The Path of Cunning, issue #5

Just a quick note to flag up that The Path of Cunning #5 has been released, including not one, but two contributions by yours truly!

One of these was sufficient to get my metaphor privileges officially revoked by the editor. I cannot imagine why.

Article in The Path of Cunning

The latest issue of sporadic GURPS fanzine The Path of Cunning is out, and I'm in it! My article looks at libraries, and how to model them in GURPS - which makes it sound more complicated than it is.

Mo Little Art

A friend of mine has set up a website selling charming cards and illustrations, and I thought I'd give her a shout out: Mo Little Art. Well worth going to check out the cute animals and striking colours even if you're not up for buying anything. Frog Soup is my current favourite.

Building a Lawful Good kingdom in Pathfinder, part 1

Politics Note: I will assume throughout this series that the government providing public goods, infrastructure and essential services to the citizens, in exchange for taxes, is broadly a good thing. You don’t have to agree, but don’t waste your time posting any disagreements here, a blogpost about imaginary kings on an irrelevant website.

Quite some time ago now, I hassled the lovely people at Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice about what a Lawful Good kingdom could look like in practice. Could you have something that at least superficially felt like a standard fantasy kingdom, while justifying the designation of Good (Lawful is at least a bit easier)?

"Basically, can it actually be both good - however you want to define that; greatest good for the greatest number is probably a working starting point - and feudal. Can you have castles and banquets and things, and subsistence level farming peasants outside to supply the tassels and banquets and things, and still be good?"

Having looked at the Profession rules in Pathfinder again, I think it might support something approaching a Lawful Good kingdom; at least, a kingdom where ordinary people earn enough to be comfortable and can take pride in their work and contribution to society, and where the nobility do have a distinct and worthwhile role.

"You can earn half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work."

A typical NPC has ability scores of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8. Specifics will vary by occupation, but it's reasonable to assume a 10 or 11 in Wisdom, giving a +0 modifier. It's also fair to assume that for an NPC who primarily works in a profession, they'll have at least one skill point, gaining the class skill bonus as well for a total +4. On average, our NPC will earn 7.25gp per week. There are various ways to bolster those earnings, though.

To begin with, our NPC (let's call them Jay) can do the sensible thing and take a Skill Focus (Profession) feat. This will land Jay a nice +3 bonus for another 1.5gp per week. We're on 8.75gp per week at this point.

Jay can also take one of various traits that grant a +1 bonus to particular Profession checks. These represent family influence, growing up in particular conditions, minor blessings, and so on. A few grant +2, but let's stick with our +1, as we're trying to see what a typical person earns, not edge cases. That's 9.25gp each week.

Masterwork tools are another simple option that's likely to be widespread. Yes, they cost 50gp, but that +2 bonus means you'll earn an extra gp per week on average, so they'll pay for themselves within a year. It's a worthwhile investment. Now we have 10.25gp per week.

Even better, you can learn the Craft skill to make your own masterwork tools - yes, it needs you to hit a DC20 skill check, but you'll save a lot in the long run, so get a group of friends together and take turns aiding another.

What about the benefits of teamwork? There's nothing (that I can see) stopping people from aiding another on those weekly Profession checks. While a GM could rule that doing your own Profession check stops you from helping someone else, it's not built in. A trained hireling costs 3sp per day, so whether that's worthwhile depends whether the assumed working week is 7 days (2.1gp for a +2 bonus equivalent to +1gp, net -1.1gp) or less. It's only worthwhile if the hireling works for 3 days or less, so probably not.

Luxurious Living

Now we get into the costs side of the equation. According to the rules, the average standard of living is:

"10 gp/month: The character lives in his own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from his home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less."

Well, would you look at that. Our humble professional - a 1st-level commoner with no exceptional features - is earning 10gp per week. Certainly, Jay can afford to live comfortably, save for a rainy day, hire assistants, and have masterwork tools for their key tasks.

Levelling Up

A related but tangential issue is how to realistically represent the level of NPCs. Level fundamentally represents combat prowess, no matter how hard the game tries to pretend otherwise; XP comes from fighting and completing quests that mostly revolve around fighting. Getting better at your job through experience simply isn't a factor (perhaps because PCs tend to go from 1-20 in the space of a few weeks).

If we addressed this, most professional NPCs would realistically have at least a few levels, and correspondingly higher skills. Since skill ranks and feats are capped by level, that makes a big difference. At 3rd level, Jay can drop another couple of points into Profession and earn another gp per week. At 4th level, if Jay had a Wisdom of 11, they can bump it up to 12 for another +1.

If the GM is allowing the Signature Skill feat, things change dramatically at 5th level. Jay can now pick up the feat, gaining the 5-rank benefit of earning gp equal to your full Profession check results each week, not half your result. Very nice. This is very much an 'if', though.

We could certainly refine Jay more if we weren't trying for an average character. The Patient Calm trait lets you treat 'taking 10' as 'taking 12', and this does stack with a trait bonus. The Brevoy Bandit regional trait lets you add another ability score to Profession checks as well as your Wisdom, for another +1, and this also stacks. By taking a Drawback, Jay can take both of these, plus one of the traits that grants a +2.

There's even a trait that halves the time needed to take 20, which would strengthen any case for allowing 'taking 20' on Profession rolls for income.*

*It's not at all clear whether you can do this normally; nothing says you can't, but equally nothing says you can. That's being said, since a Profession check for income is meant to represent a week of work, taking 20 should require 20 weeks of work.

Jay has a +4 bonus from various traits, a Wisdom of 12 (+1), a skill point that also nets a class skill bonus (+4), and Skill Focus (+3), plus masterwork tools (+2). Taking 10 gives Jay a roll of 24 for 12gp per week at 1st level. We could probably get better, especially looking at racial options for bonuses, but it'll do for now.

Back to the Kingdom

So how does this relate to the thorny question of the Lawful Good Kingdom? Well, we can see here that Jay is earning a comfortable living from the fruits of their labour. Reasonable taxes have been paid, and Jay still has money and to spare.

That certainly doesn't need to be where things stop, though. A benevolent government can do a lot to make life more comfortable. Considering Jay's disposable income is approaching 75% of their income, there's definitely room for higher taxes to fund investment and social infrastructure. But we'll look at that in another post.

Actual Play: Whartson meet the fleas

While our GM Nick was unable to run for us, I hijacked the Whartson Hall crew for a quick one-shot (which, inevitably, ran into three sessions). This scenario may be familiar to long-term readers. I really need to finish writing another one...

How will our heroes fare in the face of ancient horrors?* Can they save Mick Narsh, the mysteriously-missing author?** What terrifying abominations will they confront in the wilds of Dartmoor?*** Can they put an end to a malevolent presence that has haunted the land for centuries?****

Discover the truth for yourselves at Whartson Hall.

* oh they'll be FINE
** not so much "can" as "will"?
*** the answer will surprise you!
**** not as such, no

Enwhartening

For reasons known only to themselves (if that), the good folks of Whartson Hall recently invited me to join one of their games.

If you aren't already familiar with the Whartson Hall podcast, it's definitely worth a look. It's not only one of the longest-running actual play podcasts, but also intensely relaxing to listen to. There's no attempt to be anything other than a group of people gaming with a recorder running, complete with awful puns (the best kind). They (we?) play in a variety of systems, especially ones that aren't covered by many of the podcasts out there - GURPS, Chill, Tekumel, Forgotten Futures, and other systems to liven things up.

Anyway - if for some reason you miss listening to me play in games, and don't already listen to Whartson Hall, hurry over and partake.

Rusty Mick's Off-Brand Specials: Mk II Flashfield

“It's really gear”
“Sometimes you just need that 'what the hell!?' edge”

Look, you don't go to Mick's for chips and irons and that workaday crap. The reason I trot down to that poky rat-hole every once in a while is for an edge. Mick's genius, if you wanna call it that, is laying his servo-hands on kit that no scummer nor rent-a-cop nor Mister Johnson ever considered you might have.

"Sure, any Corp surplus hut can flog you a cheap flakjack or some bonded armour. Maybe even a knockoff force bubble. Nobody's going to overlook that, are they? People come prepared.

Or you can spread some cred, book yourself in at an all-night chop-shop and get subdermals, if you don't mind never taking another jab of stimms. Subtle, maybe, but when Mister Johnson puts two barrels of las in your back from half a metre it's not making much difference.

This little chap may not look much, but it might just save your life. Just so long as you can turn the situation round in three seconds or less. Now, about that speedchip you didn't want..?"

DuttonTech Mk II 'Oops' Flashfield

This discreet device is a simple circular disc ten centimetres across, with a web of flexible filaments that stretch along the spine, easily covered by a simple shirt. It's wired to a hefty powerpack that can be worn as a belt, slipped under a chestplate or concealed in bulky shoulder pads. Though the pack wouldn't disgrace a lascannon, it's burned out with a single use, and that's barely enough for the needs of this power-hungry contingency plan.

The filament mesh serves as an antenna to detect incoming energy signals above a certain threshold, including lasweapons, plasma beams and most projectile fire. When triggered, the Flashfield discharges its powerpack to generate a dense energy field that protects the back, neck and back of the head. Though the field burns out in seconds, it buys the wearer enough time to react to a betrayal - or, more charitably, an enemy getting the drop on you.

Specs

(system-neutral and therefore vague)

The Mk II senses concentrated energy with enough velocity to cause serious harm - it would detect a bullet, energy blast, shrapnel or blade, but is typically set so a fall or punch wouldn't trigger it. Large objects that injure through sheer mass, rather than concentration of force, are usually ignored.

When triggered, the field is strong enough to resist small-arms fire and reduce the effect of typical longarms by 80%. Vibration alarms silently alert the wearer to the danger, and are strong enough to wake them. It lasts long enough for the wearer to:

1. notice the attack
2. move a few steps; or, drop and roll
3. draw and ready a weapon and take a shot; or, strike at an attacker; or, dive into cover

The device is good for a single use before burning out. Supplies are highly erratic.

---

Inspired by Whartson Hall's excellent Cyberpunk game. The old "politely invite them to go first and shoot them in the back" trick is established enough that I got to wondering why nobody seemed to have invented a countermeasure.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells

A while ago I began compiling a list of, uh, alternative spells for Pathfinder, so basically for D&D.

Having been prompted by Big Jack Brass' recent tweets, I hereby present an extract from that inexplicably-unpublished manuscript, "Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells"

• Flares
• Speak to Dead
• Burning Hams
• Disguise Elf
• Ear-Piercing Cream
• Enlarge Parson
• Really Obscure Poison
• Cockling Skull
• Reign of Frogs
• Enter Poe Singh-Han's Big Bees

(yes, I actually have rules for these, but I don't feel like editing them for the blog at 1am and I might try to make them into something publishable)

Bedrolls and Backpacks

This post is the fault of Rich at Swordnut Radio.

Ok, tell me how you would use bedrolls and/or backpacks in an RPG

No limits, no rules, no standards, no shame.

— Swordnut Radio (@SwordnutRadio) April 10, 2018

Okay, I like a challenge. And I have a mind like a weasel.

Bedrolls

Roll up the bedroll. Place it in your actual bed, giving the impression that you are sound asleep. This is useful both when an assassin's quarrel pins it to the bedframe through what would, in other circumstances, have been your heart, and when a servant peers through the secret peephole to reassure the king that yes, you are respectably abed, and definitely not treasonously committing hanky-panky with his husband.

Use the bedroll to guard against sharp points: place it over a wall to protect you from spikes or glass shards, or hold it in front of you while leaping through a window without opening it first.

Use the bedroll as emergency quick-release padding when falling onto abrasive surfaces, such as when hurling yourself from a third-floor window to escape an enraged monarch.

Wrap it around your arms while facing down a wolf or training a warhound. Many smallish animals will struggle to get through that. Especially useful for low-level mages in cat-dense areas.

While travelling through the desert, saturate the bedroll when you find an oasis. Drape the soaking bedroll over you to help cool you by evaporation. Before departing, roll it and place in your waxed canvas backpack, so it can serve as an improvised water-carrier.

With just a bit of rope, transform it into an inadequate camel-saddle, still superior to trying to sit directly on the accursed creature.

Flick your wrist to unfurl the bedroll over a smallish mass of vipers, scorpions or similar unpleasantness, buying yourself a moment to rush across unmolested.

Place the rolled-up bedroll on your head and wrap it in bright fabric. Tell the people of the next town that you are a Tzeetvolf, one of the great nobles of the distant land of Gnasht, on an important diplomatic mission to the king, but temporarily impecunious after your caravan was caught in a storm. Point to your improbable headgear as confirmation that you must be some kind of foreigner, because everyone knows foreigners dress funny.

Fold the bedroll the other way to form a draught excluder in the cheap tavern room where you are hiding from the royal guard, or the cramped cabin of the ship you were forced to seek passage on in your attempts to flee the country. Bonus: also keeps out many kinds of vermin, especially if treated with camphor.

Practice slipping the bedroll from atop your backpack and unrolling it in a single smooth movement. This can serve to impede and temporarily blind attackers, deflect light weaponry or capture small animals.

Soak the bedroll in oil and place it in a bottleneck, or amongst a large stretch of dry vegetation. When the troll conjured by the king's archwizard steps unwittingly onto it, simply toss your flaming torch to engulf the creature in fire.

Soak the bedroll in holy water before sleeping in a location you believe to be frequented by the undead, or when harried by pesky minor demons summoned by the king's deputy archwizard.

Wedge a corner of the bedroll under a door to prevent interruption during important diplomatic meetings, such as a highly personal rendezvous with the king's husband.

Wrap fragile items, such as expensive china, magical potions or stolen crowns, to protect them from the shock of rough journeys.

Form a haybox by wrapping your hot food tightly, allowing you to cook meals while you hasten cross-country in search of a haven from royal wrath.

Keep hot items hot by using it as insulation.

Keep cold items cold (because that's also what insulation does).

Dip the bedroll in delicious beef dripping and use it to distract wild dogs; leave it behind as a decoy for bloodhounds.

Dip the bedroll in delicious chocolate and use it to distract elves.

Dip the bedroll in soup and chew it in a desperate attempt to stave off the agonising pangs of hunger.

Cut a hole in the centre of the bedroll and transform it into a useful poncho, keeping off the rain as you trudge through the backwoods to avoid detection by the king's bounty hunters.

Use the bedroll as an improvised sledge to speed down the snowy slopes of the Heavenclutch Mountains, evading the howling ice-ogres that pursue you.

Look, we know how it is. Adventuring can be a lonely occupation. Six months in the wilds, constantly pursued by a variety of slavering beasts and amoral humanoids, plus the occasional diabolical monstrosity; never knowing the touch of a lover, inebriated colleague, courtesan, sailor, love golem, Margrek's Illusory Bedmate, affectionate sheep, doppelganger, siren, thinly-disguised bilefiend, really persuasive enchanted staff, on-again-off-again nemesis or Blanket of Really Good Massages. Your bedroll doesn't judge.

Slice the bedroll into thin strips to use as improvised bonds for captives, reins for the horse you stole from a pursuing bounty hunter, or rope to escape your top-floor room when you hear the stealthy, padding footsteps of a royal assassin approaching.

Conceal an assortment of bladed objects from unenthusiastic guards.

Inscribe important messages on the bedroll before rolling it up.

Cover one side of the bedroll with silver foil. This will serve as a useful sunscreen against the baking heat of the Dying Sands, where only the foolish and desperate venture.

Also, when the mischievous winds and cunning pathways of the Dying Sands lead you inevitably to the Tower of Many Bones, you can whip the bedroll in front of you as you turn round at the sound of skittering claws, slaying the foul gorgon with its own baleful image.

Clasping the bedroll in one hand at your waist, allow it to discreetly unroll as you step back from your onrushing adversary; then, as her foot lands upon it, seize it with both hands and yank sharply upwards, tipping her backward and buying a moment's respite. Use that moment to hurl the bedroll over your adversary's face while applying blade repeatedly to kidneys.

Before inserting your hand into suspiciously-sized openings in a ruin, temple or vault, roll up a bit of the bedroll and insert that instead.

Use a pitchfork to hold up the bedroll a short distance from your body before racing through the Hall of Slaughter. The padded fabric will catch and entangle the barrage of poison-tipped darts that shower you, allowing you to move far faster than the members of the palace household trying to weave their way between pressure plates.

Wrap your bedroll around the tip of a pole and soak it with oil. Use it as a durable torch, anti-troll countermeasure or festive outdoor lighting.

Eke out meagre provisions with small, chewy chunks of bedroll. Few companions will ask too many questions about the precise origin of the ingredients in their stew, for fear you will tell them.

Tie and soak the bedroll, the excess weight giving you a functional improvised club. Insert a walking stick or other pole for easier wielding. Not much cop in most situations, but useful against small foes and wild animals that can be readily scared off.

Use a small measure of ice magic to freeze the sodden bedroll into a substantial club. When you are later captured by the watch, feign outrage and point out that you could not possibly have bludgeoned anyone to death; all you have is a bedroll and a backpack.

Backpacks

Carry your familiar, pet, or a small mystical child you have rescued from a peculiar imprisonment but whose beatific smile and cherubic features are frankly too nauseating to keep on display.

Fill the backpack with stones to use as a counterweight on a pulley or lift mechanism, such as when assisting the king's husband to lower himself safely from a high tower.

Fill the backpack with sand and swap it with a valuable archaeological artefact you plan to steal, hoping to prevent the triggering of a weight-sensitive trap mechanism. Tip: ensure the item you plan to steal weighs about as much as a backpack full of sand.

Fill the backpack with feathers and put it on backwards, forming surprisingly-effective armour against light weaponry and animal attacks. Works particularly well if you have a waist-high wall or window to defend.

Put the backpack over your head to conceal your hideous features, you repulsive cretin.

Store large and thoroughly dull books in the backpack. This assists your disguise as a travelling bore - not only does it add verisimilitude, but few people will wish to question you closely. Moreover, the books will provide a layer of protection against the arrows and poisoned knives of the royal assassins.

Put a helmet on top of the backpack and place it by a window or wall, lit from behind, to give the impression of a sentry.

Put many scorpions inside the backpack, and drop it out of the window to create a distraction.

Transport other, smaller backpacks.

Write important notes on the inside of the backpack, which few people will bother to check for paperwork.

Leave the backpack prominently in your room, secured with a shiny padlock which is not in fact closed. Fill it with rubbish, on top of which you place an envelope sealed with an important official's name. Inside the envelope, place a hastily-scrawled letter with an explosive runes or horrific curse amongst its lines.

Put heavy objects inside the backpack and practice wielding it as an improvised weapon.

Completely waterproof the backpack, and use it to transport water. When travelling to the sea-realms to seek aid against the murderous vengeance of the king, use it to transport air instead.

Place the backpack over a slain gorgon's head before opening your eyes, allowing you to look about you without fear. If you tie the strings tightly before severing its neck, on inverting the backpack the head should fall neatly inside.

Pretend the backpack contains incredibly valuable items you are secretly transporting on behalf of the Wizards' Guild, and not the head of a gorgon. When the ruffians who have been watching you ambush you and demand you hand it over, do so while screwing your eyes shut in apparent fear. Bandits often carry valuable items stolen from previous victims. Protip: Practice locating a swede, pumpkin or leather football by sound alone and replacing it in a backpack!

Determine which pocket of your backpack is the most accessible to someone else when worn. Encourage hornets to construct a nest in that pocket.

Tie a stout, camouflaged rope to your backpack and hurl it onto the parapet of your enemy's castle. When a bemused guard picks it up, heave with all your might; most will reflexively tighten their grip, allowing you to yank them bodily from the parapet.

Balance your adventuring backpack atop a door, so that the guard passing through on a routine patrol is struck atop the head and stunned by the weight of copper coins and damaged goblin armour within.

Cut a hole in the back of your backpack and wear it at all times, concealing the leathery wings you have sprouted through unwise negotiations with the Order of Damnation.

For a quick disguise, throw on an oversized coat on top of your backpack, and claim to be a hunchback. Works best if nobody sees you do it.

Balance a waxed backpack atop your head to keep off the rain.

After a regrettable encounter with Hesidian Rage-Moths, use your bush knife and backpack to construct rudimentary clothing in order to enter the city without summary arrest for public indecency.

Insist on publicly and fairly dividing up the loot from your latest immoral escapades. Patiently pour the shares, one handful at a time, into an appropriate number of backpacks. Do not inform your colleagues that you have employed hobbits to crouch beneath the table, reaching into the backpacks through cunning holes to extract the gems and replace them with lumps of worthless glass.

Place a cannonball inside a backpack, enchanting it with a spell of weightlessness, and pour a variety of more ordinary goods atop it. Encourage thieves or enemies to make off with it, then dismiss the enchantment. Dispose of them at your leisure.

Conceal an extradimensional space within a backpack, and place low-level contraband in the bag itself. Arrange for it to be confiscated by the guard. After a prearranged interval, have the thief emerge from the aforementioned extradimensional space, steal everything valuable within the guard's vaults, and put them inside the extradimensional space, before breaking out. Have the bard turn up disguised as an embarrassed noble and pay a bribe to retrieve the barely-illegal backpack.

Hire a small warehouse. Fill it with backpacks. Leave a clipboard on a shelf, with a purchase order for 10,000 mimic eggs. Leave a single boot and a broken dagger in a pile of chicken blood near a shelf, spattering that also with blood. Cast magic mouth on a large but random selection of bags, each time enchanting them with a very occasional snore, each one different. Capture the PCs, and have them wake up tied together near the clipboard.

Trail of Cthulhu: The Fallen World from YSDC Games Day 2017

The annual Yog-Sothoth.com (YSDC) Games Day took place in October, and I was lucky enough to make it for the third time. As always, it was a great, relaxing weekend full of regrettably short conversations, delicious food, and of course, games!

I managed to get a couple of recordings, and one partial recording, and will put them up here as I finish editing them. This does mean that, for the first time, these are not my own gaming group!

Librarians & Leviathans Presents: Steve Dempsey's The Fallen World

So for clarity's sake, I'm going to try to remember to use "Librarians & Leviathans Presents" when flagging up situations like this, just to avoid confusion.

Fearful Symmetries is a campaign for Trail of Cthulhu inspired by William Blake. The characters are caught up in an occult war and must use the double edged sword of magical power to reunite Albion, split asunder by time and the Mythos. The campaign will soon be published by Pelgrane Press, along with The Book of the New Jerusalem, a gazatteer of English folklore locations and people that takes up where The Book of the Smoke left off.

Steve Dempsey, the keeper for this scenario, has been running his Fearful Symmetries campaign since May 2016, achieving 61 sessions so far. This scenario, The Fallen World, was improvised by Steve at the convention. The characters are members of the Ordnance Geology Survey (Section D). Their job is to contain and clean up suspected supernatural events, and provide a suitable mundane explanation. They have been brought in to clear up in Upper and Lower Quinton in Southern Warwickshire where a number of people have suddenly died - possibly something to do with aforementioned Fearful Symmetries campaign.

Episode 1 is now available on my usual spot in the Internet Archive*. More to follow.

*okay, yes, there's a typo in the URL. That's actually there. Due to technical problems at Archive.org, I made four attempts over several days to get this uploaded, and apparently lost the second L in LnL during repeatedly typing in all the same metadata T_T I don't think it's possible to do anything about it though. I may at some point beg an admin to move it for consistency.

Links here for quick and easy access to mp4 files, others available on Archive.org. EDIT: All episodes now up!

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5
• Episode 6
• Episode 7

Gamer Nostalgia and Game Choices

This post was prompted by an old Adventuring Party episode, which seems fitting (although less old than I thought it was when I first wrote this).

The premise was, basically, "are gamers too nostalgic? where is all the new stuff?" and based on a listener question. The group discussed this at length and with enthusiasm, and eventually settled mostly on "no" and "everywhere, on Kickstarter and stuff". While an interesting discussion, I felt like it didn't quite get to grips with things. I spent a lot of it on the tangent of thinking about why people tend to substantially gravitate towards the same handful of older games - D&D, World of Darkness, Traveller and Star Wars. Why isn't there a large market share for new shiny games?

(and yes, one of the answers is "it's questionable how much those should be considered old")

Most of my discussion will focus on D&D because I've played that.

Inertia

I think a large part of this can be attributed to general inertia. Humans are, for the most part, inclined to stick with what they're already doing, and some of the social issues around gaming specifically interact with that.

Conservatism is the basic point. Once you've got a game that does X, why learn another one? This tendency is intensified by the group-based nature of gaming. To play, you need to get a group of 3-6 people to agree on a game; it's not something you can just do yourself. For many people this means persuading their existing group (or one of just a couple of groups) to try the new system. In some groups, people are all willing to experiment with new games - it depends a lot on what the group is for, I suppose. There are game groups which are (explicitly or tacitly) about relaxing and socialising, and an old familiar system fits the bill well.

There are other factors which play in here. A group of laid-back players with an evangelical GM may be perfectly happy to have their choice of game driven by the GM's enthusiasms. Some groups are pretty stable, others are highly changeable depending on what game is currently being played; the latter are perhaps easier to crack into with a new game.

The social contract, or rather a social contract, reinforces this conservatism. When you do persuade them, if some people are reluctant in the first place because they don't see the point of changing from [game that does something similar], this tends to weigh against them changing their mind. If they've given it something approaching a fair chance, and still don't really buy into it, the social contract pushes towards going back to Old Game. That's down to the dynamics of things like how we approach favours and agreements - there's generally an unspoken sense that if Jane agrees to try MegaSpaceWhizz and doesn't care for it, you'll go back to Traveller.

Worse, if you've tried something and it wasn't a great success, there's a fairly strong pressure to never try it again.

This is particularly significant when you think that Old Game is probably played with the ease of long practice; people are comfortable with the rules and expectations and the kind of characters they can be. A first session of New Game, or even first few sessions, will be full of explanations and rules checking and mistakes, and people finding out they can't do something they want to.

It's also common for there to be a long and painful chargen process, not least because you normally have 1 copy of the rules and nobody knows them so you have to share. It's a very straightforward system, but I can make a Call of Cthulhu character without consulting the rules at all (okay, yes, I don't remember the exact list of skills or their base percentages, but I can remember many and I can certainly allocate all my points to stack above base). New Game will almost always seem painful, clumsy and slow in comparison.

Of course, New Game may also have cool and exciting aspects, like new character concepts and new powers and finding out you can do something very cool, but these tend to occur after you've already bought into it. How much this applies depends a lot on how much people already know about the game, the type of game, and how the GM presents it. A tie-in game or one that draws very strongly on specific tropes known to the players may strongly spark their imagination. On the downside, if players are not familiar with those tropes, it's a much harder sell.

To make things personal for a minute, I am really quite bad at pop culture. Luckily I'm pretty easygoing about this stuff, because I usually don't really know the tropes for games people want to run. My mates are also very good at quickly giving me the basic tools I need to pretend I know what I'm doing.* I am, however, quite familiar with a lot of D&D content because before I even got near it, I'd read plenty of generic fantasy, I played some D&D games and absorbed a lot of the setting and tropes. If you want me to play a new game inspired by Popular Zeitgeist Thing, I can almost guarantee I know nothing about it.

* Although I do have a tendency to interpret all settings as basically Call of Cthulhu

I don't want to paint this as a negative thing. People stick with old games they enjoy because they already enjoy them. Most gamers I know have a stack of ideas saved up for next time they get to run something - they're already excited with possibilities for doing more of the games they're already running. There isn't necessarily any need for something new.

First gamer advantage

The old games that people come back to get that for a reason. They normally do something well. There are other old games which are obscure or forgotten.

This is actually much more complicated than the standard "first mover advantage". It's not just about economics, though I'm sure that's an issue.

Old games had the huge advantage of an untapped well of sources to draw on. This is no longer true for any but the most specific of games. This may be a factor unique to games, as RPGs are a relatively derivative genre.

This meant D&D was able to draw on a huge range of fantasy, including swords and sorcery, weird, technofantasy, gothic, fairy tales and mythology, when establishing its setting and tone. This allowed it the great benefit of being flexible and adaptable; even if a GM chooses to run in an existing setting, individual elements can be highlighted, muted, subverted or ignored altogether, flavouring the in-game reality accordingly. Something as simple as tweaking the amount of background politics and treachery can shift a setting from "bickering city-states full of backstabbing nobles heedless of the evils around them" to "loose alliance of city-states keeping the torch of human civilisation lit in the face of darkness". It does tend towards a high-magic interpretation of the swords and sorcery end, but it hits enough notes from many of the others that it feels right. It covers Generic Fantastical well enough that it's a perfectly viable game to use for it. Anyone else coming into the scene now has to do something more specific, and thus more limited.

Well, they don't have to. They can try to create another Generic Fantastical game. It's an astonishingly difficult challenge, though, because there is already a game for that and it's very, very well-established, well-known, well-supported and widely-played. Trying to persuade people to swap out their well-worn-in game for one that seems mostly quite similar is a massive undertaking, because people have a lot of traction with their existing one and need a very strong reason to change. A vast mechanical improvement might do it, and this is what game publishers try to offer with new editions. The problem for a rival publisher is that in most cases you won't be able to offer anything too similar - copyrighted monsters, magic, setting details and so on. So you're asking people to change to either a game that's a bit like what they already do perfectly well, or a (hopefully) polished ripoff of the game they already play. And for the latter, even if it's better, people do tend to instinctively dislike ripoffs.

The cases I think you can sort of count as successes here are things like GURPS versions of particular genres, and this generally seems to work because people are fans of the system and want to run their favourite genres in it. But GURPS is, in its own way, one of the Elder Games. You can't make the new GURPS, although FATE is a similar beast.

The older, vaguely generic games are generally broad enough that they support a wide range of playstyles, preferences, tones and subgenres. This means you can use the same system, and much of the same content, to do different things. Part of the reason people don't seek out a new game to do XYZ based on newish sources is that they don't need to: they can often adapt an Elder Game that's in the right area, adding new content or throwing some out to produce the game they want. You can put content from The Witcher straight into a D&D game. You can grab ideas from modern sci-fi and insert them into Traveller.

D&D (and Vampire, and Traveller) also got to grab a lot of ideas from around the cultural sphere and be the first game that incorporates them. They've had a lot of time both to raid literature and film, and to evolve their own ideas. This just leaves slightly less breathing space for newer games. There's already a beholder, a mind flayer, a mimic, a gibbering mouther... a clan of occult vampires, a sect of highly religious vampires, vampires who want to tear down the secretive vampire social order. A lot of the cool ideas have already been used. You need new ones.

And, to be honest - older games got away with more. They were there first, and they got away with throwing together rag-tag bundles of whatever different people thought was cool with minimal explanation. Supplements and expansions threw in even more stuff that might count as part of D&D or Vampire or Star Wars. Over time, edges have been smoothed, weirdness has been explained away in various ways, and this stuff has taken on the mantle of making sense because That's Just How It Is. Your exciting new game doesn't get that leeway. It's competing with other games that seem to have coherent settings. If people decide it's a random set of what you thought was cool and makes no real sense, it's unlikely to succeed.

Limitations

One of the challenges facing newer games is that because old games are often so broad, they have to define themselves substantially by exclusion. It's very hard to create a broader game, or a substantially different mix of game elements that can't already be homebrewed by a GM, if everything conceivable is already part of the setting.

To take a D&D example, if you want to create a fantasy game that's postapocalyptic (maybe based on Shannara or something), you can just play D&D: there's the refuse of previous civilisations everywhere, there's a fair amount of technological elements. If you want to create a Gothic fantasy game, that's Ravenloft, but you can also do a Gothic-skinned pulp fantasy game by running D&D with lots of ghosts, skeletons, curses, hags, witches, shadows and vampires. If you want to create a folklore-based fantasy game, you can run D&D with a lot of fey and constructs and less in the way of dungeons.

Probably none of those are quite what you meant, but for a lot of players they'll scratch the flavour itch. Basically, the difficulty is you can't say "it's like Dungeons and Dragons, but with fey/post-apocalypticism/vampires" because those things are already in Dungeons and Dragons. And similarly, Vampire already incorporates almost any conceivable type of vampire and can be tweaked to run a wide variety of vampire subgenres.

What your new game needs to do is be more restrictive: it only has fey and fairy tales, or it only has Gothic elements; it specifically excludes orcs and elves and flesh golems and half the D&D PC archetypes and so on. This allows it to have a strong and distinctive flavour, but it's a harder sell, I think. Not least because quite a few players will think "sure, or I could run that by eliding a bunch of stuff from D&D".

Often what distinguishes fantasy, say, is not just the setting details, but the tone and the flavour of the world. But this tends to melt away in the face of a fairly generic setting, because D&D doesn't rely on any particular tone or flavour. Traveller can be a hard-boiled mercantile game, or a swashbuckling pirate game, or a heroic saving-the-Imperium game. Vampire can probably be a game of personal horror if you're determined, but it's more likely to be either Vampires Investigate or Vampire Buffy, let's be honest.

Common knowledge

What's more, this breadth is very welcoming to new players. A new player won't grasp the vast details of any D&D setting, but they don't have to - having some knowledge of some fantasy is a very good start. Almost everyone knows that elves are graceful and noble, orcs are monsters that you fight, and mysterious people in robes send you on quests. Of course, there's a lot of room for confusion if you've seen Lord of the Rings and you're supposed to be playing Fafrd and the Grey Mouser, but you can work that out in play based on what everyone else does - and importantly, deciding which of those stories you're playing is more down to the GM than to the game itself, which has room for both.

In other words, even if you aren't quite right in your assumptions about the game, it's likely that you can make some in the first place. This is not necessarily the case in newer games, which try to contrast by having novel content which prospective players aren't familiar with. If a player needs to do homework before they can meaningfully join a game, the barrier to entry is high. I know some games, like White Wolf, got a lot of buy-in while expecting players to embrace a lot of their very convoluted ideas, but it's rooted in popular conceptions, and it's notable that the weirder and more experimental games have been much less successful.

I own several newer games with their own unique settings and worlds. I haven't played any of them. I haven't had the energy to read through it all. The sole exception here are the Warhammer 40,000 line, and they are Elder Games by dint of their huge existing fanbase and canon.

Mechanics

The Elder Games tend to be quite robust: they have been played a great deal, and thus through weight of numbers and through market share they tend to have rigorous playtesting. They tend to be good at what they're doing. Their systems don't suit everyone, but they tend to work well at what they're trying to do. They have rules for everything they need. They have a broad array of tools for GMs, from antagonists to hazards to setting details. There are lots of people playing them who talk about them at length on the internet, as well as critics, which makes it relatively easy to check up on possible weirdness (how does this interact with that?) or gauge which elements will work well in your campaign. For example, if you want to know which D&D classes or GURPS advantages might end up causing problems for your specific game concept, it's likely someone somewhere has talked about it already.

Evolution

The Elder Games have been around for a long time, and there are certainly very old-established aspects to them. D&D isn't going to stop having classes or levels, for example, because there's a point at which it wouldn't feel like the same game any more. However, Elder Games have been able to reinvent themselves to suit changes in the market. Editions of D&D are quite different from each other. You can do quite a few different things without ever leaving D&D.

If you want a quick, brutal and gritty dungeon-bashing temple-raiding experience, you can play the earlier editions. If you want a fairly tactical experience focused on combat choices with powerful PCs, you can play 4th edition. If you want a much looser adventuring experience with powerful and often bizarre PCs, with a lot of player control, you can play 3rd edition. If you want something fairly smooth and simple but with survivability that supports long-term play, you can play 5th edition.

More generally, this means they have responded to changing tastes and preferences from the player base, and that means they haven't been left behind as you might expect from an older product. Sure, younger players may not be enthused for AD&D, but that's okay because they can play the new edition instead. Because there's an awful lot of continuity between editions (in terms of expectations, setting, monsters, magic and so on) it's relatively easy for players to transition between them both permanently and temporarily. Older players can shift to a new edition to join a group of younger players; younger players who started on 5th edition can get a rough handle on a 3rd edition campaign. For the most part it's still much easier to switching to a completely different game.

To a reasonable extent, some of those Elder Games are also New Shiny Games. They have the easy comfort of familiarity, together with the exciting promise of nicer rulesets, new cool stuff, and maybe even That Thing You Always Wanted.

New Game Blues

So having thrown out all that in explanation of the strengths of older games, what about the challenges for newer games?

Licensing

For the most part, as I said, RPGs are a quite derivative medium. They are an opportunity to participate in a story that's like that story you enjoyed. That means they usually draw on other sources - perhaps heavily mixed up and chopped about, but still.

The Adventuring Party mentioned games based on newer stories. I think one of the chief difficulties here is probably licensing. If you really want to publish a game that's very much like Space Captain Smith or Winds of Khalakovo, and that players will know is based on them, you probably need to license the property so as to reuse names (and preferably stick a big "The Space Captain Smith Roleplaying Game!" on the front). This was not true of many older games, since they were able to draw on stories that were both out of copyright (especially as it was much less absurb in those days) and widely known. The works of many pulp authors that inspired D&D were no longer in copyright, and many vampire stories had the same benefit. Of course, the games were substantially influenced by much newer works (we all know White Wolf's ideas of vampires draws heavily on Anne Rice, though not always directly) but the game could lean on the out-of-copyright stuff explicitly for familiarity value.

Licensing is expensive, especially for the kind of popular new hits that are likely to have a large potential audience. A good designer may be able to take an obscure subgenre and see the potential for a brilliant RPG, but Harry Potter is frankly going to get more copies sold. Not only is this a problem in an industry with poor margins, and a particular problem for a small underfunded company trying to create the next hit, but there's the permanent risk of losing the license. With that, you lose all your hard work and the future sales potential. After all, if you can create a game people are playing decades later, there's the potential for a substantial trickle-in income, further supplements (hopefully with a lower baseline cost now that the initial work is done), growing the playerbase and so on. All that helps to fund more work, improve the game and create a virtuous cycle.

Statistics

I think sheer numbers are a non-trivial part of the problem for new games. A high proportion of potential players are already playing Old Game that is at least superficially similar. As a GM, you have an idea for a campaign. It's probably easier to pitch your campaign as one run using Old Game which some people play, than New Game which nobody plays yet.

If I want to run something that's roughly a fantasy game, I'll probably run it in D&D. Investigative and low-combat? Call of Cthulhu. Turned up to 11 and fairly gritty? Warhammer 40,000. Modernish and not particularly gritty? World of Darkness. Not because those are the absolute best games to run those things in, but because they work, people are familiar with them and it requires minimal extra effort beyond convincing people the campaign would be fun at all.

Longevity

I think there's genuinely also an extent to which Elder Games are good at providing long-term entertainment, through a mixture of factors including the same flexibility and breadth I mentioned earlier.

Will your game provide long-term entertainment, or exhaust its possibilities quickly? Mission-style games or "thing of the week" can feel more like the latter. Long-term games tend to have some inbuilt progression, often a mechanical one of growing power that ties into escalating challenges. D&D isn't just fun because you can get XP and become more powerful, but because that progression allows you to move onto newer and greater challenges. Moreover, long-term play with the same groups of characters allows for greater investment and depth as characters develop over the course of play through choices, new bits of backstory and characterisation.

To take another example here, my current Planescape character has been fleshed out a lot over two years of play. Beginning as the simple concept of "Gap Yah student, but an elf" he's developed specific relationships with the rest of the party, long-term goals which clash with those of some party members, a homeland that has grown from a simple name to a relatively detailed society, actually grown up a bit, and seen his throwaway National Service background (as a ranger, he has favoured enemies) manifest in radical changes of persona when faced with abberations. In a game with much shorter arcs, this just wouldn't have happened.

In the Pathfinder campaign I was recently playing, there's a huge difference between punching an orc at low levels, and at high levels watching the frontline fighter get battered to a near-pulp by an abyssal monstrosity before striding over and using a single high-level spell to restore him to full hit points. Retreating from arrows, versus clearing a whole chamber with a storm of fire. Summoning a triceratops to trample enemies into the ground. Transforming into a gigantic elemental to breach the castle walls.

I'm honestly not very sure what the newer games are like that might be trying to do a similar thing. The new games I've tried are mostly indie things that expect one-off play. FATE supports gradual changes of character through tweaks to their Aspects, which I could see working. However, it also felt to me (in my very, very limited experience) as though the game would get samey over time.

As I said, people I know tend to have ideas for the campaigns they'd like to run next. But this is much easier in a broad game where you can do a lot of different things. If a game is designed for quite a narrow pool of experiences, it may well serve them very well, but it's also less likely that you'll want to keep playing it. And if you don't, you're no longer part of the current audience, which makes it that much less likely that this game is a Big New Thing Everyone is Playing.

Market Share

Market share for all media has splintered over the past decades. There is more of everything available, it's easier to find out about, and easier to find other people with similar interests.

When I was at school, people talked about The Programme that was on TV last night. This was easy. There were a handful of channels, very few programmes people our age might watch (between parents, mealtimes, homework etc.), and live broadcast only. If you had any interest in that sort of thing, you watched the show that was roughly the sort of thing you wanted. So everyone watched Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and, to a lesser extent, Buffy. To a lesser extent because by that point, media was already shifting so there was much more choice of what to watch. You didn't have to watch Buffy because you could watch... some other programme instead, that did something similar but in a way you enjoyed more.

There are more books published every year. While finding a book that's exactly what you want isn't necessarily easy, it's more likely now that that book exists at all. People are spread more thinly, even people with quite similar tastes. They read different books, and so Jane A isn't particularly interested in Cyber-Regency Black Ops: the RPG because she's been reading a grittier set of books about Regency spies with more violence and less kissing. This doesn't mean she wouldn't like the game, it's just less likely she'll immediately find it appealing or even hear about it.

I suspect the similar interest thing also helps to create self-reinforcing bubbles. If you can readily seek out other people who want to play Old Games I Like, because you live in a large city or similar, you may just not really encounter newer games.

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So there we go, usual unfiltered ramblings about why it's hard for new games to take over the world, hope it was interesting.

Lover, Fighter, Thief: a simple spying ruleset

So I accidentally started writing a James Bond-y, Zorro-y, Scarlet Pimpernel-y sort of game and I thought I'd inflict it on you. I'm now struggling to remember how it happened.

I was definitely inspired by an episode of Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice - specifically episode 26, at around 48 minutes in. There's a brief discussion of using flavour and quirks to distinguish characters.

I think that I very much like... the idea that you have things that define your character that are not just about how good you are at adventurey stuff. They are about, you're greedy, or you're fond of a drink, or you're particularly smooth with the ladies or whatever. Okay, in some games that's going to be especially relevant...

Random Political Shenanigans

So in a recent edition of Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice, Roger and Michael suggested the need for a Random Political Shenanigans Table (roughly 36:00). I was intrigued by this idea, and I think you could actually probably do it.

There's probably two very broad categories of approaches to something like this.

Focused approach

In the first approach, you have a table of specific shenanigans that occur. I think for this one to work, you need to have things quite well pinned-down. That's to say, I think you could probably do something like this for Ankh-Morpork, or for The Eight Queendoms, or for the governments of the various Outer Stars, where you have a very specific setting and tone in mind.

You'd probably also need either a broad-minded approach to the events that happen, or quite a lot of interpretation to make them better fit the context.

Prodecural politics

The second approach, and the one I'm going to actually dabble in, is something more like (to borrow from Shamus Young) procedurally-generated politics. That is to say, rather than a table of specific events to roll on, this would be a set of rules for generating events.

The thing here is that you'd be tracking various variables of the situation, and then deriving shenanigans based on those variables.

Cohesion and Numenera (again)

Hi, Numenera. Long time, no see! I actually haven't heard much about you for a year or so either. No, I didn't mean... well... it's just, y'know... nobody seems to be playing you? It's kind of sad now that I think about it.

So I was listening to Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice while running seven miles down a major road in the rain over a series of hills, as is my wont, and Michael Cule was talking about his attempts to get to grips with Numenera. They resembled my own so strongly that my heart went out to him, and indeed to the game, and it got me thinking again about why it is that I just couldn't get to grips with it.

The start of episode 23, and about 50 minutes into episode 24.

Numenera feels like fog; like the fragments of an intriguing dream you clutch at upon waking, trying and failing to reconstitute the fractured sensations into a meaningful whole. Or, more prosaically, like a bunch of pieces from different, but exquisite, jigsaws.

A Skint New World

I was listening to Episode 11 of Improvised Radio Theatre with Dice, and was struck with a new D&D premise that I'm going to scrawl down while I can remember it.

The topic that was brought up was economics - specifically, how the gold price crashed in Spain when looted gold was hauled back by the ton from South America, coupled with a remark about how when governments feel hard-up, they tend to cut spending and consider starting a war. This was put into context with the way adventureres haul gold out of dungeons, which should really destablise economies in much the same way. My brain rattled around briefly and then settled on an idea: what does this do for adventurers?

Crosspost: Equipment and carry weight for real world adventures

As I've mentioned before, equipment and carrying capacity is something I'm vaguely interested in, at least in games that aim for some level of realism.

Hans of Shooting Dice has just put up a post about likely equipment for a modern-day investigator to carry. It's broadly aimed at Call of Cthulhu characters, but honestly, it's a good starting point for any real-world characters who are relatively ordinary folks.

Not in London

Another part of my sluggish attempts to appropriate cross-link my blogs.

I wrote about setting scenarios outside London (more generally, outside the major city of the region), and thought it was broad enough to cross-link here.

Looking back, it's a bit brief. For example, I dismissed the idea of exploring London, and I think there's something to that: if you're actually engaged in a scenario, in-character tourism is likely to limit itself to a few major landmarks. I know there's a glamour about the city for some people (Americans in particular, I suspect) but most of it is just, y'know, streets and things.

But an obvious flipside is familiarity-tourism. If players are familiar with London, then they may well get a lot of enjoyment from immersion, and so being able to wander through familiar districts or simply get the appropriate Tube lines can be a source of pleasure. And having those things handwaved might dispel the sense of immersion.

You have to weigh this sort of thing up. Broadly speaking, I think a scenario aimed at creating a Being In London experience does need to concern itself with verisimilitude. Cthulhu by Gaslight and suchlike games tend to fit into this category. However, a scenario that's set in London as a generic default doesn't, really. If London is simply a convenient place to nominally be, and all the action happens in named locations, then it's fair enough for the GM to skimp on it.

I think it's still true, though, that the smaller the settlement, the more significant each person and place becomes. In a hamlet, each of the six residents is significant, and the presence of a bridal shop is notable. In a city, there's going to be a bridal shop somewhere, so why not here? And we have to take it as read that there are far more NPCs in the place than players can possibly interact with, almost all of whom are irrelevant in the extreme.

And I do still plan to get back to that scenario, and rewrite it completely as a setting book with a couple of scenarios built in...

Using status mechanics to keep characters involved

Another day, another riff on Shannon. Shannon's post is quite specific, being about status in LARPS, and specifically a possible implementation for one of her own games. Inevitably, mine will be a general post about character status with no specific application in any of the games I'm not running.

Let me also point out that I think Shannon's solution seems absolutely fine.

One particular strength is that because it's reliant on rules and spends (rather than randomisation) it gives players a lot of control, and avoids rules causing silly results. If it's not practical to delegate the work, you can't delegate it (and hence, you have some incentive to find reasons why it's not practical...); you can only spend so much effort digging dirt on lower-status individuals, otherwise everyone will start thinking you're weird. And it's pretty simple!

It also limits players to a certain number of questions, for example, which means they can't just get around the restrictions by repeatedly asking questions about a high-status person until they get a good roll.

The reason I'm going to play with randomizer-based mechanical solutions is because I want to know whether, and how, it could work.

Fun-Sizing the Great Old Ones: Yog-Sothoth

I have posted part three of my Fun-Sizing the Great Old Ones series on Yog-Sothoth.com. This time: how can we use Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate, effectively in a game, other than getting shipwrecked on R'lyeh?

Since I was apparently asleep during this one, and completely forgot to discuss linking Yog-Sothoth with Judeochristianity, I probably need to come back to this!

Fun-Sizing the Great Old Ones: Cthulhu

I have posted part two of my Fun-Sizing the Great Old Ones series on Yog-Sothoth.com. This time: how can we use Cthulhu himself effectively in a game, other than getting shipwrecked on R'lyeh?

You can find further notes on Cthulhu use in my previous post.