Game Balance

Another short ranting post I made on the forums that I wish to save, this one in response to a thread where someone claimed 'Game Balance Is A Myth'. Here goes:

Game balance is sort of a nebulous ideal. You're never going to achieve it with a game system, at least not perfectly, but that doesn't make it a bad thing to strive for.

If a typical group of players with a typical game master (based on your target audience for the game) would enjoy your game with minimal problems, you're probably good. It's not so much that balance makes the experience better as certain kinds of imbalance can make the typical experience worse. The plight of the poor newbie that plays a fighter in 3e D&D, expecting to contribute meaningfully to epic battles against dragons and such, is a good example of the problem imbalance can cause.

However!

I think it's more important that the game designers understand and explain the balance and relative capabilities of things, and make them explicit, than that everything be balanced against each other. There's a significant difference between 'this character type is better because that's how the setting works' (Solars in Exalted, for instance) and 'this character type is better because of miscalculations by the game designers' (Clerics in 3e D&D). When people complain about poor balance, they are almost always complaining about the latter sort of problem -- relative power assumptions by the game designers that don't bear out in play because of poor game design.

The Fates

The Fates

Via various sales (mostly on drivethrurpg.com), I've picked up a multitude of Fate versions. They're all pretty similar at the core, of course, but each offers a slightly different experience, with different advantages and problems. I've only had a dozen or so short sessions so far, with few players and minimal conflict, so I can't rate the rules terribly well, but I can at least give me impressions of them.

I'll list the games in the order I picked them up.

Strands of Fate
Strands wants to be the GURPS of the Fate world, a multipurpose multigenre toolkit for whatever type of game you might want to run. It uses Abilities plus Skill Aspects rather than Skills, making it a bit more like a traditional RPG, and its Advantages system feels a bit more like GURPS or Tri-Stat than Fate. It works decently, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to run this thing out of the box. It's got a lot of rough edges. However, it's full of great ideas and rule options, and I'd recommend it to anyone planning to run Fate - it really does a good job of showing off all the ways you can tweak the system.

The Dresden Files
This one's amazing. Anyone that's a fan of Jim Butcher's book series or is even just looking for a good urban fantasy RPG wouldn't go much wrong here. Its one glaring flaw is that the system for ritual magic is kind of a mess, with a lot of things left under-detailed or absent, and a system for casting rituals that doesn't actually balance very well.

Legends of Anglerre
Anglerre is probably the most complex Fate game I've seen, but it seems to cover all the facets of epic fantasy from the 'mud-stained peasants getting beat up by baby goblins and small farm animals' of first-level D&D all the way up to the 'epic swordsmen singlehandedly fight armies while master sorcerers call down fire and ruin on entire cities' levels that Exalted reaches. The stunt construction rules are good, the rules for mass combat and organization conflict are good, and the rules for fighting out-of-scale creatures make me really want to run a Shadow of the Colossus game.
The big downside: if you buy it online, the .pdf is absolutely TERRIBLE. I mean, it's good quality in appearance, but it comes to something like 130 megabytes, loads painfully slow, takes forever to page through, and doesn't contain links in the text like better quality RPG products do - for instance, in Dresden Files, if something says 'see page 130', you can click on it and it'll take you to page 130; with Anglerre, you have to do that manually.

Free Fate
Free Fate is simply a fanmade compilation of the basic Fate rules in very generic terms, with a simplified stunt system and a decent advancement system. As the name suggests, it doesn't cost anything. I found it through a link on someone's forum signature on RPGNet. Not much to say here about quality: it's not so much a version of Fate as it is just a description of the core rules, so there's really nothing wrong with it and it doesn't really offer anything innovative.

Diaspora
The Fate space game. I think if I run a space game I'm more likely to use GURPS 4e (mostly the GURPS Spaceships line) rather than Fate, but it's a nice system. The cluster generator is probaby the best part of this book, though it's only one chapter; it allows you to randomly generate a small cluster of interconnected solar systems without spending massive amounts of time on it. Diaspora also introduces the concept of Scope, for Aspects, which lets the storyteller throw around scene and item Aspects much more freely without worrying about the balance issues that might occur.

Spirit of the Century
This is the game that started it all. If you're getting into Fate, I recommend picking this one up! It's cheap to buy the .pdf, or you could just hunt down the system reference documents, which are free but lack detailed examples, art, etc. Spirit of the Century's missing some of the innovations of the later games, but it is probably the 'purest' iteration of the system so far. Its biggest problems are a sort of stunted character advancement system that may not appeal to some (you basically start out as skilled and powerful as you'll ever be, and advancement is a matter of changing your focus rather than increasing in power) and a too-generous stress and consequence system that can (from what I've heard, and the math seems to back this up) make combats drag on for too long.

So, there you go! That's my initial thoughts on the various versions of Fate I've encountered. If you're interested in Fate, check out Free Fate (if you can find it), read up on it online, and maybe pick up Spirit of the Century. Fate's not a perfect system, but it's worth the read, and some of the .pdfs are really cheap!

The Rules aren't a Black Box

There's a pet peeve of mine that I see come up a lot in RPG discussions - the idea that you can't houserule something until you've tried it rules-as-written. This is my reply to such a post on RPG.net.

Hm.

I think I've done pretty well, honestly, and I find it a little offensive to be painted as a sort of ignorant fool that doesn't 'really' understand the games I run.

It's really not that hard. Rules comprehension is a skill you can develop. The rules are not a black box, only revealing their effects through careful study during play. They're all laid out in the text in front of you. Some games (again, Exalted comes to mind) have everything so interlinked that it IS really a pain to work out the ramifications of even a minor change, but such is not always the case. Many games are fairly straightforward or modular in design, such that you can modify one part or another without doing any harm. Yes, there's a chance a house rule will be a mistake. But you don't need hours of playtesting and empirical evidence to realize that someone made a math error or didn't consider an important edge case when they wrote a rule. To use an extreme example, I really, really don't need to experience 'bucket healing' in play to decide that it's stupid and declare that drowning does not work that way.

In fact, sometimes empirical experience is actively a bad way to develop a houserule, especially when you're working with probabilities, as you often are in an RPG. Personal experience is notoriously susceptible to bias and superstition when dice are involved, while it's relatively easy to apply statistics and thought experiments to map out the results of a change.

A lot of game systems just have bad math, incomplete-but-interesting subsystems that could use a little more detail, and, often, contradictions that outright need house ruling because the RAW are incomprehensible.

'Bucket healing', by the way, came up earlier in the thread; it's a weird obvious loophole in the d20 drowning rules that lets you heal a dying (between -1 and -10 hp) character up to zero hit points by briefly drowning him, such as by dunking his head in a bucket of water for a short time.

Revisiting Old Thoughts, Again

Wow, I've been away for a while! My apologies to anyone that's been reading this. Anyway, status update on things:

I've basically stopped work on the handful of projects listed here. Rul-Skaath is still rolling around in my head. It needs a better name and a smoother system. For the time being, I'll leave it alone, but it's the one I'm most likely to revisit.

In the time I've been gone, I've picked up the Dresden Files RPG and Strands of Fate, both FATE games. FATE is a system I've avoided in the past, but curiosity finally got the best of me. Once I've had a chance to see the system in play, I intend to post a review of it. As yet, though, all I've been able to do is read the things.

I also picked up Unknown Armies. I don't think I like the system on that one, overall, but I really like the adept magic system and the detailed stress meters. Again, I haven't had much chance to play with it due to player scarcity during the holidays, though.

If it ain't broke...

'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

A useful aphorism in many situations, but such a pain when playing around with game design.

You can pick even the most incomplete or obviously broken rule in an entire game, and if you post a suggested modification on a forum a great many people will still angrily defend it.

Granted, some house rules are just bad, but even those often fail to get a real discussion, with the actual forum threads buried under the combined cries of heresy (after all, a house-rules poster isn't a paid game designer and is thus inferior), elitist rules conservatism ('the rule as it is worked great for me, and I've been playing for 72 years!'), GM fiat ('you don't need rules for that, the GM should just make stuff up'), or even a sort of vague confusion on what house rules are ('but if you change that, things won't be the same!').

Oddly, it's worse the more broken the rule is. I posted a suggestion on making the Link +10% enhancement in GURPS cheaper, on the SJ Games forum and got a few people mildly upset but no real discussion on the rule. On the other hand, the threads on modifying some of the most obviously broken rules I've seen in gaming result in massive flame wars and arguments (Scion is the one that comes to mind most easily, with its haphazard nightmare of bad rules built into an otherwise great game.)

The best I can tell, this happens because if you say something is really broken, everyone that's used the broken rules (slogged through it, carefully avoided breaking it, or even just happily went along with the weirder results) feels threatened if you point out how broken it is, because you're in some sense telling them their game was 'wrong'.

I suppose that's a problem with any form of constructive criticism.

Another of my posts on RPG.net's forums. Re-posting it here because it's long enough and doesn't really need the forum thread's context to make sense.

There are a few different kinds of people that might join a first session in a game. The situation is different for each, but for many of them /how/ you introduce them to gaming doesn't make much difference to whether they end up being gamers -- just to whether they ever want to game with /you/ again.

1) People that know about RPGs, are interested in the idea, but have never played before. If you give them a bad first session they may decide they dislike you, your friends, and possibly the specific RPG you tried to introduce them to, but they're likely to go on to find another group of nicer, saner people and play a different RPG, rather than quitting the hobby altogether.

2) People that only aren't RPGers because they haven't played in any. Perhaps they play MMOs and videogames and such, read fantasy and science fiction, etc. but have never encountered polyhedral dice. It's possible to make a bad first impression with these people and have them give up on RPGs, so handle carefully. Still, these people are usually open enough to the idea that they'll assume a bad intro is your fault or the game system's, and whether they ever get into RPGs is sort of dependant on whether someone better offers to run a game for them in the future.

3) People that don't really care about RPGs, but are open to trying new things. Usually they won't be really engaged in the system mechanics, or even the setting or roleplaying opportunities as such. I've had good luck with a lot of these types, though: sometimes the social aspect of playing with friends gets them into the game and keeps them there, sometimes the opportunity to gain cool powers for their character or do impressive things gets their interest.

4) People that don't care about RPGs, don't like the idea, and are only at the session because someone dragged them there. This honestly usually doesn't work out. I've seen it go well maybe one time in six, usually for rules-light games with lots of action and laughter and minimal geekery. Otherwise, they'll leave the game wishing they hadn't come, and they're not likely to look into doing any more gaming in the future.

For all of these people, the 'how do you properly introduce someone to the game' boils down to: don't be boring, don't be creepy, and don't be rude. The latter two are easy to follow (or should be, anyway, if you're not just naturally rude or a creep) but the former can be tough, as everyone finds different things boring. People that love systems will be bored by rules-lite games, people that love roleplaying might be bored by especially mechanical systems, people that love power fantasy might find gritty settings dull and depressing, etc.

Paper and Pencil Procedural Dungeons

I haven't had a lot to say on the blog for a while now. It's harder to think much on RPG-related topics after an extended period of no-current-gaming-group syndrome.

Anyway, though, thought I'd point this out. It's more of a toy than a game, but it's fun enough, and there's a free version.

How to Host a Dungeon

I bought the full version a while back. It's not a huge addition to the free version, but at $5 for the .pdf, the price is right.

Revisiting Old Thoughts

This blog is still young, and built pretty haphazardly. A post here, a post there, and almost no pattern or sense to them. As I mentioned before, there are lots of incomplete thoughts.

My current unfinished business includes:

• Rul-Skaath, which has a variety of posts near the beginning of the blog, but is still not even the bare bones of a system. This one I'll definitely return to at some point, I just can't be sure when.
  
• The Games I Play -- I reviewed the ones I hate the most, but what about the mediocre and the good? I should get around to that sometime.
• The Changeling-esque oath system. It doesn't interest me as much when I'm not playing around with a game that uses it. The best odds for me ever finishing it are if I do some kind of fae-oriented GURPS game or something, or if someone actually requests it.
• The random thoughts on that other game I didn't start. Not sure if I'll use it or not, but I'm going to hang on to it. It may or may not see development in the future.
  

CTech Mecha via GURPS Spaceships

Well, I've had CthulhuTech for about a week now and I've been fiddling with GURPS 4e stuff to convert over.

In the interest of not infringing on any copyrights, I'm not going to go into deep detail on my conversion, but I can at least give my basic observations to help any readers that might be interested in running CTech in GURPS.

• CTech seems to be largely Tech Level 10 in GURPS terms, with some things only at Tech Level 9. Arcanotech provides superscience energy generation and gravity manipulation.
• Mecha can be built with some effort using GURPS Spaceships 1, 4, and 7. I picked up Spaceships 3, too, but it doesn't have much use for this unless you're planning on doing actual space battles.
  
• Remember that the Spaceships Size Modifier is mass-based; a mech is probably going to be about half as tall as the Spaceships Size Modifier suggests. That puts the NEG's main battle mech (the Broadsword) at SM+5 in mass (and thus, spaceship design) terms, but SM+4 in height (and combat) terms.
  
• You may need to tweak the stats on Spaceships missiles and the Robot Legs component to get the proper genre emulation.
• You'll need to work out how you want to handle normal GURPS combat time versus the Spaceships combat time. There are a variety of threads on the official GURPS forums about this. It seems to work best to give full (twenty-second) rate of fire per twenty seconds, letting the user divide the shots however he wishes, rather than trying to convert to a per-second rate of fire, which results in some oddities when applying the Aiming rules.
• If you have an old version of GURPS Spaceships, make sure you check the errata on ballistic weapon damage, or you'll have the smallest gun shells punching huge gaping death-holes in your sixty-foot mechs.
• For oversized melee weapons like hyperedge blades, I suggest using the GURPS Supers rules for huge improvised weapons to get something roughly similar, convert to the appropriate damage type, and apply templates like Superfine Blade (from GURPS Ultra-Tech).
  
• Alternately, check out the house rules of 'Reverend Pee Kitty' for Heavier Weapons for Stronger Characters. I think the physics are a bit weird there, but the end result is still a very usable system that lets you scale up human-size weapons for the mechs.
  

Anyway, just my thoughts. I haven't got to the point of testing this out yet, just been building, converting, and doing thought experiments.

On a side-note, GURPS Spaceships is ridiculously fun. Just designing the ships has this sort of crazy abstract RPG space legos feel. I mean, the example ships in the supplements include thinly-veiled ripoffs of TIE Fighters, the Enterprise, and even a TARDIS. And they all work.

Giant Mecha and Sleeping Squid-Gods

I just picked up CthulhuTech yesterday. It was an impulse buy; I'd come to the local gaming store to see if they had any goodies for free RPG day (got an Exalted adventure out of it) and, while looking through the shelves, found this game.

It looks pretty awesome. Not a fan of the game mechanics as such, and I've heard the expansions are kind of iffy, but the setting at least as outlined in the core book is great. It's Call of Cthulhu + Evangelion + Guyver + Robotech, with various other things thrown in. It cost me about $30, but it's probably possible to get it cheaper via Amazon or something.

The art is very good. They have some of it posted in full color over at Cthulhutech.com.

In a way, CthulhuTech seems to be a combination of multiple games, which aren't exactly intended to be played together. There's the mecha games... either using mechwarrior type mecha or the impressive Evangelion types (called 'Engels'). There's also the Guyver-inspired Tagers, which sort of remind me of a combination of the Venom symbiont from Spider-Man and the old World of Darkness werewolves. The game has rules for personal scale combat, skill use, and even sorcery as well, and supposedly the first expansion covers psychics.

It looks like the ideal way to use this game is via conversion. Rather than using the 'Framewerk' system that the game uses, I'd run these different mini-games with different systems. Any of them look like they could work with GURPS 4e. Personal scale stuff would also work well with d20 Modern (with a dash of d20 Call of Cthulhu thrown in, of course!), and Tagers seem like a great fit for the new World of Darkness rules.