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.

I'm Not Dead

I really am still here, despite the apparent lack of posts. I've been updating the old 'Why They Lost...' post instead of posting new things, recently, so if you're following the blog you may want to go and check on that post every couple days until it's truly finished and I can get on to other stuff. Or you can just wait, if you don't care about that. Either way, it should be done soon and normal posting will resume.

Half-Started Projects

So, any of you few that read this blog...

I've been posting and will continue to post a variety of things, including ideas for games and game systems. For instance, the oath system in the previous post, the vague setting outline before then, or the bits on rul-skaath.

If anything stands out as interesting, or you see something you think you might use, say so! I can write quite a lot more, and better quality, when I know I'm doing it for someone.

Bound in Word and Wonder

In mythology, fairy tales, and fantasy stories, the idea of a magically binding contract occasionally shows up, generally when dealing with powerful supernatural beings. An old witch sets a strange and impossible task for a child, but must let him go free when he somehow accomplishes it. A man bargains with the devil, trading away his hope for an afterlife in exchange for wealth and power in this life. A wizened little gnome promises to return the stolen child only if the mother can guess the gnome's name. However it works, there is something magical about these kinds of arbitrary mystically enforced rules. They reinforce the meaningfulness of even trivial interactions, and they give an air of storybook wonder to what could otherwise be dull tasks.

The idea of binding oaths and bargains is explored in many games. As far as I know, White Wolf's Changeling: The Lost is the first to really codify these agreements into an actual detailed system, though I'm sure others have come before. As such, the system I'm proposing here owes a lot to that game. My system is generic: the specific details will need to be filled in to fit whatever system it will be used with -- in my case, most like Ars Magica, Exalted, Changeling, and GURPS.

The Components of an Oath
Each oath is constructed from several components. Each component has a rating describing how significant it is, with a number associated with each rating:

• Trivial (0)
• Minor (1)
• Moderate (2)
• Major (3)
• Mythic (5)

Each component is also described as 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral.' Positive components add to the value of the oath, negative components subtract from it, and neutral components don't actually affect the oath's value at all. Oaths should generally sum to a total value of zero, excepting special rules to the contrary (some games might allow fairy lords to have positive-value oaths, or require oaths with demons to have a net negative value at some level, etc.)

Personal, Dual, and Group Oaths
A personal oath is the simplest to build; you just set the components together, make sure they add up to zero, and you're done. Many systems and settings either won't support personal oaths or will penalize them somehow, though, since they're lacking the aspect of interaction that is most of the purpose of magical oaths.
A dual oath is probably the standard; an agreement between two individuals. To build it, you design each individual's side of the oath as a separate oath and make sure the durations match and there are no contradictions. When one character breaks the oath, the other one involved has his end of the oath nullified as well but does not suffer any punishment for breaking an oath (since he didn't break it.)
A group oath works like a dual oath, except that when someone breaks their end of the oath, provided there are still at least two people sworn to it and the oath still makes sense, the oath is not nullified for the remaining characters. For instance, if a group of characters swear an alliance to each other and one turns traitor, the traitor suffers the punishment and loses the benefits of the oath, but the rest of the group is still bound to the alliance to one another.

Duration
Every oath requires a single Duration component, defining how long it lasts. Duration has a variable value; sometimes it is considered positive, other times negative, and sometimes neutral. This depends on the other components of the oath. If even one component states that it treats Duration as positive, it is a positive component. If no components treat duration as positive and at least one describes it as negative, it is negative. Otherwise, it is neutral.

• Trivial Durations last no longer than a quarter of a day. Examples include: 'until sunset' (on an oath sworn at noon), 'an hour', 'the length of a sunrise' (about two minutes; the time it takes the sun to go from showing only a sliver to fully crossing the horizon), etc.
• Minor Durations last up to a week. Examples include: 'until Sunday', 'when the sun has twice risen and fallen'.
• Moderate Durations last for a long while, but significantly less than a year: 'for an entire lunar cycle', 'until the next solstice', 'forty days and forty nights', etc.
  
• Major Durations last for long but finite spans of time. Examples include: 'until your child is born', 'for a year and a day', or even 'in a decade's time'.
  
• Mythic Durations can be truly impressive: 'until the day you die', 'unto the seventh generation', 'for three centuries', etc. At this level there's no real limit to the duration, and oaths can even be set to last forever (provided nobody breaks the oath, of course.)

(part II, detailing 'Challenges', to come later)

Thoughts on a new game...

It's amazing the inspirations that come when performing some otherwise mindless activity, like walking on a treadmill or taking a shower afterward. I had some thoughts on a game... a sort of rough fusion of concepts between Paranoia, Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, Exalted, and Angband.
The player characters would be monsters from the dungeons -- goblins, imps, dark elves, etc. -- that somehow had the same spark of potential that adventurers have, able to gain levels and such without limit. They would be sent on missions by the ruler (or rulers?) of the vast dungeon-world they live in. Stuff like gathering resources, recovering ancient relics, rescuing lost mining expeditions, repelling treasure-hunters from the surface, raiding settlements of rebel monsters that don't submit to the overlord, etc.
I haven't figured the system yet, at all. These are just thoughts on the setting.

The Heart of the Hero

In the Realms of Men, some individuals are blessed with inspiration, potential, and raw determination that far exceeds that of their brethren. These few become adventurers, heroes, champions and kings... well, those that survive. At first they're no more skilled, intelligent, or powerful than any other, but over time they learn and grow, never reaching a plateau where their improvements must cease.

The Dark Gifts

Even in the Shadowed Depths, among the many inhuman kinds, this spark occasionally emerges. It still provides the same potential for boundless improvement... but it grants a little more than that. By ancient pacts and terrible sorceries, the three great powers of the underworld -- the Viles, the Lords Cthonic, and the Goblin King -- have worked a change upon how that spark manifests in their minion races. Each of these powers grants one Gift to the blessed one, one special power or feature that lets them stand apart from others of their kind.

The Viles

In modern times, the beings that rule the Heavens beyond the Realms of Men are known as the Celestials, angelic beings of peace and light and nobility. They were not always so. At the dawn of time, the Celestials were united only in their beauty, power, and immortality, but all had their own interests and agendas. And their own religions. When the many worshipers of Beauty and Light and Truth organized into a single religion, they cast out their 'lesser', 'inferior', and 'sinful' cousins, banishing them deep beneath the earth where the inhabitants of Heaven would not have to look upon them.
These banished creatures are known as the Viles. The name was originally an insulting title given to them by the ones who banished them, but later claimed by the fallen Celestials as a title of honor: a Vile is one who is true to himself and loyal to himself, with none of the pathetic arrogant nobility of serving some intangible 'higher power'. Some are horrific monsters, embodiments of a love of fierceness and strength. Others are dark but beautiful, shadowed beings that still recall their former lives as the angels of heaven. Many take both forms.
The minions of the Viles are imps and evil spirits, monsters crafted and formed from the tortured dead souls of mankind's most detestable examples.

The Lords Cthonic

The world was created long ago, by the collective effort of the Celestials (even those who later fell to become Vile) and perhaps the aid of some greater, more distant being or beings. Everything that exists comes from them.
Or, so the priests would have you think. The truth is, little by little, perhaps once every century, an otherworldly thing creeps in through one of the dark corners of the world where nobody's watching. The Celestials patrol the Heavens, and the Realms of Men have their own inhabitants, but in the darkest realms such as the depths of the oceans or the deepest tunnels of the world, these creatures can enter the world unmolested.
Some are harmless. Little many-legged crawling things, impossibly-colored funguous growths, or lumbering, mindless beasts. But not all of them. The range of power is incredible, and many of these things dwarf even the grandest Celestials in their power, though their intelligences and priorities tend to be quite alien and incomprehensible. These nightmare-creatures are known as the Lords Cthonic. The Father of Dragons. The Ocean of Slime. The Skittering Horde. The Great Eye.

The Goblin King

Nobody's sure what the Goblin King is. He is clearly something supernatural, able to work great sorceries and often appearing in different forms. He rules over the monster-men and armies of the Shadowed Depths; the highest authority among the cities and the roving tribes of that dark realm, to whom all the chieftains and mayors and lords report to.
Some think he is merely one of the Viles who didn't quite fall as far -- hence his sometimes fae appearance and his greater willingness to rule in a organized and almost benevolent fashion. Others think he was once a human hero, who achieved near-divinity in his adventures into the dungeons, until he eventually carved out a kingdom with himself as god-king over its monstrous inhabitants. Still others think he might be one of the Lords Cthonic, a monster from beyond the world, just more human-seeming than the others.