All right, kids. Come on in. Sit down by the fire. Grab a cup of eggnog. Old Uncle Angry is feeling his Christmas cheer. And he wants to talk to you.
Let me make a few things clear. First, Christmas cheer in this context ain’t a feeling. It’s a volatile liquid made from the fermentation sugar that Uncle Angry has been adding to his eggnog all day. But Christmas cheer makes Uncle Angry less outright angry and more grumpily thoughtful. Second, Uncle Angry really doesn’t want to talk to YOU. He’s just going to talk. And you can listen. Quietly. See, Uncle Angry is in the midst of his holiday festivities. And even though this article won’t go live until a day or two after Christmas, it’s getting written just before Christmas, during some stolen quiet time. Uncle Angry has gotten all his presents wraps, the tree is decorated, and he’s watched all the Christmas movies that any human being can reasonably take. And now he’s thinking about role-playing gaming. And the future. And how he’s sick of explaining certain things to certain people.
This is a bulls$&% article. It’s one of those rambling things where I’m just sort of thinking about something and I don’t know where it’s going to go or if it’s going to go anywhere useful. But I know some of you appreciate these insights and glimpses into the disordered and chaotic mess that is the Angry brainspace. And, for the rest of you, I’ll have a real article for you in a few days to round out the holiday season. Maybe something about monster building. Probably something about monster building. Since that crap is half done anyway. Meanwhile, this article. I gotta warn you. This may be more scattered and chaotic than most. Which is why it’s going to sit for a day or two before I edit and proofread it. I have been hitting the holiday cheer pretty hard. It’s been that kind of December.
Anyway…
The thing is, I’ve been talking a lot about plans for the future. Specifically, RPG plans for the future. Specifically, ideas for innovating in the RPG space in the future. Specifically, ideas and plans about a specific future RPG that is specifically something that I, specifically, am, you know, working on. Not so much publicly talking, though. Just sort of talking with the odd random friend, fan, family member, or reader. I mean, occasionally, someone can get me talking about it in one of my live chats or the all-too-infrequent streams or random, open calls I do. But mostly, it’s just conversation. Really, it’s mostly people asking me questions about “The Angry RPG” and me being too excited about sharing my ideas and showing off what a genius I am to say “sorry, I’m not ready to talk about it in this venue yet.” Which is what I should say. I shouldn’t be talking to anyone who hasn’t signed an NDA. But it’s hard not to be excited about it.
But here’s where this all takes a decidedly grumpy turn. As excited as I am to talk about things, I also end up frustrated a lot. Because I end up mostly just explaining the same thing over and over again. The same singular thing. One specific thing. One specific concept. And it makes me sad and angry that I have to keep explaining it. Because a lot of the people I talk to are creative people. They are designing their stuff too. And some of them are extremely smart and extremely talented. There’s A LOT of creative talent out there in the “RPG community.” It’s just a lot harder to find than it used to be. And that, in itself, is part of a sad trend that also has me pretty upset these days. And since I’m allowed to ramble and talk about whatever bulls$&% I want, I’m going to come out and say it:
Where the f$&% have all the creators gone?
The RPG community in general and the D&D community specifically has been growing of late. But that isn’t breaking news to anyone. At least, it shouldn’t be. The D&D community has been growing every year since 1974. And I’m sorry to tell you that D&D 5E isn’t special in that regard. Sure, it’s the biggest edition of D&D yet. But so was every other edition of D&D before it. D&D 5E is the biggest rebirth and renaissance in the RPG gaming community since D&D 4E. Yes. 4E. It DID grow the community. WotC told us all about it while it was happening. In fact, I gotta tell you that 4E saw a huge explosion in official play at game stores and conventions compared to the editions before it. And, honestly, D&D official convention play is actually a bit smaller now than it was at the height of 4E’s official play. You can see it simply in the size of the spaces D&D fills at conventions now-as-compared-to-then and the number of different official play tracks and products. And when 3E came out, it was a massive rebirth of a game that lots of people feared was all-but-dead thanks to the mismanagement of TSR, the company that used to own D&D. And AD&D 2E also saw a massive surge in popularity. Older gamers know we’ve been here before. We’ve seen all the same articles and headlines about how “D&D is more popular than ever” and “D&D is making a comeback” or “D&D is reaching a new generation” that we’re seeing now for every previous edition. And we all recognize it for the same native advertising bulls$&% that the internet thinks it invented.
Sorry. I was there. There’s nothing new in the universe. D&D is just as big as it’s always been, correcting for the natural inflation of the market. And that is pretty small by comparison to just about any other nerdy entertainment industry that exists. Consider, for example, that the video game industry and the table-top role-playing game industry were both born at roughly the same time. The early 1970s. Now, compare the sizes of the audiences for the two. Compare the amount of money in the two industries. The number of major companies involved and their values. The number of products. The number of colleges and universities that offer degree programs in industry-related fields.
I don’t mean to bash on RPGs. Partly, this is the booze talking. But mostly, it’s just a reality check. We love to get excited about how big the RPG community is and how popular it is and how many new people are joining the community. But we have to maintain a sense of perspective. This is a niche hobby. It could be a lot bigger than it is. And a lot of the current growth comes not from bringing new players and GMs into the fold, but from expanding the definition of “gamer.”
I know I’m going to have a lot of f$&%ing morons screaming about gatekeeping here, but I’m going to say this. We have a lot of people who are now participating in the “RPG lifestyle” who aren’t actually playing, running, or creating games. We have a lot of people consuming RPG-related entertainment, especially on YouTube, who are not actually playing or running or creating anything. We have a lot of artists and cosplayers. We have a lot of Etsy crafters. We’ve become a lifestyle brand.
Now, before you lose your f$&%ing mind because I’m daring to suggest that someone who wants to call themselves a gamer might not be a TRUE gamer, notice that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Nor am I saying it’s bad for the hobby. It’s good for the hobby. It means gaming is getting in front of more people. And some of those people will convert to quote-unquote TRUE gamers and start playing. Or they will share the gamer lifestyle with people who might not have discovered it otherwise. That’s good. But that’s a sort of halo effect. It’s an indirect good. Or rather, it’s an opportunity. Table-top RPGs are being seen by more people. But that doesn’t get more people into the TRUE gaming inner circle unless specific steps are taken to convert them. And, really, that should be the goal. Because without the TRUE gamer inner circle of actual people actually playing, running, and creating, the whole community collapses. Not that I think that will happen.
But there is a danger that the halo of gaming fandom can actually shrink the community of TRUE gamers. And yes, I am now purposely using TRUE gamer to torque any of the bigoted a$&holes who can’t see that phrase without going nuts about gatekeeping. Which, by the way, is a bulls$&% term. Fight me, bro.
Now, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about shrinking the community if not for a trend I’ve noticed in the past decade or so that I’ve been doing this. The number of gaming content creators creating actual, innovative gaming content has dropped off substantially. There’s a lot of fewer people like me out there now than there were back in 2008 when I got started. There’s a lot of people using gaming to create entertaining content, but that’s not the same thing. I’m talking about bloggers and independent, freelance module and game designers. People who put out new rules, new hacks, new books, new games. Amateur and professional. But where it is most notable is in the number of people who are sharing their homebrew content.
And that makes me sad. But, I digress. Boy did I ever digress. Because what I really want to talk about is this thing I have to keep explaining over and over whenever anyone asks me anything about “The Angry RPG.” And that thing is: almost everything you think of as a defining feature of a role-playing game is actually a specific game mechanic that was invented for one specific game. And outside of the context of a specific game, the terms most gamers use actually don’t mean anything.
Take, for example, ability scores. Lots of RPGs have ability scores. In fact, most RPGs have basically the same list of ability scores. And, in fact, in most RPGs, the ability scores do exactly the same thing. But what if I told you ability scores aren’t actually a thing. That phrase doesn’t actually mean anything. And it doesn’t even mean the same thing to everyone.
All right. Obviously, ability scores are a thing. In many RPGs – both mainstream and indie – ability scores are a set of physical and mental characteristics that all or most creatures have in common and that are used to determine the basic potential of the said creature. They are a way of defining all the creatures in the world and comparing their physical and mental capabilities. Right?
Well, maybe not right. You can take issue with that definition. It’s actually not a really good definition of ability scores in many modern RPGs. And that’s sort of the problem. That’s what I’m getting at.
The truth is that there’s no really solid way to define ability scores. And that’s because no one has had to define ability scores in a long time. Because so many games just start from the premise that characters and creatures are defined by ability scores and that the ability scores describe the physical and mental capabilities of the creatures. We’re so used to seeing ability scores as THE way to define the physical and mental capabilities of a creature that we just KNOW that’s what they are. Or rather, we ASSUME that’s what they are.
The reason that you see ability scores in so many games is that they were in D&D. And not only did D&D inspire all the role-playing games ever, it also inspired the entire computer and console role-playing game genre. Or, when it didn’t inspire them directly, D&D inspired the TTRPGs that inspired various computer and console role-playing games. Fallout has its S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ability scores because Wasteland had ability scores because Tunnels and Trolls and Mercenaries had them because D&D had them because Ken St. Andre was literally trying to create “D&D but, you know, better and easier.”
Because, yes, one year after D&D was invented, someone was already pissing and moaning about how it was too complicated, too expensive, and too inaccessible.
See what I mean? There’s nothing new in the universe.
But, here’s the thing, you don’t know what you think you know about ability scores. And even the various definitions of the rulebooks are actually wrong. Especially in modern games. They aren’t really descriptive at all, for one thing. They don’t really describe anything about a character these days. And they aren’t really meant to. And that’s because the definition of ability score suddenly changed in the year 2000. But no one realized it.
See, except for some obscure optional rules in AD&D 2E and a minor rule no one ever used for a particular version of Basic D&D back in the day, ability scores in the old days didn’t do a whole lot. They mostly were exactly what I said: a way of describing and comparing the physical and mental capabilities of various living things in the D&D universe. The actual mechanical effect they had on the game was pretty limited. First, they determined how well-suited you were for your adventuring profession. That is to say that if your wizard was particularly intelligent, he’d advance faster. Characters got more XP for matching their profession to their physical and mental capabilities. And if your character was too stupid, he couldn’t be a wizard at all. Second, every ability score affected a few very specific mechanical elements of the game. Strength gave you a bonus to melee attacks and melee damage and a greater chance of breaking down doors. Charisma determined how many followers you could have and how loyal they were. Stuff like that.
But in the year 2000, when D&D 3E came out, ability scores changed completely. They became the basis for a universal action resolution system. Which D&D had never actually never had. Before the d20 system, D&D was a collection of specific mechanics for specific things. There was a specific rule for making an attack roll, there was a specific rule for gauging how a monster would react to the party talking to it, there was a specific die roll to determine if you could locate a secret door, there was a specific system for locating and removing traps, and so on. And no two of those rules were precisely alike. Beyond that, if you had a player who wanted to do something that wasn’t covered by a specific rule, you just made up the result. And different GMs had different methods of handling that. Some GMs would assign a percentage chance of the thing succeeding and roll percentile dice. Some GMs would bounce a die behind the screen and then make a ruling based on nothing in particular. Some GMs would compare relative ability scores and decide the outcome based on that. But mostly, if you wanted to know how a GM was actually determining the outcome of any given action, you’d need a doctor with rubber gloves and a little flashlight to find out.
Obviously, there’s some flaws in that approach. And so, the d20 system was invented. And the core mechanic of the d20 system is that the GM could determine the outcome of any action with an ability check. Roll a d20, add the most relevant ability score modifier, and compare the result to a fixed difficulty number. Every other mechanic in D&D 3E hung off that basic idea in some way. Some rolls would have special, extra rules layered on top of them and would get special names. You know, attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, s$&% like that. But they were all just ability checks.
Of course, D&D had always had the same six ability scores. And because D&D had cross-pollinated so many other things, those six ability scores became, more or less, the default list of statistics to measure any character in any game franchise ever. Some games changed it up a bit, but not by a whole lot. Conceptually, the list is the same across most of the RPG spectrum. Even the ones powered by computers and game consoles.
The problem was that, initially, no one intended for ability scores to describe everything there was to describe about the physical and mental capabilities of a living thing. The ability scores were originally ways to describe certain, specific physical and mental capabilities that were related to specific game mechanics. But when they became the universal action resolution mechanic, they also became the de facto list of every possible physical and mental trait that could exist about a person. You want to know how Wisdom came to encompass senses and perception? Well, that stuff had to go somewhere and Wisdom was the best fit on the list.
See, once you make your ability scores THE way of resolving every action ever, every action has to get crammed into an ability score. In the old days, you could have things that fell outside the ability scores. Like perception or the ability to find secret doors or the ability to disarm traps. But with a universal action resolution system, everything has to land inside one of the six ability scores. And so, you have this sudden weirdness where dexterity – which formerly only described balance, reflexes, and gymnastic ability – had to suddenly cover fine motor control and hand-eye coordination. Because picking locks had to go somewhere. Even though it’s kind of f$&%ing weird that anyone who can paint a really good miniature is also a capable gymnast even though most people who can paint really good miniatures do not have what I will politely call the “proper body type” to pull off a solid Arabian double front and stick the landing.
Now, this is not me complaining about the ability scores in modern D&D are all stupid again. I mean, they are. And that’s why they are. There is zero sense to covering two completely physical capabilities like agility and hand-eye coordination with the same statistic. Just like there is no sense in assuming that the most fearless people are also the most perceptive. Or that you can measure the sum total of all of someone’s social abilities can be measured with just one mental quality.
And, by the way, this is why things have changed so many times over the last three editions. For example, this is why willpower has gradually moved from Wisdom to Charisma even though Wisdom still inexplicably governs fear-based saving throws.
Okay. If I keep this up, I will end up just bitching about the problems with D&D’s ability scores. AGAIN. Because that isn’t my point. D&D’s ability scores are okay. They work. They are clunky if you think too hard about them. But they are perfectly usable. And the main reason why they are clunky is that they represent a clumsy merger between a very elegant bit of modern game design and a bunch of legacy terms that were deemed too much a part of D&D’s core identity to rethink.
What I am bitching about is the fact that most gamers – and game designers across the spectrum to basement-amateur to published professional – treat D&D’s ability scores as definitive. Or universal. As an industry standard. And that means that when people ask me about “the Angry RPG,” they don’t ask me about action resolution mechanics or how characters will be defined, they ask me “how are you going to handle ability scores” or “what ability scores will you have” or “how are you going to fix ability scores” or “what are you going to do with Charisma?” Because they can’t see past D&D.
The thing is that even in the TTRPG design space that already exists, the D&D approach to ability scores isn’t universal. And even though there are a lot of similarities across the TTRPG game space, there’s subtle differences under the hood.
Take GURPS, for example. The Generic Universal Role-Playing System. On the surface, you’d be forgiven for talking about its Basic Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence Quotient, and Health as an ability score system. Especially when you also Will and Perception, a pair of derived attributes that are used some of the time. See, GURPS is a skill-based system. Which means that most of the time, you’re rolling skill checks. In fact, if you ever find yourself not rolling a skill check, you’re at a disadvantage. Skills are purchased and calculated based on the Basic Attributes, but it’s the extremely extensive skill list that provides the list of “everything that can be done.” And the attributes have other game mechanics that hang off of them.
Another, similar example is Savage Worlds. It’s five attributes – Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor – also seem to run close to the D&D gamut. But it’s closer to GURPS in that the attributes are used to determine what skills you can have at what ranks. It’s the skills that handle the action resolution. The attributes provide defaults if a character doesn’t have the requisite training for a task that someone could reasonably attempt untrained, but that’s done at a disadvantage.
Of course, some people play D&D that way. They play as if the skill list is the list of possible actions and the ability check is a default for undefined actions. But that’s a problem of presentation. And it doesn’t matter much in D&D whether you do think like that since skills and ability scores are the same things and both are equally influential on most die rolls.
So, when people ask me how “The Angry RPG” is going to “handle ability scores,” it drives me bonkers. Because I – and I alone – seem to realize that doesn’t mean anything. That’s like me agreeing to bring a dessert to the dinner party and then being asked what kind of frosting it will have because some dumba$& assumes that all desserts are cakes. So, I have to get snarky. I have to say, “what do you mean by ability scores?” And then I make them try to define what they think is a universal game concept based on a pile of assumptions until they realize they actually don’t know what they are trying to define. And then I explain how “ability scores” is a D&D thing. It’s a specific execution that is far from universal, that doesn’t work for everything, and is actually a clumsy amalgam of two different systems. And that it hasn’t evolved substantially since the year 2000. It’s a two-decade-old system no one is questioning anymore.
And then, if they are really nice and humble and apologetic, I give them a taste of what “The Angry RPG” will actually do and they say, “well, that’s ability scores.” Because it sure as hell does look like ability scores in the same way that GURPS and Savage Worlds look like D&D and Pathfinder and how cake and pie are basically the same things if your definition is broad enough. And then I get really pissed off.
The same thing happens when it comes to skills. And feats. “Are you going to have feats,” people ask. “What’s feats,” I ask. And then they struggle to answer until I hand them a definition that they like myself because I can define their assumptions better than they can. And then they say, “yeah, that. Will you have minor, selectable character abilities that exist outside the normal class progression that allow a player to further focus or refine their character?” And I say, “what’s a class?”
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Now, I know I am being too hard on people. It’s hard to see ways of doing things beyond the ways you’re already doing them. If it was easy, everyone would be cranking out new games all the time. People evaluate new things by comparing them to the things they already know. So, I probably should cut everyone some slack. But f$&% it. I’m an a$&hole. I made a conscious decision ten years ago to be an a$&hole. It’s served me well. I’m not going to stop.
So, what’s my point then? Is this article really just a rant about how no one appreciates my vision and how people can’t see beyond the familiar? Well, to some extent, yes. But also no. There are some lessons for you creators out there in this whole rant. And please take them to heart. Because we need more creatives in the TRUE gamer community. We need all the creatives we can get.
First, it’s important to realize that pretty much everything is an assumption. I know it seems like these days that the concept of choosing a race and class and having a set of ability scores, a set of skills, and a set of feats seems universal and definitive. Like it’s THE way of doing characters. And you either do it OR you come up with a clever way to subvert it. You know, like you make your RPG the one where races are classes and vice-versa or the one where everyone is the same race. And you call that a unique selling point because you’re doing something different from the norm.
The thing is that each one of those things was a solution to a design problem once upon a time. Once, before there were races and classes and ability scores, someone had to say “okay, how can people define their characters in a fantasy world and how can that definition impact the game’s rules?” And then races and classes and ability scores were the solutions. And they were a damned good solution. So good that everyone stopped thinking about the underlying problem and copied the solution. Even when the underlying problem actually changed.
Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t use someone else’s solution. Don’t waste your time reinventing the wheel. But you should be careful about assuming the wheel is the only way to get something moving from here to there. Make sure that before you’ve adopted someone else’s solution, you understand the problem you’re trying to solve first.
See, one of the problems “the Angry RPG” had to solve was that I needed a way for the GM to easily determine the outcome of any action that players could imagine their characters taking. And that players needed to be able to define their characters in such a way that they were more likely to succeed at actions that played to their character’s strengths and less likely to succeed at actions that played to their character’s weaknesses. And that SOUNDS like the d20 version of ability scores. That’s exactly what ability scores do in modern D&D. They allow the GM to determine the outcomes of actions in a way that is influenced by the player’s definition of their character. If a player decides they want to play “the strong guy,” they will be more likely to succeed at actions that involve physical strength.
But the problem is that the six ability scores that D&D has been using aren’t really a solution to that problem. Not completely. The vague definitions and weird overlaps and shifting definitions and the crammed-in stuff that’s poorly defined like sensory perception and hand-eye coordination all get in the way of that “easily determine the outcome of any action that players could imagine their characters taking.” The designers of D&D 3E recognized the problem – they needed a universal action resolution mechanic – but they were bound to use existing game concepts, so they had to use a set of ability scores that weren’t actually a good solution.
Second, though, it’s important to recognize the flaw in “either keep this mechanic or purposely discard it” type thinking. If I viewed the choice as “keep the ability scores in D&D or purposely reject them and do something different,” I’m still making the choice based on the existing solution. I’m still not addressing the actual problem. I’m still designing a game by comparing it to something else.
But there’s a dangerous trap you can fall into there. Because if you take that to its logical endpoint, you end up rejecting everything and reinventing everything. You ignore all existing solutions and solve every problem for yourself. Not only is that a lot of work, but it also robs you of a very important tool. And it’s egotistical as hell.
It comes down to the interplay between progress and tradition. And please remember that this blog is only about game design and gaming advice. This has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Uncle Angry doesn’t do deep philosophical truth and he don’t do life advice. Traditions are good because the things that last for a long time are things that ipso facto worked for a long time. D&D is a good game. Even D&D 5E. And it’s the end result of five decades of learning what works and sticking with it because it works. The stuff in D&D that has endured has been tested for 50 years. And it has mostly stood up to that test. That’s the important tool part. If you use an existing mechanic from a 50-year-old game, you get 50 years of playtesting you didn’t have to do yourself. The egotistical part is, by the way, assuming you’re smarter than every other game designer who had a hand in designing games before you came along. The games that exist today are the result of the best ideas those game designers had. And some of them are probably better than your best ideas. Don’t throw them all away.
The problem is that eventually traditions get carried on without thought. They don’t get examined. Traditions become habits. They can stick around even when better solutions exist. And because the past wasn’t perfect, traditions are also a way of importing the problems of the past into the future. Just because something is a tradition doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Or even that it’s still good.
And that is where progress comes in. Experimentation. Trying new things. Innovating. Moving into the future. Progress is a good thing because without progress in the form of experimentation and innovation and openness to new ideas, nothing ever improves. Nothing is ever perfect, but without progress, nothing will be better tomorrow than it is today. That’s the good side of progress. The bad side of progress is often that it gets so excited about the new and fresh and innovative that it assumes that anything not new is automatically bad. Progress rarely respects tradition. And, as noted above, a lot of traditions endured precisely because they were the results of the best experiments of their day. That they were the ideas that won. The traditions of today were the successful results of progressive experiments of the past. Progress can thus repeat the mistakes of the past, experimenting with ideas that have been tested, failed, and been forgotten in its rush to innovate. And, like all innovations and experimentations, it can involve a lot of wrong turns. It can lead to a lot of dangerous places.
Good game design has to strike a balance between respect for the past and humility before the great minds that came before you and a willingness to strike out and to try new ideas. Old ideas shouldn’t be rejected just because they are “sacred cows” and “old fashioned,” but neither should they be adopted without examination and thought.
Evolution – and that’s really what you want – evolution comes at the collision between tradition and progress. A new idea appears, it wins over the other ideas of its day, and then it stands the test of time until it becomes the norm. And the norm today is the result of every best idea that came before it.
So, yeah, “The Angry RPG” may have four statistics for living creatures called Might, Finesse, Cunning, and Will. And because those things are used as the core of the universal action resolution system, you might want to look at them and say “oh, it’s ability scores.” But no. The devil is in the details. And ability scores as you know them aren’t the right solution to my problem. But I did think about whether they might be. And knowing that, maybe you won’t ask me whether “The Angry RPG” has skills. Or feats. Or spells. Or initiative.
Yeah. Even initiative – the very concept of initiative itself – is an assumption.
But that’s a discussion for another time. And Uncle Angry has had too much Christmas cheer. So you kids go play with your toys. I’m going to bed. Merry F$&%ing Christmas.
We do love to use Ability scores or stats: meaning Strength, Intelligence, whatever.
Even in systems when STR, DEX and so on don’t much affect the game mechanics, they do give the players that first way to quickly ‘image’ and quantify their character. e.g. “I’m strong”, “My thief has the instinctive grace of a dancer” and so on.
But maybe a string of six stats isn’t the best way to do that.
Instead of having STR 18 CON 18 and CHA 8, it might be better to say something like:
“My Fighter has 2 levels of [Big Guy] + a level of [Ugly Customer]”
Or instead of having STR 8 DEX 18 and CHA 16, it might be better to say:
“My hot Elf ranger has [Appealing Fragility] + 2 levels of [Balletic Grace] + [Screen Presence]
So instead of stats, we develop a series of Characteristic Traits that describe in what way this character differs from the norm. And have those Traits tie into game mechanics.
This has the advantage of presenting a characters distinctive qualities in terms of memorable, human-readable text.
It also allows for useful distinctions in (for instance) Dexterity.
For instance: Conan the Barbarian doesn’t have 18 DEX. Instead he has [Cat-Like Reflexes], [Never Suprised] and [Innate Balance] – but not [Skilled Craftsman] or [Miniature Painter].
A system of Traits like this would work similarly to (and dovetail with) classic Feat systems.
Hope this is useful.
You mean like the fate system?
I don’t know the Fate system well enough to comment.
The 1st system I saw that did something like this was the Superhero RPG ‘Golden Heroes’.
GH had Ability scores in the rules, but (bizarrely) they had almost no effect on the game.
In GH you would build your superhero out of 2d6 power points. And … that was about it. You would add your own descriptive chrome on top of that.
So a random Superhero might have [Strong-2], [Tough-1] and [Armour-1]. This is a very … economical, barebones way of describing a hero.
However it was so low-resolution that any descriptive chrome you added would fit. And also: differences between heroes became very clear.
E.g. a [Strong] [Tough] [Armoured] Hero who also had [Fire Blast 2]
would play sufficiently differently from a
[Strong] [Tough] [Armoured] Hero who had [Precision] or [Superspeed], or [Flight] or [Martial Arts] or a [Chainsword]
It was an inspiring approach to game design. Players could imagine their character very easily, rather than puzzle at a block of feats and ability scores.
So – taking this low resolution idea to DnD. Imagine a DnD homebrew where all abilities were quantised to two or three levels.
E.g.
My character could be “Strong” (STR 14 in all ways) or “Very Strong” (Str 18 in all ways”
or “Quick” (DEX 14 in all ways) or “Very Quick” (DEX 18)
and so on. And a STR or DEX of 10 is just normal and doesn’t get its own name.
Do this and suddenly a lot of complication falls away. Characters become more cinematic/easy to visualise. The rest of the game rules could (in theory) be simplified to the same resolution.
Hope this is useful to someone.
While I like this idea, it has some problems with improvising an action: either you have several traits that could be valid, or all traits have to be mutually exclusive among themselves
This sounds very much like the City of Mist RPG, where everyone has “tags” which are essentially little blurbs like “Cat-like reflexes”, “Skilled Marksman”, “Police Officer”, etc. and for each tag that applies to the action you’re using you get a +1 bonus. Thus far from playing it, I find it works pretty well, though the DM has to adjudicate which tags are appropriate in which situations.
Thank you for the tip Dwarfslayer.
I will go look at that game. Sight unseen, I’m guessing that limiting tag proliferation and scope is a key part of the design.
I won’t ask, but I do feel compelled to note that my curiosity is once again piqued by an article. Specifically, I wonder if Angry has been hinting that “The Angry RPG” will not use the core mechanic of the d20 system.
Hinting? Holy crap! I’ve said it outright.
Dear Angry,
Are you jumping on the d30 train?
Sincerely, A concerned Reader
F%&$ no.
Before switching to Pathfinder when it came out, I played Rolemaster for a few decades. It’s the skill-based system of skill-based systems, and like D&D it has stats, just more of them, and it addressed some of this. It has Strength, Presence (a bit like Charisma but Appearance is separate), Agility, Quickness, Constitution, Reasoning, Intuition, Memory, Empathy, Self Discipline and Appearance. And even with that much of a breakdown, some skills would be enhanced by the average of relevant stats. You either had ranks in a skill (and there were pages of them) or you made the roll with a stiff penalty. It was hard at first getting used to “Dexterity” covering the bases like it does.
I’m working on my own version of Pathfinder. I didn’t start from scratch and I’m not changing stats. I agree with everything you have said about them not making sense, and tradition and all of that, but to me that’s not the issue that bothers me. I’m addressing action economy and maintaining play balance as characters gain power without removing as much customization as 5E did. I want a game that I can have fun building characters that are mechanically unique, but that also plays smoothly. It needs the soul of 2E, crunch of 3E, combat elements of 4E and the simple elegance of 5E. No problem.
So which mechanism for “doing stuff” are you going for? Skills? Stats? Narrative?
I think perhaps you could maintain play balance by using an age mechanism, like Pendragon.
Kudos for building your own version!
Old school feel + 3E crunch + those cool monster powers from 4E + a fungible action economy. That mix ought to work very well.
3rd Edition was such a step-change from what came before. The AOO mechanic, a clean action-system, the target DC mechanic for skills/attacks/saves.
And Feats! Discrete nuggets of customisation to weld onto your PC. Just great stuff.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s a good place on the internet for GMs to share their homebrew ideas?
What do you think about PF 2E? Seems like it addresses your concern about action economy, somewhat balancing PCs and tightening the overall math.
Great post, lots of Wisdom in there, lightly obscured by gaming jargon. There is some relief to our presently hostile rl political climate in there, for any flexible enough to apply it.
Anyway, I believe Quickness needs to be a distinct “ability” (at least for any game with combat), as it is sufficiently different from dexterity/finesse. For example, consider martial arts and rock climbing. Also, I don’t think it’s necessary or even desirable to fit every adjudication into just one attribute + one skill. For example, an effective punch is a function of mass (Strength), speed (Quickness), and accuracy (Brawling/Boxing)? Is it too much to ask the typical player or GM to average the first two and add the third?
Personally, I like the idea having every physical attribute contribute to combat. Strength increases damage, Coordination increases chance to hit, Endurance governs how many actions you can take before you need to catch your breath. The problem is that even with 5E’s simple system, I still have to explain to one of my players what numbers to add to the dice roll to make an attack/ability check every single session (not the same player each time). A lot of players just don’t think about D&D when they aren’t playing D&D and when you only play once or twice a month, it is easy for them to forget how the mechanics work. The people here read 5,000+ word rants by Angry and then take the time to comment on the articles, which makes us members of incredibly tiny minority of the gaming population that spends this much time thinking about RPG’s when they aren’t playing them.
It is what separates players from Dungeon Masters. Thinking about and planning out D&D as much as DM’s do is a separate hobby from actually playing D&D
“Personally, I like the idea having every physical attribute contribute to combat”
Me too! I found what I hope is a neat way to make Charisma important in combat.
In my game: Charisma measures a character’s *importance*.
This is *not* social importance. Instead it’s how central they are to the drama.
For whatever reason: high-Charisma characters are the A-list stars of the role-playing experience. They’re Hugh Jackson, Kate Beckinsale, Kiera Knightley and so on.
There’s an analogy with films.
In an action movie there might be many protagonists or good-guys: however the camera follows one or two characters around much more than others.
The stars of a movie tend to both survive and prevail – despite fighting stronger, quicker, smarter foes. Because it’s in the script.
This is because they are the *stars of the movie* – other characters may be stronger or smarter, but the viewers simply don’t care about them so much. Sigourney is going to survive, but not Harry Dean Stanton.
In the same way: high CHA characters in an RPG tend to succeed in what they need to do, and survive their dangerous adventures more often than one might expect.
Which is all a long winded way of saying – I give them Narrative awards in-game based on their CHA. These might be used to add to damage, reroll saves, get extra attacks or spells etc.
Yes it is too much to ask. Sure, for something you expect your character to do often, like throwing a punch, you’ve got the average already worked out, but for any unusual action you’ve got to pop out of the narrative into mechanical space for the extra time it takes to work out an average you don’t have on hand. Even though that takes what seems like a negligible amount of time, it will kill tension in any fast paced scene when the effect is compounded, not to mention eating up real table time. And it would be wildly impractical to have all possible averages worked out ahead of time. Even with the only six ability scores of D and D the number of combinations is staggering.
The question you should ask yourself is what the limiting factor is. This is complicated in the case off attacks in D and D, because at least two separate issues are bundled into one number, Armor Class. Since it covers both whether you can actually hit the target and whether the attack manages to penetrate any armor they may have, the accuracy and power of the attack are combined in a single roll, hence the desire to combine, in your example, Strength and Quickness.
Some systems (Shadowrun, for example) handle this by making individual rolls to hit a target and then to penetrate armor but the extra roll for every attack in comparison to the d20 system forces you to spend more table time in mechanics. There is value to both approaches, and presumably a better system than both that I have not yet seen or thought of. You can either decide which side to err on, or come up with that better system yourself. Either way, best of luck.
A game I would recommend D&D gamers play is Munchkin and to play it with non-gamers. It has the most basic D&D treadmill. It takes the piss so everyone can have a good laugh. But it also encapsulates the most basic elements of D&D. You make a character, you attack monsters, get treasure and your choices help determine whether you succeed or fail.
It’s fascinating seeing how non-gamers react. They will seek to optimise as much as the most hardcore minmaxers. They will argue over interpretations over ambiguously worded abilities. They will want to introduce houseriles to deal with overpowered abilities. But it’s also fascinating seeing what they struggle with (class vs race is confusing I’ve found). It also distils classic D&D to its most basic forms. I’ve found it enlightening when looking at assumed parts of the game and asking how necessary they really are.
It’s also a good filter for seeing who might be open to an introduction to TTRPGs (e.g., D&D). Most of my extended family refuses to play Munchkin because … and get this … it’s too complicated. The scrunched up faces and confusion about “equipping” an item would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
The ones who enjoy playing are the few of us who already play D&D.
Interesting thoughts, and it’s making me take a step back to reassess some of my assumptions for some homebrew stuff I’m working on.
I feel like any game system that’s remotely accessible to new players has to have some basic building blocks of a character to start from, with further detail then layered on top with other selectable character aspects. Terminology, of course, will vary from game to game.
It doesn’t necessarily make things match up to reality, but it gives newbies a starting point for understanding what their characters can do. While you may not like questions such as “What ability scores will your game system us?” due to the terms coming with some preconceptions, but I think it’d be fair to ask “What are the basic aspects of a character in your system?”
“So, yeah, “The Angry RPG” may have four statistics for living creatures called Might, Finesse, Cunning, and Will.”
Interestingly specific there, “living creatures.” So I’m guessing that you aren’t going to have a universal stat block that applies to every single creature the way D&D does? Which makes sense, why do Ghosts and Specters have strength scores? They are incorporeal, and it is heavily implied that they are incapable of physically moving objects by the fact that Poltergeists have the specific ability to move stuff with telekinesis. Can Fire Elementals pick up stuff? They have a strength score of 10 which implies they can, but they also have the condition immunities of a non-corporeal creature. It is obnoxious having to copy down every stat in a stat block for every creature even though I know I won’t need 90% of it unless the players cast a spell that requires a specific saving throw and all of a sudden I need to know how intelligent an Iron Golem is and whether or not it can even be affected by an illusion spell (and the stat block doesn’t actually even tell me that).
May I suggest that combat abilities (assuming your game has an emphasis on combat the way D&D and Pathfinder do?) not be as heavily based on your Might, Finesse, Cunning, and Will descriptors? I find it really annoying that in 5E D&D every Fighter, be they human, dwarf, elf, or even gnome, ends up with 20 Strength, the strongest it is possible for a mortal to be (assuming they don’t just use Dexterity and ignore Strength completely). Every Wizard is a genius, every Bard, Sorcerer, and Warlock has peak willpower, every Rogue is an Olympic gymnast with perfect hand-eye coordination. It’d be nice to have the option to make a smart fighter or strong rogue without having the system brutally punish you for it (why are Rogues proficient with Longswords when they can’t use them to make sneak attacks anyway?).
I think his rant was exactly about this. The Angry Action Resolution is used to resolve actions, they are not also ability scores that describe multiple facets of the character as a living creature in the world.
Do you resolve your actions with force or cunning? Physically or mentally?
Maybe the answer is to go back in time to when stats didn’t count as much. Where a 16 strength gives the +1 and a 20 gives +3. Or really old school and you roll stats in order and THEN decide what class you want to play.
Well, for all the self-awareness that this blog post was a meaningless rant, I was still blue balled by the conclusion. Is the Angry RPG on any kind of schedule as of now?
I was floored when I glimpsed your white board with the 4 nouns for universal action resolution.
I’m feeling excited again!
I’m still wondering about that dice progression.
Magic as physical items?
How will you determine the order of action resolution?
Will there be dueling pools of dice for mortals & gods?
Will you release the Angry RPG before GRRM finishes ASoIaF?
It seems odd to me that you haven’t looked at the European development of table top wargames, and in particular Warhammer, and tyeir role to play in development of rpg systems. There’s also MERP and WFRP (currently in the fourth edition)…
I’m inclined to agree with you about the lack of innovation, but I’d also add that a lot of it is lack of meaningful technical support for new DMs and horribly lazy players who don’t know the system their playing, and inflicting their weals and woes on the new DMs before they get a chance to breath. What’s often dished out is RP advice for “NPC encounters” and drivel that you could find on a wiki article on character development and prose characterization…
And even though sites like D&D Beyond have “homebrew” resources, it’s a nuisance to use at best – on top of the mess that is the 5e DMG where that’s concerned…
I’m hoping to read through Cubicle 7’s One Ring RPG for 5e, because that’s by far the most extensive rework of 5e that I’m aware of, and it’s professionally done…
Like most people, I like to know and understand the thing I’m tweaking, and in the current framework that’s difficult to do. Some of the principles used to test 5e are so fundamental that tweaks are game breaking and cause an avalanche affect in game; where “nooby” players who barely understand their classes and spells try to “faux-roleplay” around mechanics – “faux-roleplay” being a culture in the community currently, a failure to contextualize the player-character relationship.
We’re not professionals, and voices and nigh-on “method acting” is grossly inappropriate, given the need to use as you’ve pointed out a “meta-perspective” to play anything – Matt Mercer’s continued balancing act is all the more impressive for this!
I’ve been reading this article, foaming at the mouth in how it accurately describes how people be have in a different hobby of mine, MoBa games.
It has it’s own lexicon of terms that have stopped having well defined meanings, and people are treating mastery of those terms as a prerequisite for understanding the game.
They say things like “we need a tank” when they mean “we need a way to reliably engage” Tanks usually have that, but they would rather play with a tank that is an exception and doesn’t have a reliable engage than with something else that does have one, because only noobs don’t understand you need a tank.
They definitely don’t understand the question “what’s a tank”, but know you don’t know anything if you do ask.
The most infuriating part is that in the vast majority of cases you need a tank, and things have been designed especially around not having to question what a tank is and what it does if you just know you need one.
You know, this article makes me wanna go back to my, well, I liked Rain World so I started something for it. I dunno, I guess the charm drew me in. I wrote quite a bit before it fell off the radar and I stopped working on it.
Might be a decent new years resolution. Finish the system/render it in a decent playable state. Even if I cut out the Rain World element.
This year, I chose to start reading and GMing new systems, and it has broken down a lot of my assumptions. There are so many innovative rule system out there that fundamentally break with DnD, especially for indie RPG. You can see they thought really accurately about the experience they try to give, and how to best reflect it in their rules. You can see why they didn’t kept a standard mechanic, or why the build a specific rule system for a situation, and why it would not make as much sens in another game.
Problem is, the indie niche is indeed a really small one. Also,they are more or less all competing to get the attention (and money) of a handful of enthusiast GM (or players, I guess). But damn, there is stuff in there to make you think about your own design.
Can I ask if you have any recommendations for systems that work very differently from D&D, and do a good job of making the mechanics support the types of story the system is meant to tell?
I’ve only really played D&D, Shadowrun, White Wolf, and L5R RPGs enough to feel like I grok the rules, and while they all work differently, they also all come back to “roll ability plus skill, modified by traits”.
To be fair, that is a solid baseline for a system, it’s fairly intuitive for new players, but as I work on homebrew stuff I want to explore a bit to see what else is out there. I’m just not really sure where to start, I don’t have the time or money to buy every game system that seems interesting (as much as I wish I could).
I’m in no way an expert on the topic: I’ve actually not played that many more systems than you. However, I quite like to skim trough different systems, and sometime, I just get so excited I try them out.
The most different thing from DnD I played is Ten Candles. It’s a one-shot tragic horror game with really simple but effective mechanics. The most interesting thing is that they thought about how the mechanics build narrative tension, ambience and pacing almost all by themselves. However, it is also the kind of game Uncle Angry will despise because its halfway between “collaborative storytelling b#&ls*%t” and “actual roleplaying” (it’s a no prep improvisational system where narration of outcomes is shared between the GM and the players; therefore, players also need to think from a story perspective, not only from their character’s).
Another really nice RPG I tried is Forbidden Lands. Its an old-school-like, exploration and survival sandbox RPG that provides exactly that. It’s more traditional dice pool system with attributes and skills. However, i find that it is really clever in how many of the mechanics are built to make the most out of it. They chose a base mechanic, and then worked out a lot of ways to use it.
These are the one I actually ran. But I also plan to try out the quickstart rules of Root, an upcoming RPG based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system (Blade in the Dark, Dungeon World, Apocalypse World…) I’m quite impressed by how rich it feels with only 40 pages or so of rules. I particularly like how the character generation and progression systems build on the themes of the setting.
Awesome, thank you, I’ll definitely check those out!
Angry may not like some of that, but I know there are players who would, and at the end of the day the important thing is that everyone at the table is having fun.
While it doesn’t *harm* anything to have a generic system with a cool setting, to me it always adds more to the game when the mechanics and the fluff support each other in a natural way, as opposed to being forced together, and that’s always going to be my goal with homebrew games.
I can’t think of many RPGs that don’t come down to roll dice + modifiers, but as far as just being different, I’d put the “Powered by the Apocalypse” system on the list (Dungeon World, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark and City of Mist being the top 4 games using that system that come to mind). While ultimately these systems do come down to dice + mods, mainly these systems are very different because of a few things.
First, players roll all the dice. NPCs aren’t represented like PCs at all and essentially work closer to obstacles than characters.
Second, the system is designed around action, not inaction. For instance, in most RPGs when a roll is failed, it simply means nothing happens. You didn’t pick the lock, you didn’t hit the monster, etc. In this system, when you fail it essentially lets the GM “make a move”. A move can be something like introducing a new threat “You hear footsteps in the distance”, causing loss of resources “You pick breaks in the lock”, or “You miss the goblin and he brings his axe down on your shoulder, take some damage (how damage is handled varies between different games).”
Third, the focus is on the narrative. The rules exist to serve that, not the other way around, and GMing is more of an art form as opposed to the hard science it’s become. And the majority of actions are going to be limited based on that. If there’s a zombie grabbing and lunging at you in close quarters, you probably can’t get a shot off with your shotgun until you first do something to get away from it. Where as in a game like D&D, the final arbiter is the miniature on the board. A big dire wolf knocks you prone and bites you, well you can just stand up on your turn no problem and swing your greataxe without penalty.
It really has a different far more cinematic feel as opposed to the very mechanical-feeling conventional RPG.
That’s a really interesting idea, with the players rolling all the dice, and things like “you fail to hit the goblin so the goblin hits you instead”.
I know that nearly every system is going to have dice to add a random element (otherwise you may as well just write a novel cooperatively), and that there’ll be modifiers to those dice based on various things. But I think Ability+Skill as a method of determining dice modifiers and/or dice rolled, while a solid basic concept, is far from the only way of doing things. As Angry said above, it’s worth reexamining things that may be taken for granted as “normal” in gaming to see if there might be another, equally good or even better way of doing them.
As far as variant ways of representing attributes, I’d probably say your best bet would be to look into City of Mist, which uses tags instead of numeric scores, so you’d have things that may say things like: “Private Eye”, “Strong”, “Expert Marksman”, “Armor-piercing rounds”. When you take an action, you choose all those that apply and gain a +1 bonus for each. It produces a more varied spectrum of ability proficiency that feels very natural. The downside is that it does require some GM adjudication on what he’s willing to allow.
I read ‘City of Mist’ – thank you for the tip.
I’m tempted to run a Tag-enriched SciFi game.
Not ‘City of Mist’ (it’s just not where I’m at) but a version of D20 where players are built using a different kind of Tag concept.
I would use a pre-set list of allowed player Tags to swiftly aggregate a whole bunch of ‘behind the scenes’ point-based proficiencies.
I hide all that pre-costed complexity and just present the players with a list of allowed Tags.
Each of these Tags is effectively a ‘superfeat’ that brings with it a whole raft of powers and bonuses above the default norm
————-
So e.g. the “Medical Doctor” Tag might add a mass of technical skills, social standing and an improved chance at scoring criticals.
The “Owns a Tmaunt Super Weapon” Tag might add a powerful psionic weapon and a host of horrid mental disadvantages.
The “Troubled Beowulf Super-Soldier” Tag adds Strength and Combat skills – but also some disadvantages as the PC keeps having flashbacks.
————-
This use of Tags is obviously similar to DnD class levels, so I’m not being innovative here. I would mostly be hiding the class concept behind the word ‘Tag’.
Except that a Tag is more freeform, and allows the PC to gain anything that can be properly costed in game – e.g not just skills and spells but weapons and followers and troubling diseases.
And a Tag is essentially Free Text, so it can be tailored to fit a particular player or campaign.
This is exciting, I hope you’ll let us know when/if you’d like creators to make content for your rpg.
Hopefully in 2030 people will look back on an explosion of new mechanical frameworks for gaming and recognize this article as seminal.
An explosion of “new mechanical frameworks for gaming” has been underway for sometime – you just need to plug into the indie gaming scene. I’m a regular reader of Angry’s column – and love his design theory and the way he unwraps various design elements – but there is a ton of creative work going on out there – just, perhaps, not in the D20-space (Hard for me to say – I kind of “gave up” on both D&D and the OSR years ago and started looking for other systems).
Obviously I have no way of knowing your experience, but if you are not familiar with games other than D20-based (D&D, Pathfinder, etc.) there are lots of games within the indie game scene that are not as hung up on the same 6 old school ability scores. *IF* you aren’t familiar with them, try games that are built on top of Apocalypse World, Fate, Burning Wheel, etc. At a minimum, these games present systems that break the D&D model and try to do something new – usually with mechanics that are tied to trying to evoke a certain feel or encourage a certain play style.
Check out work being done by Adam Koebel (Dungeon World), Luke Crane (Burning Wheel), Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World), John Harper (Blades in The Dark)…and games built on top of those systems (there are a lot of them – Apocalypse World and Blades hacks are very popular at the moment). Check out 7th Sea, Masks: The New Generation, Urban Shadows and a lot of others.
Masks, in particular, has some great mechanics for representing how teen superheroes see themselves and respond to the influence of others. It’s very cool how the mechanics and character attributes are tied together.
Agreed.
I’ll be buying this system when it comes out. The guy brings so much clarity to the RPG space. Even if I don’t end up using the system I know there’s going to be treasure there.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the mechanics of various gaming systems – apocalypse world and its offshoots, FATE, pathfinder, Beyond the Wall, Legend of the 5 Rings, that one about sharp objects in a dimly lit environment that you’re tired of hearing about, and even the Sailor Moon RPG that I know nothing about but hat you played at a convention, and any other interesting cases that you might know about.
I know you dislike fluffy story games, but I’d be keen to hear exactly WHAT you dislike about them, and if they have any redeeming qualities that you like.
Yet another great article Angry. I have to say that I am coming to the same conclusion you are. After trying to tweak Dungeon World and ICRPG with some of my own systems to create a simple, yet unfettered system for my young daughter and her friends, I have just recently decided that “Ability Scores” may not be necessary at all for my game. I am moving more toward the use of descriptive tags. If you have the military training tag you have bonuses with anything we can reasonably assume goes with military training. If you have the “Feral” attribute you have bonuses with anything that we can reasonably assume goes with being generally feral, etc.; they’re all just descriptors of what your character is like, and not nearly so arbitrary as concepts like “Ability Score”, “Skill”, “Knack”, “Feat”, “Race”, “Class”, “Edge”. I’m really excited about where this is going…oh s$@%, I’ve given way too much information about my system here. I’m gonna need you all to sign NDAs for me.
As the latest look into the Angry brainspace, this article serves to whet my appetite for the Angry RPG even more. I certainly hope to get into any playtest that comes along, even with a draconian NDA, as a new outlook on game mechanics is always intriguing to me. One of the groups I play with has a rotating series of games, ranging from Warhammer FRPG, through Deadlands Classic, on to old games like Nightlife and Ghostbusters. The variety of mechanics is fun since it has led me to be a bit more critical and aware of the desin elements used in the different games, and has led me to be even more open to the ideas coming out of the Angry brainspace. Lots of fun!
I’m rather excited to see what form these mechanics take, and quite agree that D&D is not the best compromise between mechanics and narrative, but just decent.
Hope the holidays have been good to everyone!
I don’t know but I tend to think the first question before stats and skills and all that really ought to be “what is an action.” Before I had D&D I had Choose Your Own Adventure books, which were more about choices than specific actions.
Where can we get more news and updates about The Angry RPG?
In the future I guess!
I think this is just a “wait and see” kind of thing. I can’t imagine how much work building and testing a new system is and doing it alongside this website, too.
Would it be more reasonable to ask how you’re prioritizing narrativism, simulationism, and gamism? Or you’re deciding between systemic elegance (ala 4E or Fate) vs. individualized solutions to specific scenarios (ala 1E)?
And for that matter, whether character creation will lean more toward freeform granularity (GURPS, Fate) or template-based modularity (classes/races, “playbooks” etc.)? And how broad or narrow action options and modifications are likely to be, or if it’ll be a mix of both? Like as an example of a narrow option, I’m thinking something like “deal 4d6 damage to all targets in a 30 ft. circle at the cost of a second level spell slot and a standard action” and as an example of a broad option I’m thinking of like “you can choose to add the [water] and [magical] keywords to attacks you make while adjacent to a body of water at least as large as yourself.”
Also, are you looking into lots of different character resources to track (hp, different leveled spell slots, uses per of individual actions / options, ammunition, consumable inventory items) or trying to limit the different kinds of resources so that as much as possible can be done with the same resource a bunch of other stuff uses?
Who dares mention the GNS bulls$&% on my site? Holy crap, that s$&% doesn’t mean anything.
I think it might get used in some unhelpful ways, especially when essentializing entire game engines, but it can still be useful to know where one’s priorities lie in terms of simulating real world physics vs. satisfying gameplay vs. mechanics that encourage good storytelling practices but aren’t necessarily as “realistic” or crunchy as the other two options when it comes to individual mechanics / solutions.
Sure, when they don’t conflict it’s best to hit all of them, but there are times when your options for how to implement something favors one approach over another, and keeping an eye on what you’re wanting the overall experience to be like doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to do as a designer.
And I know I’ve seen you argue with yourself on issues about the strengths and weaknesses of house rules you’ve talked up on this site in terms of how they succeed at those goals, so even if I’m using words that you don’t think describe your process well, I do think we’re talking about how to untangle the same knots.
Like there’s obviously a different philosophy behind how GURPS handles ruling situation, how D&D 4e handles it, and how PbtA handles it. You can call those philosophies what you want, but they’re definitely recognizable trends in game design.
I’m just gonna copy and paste an excerpt from a Facebook post I’ve made. The rest was referencing a different topic, but this part was a sort of analysis of the purpose the different scores provide.
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There are 2 Main divisions (Physical and Mental) that are each divided into 3 interactions (active, passive, and utility/reactive).
The Active scores are Strength and Charisma, which are how the creatures impose themselves on the world around them.
The Passive scores are Constitution and Wisdom, which determine how well the creature takes in and withstands the things that the world does to them.
The Utility/Reactive scores are Dexterity and Intelligence, which represent the creatures’ ability to process and manipulate or instinctively react to the world around them, and are what is used to make up for a lack of ability elsewhere by redirecting what is going on around them.
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To me it seems that if you are focused on action resolution you start with individual actions, then work your way backwards to buckets or groups.
I make a character who is good at moving heavy things, so I get two points in “Push” that I add to my roll to push things. Does this apply to “Pull” actions as well? Sure. Some of this is skill and practice, building muscles, but some people are born better at pushing that would apply even if they don’t put points in Push.
So I want to carry heavy things too, do I need a separate bucket of Carry? How about Lift? If you are making a Worlds Strongest Man game then I would say yes. If it’s a game about pretend elves and whatnot, I would say no.
I’m running a game and a character tries to do something I’ve never thought of, so I need a new mechanic for that. Call it Carry Heavy Stuff For A Long Time. Do I need a new bucket, or can I just lump it in with other stuff I already have? I would argue it’s a matter of expediency at the table focused on what the characters in the world most often do, and how granular I want to be about the difference between not getting hurt in combat because I blocked, dodged, or had enough coin and sense to wear a helmet.
Hey Angry & frens. I forked a basic bot for Discord and made it implement the Tension Pool. Code’s not beautiful but it works. Hope someone finds it useful.
https://github.com/C-F-K/Angry-Tension-Bot
Happy (and/or Angry) New Year.
I like to design games and like that D&D 5e is essentially a game engine. There are a lot of crappy board games out there that are just simply badly designed, not fun, or too complex for my kids. I’ve used the boards, minis, cards, etc. and written new rules from scratch before and really enjoyed it. I like writing homebrew material and play-testing it. I love this blog because it sparks new solutions to problems in games I was subconsciously aware of but couldn’t consciously articulate.
You may have addressed this previously (I haven’t read ALL the archives yet) but one concept I always keep circling back to for D&D and any other game is the balance between complexity and approachability. One of the great aspects of 5e is how it simplifies a lot of the game mechanics. Even if the D20 and abilities mechanic isn’t perfect, like you stated, it is effective. I now play with friends who wouldn’t consider the FATE system or older version of D&D who love playing 5e. I’m convinced this is a key reason. They are able to digest how to play and still have a wide degree of freedom.
I’m excited to see your approach to the TTRPG space and I’m also curious to see where it falls on the scale between Yahtzee and ASL.
Well said. The balance between complexity and approachability is something that’s on my mind a lot as I try to homebrew content, both for existing systems and creating new ones.
There is a certain amount of nuance to it, I’ve found. Chess, for instance, has extremely simple rules at its core- you can write the entirety of the rules on an index card- but there is so much emergent complexity of play from the implementation of those simple rules that it really isn’t that approachable for new players.
Also, I’ve found that approachability complexity isn’t always a zero-sum game. More intuitive systems can be more approachable, even at higher levels of complexity. For me, at least, any system where you have to roll low to succeed (like percentile systems) feels backwards and non-intuitive. Narrative framing can help, too- if the story being told, even if it’s basic, meshes well with the mechanics used in the system, it’ll be easier and more accessible.
It’s been a big challenge to me with homebrew to remember that not everyone has the same standards of complexity that I do. I love complicated systems with a ton of fiddly bits, but lots of people would find that overwhelming, so I know I need to either accept that the stuff I make will only be potentially appealing to a niche corner of an already niche market, or I need to adjust my thinking to make it more approachable.
The intuitive thing is spot on. I’ve tried some of the games that use the “lower-than” mechanic for success instead of “greater-than” and it’s always a difficult mental shift. There is a book on design called “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug that has stuck with me ever since I read it over a decade ago. The principal of using existing paradigms to your benefit (i.e., intuitive design) instead of being novel for it’s own sake is powerful. Without putting words into his mouth, this was essentially Angry’s point and I agree with him. Where things already work, and for the right reasons, keep them. If the underlying problem is no longer solved by that technique, change it but do so in the least disruptive way.
It’s essentially Chesterton’s Fence applied to gaming.
I’d never heard of Chesterton’s Fence before, and looking it up you’re exactly right. Thank you for teaching me a new thing! And I’m definitely going to look up that book as well.
Well said.
At this stage of RPG design, having to roll high numbers for success ought to be the default position.
‘Score big numbers = good’ has to be the most intuitive rule there is.
I have to give an admiring shout out to Call of Cthulhu here. It’s successful despite having a fiddly ‘inverse success’ rule (and on percentile dice!) for attacks and skills.
The Lovecraft genre is just so strong that people who play it will accept ‘inversion complexity’ on every roll.
Maybe this inverted dice mechanic even fits the genre of an uncaring universe in some subconscious way.
Thinking about it: iirc, inverted rolls are also used for the Warhammer 40K RPG – perhaps another case where the genre is so compelling that players will accept complexity just to role-play in an awesome universe.
I think games like CoC illustrates more how we shouldn’t overvalue one single element of game design over all the others. RPGs are complex beasts, and intuitiveness of base rules is just one small aspect of them. And given enough time, players will get used quite easily to many such small details. After all, the whole “rolling low is good” doesn’t necessarily demands more brainpower than “add ability score modifier and proficiency modifier”. Problems appear when the two are combined.
For example, even if I’m no fan of percentile systems, CoC’s one makes quite clever use of its base mechanic by establishing different degrees of success if a roll is under half or a fifth of a stat, instead of using the ordinary BRP modifers of +/- xx% success chance. So, even if the base mechanics are not as intuitive as possible, at least designers built something working well with them.
I could contrast this with other games that use a D20 roll-under mechanic with modifiers, i.e. the Dark Eye, in which everything would run much more smoother if it was a D20 roll-over system.
For those GMs who like BRP genres (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) but who don’t care for the use of inverted percentiles –
Here are some quick and dirty rules to invert BRP rules to a D20 system:
These are intended to be used with reference to the rules presented in Chaosium’s Quick Start pdf.
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a) Convert all skill levels to 1 to 20. E.g. 05% = +1, 75% = +15 and so on.
With e.g. 75% skill you would roll 1d20+15 to resolve a task.
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b) The DC for regular tasks is 20.
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c) If you score 25+ when trying to resolve a task then you have scored a Hard success.
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d) Any natural roll of 17+ on the D20 is a “Threat”.
Reroll the same skill roll to see if you succeed against DC 20 again.
If you do then this was an Extreme Success.
Note: Scoring an Extreme Success is always better than a Hard Success: even if the Hard Success roll hit a higher DC.
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e) For Opposed Rolls: you could just use ‘higher DC wins’ of course.
But if you wanted to be congruent to the BRP rules then the following is one way of doing it:
Both sides roll against a DC of 20.
* Failure = 0 Successes
* Beat DC 20 (a regular success) = 1 Success
* Beat DC 25 (a Hard success) = 2 Successes.
* Beat DC 20 with a confirmed “Threat” (an Extreme success) = 3 Successes.
If the number of Sucesses is the same then – and only then – you compare which score is higher as a tie-break.
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f) Bonus and Penalty dice.
A Bonus dice adds +2 to the roll and increases the Threat range from 17 to 15.
A Penalty dice adds -2 to the roll and decreases the Threat range from 17 to 19.
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Caveat – these rules have not been playtested.
For reference: here is a link to Chaosium’s free Quick Start rules for Call of Cthulhu
Here is the same link to Chaosium’s free Quick Start rules for Call of Cthulhu – this time written out in clear text in case Akismet mangles it:
https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Quick-Start%20Rules.pdf
I must have missed in some earlier post or discussion, what will it be about?
Will it be a “classical” dungeon diving rpg, with exploration? Political intrigue and multigeneration characters rpg? Sci-fi planet liberating crew rpg? etc.
Great article. I have encountered these same problems when talking shop with traditional players. I am sure that it happens due to a lack of exposure. I have consistently asked new players to play in my groups and put game designs in front of them that lack the things they are used to. Whether or not they like the specifics, they come away realizing how varied rpgs can be. Once their eyes are opened, it’s easier to discuss what parts are integral to rpgs.
As for sharing our private creative endeavors, I don’t know how to do it well. I have a dedicated testing group who is willing to play literally any screwed up concoction I can think of. In this setting, I’ve come up with lots of systems that work well, but they’re all half-baked. After every session, I’m ready to brainstorm on the problems, I read tons of other people’s rpgs (both new and old), and I focus on the problems at the table instead of theoretical problems. I can see the problems that I want to solve in rpgs, and I’m working on them so I can play games that I enjoy.
But, what can I do with this to help the creative community, really? Showing others a bunch of half-baked ideas, games that I run without a rule-book, and systems that don’t really even reference where they are taking inspiration from… I already spend enough time on this as is that I can’t imagine the time it would add to try to justify and/or help run anything that I make public.
There are probably lots of people that are in this same situation. Having them all spew out half-baked ideas doesn’t seem great.
I’ve often thought D&D ability scores were hamfisted, especially as a player when designing semi-effective combat characters for narrative storytelling. Feels like pick three stats and suck at the rest. It’s dumb and strips away so many narrative possibilities (Charisma, I’m looking at you, you stupid @#!$@%!!#@!)
There should be only two stats which govern everything: physical and mental. Every other skill or feat you can possibly conceive (strength, dex, athletics, charisma, etc..) is rooted in physical or mental or a combination of the two.
Was wondering when and if you’d ever bring up GURPS in your articles. You have so many articles about hacking D&D I often thought to myself why you don’t play, or at least mention GURPS more often. I quite enjoy how intuitive the combat mechanics are for that system. Its not perfect but I find it more refreshing than the HP sink of D&D. A hit is a hit, and armor protects against actual damage, etc. With limitations on HP a fight carries more tension and weight, thus driving a larger emphasis on character development towards social interactions, aka, actual role playing.
I also like the skill base and classless character building. The bell curve of the 3d6 roll has a very nice feel as opposed to the linear probability of a single dice such as the D20.Some very good takeaways from that system.
Still it all needs to be more approachable as that is one thing GURPS does not do well. Perhaps I answer my own preponderance in the opening statement. If you’re looking for something to appeal to the masses, you are going to have to sacrifice a lot of nuance for streamlined systems. I think that’s where D&D scores big. For 90% of the player base it masks its simplistically with flashy wow factor. Lets face it, most people don’t care to think too deeply about most things. They just want to toss some dice, kill monsters, get loot, and have you stroke their egos by telling them how awesome they are. The creationists who long for more are few and far in between. Or at least content not to be vocal and accept something that hits close enough to satisfaction.
D&D is a money game, and they’ve nailed the target audience. It’s prepackaged, easy to grasp, well funded and advertised. It’s got another thing going for it too, nostalgia, which is huge currency driving entertainment these days. It’s Dungeons & Dragons #*$^ sake. Come up with a better name than that for this type of game. Its like the McDonalds of the TTRPG world! I mean I still love me some cheeseburger every now and then.
This is the way of mainstream games. If somebody can crack the code for balance between the intuitive complexity and accessibility I’d be all in. Until then I am found wanting…
“A hit is a hit, and armor protects against actual damage, etc. With limitations on HP a fight carries more tension and weight”
This is profoundly true. When characters are insulated from being wounded or incapacitated in a single hit, fights become undramatic.
Armour absorbtion, comparatively low hps and (also) a Wound mechanic are vital components of an exciting HTH combat.
The old RuneQuest 2 system used to work that way. At low levels, fights were very intense.
However RQ2 combat was a bit attritional.
The attacks were made with percentile dice that you had to roll low with. Then you had to do long-division in your head to work out if you’d scored an impale or a critical, or just a regular hit. It wasn’t difficult, but it was an extra mental hurdle that detracted from the game.
And THEN the other guy got to do a parry. So fights could drag on. And on.
So I created a D20 mechanic that resolves Attacks vs Parries in (mostly) a single-roll . I’ve used it for over a decade: it works very smoothly.
If anyone is curious about it just ping me.
Armor preventing damage isn’t unrealistic I think, as it will protect against blows and projectiles coming in at odd angles that would otherwise cause a wound. Not every blow is well-placed.
I know realism isn’t necessarily a goal here, but for a system to make sense this should be incorporated.
Perhaps have two values for AC. Below the lower value is a miss, between the values the armor reduces damage and above it’s a proper hit and you take it on the chin.
Yes, that’s fair.
You can certainly make a case for Armor preventing damage (DnD) rather than reducing and/or preventing it (RQ, CoC, others).
If anyone wanted to introduce damage-reducing armour into DnD they would just have to use a rule like:
“Platemail doesn’t give you AC 18 anymore. It gives you AC 16 and DR2.”
And add a rule that this DR2 doesn’t work against Incorporeal creatures (who are also making Touch Attacks, so are already ignoring Platemail AC)
Thinking about it: reductive armour is only part of the difference between the [Low Hps + Wound Mechanic] regime of RQ/CoC and the less dramatic [High Hps] regime of DnD.
The ability to dodge and/or parry is the main difference.
But the RQ method of handling parries could lead to attritional fights.
The way forward is to have a Defence DC (this would be a ‘Touch AC’ in DnD) and also a Parry DC.
(I have some brief notes on how this mechanic could work – I’ll put them in the next post to avoid text limits)
Here are my notes on how a [Defence DC] and [Parry DC] mechanic can work.
They’re not as brief as I’d hoped. But maybe someone will find this useful.
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For the sake of example, let’s assume a D20 system similar to 3E.
Also let’s assume that PCs have Base-Attack Bonuses [BAB] that run from 1 to 20.
PCs also get the usual bonuses to hit from Strength or Dex or magic swords or surprise etc, but the [BAB] is key here.
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Each PC and Monster has a [Defence] DC.
* This is typically 20 + any DEX or Dodge bonuses.
* We add +2 [Defence] if they’re wielding a Shield.
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They also have a [Parry] DC.
The [Parry] DC equal to their [Defence] + [their BAB -5].
If BAB is <5 then [Parry] just equals [Defence].
The [Parry] DC is larger than [Defence], or is equal to it for low-skill PCs and for creatures that don't parry (such as Dire Boars or Gelatinous Cubes).
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So the party Fighter might have [BAB] 20, [Defence] 20 and [Parry] 20+(20-5) = 35
The dextrous Rogue: [BAB] 15, [Defence] 24 and [Parry] 24+(15-5) = 34
The stolid Cleric: [BAB] 15, [Defence] 20 and [Parry] 20+(15-5) = 30
The vulnerable Mage: [BAB] 10, [Defence] 20 and [Parry] 20+(10-5) = 25
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Note that as BAB doesn't change in play, [Defence] and [Parry] are mostly static.
If a character's [Defence] goes up by 2 – due to e.g. simply picking up a Shield, then his [Parry] goes up by 2 as well. Easy.
But GMs should avoid any mechanic that changes raw BAB in play.
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So how do we use these lovingly created {Defence] and [Parry] DCs in game?
An Attack Roll is made using 1d20.
We add the [BAB] + any other bonuses to get an Attack Score. I'll refer to this number as [Attack] for clarity
We compare [Attack] to the [Defence] and [Parry] of the target
* If [Attack] = [Defence] but [Attack] = [Parry] then the attack hits
Also: an Attack Roll of a natural 20 always hits.
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And … guess what. All this isn’t *remotely* enough to give us an interesting system.
First of all: we need to add in a way for skilled or lucky fighters to break or feint their way past parries. It’s got to be easy and work smoothly.
So – next post will be on how we can adapt the familiar Threat mechanic from 3E to handle this.
Oh Lordy, the Akismet text parser mangled the core of my post. Trying again!
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An Attack Roll is made using 1d20.
We add the [BAB] + any other bonuses to get an Attack Score. I’ll refer to this number as [Attack] for clarity
We compare [Attack] to the [Defence] and [Parry] of the target
* If [Attack] is less than [Defence] then the blow misses entirely.
* If [Attack] is greater/equal to [Defence] but [Attack] is less than [Parry] then the blow is parried.
* If [Attack] is greater/equal to [Parry] then the attack hits
* Also: an Attack Roll of a natural 20 always hits.
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As previously discussed: here’s how we can integrate the 3E Threat mechanic into a [Defence] + [Parry] based system.
This change converts a stolid [Defence] + [Parry] system into an exciting murder-fest, so I highly recommend it.
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* Every attack type has a Threat level. This is (let’s say) 17 for a standard sword.
* If the 1d20 Attack Roll (not the Attack Score) was a 17 or more then the attack is a [Threat]. The attacker rerolls his whole attack to confirm.
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* If the original attack and the reroll *both* beat [Parry] then the attack is a Critical Hit. Whatever that means in your game.
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* If the original attack and the reroll *both* beat [Defence] – but not [Parry] then the attack isn’t a Critical Hit.
But the attack still beats its way past parry, and scores a Normal Hit.
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* If the original attack and the reroll don’t *both* beat [Defence] then – even though the attack roll was a Threat – it still didn’t hit
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Note in passing: a natural 20 is always both a Hit and a Threat.
This means that an attacker who rolls a natural 20 and who then confirms with another 20 will always score a Critical Hit.
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All of which got us to an excitingly kinetic battle-space.
One roll + a possible Threat reroll compared against two static DCs gave a simple spectrum of possibilities.
This system performed well in playtest.
The GM does have to make sure that he can quickly access the [Defence] and [Parry] DCs of all combatants – but if he does this then combat becomes *fast and furious*.
However – there was still a tendency to ‘Parry Monoculture’. A good [Parry] DC became the most important thing for fighter design.
Also: where both sides had good parries then fights tended to drag.
So I added in rules for the sort of attacks that ignore or smash aside parries – Dragon claws, Ogre clubs, Dire chains and so forth.
I also adopted One Simple Trick for monster design that made fights desperately dangerous again.
The readership of this long, parser-mangled set of posts is probably zero by now, but if anyone wants I will post some notes on these.
Hope this is helpful.
That was fairly readable. I have to say I was slightly skeptical until you mentioned the play test. Any system can be gamed and parrying or dodging would almost always be preferable to catching it on the armor in my mind. It looks pretty exciting!
Thank you for those kind words Rijst.
I probably should have led with the eight years of playtesting.
We used to use a clone of the Runequest percentile system.
Then in 2011(?) I realised that I didn’t enjoy dividing percentile numbers by 5. It’s not hard, but it wears a hole in your brain if you do it continually for a weekend’s gaming.
So I took the RQ rules and DnD 3rd edition and mashed them together in a trash compactor.
This Defence + Parry mechanic was a key piece of the result.
It’s a direct inversion of the RQ d100 levels of sucess into the “high roll = good” D20 system.
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I also use it for my Space Call of Cthulhu game – but in that genre you don’t get so much melee. It’s all submachine guns and lazers.
So I’m experimenting with a [Defence] DC and a [Cover] DC.
[Cover] is at +5, +10 or +15 above your [Defence]
And your [Cover] DC isn’t based on angles or lines of sight or anything complex like that.
Much simpler – you’re always assumed to be using the best cover you can get, if there is any cover at all.
Instead your [Cover] is based on how exposed you are.
If you are blazing away with a single pistol, your Cover can be “Excellent” [+15]. The enemy can only see about a quarter of your body.
If you are firing with a 2H Lazer Carbine then your Cover can be “Good” [+10]. The enemy can see about half your body.
And if you are struggling with a powerful Anti-Robot Bazooka then your Cover is at best “Poor” [+5]
Sorry, I’m drifting into rules mode again :0(
Note to self: we just playtested the [Cover] mechanic in my SciFi game.
I’ll just share the results, as it’s all of a piece with this [Defence] + [Parry] mechanic.
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Having three possible levels of [Cover] that add to [Defence] is *not* the way to go.
It’s attritional: it involves too much mental re-gearing in the middle of combat
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What *does* seem to work is a static [Cover] equal to the character’s [Defence] +10.
And then the GM can grant Advantage (+2 Attack and Threat) if the target has poor Cover.
This could be because it’s using a cumbersome 2H weapon like a bazooka, or because the cover is sub-standard in some way.
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And he can grant Disadvantage (-2 Attack and Threat) if the target is in good Cover – e.g. it’s firing a single pistol round a corner, or it’s firing from a prepared position.
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This may seem like much the same mechanic, but the mental process in-game is much cleaner.
Cleaner is definitively the way to go. There’s a balance to be struck between making the system interesting with options for the players, making it intuitive and reducing mental load at the table.
I’m not familiar with the 3E system but it looks like you’re working on it. Would be great to have a place where you could put this out there and get feedback from other players as a comment thread on a blog surely isn’t suitable.
Agreed. It would be great if there were a good site out there for home-brew enthusiasts to share their ideas on game mechanics.
Contributors on this blog keep asking if anyone knows of one, but I haven’t come across any useful replies yet.
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In the meantime: desultory chats with other GMs on a blog like this are a *huge improvement* over no discussion at all.
The simple act of expressing my half-assed ideas in a public space really does help me see what’s wrong with them.
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Of course the best way to create good mechanics is to playtest them.
Also: record your game sessions and periodically review the recordings.
That way you can quickly pick up on slow or attritional mechanics.
If you listen to a playback and find yourself getting annpyed at the sluggish speed of a rule adjudication then – that’s great! You’ve spotted a nasty piece of attrition that needs to be filed down.
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Case in point: I’m embarassed to say that I used to give players multiple resource types in game.
They had “Exploit points”, “Fate Points”, “Resolve points” and others. Loads of things for players to juggle with.
You would think I’d realise how bad an idea this was from first principles, but no. No I did not.
Instead: it only ‘clicked’ once I listened to a session playback.
Playback, that sounds like a good idea. I only started gm’ing in September so I’m still getting to grips with narration and adjudication.
On homebrew sharing, I’m suspect we’d have to set that up ourselves.
I’ll agree with the general bitch at the beginning of the article – ‘where have all the creators gone’?
I was reading some old White Dwarf magazines from the eighties, and it’s full of people presenting their own variants; changing the rules how they like them; and arguing with each other about how their own hybrid version of Runequest and Swords and Sorcery with an additional seven pages of rules on how to handle jumping off things is better than everyone else’s game.
Then you go and look at rpg message boards on the internet and see people asking ‘Can a goblin be a wizard? as if they need permission from Wizards of the Coast to invent an NPC.
I think the basic answer comes in three parts: Youtube, DM’s Guild, and social media.
If you are a content creator now, you probably take any ideas you have that are more linear, like angry’s article on undead that just came out, and read it out loud on camera and post that to youtube. XP to 3, Runesmith, Matt Coleville, are all content makers who’d probably have an Against the Wicked City style setting blog, except that instead they just make Youtube videos.
If you have ideas that are more systemic, like a mini-boss subsystem, a new way to handle spells, or an adventure, you post it on one of the many websites like DM’s guild that will pay you real money to post your content for [company’s games]. Why give out the milk for free when you can sell the cow?
If you’ve got something smaller, punchier, more controversial or more of a drive by, something that you probably couldn’t make a whole video or saleable product out of, something like an example encounter, new kind of monster, or state-of-the-industry ramble, you post it to reddit or G+ or something and argue with your community in the comments.
After you’ve chopped up your content like that, what’s left to blog about?
Ignoring the main chunk of the article for a second, I hugely enjoy creating homebrew stuff so far but as I’m fairly new to this game the idea of publishing any of it is quite daunting.
No idea how to go about it either, are there any good websites for this?
+1 to this. I’m looking for some place to share my homebrew ideas + see what other people have got.
reddit r/rpgdesign. Literally a discussion place for exactly this, and I love it. Come on over.
Excellent, thank you!
Thanks Violentink :0)
I just found this: https://theangrygm.com/save-vs-lawsuit-how-to-publish-dd-content/
Well I have designed a few RPGs that had no “Ability Scores” and you simply wrote a few words down describing your character, received you destiny points which were universal get out of jail free points/ Hit Points (Kinda), jotted down a few pieces of equipment and then started playing. Damage and such were all handled by rolling a D20 and interpreting it depending on the character doing the action, the higher the better. A 20 meant the best possible outcome and a 1 was a critical failure.
For example:
Steel Man the Cyborg. After getting into a terrible accident most of his body was replaced by cybernetics. He is super strong (Can lift a small car) and tough and his cybernetic parts can take up to heavy gunfire. He has 10 Destiny Points.
You are a heroic (or not) warrior of old. Your primary purpose is fighting and killing the enemy. You can wear all armor and use all weapons! You have Piecemeal, Old Helm, Backpack, Sword and Shield. Destiny 5 Points.
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Just curious-whatever happened to Megadungeon Mondays? Is the complete series in the book you offer?
I was really interested in it, but it seems to be dead.
Apologies if this bothers you, and hope your New Year is off to a good start!
Angry is famously reticent to talk about the megadungeon, to the point where it’s a bit of a joke among long time readers.
I think the answer to your question is no, because the megadungeon was built around the play loop assumptions of 5e, and angry’s upcoming book is about a new system to compete with 5e. The megadungeon if published would have to be a standalone book I think.
As to why angry hasn’t continued the series, I notice that most of the feedback that didn’t come from angry’s own website amounts in total to “The kind of people who would spend money on something called a megadungeon would not be happy with this product, and everybody else would not spend money on something called a megadungeon.” Since the whole point of the product was to design blog as marketing for a product coming to market, I imagine that feedback could have soured angry on completing the project.
Plus it’s also a mega project and time sink, it’s not easy to keep motivating yourself to work on something like that. Basically “design a campaign for levels 1-11 session by session”, the thought alone..
Not a charactersitic fix, but a thought I have been sitting on for a while;
Play a “character mechanic blind” game. DnD works well enough for this (and really well with new players). The GM has the stat based character sheet at hand, but the llayers only have a descriptive sheet.
Mechanics are generated by the GM (secretly) based on the description provided by the player (could you describe your characters preference), but the player is never connected the actual numbers, just as we have no direct connection to our own “statistics”. Skills, magic etc are chosen from provided options with a character/story led focus until the mechanical requirements are reached, but again are simply described as “you are an accomplished swordsman, respected by you peers”.
All character dice rolling is done by the players, with effects and consequences as descriptors, not mechanically measurable effects.
Is this maybe the core of an rpg, with mechanical control stripped away?
The GM could conceivably make up characteristics, skills, talents etc on the fly, based on player/character development.
“Help me, Angry-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope!” I need the AngryRPG like nobody’s business. I can no longer look at other RPGs the same. You’ve opened my eyes to too many of the glaring problems and shortcomings out there. You’ve made me sick, but haven’t released the medicine yet!!!
I feel you, my friend. I am exactly where you are
So I have followed for a long time and this article was legitimately a wake-up call for me. I’ve been playing and GMing for the better part of two decades now and originally I made a lot of homebrew content and was not shy about sharing it within our circles and what not. Somewhere along the way I started to conform and, let’s be honest, got too lazy to keep trying to make and improve on rules and became more of an enforcer of the rules than a creative.
I’m hoping that the goal of the article, aside from getting people to stop asking about the ability scores on the ARPG, is to get some of us creatives back on the job. If so, then message received.
I’m not sure I’m ready to make my own RPG just yet, but I am definitely going to start addressing the issues I have with the current system and things that I have a problem with. I don’t have a lot of experience outside of d20, but for now I guess I’ll start by trying to better what I know and learn some more about what I don’t and hopefully I’ll manage to surprise you, and the community, with some cool stuff.
Thanks again for the article and keep up the good work. We all appreciate it.
Cheers.
Most board games have set rules for number of players and rules that change depending on number of players but RPGs try to design an open ended system, despite that its obvious that the more characters in play the more fast and simple each needs to become.
This could be thought of as a division of labor question (or positions in a team sport). In a single player video game RPG the choice of where you put skills turns more into a question of gameplay style and theming, because the player could beat the game with a variety of “builds”.
If the game is designed around two players the question becomes – “does this require two players?” Does 1 fighter or 1 wizard get overwhelmed but if working together one can guard and one can cast; and does this work a lot better then just 2 fighters or 2 wizards (or two hybrids that do a bit of both)?
DnD settled on fight, magic, heal/support, traps/locks. But the needed roles are defined by what the game (the actual adventures) is about. So you get diplomacy and outdoor survival roles that don’t do much against the undead city.
Without attributes you could just give everyone 20 skill slots and if the party is just one player then they would probably take 5 points in each role. If the party is four players then each can take 20 in one category (and the more you concentrate the bigger the benefits become).
I feel I’m a bit late to the party, but I get the impression that if someone were to ask about the Angry RPG, they’d be best off asking things like “How will action resolution be handled? How will characters distinguish themselves? What tools will the GM have to create goals for the players, and then create obstacles for them to overcome to achieve those goals?” And if similarities are noticed, then one might ask, “How does that differ from [RPG system x]?