The Hive Mind 3: copying combat

So, having carefully stolen the the skill spheres system and the serious injury model how can I steal Necromunda's combat system and make it my own?

To recap, the melée combat system works like this:

• You each have a Weapon Skill stat
• You each have an Attacks stat
• You roll dice equal to your Attacks and pick the highest
• Opponents with a parry (mostly due to a sword) can make you reroll one die
• You subtract 1s
• You add +1 for any additional 6s
• You add your WS to this number
• You compare totals
• On a tie, the highest Initiative stat wins
• You can roll to wound once for each point of difference (minimum 1)

I'm actually wondering whether you couldn't extrapolate this to other resolution mechanics, given a different statline. And there will definitely be a different statline.

Off the top of my head, for purposes of experimenting, I'm going to propose something like this:

• Might - governs physical brawn and toughness
• Agility - governs nimbleness, dexterity and reaction
• Intellect - governs memory, logic, reason and knowledge
• Charisma - governs social graces, plausibility, charm, leadership
• Weaponry - weapon use
• Stealth - sneaking, disguise, camouflage and sleight-of-hand
• Persuasion - influencing others
• Athletics - physical feats
• Lore - all learning

Lore could be broken down further, but I'm not convinced it needs to be. There's certainly some characters (and real-life people) who are experts in science but not history, or history but not politics, or whatever. But given there's one skill for using all weapons, and one skill for all interpersonal interactions, I'm not sure we need more. Obviously this will depend on the kind of game - in a magical system you might not want learning and magic to be all tied up together, even though that's the most common model.

The first four are stats, the remainder are skills (and I'm going to use the "skill" term here even though that means something different in Necromunda). Basically, all opposed tasks would be resolving using a Stat Dicepool + Skill Modifier roll. The stat determines how many dice you roll, both making a higher stat more reliable and slightly increasing its maximum potential, but you're all human and there aren't vast differences in your raw potential. That difference comes from skills, which represent actual experience and training in a particular task. Someone with a lot of training in weapon use can still get reliable results, even if they're physically outclassed. On the other hand, that burly thug might just overwhelm you with brute force and luck, because the range possible on a die is similar to the range of possible skill levels.

These will usually be combined in particular ways, but occasionally something different crops up. For example, you might easily use Intellect + W for forensics on a murder scene, or Charisma + W when regaling people with exploits of derring-do. Persuasion can be readily used with Might (physical intimidation or showing off), Agility (ditto), Intellect (reasoned discourse and argumentation, whether true or not) or Charisma (charming, beguiling and befuddling). Intellect + Stealth would help plan ways to disguise or hide an object, as well as tracking down what's hidden already. Stealth + Charisma is used for impersonation.

Having an argument? Roll Intellect + Persuasion if you're debating, or Charisma + Persuasion if you're relying on force of personality. The low-Persuasion mook might just flummox you with a killer question you just can't quite formulate the answer to by rolling a 6. Or you might land a series of lethal QEDs that shut her down completely, because you roll 3, 4, 5=best and you're adding a 4 and she only rolled a 3+2.

Parries could be generalised to a set of equipment or abilities that let you gain a similar benefit. A particular debating trick might allow you to "parry" a Charisma roll by undermining the other party or throwing them off balance with unexpected gambits. In a high-tech setting, a piece of cyberware might allow hackers to parry intrusion attempts and the efforts of security systems. Wizards might "parry" in a magical duel by expending a specific spell component, while specific charms might allow anyone to parry magical attacks.

The Hive Mind 2: playing with ability pools

So I was looting Necromunda for ideas. Let's see what else could be done with the skill pools system.

As a reminder, the original ability pools are: Agility, Combat, Ferocity, Muscle, Shooting, Stealth, Techno.

Although the ideal option is probably to flesh this out into a vaguely similar gritty sci-fi setting that isn't focused purely on combat, I think I'll actually try to replicate D&D instead. That's because moving from wargame to combat-heavy game is easier than directly to lowish-combat game.

Sword and Sorcery

So here I'm going to try and throw together a set of special abilities that broadly cover the sorts of things you might expect from a fantasy adventure game, substituting for classes.

The first thing I note is that of the seven Necromunda pools, two are directly tied to raw physical ability mostly as it applies to melée combat, one is a mixture of combat and dexterity, one is a sort of willpower thing that includes toughness and scariness and more melée combat, and one is shooting. That seems excessive in an RPG.

I suggest the following seven pools to begin with, assuming a pretty straightforward dungeoneering approach to the game:

• Agility skills are about grace and reflexes
• Might skills are about physical power
• Zeal skills cover willpower, drive and encouragement
• Stealth skills are about secrecy and concealment
• Smite skills unleash destructive magic
• Conjure skills summon helpful spirits
• Enchant skills beguile and influence minds

Agility

• Catfall - you can easily maintain balance, halve the distance fallen when determining affects of a fall, and don't land prone unless you want to
• Dodge - you can burn your next action to make a save against an attack or hazard you've detected, moving up to 2m if you succeed
• Reflexes - you double your initiative and are never taken Off-Guard by traps or ambushes
• Light Fingers - you can reroll a failed Prestidigitation roll (pickpocketing, lockpicking, manipulating small objects, planting, palming, card tricks)
• Spring Up - you can stand from prone without using an action
• Quick Draw - once per round, you can draw or stash an item without spending an action

Muscle

• Sprint - you triple your speed when you run, rather than doubling it
• Hurl - if you win a combat, you can trade all your hits to shove your opponent 1d6+hits in feet and knock them prone. Larger enemies halve the distance once per size category, rounding down; if it reaches 0 this ability cannot be used
• Tireless - you treat armour and baggage as one step lighter when determining movement and fatigue
• Steel Jaw - you gain a +2 bonus to resist stunning and knockdowns
• Iron Thews - you treat weapons and shields as one category lighter when determining wielding rules
• Demolition - you deal +1 additional damage to objects and constructs, and can reroll a failed Bend Bars Lift Gates attempt.

This set may be a little opaque in the absence of rules. The idea is that our Muscly hero can use these rules to dual-wield full-sized weaponry, or carry oversized weapons, or run around with a tower shield and so on. Tireless is supposed to let them avoid speed penalties, swimming and climbing penalties, or penalties for sleeping in armour.

Zeal

• Vicious Reputation - you gain a +1 bonus to intimidate or overawe, including Fear and Retreat tests you inflict, but suffer a -2 penalty to befriend or win over NPCs.
• Nerves of Steel - you may reroll failed Pinning and Retreat tests.
• True Grit - you can make a Will test to subtract 1 from a wounding roll against you, to a minimum of 1.
• Iron Focus - you may reroll failed tests to avoid distraction, and exhaustion tests when concentrating for long periods, including overwatch and standoffs.
• Rallying Cry - you can spend your action calling reassurance to nearby comrades or silently reassuring an adjacent ally. All affected allies can immediately roll to escape one morale effect, such as Pinning or Fear.
• All Out - you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into your actions, increasing your potential, but leaving you vulnerable to error. When you do so, increase your margin of success or failure by 1.

Stealth

• Ambush - you can use a single action to attempt a Hide roll and ready an action
• Blend In - when hiding, sneaking or disguised, double the effective distance when testing whether other characters notice you or pick you out in a crowd
• Act Natural - you have advantage on rolls to maintain a disguise if you're blending into a group or have recently observed the type of person you're disguised as, unless you do something drastically out of character
• Backstab - you strike with advantage if you attack when hidden
• Soft Footed - you can move at full speed while sneaking
• Slink - you can move through small spaces at full speed and without stealth penalties

Smite

• Havoc - you gesture and the ground erupts violently, blasting everyone nearby
• Dragonsbreath - flames gush from your palms in a blazing arc
• Lance - blazing light sears a single target
• Fellblade - a glowing weapon manifests in your hand
• Banestorm - mystical energies wrack your chosen spot until you bid them cease
• Whirlwind - a spiral of air moves at your command, hurling foes and obstacles aside

Conjure

• Guardian - the spirit intervenes to protect its ward from danger
• Veil - the spirit cloaks its ward to conceal it from sight
• Steed - the spirit carries its ward swiftly along
• Healer - the spirit tends the wounds of its ward
• Servant - the spirit fetches, carries, labours and cleans as requested
• Mantle - the spirit infuses its ward with power

Enchant

• Beguile - you charm and manipulate the target into doing as you wish
• Pacify - you lull a target into distraction, slumber or a deep trance
• Mesmerize - you transfix a target with your gaze, and attempt to command them
• Hallucination - you confuse the target with misleading illusions
• Disguise - you warp perceptions with a magical veil that disguises reality
• Bewitch - you reach deep into the target's mind, sensing or influencing their memories and feelings

So, let's see. Our classic brute hero would gain access to the Muscle and Zeal pools. A thief would have Agility and Stealth. A hardy cleric might have Conjure and Muscle, while a demagogue might have Enchant and Zeal. A wizard or wrathful priest would have Smite and Conjure. This is only a very basic attempt at the model, but I think it kind of works.

Politomunda: the city-world

So we've got massive grimdark cities, and you're a bunch of, let us say, questionably-moralled individuals who are trying to get by. Each of the Houses has its own particular philosophies, genetic lineages, education systems and resources that leave their members tending towards similar abilities.

I'm going to suggest Reflex, Combat, Zeal, Stealth, Tech, Face, Instinct, Wits. Remember that these skills are not the basic mechanics for interacting with the world; they are pools of special abilities that replace things like class powers.

• Speed skills are about reactions and movement.
• Combat skills provide benefits and options when attacking or defending.
• Zeal skills cover willpower, drive and encouragement
• Stealth skills are about secrecy and concealment
• Tech skills cover interaction with technology
• Face skills apply to social interactions
• Connections skills cover society and street smarts
• Wits skills involve knowledge, understanding and perception

The specific bonuses and penalties below are arbitrary, since there's no system here!

Speed

• Catfall - you halve the distance fallen when determining affects of a fall, and don't land prone unless you want to
• Dodge - you can burn your next action to make a save against an attack or hazard you've detected, 6+ on 1d6, moving up to 2m if you succeed
• Sprint - you triple your speed when you run, rather than doubling it
• Quick Draw - once per round, you can draw or stash a handheld item without spending an action
• Reflexes - you double your initiative in any standoff and can't be surprised
• Ease of Practice - when performing Extended Actions for which you are trained, you reduce the time required by one-quarter

Combat

• Interference - enemies don't benefit from strength of numbers against you
• Pinpoint Strike - you can reroll an attack's hit location once per round, accepting the second result
• Turn Aside Blow - you can parry without a parrying weapon, or take the best of two results with a parrying weapon
• Snap Attack - you can treat your movement as one category less when determining attack penalties, but suffer a -1 penalty and cannot use sights
• Duck and Dive - instead of taking a Pinning test, you can fall prone if this would give you cover from the attacker
• Suppressing Attack - roll no damage on a hit, but inflict two Pinning rolls (ranged) or Retreat rolls (melée)

Zeal

• Vicious Reputation - you gain a +1 bonus to intimidate or overawe, but suffer a -2 penalty to befriend or win over NPCs.
• Nerves of Steel - you may reroll failed Pinning and Retreat tests.
• True Grit - you can make a Will test to subtract 1 from a wounding roll against you, to a minimum of 1.
• Laser Focus - you may reroll failed tests to avoid distraction, and exhaustion tests when concentrating for long periods, including overwatch and standoffs.
• Rallying Cry - you can spend your action calling reassurance to nearby comrades or silently reassuring an adjacent ally. All affected allies can immediately roll to escape one morale effect, such as Pinning or Fear.
• All Out - you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into your actions, increasing your potential, but leaving you vulnerable to error. When you do so, increase your margin of success or failure by 1.

Stealth

• Ambush - the character can use a single action to attempt a Hide roll and ready an action
• Blend In - when the character is hiding, sneaking or disguised, double the effective distance when testing whether other characters notice them. When hacking, systems and sysadmins treat their activities as one rank less suspicious than normal
• Method Actor - when disguised, the character treats their cover identity and cover story as true for the purposes of psychology and lie-detection
• Light Fingers - the character can reroll a failed Prestidigitation roll (pickpocketing, manipulating small objects, planting, palming, card tricks)
• Trackless - when attempting to track, trace or identify the character, treat time elapsed as one step higher (minute, hour, day, week, month, year)
• Uniform - providing the character is dressed appropriately, their presence in a location is considered one rank less suspicious than normal.

This section assumes the existence of a set of infiltration mechanics, rather more elaborate than the classic single-roll Stealth/Disguise-type mechanics, which feature:

• Ranks of suspicion for presence and activities in an area
• Ranks of security for particular zones
• A general system for determining whether people notice you and what they notice about you

I might try to rough this out at some point, it seems useful.

Tech

• Percussive Maintenance - the character can attempt a short-term fix as a single action, but the results are unreliable
• Changelog - the character always has a chance to notice hacks and modifications without actively searching, and rolls twice when searching.

Tech is hard to do without actually building the systems for doing tech stuff, because it needs to interact usefully with those.

Face

• Read Intention - the character can roll [stat] to gauge what a partner hopes to get out of a social interaction
• No Hard Feelings - when the character bargains, strikes a deal, persuades or influences an NPC, they can reduce any negative change in attitude by one rank with a successful [stat] roll. If they used Intimidation, the roll is at a penalty
• One of the Guys - the character can use an extended action to roll [stat] with a non-hostile group. If successful, they're treated as a Peer for social rolls until they fail a roll or do anything that antagonises them
• Afterthought - when the character amicably gets information from a source, within 1 week they can think of one additional question. They roll as normal; if successful, the source contacts them spontaneously to provide related information. The GM decides how and when the information arrives.
• My Pleasure - when the character strikes a bargain or seeks a favour from an NPC, if they roll [very good] the NPC feels as though the character has done them a favour.
• Between These Four Walls - when the character seeks information or antagonises an NPC, as long as the outcome is amicable, their sources are reluctant to report the incident. The chances of raising suspicion are reduced, and it is one step more difficult than usual for others to find out that the character was making enquiries.

Connections

• Find the Core - when observing a conversation or interaction, the character can roll [some stat] to understand the social dynamics between the parties
• Know a Guy - the character can roll [stat] once per day to tap a contact with a necessary skill at [level] or higher. The result determines the time it will take (minutes, hours or days) and/or the level of the contact's skill.
• Social Butterfly - the character can roll [stat] once per day to tap a contact with connections to an organisation or public figure. The result determines the degree of separation and/or the time it will take (minutes, hours or days).
• Name Dropper - the character can attempt to sway an NPC by mentioning their contacts. This requires a [stat] roll, but grants a bonus on subsequent rolls. On a botched roll, the NPC is antagonised and subsequent rolls are penalised. In either case, it is one step easier for others to learn about the interaction.
• Middleman - the character can play two NPCs off against each other, either immediately (with a penalty) or as an extended action. The NPCs must be Amiable or worse in their mutual relationship. Roll [stat] against each NPC's [discernment stat]; the character can repeat this, but each subsequent set of rolls must gain [better result] or the attempt fails as the NPCs realise what is happening. The accumulated bonus can be applied to one interaction with each NPC, and overrides their limiters for Common Sense and Professionalism.

I envision that this game would have mechanics for organisations and social connections. Perhaps there are degrees of separation, which determine your influence over NPCs and ability to interact with (or infiltrate) their organisations.

It will be much easier to interact with large, public organisations and much harder to interact with small, private and illegal organisations. Similarly, it's easy to tap a contact who slightly knows a media personality, and hard to tap anyone who's close to a criminal, let alone anyone whose real identity is unknown.

The reason for this complexity is basically that I think it makes the Face character both deeper and more distinctive. If anyone can do social magic then being the Face is a matter of quantity rather than quality, which is somewhat less interesting than other roles which have distinct and unique capabilities. Secondly, it makes it less powerful: it's easy for social systems to end up being a sort of binary, where a low roll means you achieve nothing and a high roll lets you win over a paranoid criminal you've never met before. I'm not claiming I can write a game that fixes social skills, I'm just saying this imaginary game could attempt this kind of mechanic. It's less social combat and more a framework for establishing and tracking the difficulty and scope of social interactions.

In the last example, assume that an NPC has some kind of basic behaviour limiters. There's a point where common sense kicks in, and a point where professionalism kicks in (and probably at least one for self-preservation) so that it's very hard to push NPCs into unrealistic behaviour with simple social interaction. Maybe it's something approaching a Wisdom save, and the more inappropriate or self-destructive the action, the easier it is to resist. In the case of Middeman, the PC can try to work up antagonism between NPCs so that they forget themselves and act rashly.

Wits

• Rapid Recollection - the character can make a Knowledge test to recall or recognise omething without spending an action
• Spider Sense - the character halves distances when testing to detect hidden or sneaking characters, tails and anyone watching them
• Weakness in Numbers - enemies don't benefit from strength of numbers against the character
• Skim - if the character succeed on a roll to research or analyse information, they halve the time required
• Erudition - they character's ability to grasp new information means they never count as untrained in intellectual tasks, including conversation
• Expertise - when the character draws on their training, knowledge and education they can use [stat] in place of [stat] for a social roll

Okay, I'm not going to claim this is an amazing new revolutionary game or anything, but I feel like I can see the shape of an acceptable game emerging here. Everyone gets the basic game mechanics for Doing Stuff, then they choose an archetype that draws on a subset of the talent pools; these pools let them select specific special abilities that let them do things the other characters can't.

You could push these up to more impressive effects, depending on the style of game you want. This is generally easiest with combat, which we're used to having be quite mechanical, and hardest with social/magic/technology skills where you kind of need a robust subsystem in place for your special abilities to work with. It's hard to devise special social mechanics if everything's basically left for the GM to interpret anyway, because the whole point is that the Face (for example) lets you do things the other characters cannot. I could have made these more mind-controlly, but that's a specific genre. And then you start getting into issues of "what if the character uses these on a powerful NPC" issue, because the ability to influence any NPC is extremely potent in a way that combat mechanics aren't usually allowed to be.

In general, though, you could easily use this structure to build in things like:

• Attacking multiple enemies at once
• Charming an NPC so well that they spontaneously act in your favour later (like a one-use aftereffect)
• Becoming practically invisible when you hide

I'm going to stop there for now, I feel like this bit is done, and I'm not up for actually writing (another) game right now...

Magic Scales

So at some point I had an idea for a different kind of magic/power system, and basically just wanted to scribble it down while I remembered. I'm certain that someone has already thought of this for an existing game; I just haven't come across it yet so I don't know where.

The immediate inspiration was reading some White Wolf stuff, which to my mind has a real problem with powers. Basically, they want you to have supernatural powers that sound really cool (and which, in game fiction, are really cool). Unfortunately, they also want to make those same powers very specific in their mechanical capabilities.

There are different possible interpretations of this. A generous reading is that, although White Wolf want to enthuse readers and fill their mind with possibilities, they're concerned that vague rules would leave the Storyteller to create mechanics each time a power was used; the narrow capabilities are designed to lighten the load for STs and avoid balance issues. A harsher reading is that White Wolf aren't very good at matching mechanics to fluff, and are violently averse to giving players access to tools that might derail the Storyteller's beautiful plot; giving them very very specific tools ensures the Storyteller knows exactly what their capabilities are and can overrule requests for a broader interpretation.

Given that utterly broken powers have been a mainstay of the White Wolf experience from its inception, through its history, to the present day, and many of the powers are so oddly-written that the Storyteller still has to make arbitrary rulings on what's allowed, I'm going to have to plump for the latter.

There are a couple of downsides to this mixture. One is that players can be confused and disappointed when (for example) the power that they think allows them to overwhelm enemies with raw terror can be used exclusively to make them run away from you. The other is that you have to pay attention to what's possible, and some things that seem equivalent may be impossible because the designer didn't think about it, and there may be odd gaps in your supernatural arsenal.

My idea is basically the complete opposite of this ("complete opposite" is not a helpful description, and probably straight-up wrong) a very different approach to this.

So the White Wolf tack can basically be seen as permissive mechanics: You Can Do This. I've seen (somewhere) a more quantitative mechanics: You Can Do X Amount of This. I've seen narrative-quantitative approaches: You Can Roll Dice and Fluff the Result as This.

Insofar as I can classify it at all, I think this approach is more like narrative-dramatic. Essentially it's based on You Can Overcome These Challenges. Powers don't have any mechanical specifics at all; you simply choose a type of thing you can do, and decide how useful that ability is. Does it occasionally save you from mild inconvenience, or regularly allow you to achieve goals that would otherwise be beyond you?

• Trivial. The magic is nominal, or cosmetic, and of virtually no practical use (although it may be cool). Maybe you can change the colour of small items, create tiny illusions in your palm, create sparks,
• Convenient. The magic allows you to achieve something you could have done anyway, but sometimes saves you effort or time. For example, copying a document, flipping a light switch from a few feet away, reheating meals, making noises, cleaning objects, or giving someone an electric jolt instead of a pinch.
• Useful. The magic is a significant and regular asset that makes your life easier. For example, keeping your devices powered without charging (or even without batteries), locating an object you want within a room, protecting you from mild injury, telekinetically preparing meals while you watch TV, helping you win on the races, distracting an annoying person, providing a weapon, opening doors without the key, getting favours, or completing a task much faster than normal.
• Impressive. The magic provides major benefits or allows you to overcome substantial problems. For example, summoning a lost item, surviving dangerous situations, finding a person, learning hidden truths, getting into a secure area, providing a potent weapon, travelling great distances quickly, speaking new languages, removing physical barriers, or altering a person's opinion.

Note that the scale of your ability is absolute, even if you use it in different circumstances. If you have Convenient Electrokinesis and use it to turn on lights with your mind and therefore look cool, you cannot use this to turn off the forcefield using the switch on the other side of your prison barrier. Why? because that would be Impressive. It's up to you and the GM to establish why it isn't possible, if you care. In this case, clearly the barrier interferes with your mental powers.

Numenera and some uncanny valleys

So a couple of us played another game of Numenera recently, and despite our initial hesitation and previous concerns, we had a good time.

We are actually implementing one of the rules I thought up: combining the two sets of XP rules by making it so that you have to spend XP on a reroll or a benefit, before it transfers to your "actually learned something" pool. The idea behind this was twofold: firstly to make sure everyone roughly balanced out, and secondly because I actually find that mechanic quite elegant. Your nebulous "experience" lets you achieve something within the game (like recovering from a near-failure, or gaining familiarity with an activity, etc.) and that learning experience builds towards you gaining a permanent benefit. Of course, the permanent thing you gain may not actually relate to what you learned, so... look, I tried.

Starting Small

We did once again run into the sense of vague disappointment when you look at the low-level abilities. This can happen a lot; it's very tempting to keep feeling like the next level will be the one where you're finally awesome and completely satisfied with your character, and it never is.* But examining the low-level Numenera powers does seem to show up that they are genuinely quite limited.

* I actually think this is an argument in favour of sometimes playing non-levelling characters (basically iconics) rather than always using levelling systems. In theory, you should be able to make a character who does what you want them to do, and then play without that vague shadow of dissatisfaction and anticipation distracting you from what you're doing now.

Niggling Nanos

For example, the Nano is the 'esoteric powers' type, and I tend to associate that with having an array of different mystical capabilities even at low level. I think most people do. Unless you're playing (or reading, or watching) in a setting where the majority of player characters do Weird Shit, I think the assumption is generally that the Weird Shit Doer is defined by breadth. Generally speaking, you have some sort of dynamic like: the Fighter, the Thief and the Mage. Or, the Brute, the Face and the Mystic. Or, the Merc, the Tech and the Psychic. Even in Warhammer 40K, where often the whole party do quite similar things professionally (especially Deathwatch), the psyker ends up as the one who not only interacts most with anything supernatural, but also has the broadest range of knowledge in general, and has access to several different psychic powers of which most can be used flexibly.

This is partly because magic-type stuff is very strongly associated with intellect in most games I've run across. That doesn't have to be the case (as I've discussed before). But because it is, magic-users and psychics are typically also very intelligent, and so typically know a lot of things. They may have access to skills other people don't, which essentially gives them new subsystems to play with. They may just get more Skill Points or whatever you're calling them, and so get to be accomplished at more types of task than others.

A further complication is that, because a spell (and I'm just going to stick with "spell" here) allows you to break the normal rules of the game and indeed of physics, each spell essentially creates a new subsystem for you. The spellcaster can now do A Thing that other characters cannot do; they have a new tool to apply to problems.

If you consider the D&D wizard - and I know that's not the only comparator, but it's the one staring you aggressively in the face - then a starting-level wizard from 3rd edition onward typically knows a handful of cantrips plus two or three individual spells. Moreover, some of those spells are quite specific (typically combat spells), but utility spells often leave a lot of room for creativity: you can do a huge amount with mage hand (minor telekinesis), prestidigitation (basically any minor magical trick), unseen servant and so on. You can play tricks, gaslight NPCs, distract monsters, drop objects from a height, impress NPCs, carefully arrange large numbers of small objects in complicated arrays to do things at a distance (set off a trap, injure an enemy, break down a door, pull a lever, press a button...), convince an NPC that food has been poisoned, convince an NPC that food hasn't been poisoned, pass objects between cages suspended in the air, retrieve something from a grating...

What the Nano can do is, in comparison, extremely limited and often very specific. The Hedge Magic esotery is roughly equivalent to prestidigitation, but there is no mage hand. The Push esotery allows you to shove a creature or object violently away from you, but specifically can't be used to push a lever or otherwise interact with the environment. The Scan esotery lets you scan a three-metre cube and determine the type of material and energy present, but it's relatively expensive and is an instantaneous thing, rather than a lingering ability. Other abilities can be used all the time, like Ward (permanent armour) or Onslaught (an attack which, for a Nano, is usually free).

But on reflection, I don't think there's anything specifically wrong with that. What can the other characters do? Well, the Glaive gets a selection of static bonuses to their combat abilities, and a couple of general physical boosts. The Jack gets a little from the Glaive and a little from the Nano. In other words, as far as I can see, the Nano isn't less interesting than the other two; it's just that the Nano isn't significantly more interesting (in terms of variety and scope), and I think we are generally trained to expect that.

The Nano begins with two of the following abilities. "Permanent" means always-on. "Without limit" means your Edge lets you cover the 1-point cost of an abilit without spending from your pool so you can do it as many times as you want under normal circumstances:

• a relatively powerful ranged attack*, without limit
• a long-ranged telekinetic shove**
• a permanent magic shield that improves your Armour by 1 - this is genuinely really good
• scanning a 3-metre cube and learning the mechanical Level of entities within it (which largely determines how dangerous they are) plus information about matter and energy composition
• performing a wide variety of small temporary magical effects, without limit

* Onslaught does 4 damage at range, or 2 damage ignoring armour but to Intellect (this is, in almost all cases, functionally equivalent to all other damage). This is as good as a Medium ranged weapon, or better if the target is heavily armoured. Medium ranged weapons are pretty expensive - ammo is particularly expensive. None of your "20 arrows for 1gp", this is 12 arrows for 5gp, which is as much as medium armour, most weapons, and so on. Getting free unlimited ranged attacks is genuinely valuable. You can even use it to destroy terrain and objects through patient attack, which isn't feasible for an archer.

**"short range" is the second distance category, about 50', which is really quite a long range to be able to forcibly shove an object from.

The Glaive begins with two of the following abilities:

• do less damage on a hit but slightly hamper the target for 1 round, without limit
• fight unarmed as though you have a medium weapon (a sword or whatever), permanently
• do +1 damage on a hit if using a pointy ranged weapon, without limit
• do +1 damage on a hit if using a sharp melee weapon, without limit
• a small defensive boost when not wearing armour

I would note that at low levels, much of the time, the first ability is strictly worse than not using it. For example, fighting a Level 2 creature with Armour 2 and 6hp, a Glaive with a medium weapon does 2 damage normally. Do you want to kill the not-particularly-powerful enemy in 6 rounds, while making it always slightly less likely that it causes you 2 damage, or do you want to kill it in 3 rounds and allow it half as many attacks?

Similarly, because Glaives can wear at least 2 points of armour without penalty, and this is quite a lot of armour, the last option is mostly there to allow for playing a character who's narratively unarmoured without a substantial effectiveness penalty.

The Jack begins with two of the following abilities:

• do +1 damage on a hit if using a slightly weird range of weapons, without limit
• do +1 damage on a hit if using a sharp melee weapon, without limit
• do +1 damage on a hit if using a pointy ranged weapon, without limit
• performing a wide variety of small temporary magical effects, without limit
• wear medium armour without it slowly sapping your life (same as the Glaive), permanently
• defend yourself slightly better, permanently
• a small defensive boost when not wearing armour, permanently

So... one of these choices actually gives you a new ability (Hedge Magic). Three of them increase damage, and they're just the same power tailored to different weapon choices. One is a small mechanical boost to defence. One essentially allows you to wear armour at all.* The other makes you tougher when not wearing armour.

* Wearing armour you are not Practiced in (which is not the same as training, you cannot Train in armour) causes you to lose points from your pools once per hour. This is directly equivalent to taking damage. If you wear heavy armour for 12 hours continuously, you will die. Strictly speaking, simply putting on a suit of armour and sitting still all day is fatal. Oh, and you incur a cap on your Speed Pool size until you take it off.

Examining that list, it looks to me as though the Nano is still relatively interesting. The Glaive has exactly one "new ability" and it's a minor mechanical combat trick with exactly one application; all the others are strict mechanical tweaks relating almost exclusively* to combat, and the only choice is whether you want free extra damage. The Jack has one of the Nano's options (Hedge Magic) that gives a new ability; all the others are strict mechanical tweaks relating almost exclusively to combat* and the only choice is whether you want free extra damage. The Nano has one permanent boost that relates mostly to combat*; one new attack form that is at least as good as most weapons and more flexible than any (although if you have it, using it or not is hardly a choice); one new ability to gather information that's of broad application; one new ability (Push) that's usable inside and outside combat, though its application is relatively restricted; and one new ability that can be of wide application depending on player creativity and GM flexibility.

* Defensive benefits are of course useful whenever you might take damage, so there's some occasional application in dangerous bits of exploration.

Of the five Nano options, I think three are genuinely reasonably interesting specific abilities to have, Ward is more of a narrative choice that you want to be tough, and Onslaught is kind of a no-brainer but not strictly obligatory. Knowing two of those (of which one is probably Onslaught) is a significant limitation compared to being a wizard in D&D, no doubt about it. Yet this isn't D&D.

There's a side issue as well, which is that Nanos are always trained in numenera. That is, they are trained at dealing with the magical-scientific weirdness of the setting, the weirdness so pervasive that the entire setting is named for it. If there's a weird machine, a forcefield, an artefact, a monolith, a robot, a cypher, a gadget, a woobly monster or anything like it, they can know stuff about it, and quite possibly interact with it, better than anyone else in the party. I know it's not a choice on the player's part, but I think that's a genuinely meaningful benefit in terms of doing the weird shit.

Ironically, although I started out focusing on the Nano, I think what this best demonstrates is that the Glaive feels dull in its choices. The fact that you have choices at all, but none of them do a great deal, is weirdly I think more disappointing than not having those choices and just getting a flat +1 boost to damage.

Frustrating Foci

To be honest, the bit of Numenera characters that seems coolest is the foci. You have options like: Bears a Halo of Fire, Commands Mental Powers, Controls Beasts, Controls Gravity, Employs Magnetism, Exists Partially Out of Phase, Fuses Flesh and Steel, Rides the Lightning, Talks to Machines and so on. Don't those sound cool?

Okay, some sound less cool. Carries a Quiver and Entertains are completely mundane things anyone can do - they just offer mechanical bonuses. Crafts Unique Objects is, like most things that hang on crafting systems, suited to a very specific playstyle. There's several fighting style ones that, in a game which I consider to be pretty forgiving of flavour, just don't quite seem necessary when I can just say I'm Fighting With Panache. And Works the Back Alleys is frankly unfortunate.

I have already written extensively about the baffling inclusion of Howls at the Moon.

Let's take a look at the actual abilities though.

• Bears a Halo of Fire lets you damage anyone who attacks you melee, as often as you want. Potent, but specific.
• Carries a Quiver lets you do more damage with a bow and spend from different pools. Useful, but very specific.
• Commands Mental Powers lets you talk to nearby allies via telepathy. Sometimes useful, fairly specific.
• Controls Beasts gives you a beast companion. Not very powerful, but moderately flexible.
• Controls Gravity lets you hover in the air and move slowly. Sometimes useful, but specific.
• Crafts Illusions lets you create a single illusion in a 3m cube within a few metres. Sometimes useful and moderately flexible.
• Crafts Unique Objects grants you training in two crafting skills. Usefulness and flexibility depends entirely on the campaign.
• Employs Magnetism lets you telekinetise a metal object for non-combat use. Useful and moderately flexible.
• Entertains gives a small passive bonus to recovery during rest. Slightly useful but very specific.
• Exists Partially Out of Phase lets you slowly move through solid matter. Useful but fairly specific.
• Explores Dark Places gives you training in several skills. Useful and fairly flexible.
• Fights with Panache lets you give a bonus to allies whenever you attack. Potent but specific.
• Focuses Mind over Matter gives you a slight defensive boost. Moderately useful but specific.
• Fuses Flesh and Steel gives you some slight permanent boosts. Moderately useful but specific.
• Howls at the Moon gives you an ability that, by RAW, you can't control and is far more likely to be a severe liability to the party and yourself than in any way useful.
• Hunts with Great Skill gives you some skill training. Moderately useful and fairly flexible.
• Leads gives you some skill training and you can always 'advise' another character to grant a bonus. Useful and fairly flexible, but liable to lead to some rather repetitive (and perhaps quite irritating) playstyles.
• Lives in the Wilderness grants some skill training. Sometimes useful but fairly specific.
• Masters Defence makes you slightly better at using a shield. Moderately useful but very specific.
• Masters Weaponry lets you do +1 damage with your favourite weapon. Useful but very specific.
• Murders lets you do sneak attacks for slightly more damage, and gives you stealth training. Useful but quite specific.
• Rages lets you... it's mechanicsy. Look, it makes you slightly better in combat, okay? Useful but fairly specific.
• Rides the Lightning lets you add a little electrical damage to an attack, and also recharge some devices. Useful but fairly specific.
• Talks to Machines lets you activate most types of machine at a distance. Useful and quite flexible.
• Wears a Sheen of Ice gives you armour and protection from cold. Useful but very specific.
• Wields Power with Precision gives you more points in your mental pool. Slightly useful but quite specific (depends what you do with them of course).
• Wields Two Weapons at Once lets you mechanically dual-wield two light weapons. Honestly not that useful for most characters most of the time, and very specific.
• Works Miracles lets you heal. Useful but very specific.
• Works the Back Alleys gives you training in a few thiefy skills. Somewhat useful but quite specific.

I think in some ways the best comparators here are the X-Men. No, really. Think about these splats. They're the same kind of one-phrase descriptors you'd slap on a mutant with one shtick.

Wears a Sheen of Ice feels a bit like Iceman. But you can't control ice, shape ice, craft barriers, walk through ice, walk on ice, or anything like that. You're just a bit armoured with ice.

Rides the Lightning just lets you shock people. You can't impress people with lighting powers, repel or absorb electrical attacks, control machines with a touch, stun robots, or actually ride any kind of lightning. You can recharge powerful magical items, if you have any.

Employs Magnetism lets you move one metal object around fairly slowly. I actually think this is the most interesting of the powers, which is why I chose it this time - it's genuinely quite flexible. You can't usually use it in combat, but there's a lot of possibilities in the exploration end of things. Technically you can also use it to fly by just standing on something metal.

Controls Gravity doesn't actually let you control gravity in any sense. You can just levitate a bit. You can't walk on walls, make heavy objects float to carry them around, pin enemies to the floor, make incoming arrows fly up into the sky, and so on.

So although the Foci sound very flavourful and fun, they are actually far more restricted in most cases than we tend to expect. I think they fall into an unfortunate uncanny valley: they sound like a Fate Aspect or a handwavy superpower or perhaps a Mage Arcana that lets you do a wide variety of thematically-appropriate stuff, but they are mechanically extremely traditional and more akin to a heavily-balanced D&D spell or special ability.

What Makes a Man?

People, most definitely including me, tend to have D&D in their heads when playing Numenera. This is entirely natural. It looks like D&D, it's by one of the designers of D&D, you basically play a fantasy adventurer like in D&D, you have a fighty one and a magicky one and a tricksy one like in D&D, you roll d20s like in D&D. But it is a genuinely different game that works in some genuinely different ways

D&D has Race + Class. Numenera has Descriptor + Type + Focus, and your Type is very much not mechanically equivalent to a D&D class.

Numenera is also keen to remind you that Cyphers are a major part of the game; you are supposed to use them regularly. I believe they play a bigger part in determining not only how powerful you are, but also what kinds of things you can do, than is the case of magic items in D&D. I am very sceptical as to whether this is a good thing; it depends on what the game wants to be, but it does appear to work against its stated position on what defines your character.

Specific vs. Generic

I think one of the deceptively-different facets of Numenera is that the weight of abilities falls differently to other games that it looks like. Most trad roleplaying games tend to emphasise the specific named rule-bending special abilities that your particular class, splat or species grants you.

A Numenera character is not equivalent to a 3rd+ edition D&D character in terms of named special abilities.

A Numenera character in some ways significantly surpasses a 3rd+ edition D&D character in terms of generic ability.

I think Numenera is less about applying special abilities than D&D is, and expects a more wide-ranging style of play. I think in a lot of cases, the special abilities are the equivalent of a TV character's shtick that they apply once per episode to significant effect, rather than something they do continually. Of course, you can use most special abilities multiple times per day, but you get the idea.

I think Numenera expects you to spend more time doing things that aren't specifically on your character sheet, because you are generically quite competent at absolutely everything. This requires quite a big change of mindset and I think it's something I struggle with, at least.

The most obvious example is that when we first played, we had a Glaive and a Nano and a Jack, and as the Nano I kept talking about how we weren't any good in combat. This is completely, 100%, factually untrue. We were exactly as good at hitting things with weapons as the Glaive was. The Glaive had some special abilities that gave damage bonuses or special riders in combat, and had a bigger pool of Might points to spend on attacking, and was allowed to wield Large weapons.

The latter is actually the major difference, because doing 6 damage minus armour is massively better than doing 2 or even 4 damage minus armour, considering most things have about 12hp. If the thing has armour, this can be the difference between "reliably hurting Thing" and "being mechanically unable to hurt Thing at all unless you roll a 19 or 20", which is like the difference between zero and infinity. If the thing has no armour, this is the difference between killing it in two hits and killing it in six hits.

I did some maths.

• A light weapon user can kill a Level 3 enemy (a lot of common threats) in 8 rounds, a level 4 in 14 rounds, and a level 5 in 25 rounds.
• A medium weapon user requires 4, 7 and 12 rounds respectively.
• A heavy weapon user requires 3, 5 and 9 rounds respectively.
• If the creature has Armour 2, a light weapon user cannot kill it by conventional attack, only through critical rolls, or finding a way to gain additional damage.
• The medium weapon user requires 8, 14 and 25 rounds respectively.
• The heavy weapon user requires 4, 7 and 12 rounds respectively.

It's almost impossible to overstate how important armour is in this game, and the impact of that on weapon choice. The crucial take-home is that Nanos absolutely require the Onslaught power, because (unless they choose to take a weapon they're not proficient with and suffer permanent penalties) it is the only way they can reliably harm an enemy with 2 points of armour, which is relatively common - many low-level enemies have 2 armour, though higher armour is thankfully relatively rare.

But still, we were entirely competent in combat. Compared to, say, a D&D wizard, who can easily be so ineffectual at attacking and so vulnerable to damage that it's genuinely a party liability for them to try and fight, a Nano is a very competent combatant.

But forget combat for a minute. This is one of the non-obvious subtleties of the Numenera system.

If you want to sweet-talk a Level 3 NPC, you need to roll a 9 on 1d20. Everyone is inherently equally good at doing this, even if they don't have an appropriate skill, and your chances of success are quite high. You can even spend points from your Intellect pool to drop that to, at worst, a 6+ on 1d20. In contrast, sweet-talking a guard in D&D would likely be a Moderate DC15 (roll 15+ on 1d20), meaning that only an actively charismatic PC is liable to succeed.

Similarly, everyone can climb cliffs, leap chasms, sneak!, tinker with machinery, or attempt to decode ancient writings. There are some characters who are actively skilled in those things, but the benefit is relatively small (a +3, basically, so +15%).

What this means is that a lot of the time in Numenera, any character can attempt to react to a situation in whatever way seems sensible, and their chances of succeeding are far higher than a D&D-attuned brain tends to estimate. And this is something that's genuinely difficult to adjust to. I know, because I ran into these credence issues from both directions when playing Deathwatch. I regularly wanted to apply skills when I had a remarkably small chance of succeeding despite expensive training, and I tended to underestimate the likely effectiveness of certain combat tactics.

So I think what Numenera expects from you is different, in a way I haven't quite worked out yet; and partly as a result, I think the named abilities on your character sheet tend to be either of limited use, or constant benefits that feel mechanically dull. I think you need to step high, wide and plentiful with gleeful exuberance, and expect that the system and the GM will support your far-reaching interpretation of what you can reasonable attempt. Of course I can do this. I'm a hero.

It reminds me in some ways of, for example, a lot of pulpy and action films. Of course the protagonist can fool the guard. Of course the protagonist can solve the riddle. Of course the protagonist can fly the plane. And so on.

I don't think these excuse Numenera from the fact that these abilities seem underwhelming. How a game makes you feel is important. I think this particularly in the light of its presentation: much is made of the idea that You Are An Adjective Noun Who Verbs, whereas mechanically you're very much more of a Verbing Noun who is a bit Adjectival, and I think if looked at holistically, you are actually An Adventurer Noun Who Verbs and Is a Bit Adjectival. That is to say, I think that the bulk of your effectiveness in Numenera actually comes from being a Player Character, with your Noun and Verb giving you a small package of abilities to colour your capabilities, and your Adjective being of very small benefit.

It's not what I'd do with an Adjective Noun who Verbs system, not at all. But I'd like to try and play it for the game that it is, not the one I'd expect it to be.

Tradition, Story and Numenera's Dilemmera

I'm getting the sense that Numenera suffers from a continuing tension over where it wants to fall on the loose spectrum between a Traditional RPG and a narrative game.

A very high proportion of abilities are actually just rather bland purely mechanical benefits: a flat bonus to this, or training (equivalent to a bonus) in that. I'm not sure why these are thought to make your character cooler. The names sound cool, but do they feel cool?

Mostly what I feel makes me cooler is Being Able to Do a Thing. It's being set apart from others in a qualitative or semi-qualitative fashion: being able to break the rules, or to interact in a way others can't, or to understand something others don't. Or, in a low-mechanics game, it's flavour and character and background. And I can't help wondering if, despite being very mechanicsy and trad-RPGish, Numenera would actually like you to focus on the latter and treat any mechanical benefits or new abilites as mere perks. But I think in that case, its approach of having specific and discrete powers works against that, at least by setting expectations.

On the one hand, Numenera offers you a template that looks a lot like trad-RPG Race + Class. Yet as I've argued, much of your mechanical competence comes from simply being a Player Character, which feels more storygamey.

On the one hand, Numenera offers you an array of foci that seem to be broad-brush archetypes of Stuff You Can Do, as I'd expect in a storygame - is "Covered in Fire" not an ideal shorthand for a flexible story-focused game? Yet mechanically, they offer you a single specific benefit, and often one which is a pure bonus with no additional flexibility or options to make your character feel more interest; something more typical of a Trad RPG.

One the one hand, Numenera seems to offer a Fighter, Mage, Rogue triad that defines your playstyle and capabilities, exactly what a Trad RPG tends to do. Yet the latter two, at least, are much more combat-ready than their Trad RPG niche generally permits, partly because they have far less in the way of niche abilities.

On the one hand, Numenera has specific templates that offer specific powers that do specific things, which feels very Trad. But on the other hand, you are encouraged to make up your own skill lists and to try things you have no particular training in, which feels very storygamey.

On the one hand, Numenera has no particular rules for combat: you can attempt anything, there's a flat target number for the enemy based on how "powerful" it is, and the GM simply determines what modifiers might apply and exactly what the outcome means. This feels like a loose, flexible narrative combat system from a storygame. Yet almost everything in the rulebook is a monster that hungers for your flesh and can't be negotiated with, and there's a simply but highly mechanical damage system that goes as far as having fixed damage amounts and subtractive armour, which means some characters literally can't hurt some others, which feels quite Trad to me.

On the one hand, Numenera has a quite specific setting with very highly-described locations, artefacts, monsters, individuals, political systems and even local economies. Yet it's also very handwavy about exactly how any of this is supposed to work as a functioning world, what anyone actually does with their time, what life is like for the people, and all the other details that allow you to run a simulationist-by-default campaign.

And of course, to top it all off, Monte Cook then goes and tells us that actually what's really important about the system is... the cyphers. The ten-a-penny one-shot minor magical items you roll up on random tables from looting enemies and ruins. He describes these as "more like abilities and less like gear", and goes so far as to name the entire game mechanical system The Cypher System. And the thing is... given how limited and specific most of the actual chosen character abilities are, quite often having a cypher that can do X will indeed be at least as powerful as anything you can do, and they do indeed grant a meaningful expansion of your capabilities. Sometimes a dramatic one. You can easily have one cypher that lets you climb sheer surfaces, one that offers remote viewing at unlimited distance, and one that translates any language. Bearing in mind you'll typically start play with three abilities, at least one of which is usually a flat bonus... that's a big increase in options.

The end result is that I never know which lens I should be looking at the game through: am I thinking like a mechanical Trad Gamer who knows exactly what I can do and how and when, or a narrative Storygamer who takes cues from general descriptions to collaboratively create a wonder-filled story of exploration and adventure? The truth probably lies somewhere in between, and it's hard to find.

The bottom line

I think Numenera is perhaps more sophisticated than I initially gave it credit for. Unfortunately, I think context will hinder it. You can only play a game in the context that exists. I don't think the expectations raised by all the games that have come before allow us to approach a game with classes and levels and specific special abilities and modifiers, like Numenera, with a mindset that what's really cool and important about my character is how I think about them. Particularly when the game iself tells me otherwise - tells me that I'm an Adjective Noun who Verbs.

When I think, at the core of it all, when all pretence is stripped away, I'm a guy walking across a desert of broken civilisations a billion years in the future, breathing nanotech and looking up at artificial stars, scavenging forgotten miracles for a few measly shins.

The Hive mind: stealing from Necromunda for fun and profit

So an idea I've had vaguely floating around for a while is to use Necromunda - or rather, its mechanics - as the basis of an RPG.

For those of you not in the know, Necromunda is a tabletop skirmish campaign wargame of bloody battles between rival gangs in the Underhive, a festering hellhole chemical wasteland miles beneath the unthinkably vast future-gothic city-spires of the Hives where the mass of humanity eke out their miserable existence. Let me clarify that working 20-hour days welding shut ration packs in a factory powered by unshielded reactors and filled with toxic fumes that will kill you before your fourth decade, then splitting your miserable wage between religious tithes, flavourless algal slop, a variety of even more lethal drugs to get you through the day, and gambling in mob-run hells in the faint hope of a fractional and temporary improvement in your circumstances or at least an entertaining brawl, monitored all the while by a fascist regime that crushes the faintest hint of worker uprisings with appalling ferocity, and under the perpetual threat of irresistable annihilation by either an incursion of horrific Chaos demons or any of the myriad alien races whose xenophobia is exceeded only by your own, is the cushy life of law-abiding mid-Hive citizens. Your distant, implausible dream is to one day retire there.

Being Mean About Rangers, part 3: Homebrewing

Constructing a Ranger

So having spent all this time arguing that the ranger doesn't need or deserve to be a class of its own, and indeed that insisting on it is probably deleterious to the game as a whole... what if I had to make a ranger class?

What, if anything, do I think can stand out as unique selling points for the ranger?

These must be:

• Sufficiently generic that they don't lock the ranger down into one character concept
• Sufficiently flexible that they are regularly relevant in most campaigns; which is to say, you will actually get to use these features during the game session
• Sufficiently related that they seem to form a coherent whole
• Sufficiently visible that they manifest in the narrative. Phrased much less pretentiously, I mean they should be something you actually notice happening, because unless you actually notice it in play, it doesn't feel like a real part of the story.

Being Mean About Rangers, part 2: Spelling Tests and Typecasting

Last time, as you may recall, I was pretty comprehensively dismissive of the 5e ranger's claims to be a class, based on what I argued to be a rag-tag collection of attributes and some shonky fluff-crunch joints. In particularly, I feel most of its non-combat abilities are overly dependent on the campaign, and the DM's preferred style, for relevance.

Mechanics

What about the mechanical end? Rogues and barbarians are to a non-trivial extent defined by a specific class mechanic (sneak attack and rage respectively). Of course, these are strongly tied into their fluff.

Unfortunately I feel like the ranger is, in a sense, self-sabotaging.

Being Mean About Rangers, part 1: Decline and Fail

So I've been thinking about the Ranger a lot, because it's one component of my multiclass character. I ran into problems at 4th level when I realised taking several more levels of ranger would not meaningfully affect the feel of my character. I'm not going to delve into that because it's as inside baseball as you can get. But I do want to talk about rangers.

Discussing things with Dan, the conclusion I came to was that the ranger is a bit of a problem.

The ranger has a core mechanic which actively discourages you from using a large proportion of its other capabilities. It has an unusual proportion of features dedicated to the "exploration pillar" in a way which makes its relevance uniquely vulnerable to the campaign and the whims of the DM. It lacks a strong and coherent archetype to explain what the class is all about. And in place of a strong defining thematic mechanic that supports a range of concepts, it has a hodgepodge of abilities that encourage playing a specific character.

...dammit. This is going to be controversial.

Hi, I'm Shimmin Beg, and I don't think the Ranger needs to be a class.

More fun with Demon: the Descent

You might want to read my Impressions of Demon: the Descent first, particularly the bits about powers, and also this one.

I was quietly doing random character generation, as I am wont to do, and I noticed this. These two powers sit side by side in the rulebook. You'd think someone might have noticed the discrepancy.

Name of power	Raw Materials	Shatter
Description	Nature abhors a vacuum. With this Embed, the demon can break an object to “summon” an object of similar Size. The object that she breaks is destroyed, never to be repaired or made functional again. The object she summons isn’t created out of nothing, but is brought to her location by a seemingly coincidental series of events.	Everything breaks. It’s just a matter of applying force in the right location. A demon who understands this principle can apply the force of entropy to an object and shatter it with a swift kick.
Dicepool	Manipulation + Crafts	Wits + Crafts
Limitation	No size limit specified. Durability is immaterial. Success doesn't risk Cover.	Object can be no larger than the demon. Used on an object with Durability 3+, she risks blowing Cover.
Mechanical Intention	Obtain an object by destroying another object of similar size.	Destroy an object.
Narrative Intention	I'm not sure.	As mentioned in the power, breaking down doors and smashing weapons.
Drawbacks	A failed roll risks Cover. The new object takes some time to arrive.	Failure causes injury. A success risks Cover if the object is Durable.

Why can't me and Wild Talents just get along?

I would start using a "Rambling" tag on these posts, but it would go on pretty much all of them.

So as mentioned previously, we recently attempted a campaigngen brainstorming session for Wild Talents, and I didn't get on with the game.

That rather confused me, because I don't understand why. I feel like this is the sort of game I should like. I like tinkering with mechanics, so shouldn't I like a game where you build your own powers and everything? What's putting me off? I wanted to try and work this out.

Okay, for a start, I think we got off on the wrong foot for a couple of reason that aren't to do with the game per se, but the attitude I read into it. The Introduction and What Is Roleplaying seem a tiny bit preachy to me - somewhat reminiscent of White Wolf, to be honest - and despite the attempts at catering to all tastes, I get the sense that really they want you to play a gritty game where you're people with superpowers, and think actual superheroes are a bit naff.

Demon: the Bodging

I'm in a really White Wolfy mood right now.* I could really play some White Wolfy game. Admittedly I might get frustrated with it within a few hours when it turns out not actually to be what's advertised, but I hold out hope.

That was... a couple of months ago, when I started writing this. Same old, same old...

Anyway, my exhaustive (ahem) researches for Visitant involved rereading Demon: the Fallen and being reminded how promising it first sounded. Isn't there some way to get a faux-Judeo-Christian game about demons that are actually vaguely tied into real-life Judeo-Christian demon tropes (including, obviously, all the pop culture stuff that it's spawned) out of this?

Visitant: Technological Gift trees

I'm still calling these "trees" all over the place, but let's be clear: they're very obviously pools. There is no hierarchy.

I actually really like the Demon: the Descent way of handling special abilities, and would have liked to use that. My original idea for Visitant was that there wouldn't be specific species at all. Instead, I'd discuss broad alien archetypes, and players could then combine certain low-level powers to make a species of their choice. More potent abilities would be keyed off these, just like D:tD.

For one reason and another (not insignificantly, a strong representation from a friend that Extremely Specific Splats were more White-Wolfy than vague mumbling, which seems true enough) I went the other way, and it has some advantages. Like, I don't have to worry about people combining completely arbitrary sets of abilities and producing some RAW-derived monstrosity. Only a small subset of abilities can be combined, which is frankly bad enough.

Today I present the last two Gift pools: the tech powers. Luminescence and Nanokinesis are both power sets I dreamed up out of nowhere. I started writing powers long before I'd nailed down exactly what the aliens would be. I originally intended these to be attached to a specific alien, but there were two things. One, I had no particular ideas for said alien. Two, I was very conscious that my aliens get a very restricted choice of powers compared to most White Wolf games, and allowing them free choice from some technology-based pools seemed both genre-appropriate and a useful getaround.

I may still write some more of these if I get inspired.

Visitant: Ytaleh Gift trees

Almost finally, we come to the Gift pools for the ytaleh, little bundles of nervous tissue that they are. These critters get a rather woobly set of abilities, with the telepathic Mentalist pool granting ability to sense and manipulate other minds. Neuromancy is a harder one to pin down; as an electrochemical field-based pool, it combines tapping into the minds of host bodies, disrupting the functions of inconvenient humans, and sensing or manipulating electromagnetism. The ytaleh therefore tend towards a fairly low-action approach, sensing things and invisibly manipulating them to their own advantage. They're good when they have time to exploit their memory-stealing capabilities, but do have some combat capability too, and those are some of the subtlest attacks in the game.

If anyone's wondering, yes, the ytaleh are the Joe 90s of Beneath Dark Skies.

Visitant: Shekt Gift trees

You either know the score by now, or you have no idea what is going on. If the latter, I heartily encourage you to go back a few posts. In fact, maybe go all the way back to something more entertaining, like the Imperial Fists podcasts or the ones where I make sarcastic comments about poisonous doorknobs. Those were the days.

It may not come across, but I tried to give each Gift pool set of names that were thematically equivalent, so that you don't get a big aesthetic clash; I didn't want really purple names sitting next to "Levitate" or whatever. So the Guise names are a little fancy, Protoplasm is fairly matter-of-fact. Mosa Gifts have pretty short, punchy names that try to describe them as briefly as possible (Taste the Wind is an exception, admittedly).

Today, Shekt gifts! The insect swarm folks get two pools, one based on making buzzing noises, and the other on... well, being made of thousands of insects. Seems fair. For Shekt, I went with alliterative song-based names for the Cadence pool, and fancy-pants florid names for the swarmy ones. No particular reason, I just started with I Am Legion and went from there.

I would also like to note that I'm aware "One With Everything" sounds like a pizza. This is not accidental.

Visitant: Mosa Gift trees

As per the previous post, here are some powers, this time for the self-evolving Mosas.

The Mosa Gifts are somewhat odd, in that a lot of them don't require rolls, but simply provide various kinds of boosts. Quite a few don't even require require Focus. I'm not sure whether this will prove unbalancing, in that Mosa end up able to reserve their Focus for a small number of powers, or whether it's irrelevant because the utility of the powers is the main thing.

---

Visitant: Ansad Gift trees

The four playable splats for Visitant have now been introduced, so laying out their powers seems the next logical step.

I've taken a broadly traditional WoDdy approach, so these are more like Vampire powers than Demon: the Descent.

There are some differences between the way "powers" (Gifts, in Visitant) work here and in some White Wolf games. The main thing to note is that in the vast majority of cases, it is absolutely 100% impossible for a member of one splat to obtain a Gift belonging to another splat. This is not just a mechanical block, it's a narrative one. Visitants' abilities are primarily derived from their biology, not from magical or supernatural talent, so it's not like this is something you can learn. Are you a gestalt mind composed of several million insectoid drones, or aren't you?