Lost Songs of the Nibelungs Combat Example

This one is for all those wondering how combat is different in Lost Songs of the Nibelungs and in many ways a follow-up to this post from November with some conversion rules. It's also result of ongoing exchange between people gearing up to play this game and me trying to explain it. I'm ever grateful to the amount of patience those people are able to summon ... So this is a detailed example how combat in Lost Songs is less about rolling a die and see if something is hit but instead more about how complex combats really should (and can) be. It helps to be familiar with the basic rules of the game (the post linked above has rules converting D&D to Lost Songs, so if you've read that and use the picture below as orientation, you should be fine). Or just read this short summary up front:

Combat Dice are d6, rolled at the beginning of a round and used as described below. Combatants usually have Base Attack and Defense values that are added to the dice used for the main actions (attack, soak/damage, defend). 1s are discarded, 6s generate a new die for that round, doubles double the value of the dice involved, triples triple it. NPC combatants get a static die for familiar environment they can use for everything but doubles. Up to two dice can be delayed into the next round. The rest is about ...

... two hunters and an angry boar!

Snorrison and Ragnar hunt a boar and the beast decides to fight back. Snorri and Ragnar both have two Combat Dice each, the boar has three. Ragnar had damaged the boar with an arrow in the second round, taking the first round for aim. First round Ragnar rolls 2 and 3. He puts them in Delay (Attack). S. does nothing and the boar is unaware. Second round R. rolls a 2 and a 5, the 2 and the 3 from the first round come from the delay, so R. gets a shot of Base Attack (his is 10) + 16 (double 2 + 5 and 3) minus a tenth of the distance (30 m = 3), leaving him with an attack of 23. Using a bow, the damage is everything that is above the boar's Base Defense (which is 17 for the tough beast), so the boar gets 6 damage from the bow, which is enough to piss him off (he got a maximum of 28 Health). The environmental static for the boar is a 2.

So the boar charges and the guys get ready for close combat. Third round the results are S. with 1 and 3, R. with a result of 2 and 4 and the boar with a freakin' 1, 1 and 3 (I'm rolling this as I write it, by the way). Not much is happening this round after all the 1s are took out of play. The boar moves (3 on a Drop Die Action), S. delays the 3 to attack and R. changes Weapons and readies himself for an attack (2 on the Drop Die Action “Do”, 4 on Delay (Attack)). After that it's initiative again.

Visualization!

S. comes up with 1 and 2, there is also a 3 coming from Delay (Attack). R. is a little more lucky, he rolls a 3 and a 6. The 6 generates a new die and he adds a 2 to his initiative and gets a 4 from his Delay (Attack). The boar rolls a double 2 and a 1 (sigh).

Initiative is now in order: S. (a 2) – the boar (a 4) – R. (11)

Starting with the slowest, S. has to declare first. He had an attack prepared, so he needs to declare damage, too. His decisions are made: the 3 on Attack and the 2 on Damage, which leaves him with an attack of 13 (his Base Attack is 10) and that's a miss (since the boar's Base Defense is 17 and a successful attack needs more than that).

The boar is next and decides to delay his dice to the next round, squeaking and scratching angrily …

R. is the last to declare. He sees S. struggling with his attack and the boar powering up for next round. His dice are 2, double 3 and 6. He decides to support S.'s attack and attacks on his own (gives S. his 2 as a Drop Die Action (Coop), puts a 3 and the 6 in attack, a 3 on damage).

Resolving this round will show a successful attack from R. (10 (Base Attack) + 6 (one of the double threes) + 6 > 17), doing 6 damage (the second 3). The boar is doing nothing but taking damage this round. And thanks to R.'s support S. manages to hit true, too (10 + 8 (now a double 2) > 17), doing 3 damage. So the boar is down to 13 Health. This could still go terribly wrong. Next round.

S. has a double 3. A good start, but he also takes a Rage Die and gets another 5. R. has a 5 and a 6, adds another 5 with the new die (this guy is on fire!) and the boar has a 1, a 2 and a 3, with a double 2 coming in from delay and the environment corresponding with another 2. Still not much.

What a magnificent beast! [source]

Initiative this round is: the boar with 5 – S. with 11 – R. with 16

The beast is hurt and angry. Delay was at least one die in attack, so it'll have a 2 in attack and another 2 with the 3 in damage. The environmental static (not counting for doubles or triples) will be on Defense to prepare a soak with the third 2 (part of a triple, all counting 6 each now). It's attacking S., who has light armor (+3 to Base Defense) and a Base Defense of 8 (total Defense of 11).

S. is next and sees with dread the beast is going for him with a 15 (boar has a Base Attack of 9 and adds a 6 for the triple 2) and decides to do a 5 on Defend to avoid harm (total defense of 16 is > 15). It leaves him with a double 3 that wouldn't be enough to harm the beast, so he decides to regain the Rage Die and support R. (one 3 on the Drop Die Action Regain, the other on Coop).

R. sees that the boar is attacking S., but S. will be able to handle it and also positions the beast in a way that really supports an attack, so that's what he'll be doing (the 6 and the 3 to Attack = 19 > 17) and the double 5 on Damage (20!).

Resolving the round from fastest to slowest now will have R. dealing 20 damage, but the boar will be able to soak 6 of that, using the forests undergrowth as cover (the environmental static), leaving 14 damage (which leaves the boar at -1). Even if this would take the boar out (a Stomach Save will determine that), all attacks and damage resolutions are at the same time. So the boar will get his chance, attacks and S. defends against it. The Stomach Save (9 plus monster HD, in this case 12) comes up with 31 (rolled a 19 …) an that means the beast is still very much alive and angry. The next round should be the last one, though. Let's see.

S. starts with a 6, a 1 and adding a 4. Not bad, still, he adds another Rage Die, which turns out to be a 1 (so: nothing). R. is having a 5 and a 2, goes for the Rage Die and gets a 2. Boars are stubborn and this one won't go down or flee. Instead he comes up with 2, 3 and 5.

So initiatives are: R. with a 9 – the boar and S: tie with a 10 each (in this case it's 1d20 each, higher is faster, the boar looses)

R. declares first. Double 2 on attack (would hit) and the 5 on damage is what he decides. The boar again has the environment on his side (static 2), so he defends with that (total defense now 19) and also attacks S. again, the 3 on Attack and the 2 and 5 on Damage. S. sees that R.'s attack will be useless because the boar is hiding in the undergrowth again to avoid the attack. The beast is also going for him for 7 damage, so he should do something against that, too. He decides to Defend with the 6 and gives the 4 to R. to support that attack.

Those 5 Damage could only hit home true because R. and S. worked together and that's what killed the boar in the end (he didn't make his second, more difficult Stomach Save and after that he's dead meat). Both had gained Rage Dice in the end and the last thing after the fight is that they need to roll those and subtract them from Endurance. Both loose 4 Endurance because of the fight but are otherwise unharmed.

And that's how combat works

Some luck, some tactics and lots of teamwork! And it is about decisions. Even with keeping those numbers, different decision could lead to a very different outcome. Add more combatants and it results in an even more complex (but satisfying, in my opinion) narrative, with everyone bringing a different style to the table. It's a system a player can get better at, but that is also very forgiving because it enforces teamwork and experimentation. It evolves not only with the character but also with the player.

Unjustified

I have been trying to write this down for some time now. Waiting doesn't help. It just comes down to a slow building rage instead of uncontrolled ranting. So I decided to get it out of my system for good. Not even a fucking safeword could have helped with this one ...

Entering a world of pain

Story time!* When we arrived at the convention (yes, the one I was talking about), we wanted to do one thing: play. It didn't matter that much what we were to play, as long as we weren't ending up with Das Schwarze Auge (The Black Eye) or Shadowrun. Needless to say, those were the go-to systems for the majority of the games offered. Anyway, Cthulhu was a distant third in what was offered and a supported game was about to start soon. I like Cthulhu, but never got to play a lot of it, so that's where we went.

Two guys were already sitting at the assigned table: a small guy and a big guy. I somehow assumed Big Guy was to be the DM. He wasn't. Small Guy was and happened to be one of the worst DMs I've ever had the pleasure to encounter. For the few hours that we were stranded at his table he did behave as stoned by his power as you might expect from a spoiled and very small dog that knows he has backup.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the set up. Somewhere in New England people drove with a bus through a forest and went missing on the way. Our pregens were a taxi driver (Big Guy), a Doctor (a good friend of mine that had decided to join me at the convention, let's call him Mr. B.), a jazz musician (some other guy that joined the game late) and a p. i. (lucky me). We all had lost people on route and took that bus to find out what happened to them, so we incidentally were all in the same bus. There were no other passengers, the only NPC was the bus driver.

Long story (somewhat) short: we drove into a mysterious fog and the bus driver stopped at a fork in the road he had never seen before. He turned the bus to drive back just to arrive at the same fork again. Nice players that we are, we started experimenting with the situation. We altered the scene (leaving cigarette butts, kicking a road sign down, stuff like that ...), turned around, arrived again at the same fork and found it untouched. We explored the surroundings and had to use ropes connected to the bus, because the strange fog kept making us dizzy. Nothing worked. It was frustrating.

I think it was the 10th time we had ended up at that fork when Mr. B. talked about climbing up a tree. He didn't have the skill, though and he kept looking at me, pregnant with meaning. Well, he had seen that my character had freaking 65 (!) % at climbing (for the uninitiated: the base value for the unlearned skill is 40%). I guess I had it coming.

For the use of the skill climbing, the rulebook assumes a flat surface. Furthermore (again, quoting from the rules) is a character with a 50% skill or more able to make a living with that skill. So my character was almost a professional climber in that regard. Trained on flat surfaces. Not trees. Trees are fuckin' easy ... Anyway.

Of course I had to roll for climbing the tree.

Of course I failed the roll (and 3 others that might have saved me ...). Broke a leg while doing so, too.

The best of it? It was a dead end. The DM knew it was a dead end (or had decided so before I had declared my intention to climb a tree). There was no drama in it, no real value for the game. And he did realize the truth of that as he saw me failing big time. Right there is your proof, if you needed any. I'm pretty sure he had to fudge the results of the damage roll, too. It's hard to bullshit a bullshitter. I saw what he did, hiding behind his screen.

So that was that, my character was crippled and, because the doc had some morphine to share, rather stoned. On we went between identical forks. But to mix things up we encounter a bus stop in the middle of nowhere with a guy standing there waiting for the bus. The bus driver didn't know that stop, but wanted to let the guy in nonetheless. We saw that plot point and intervened. Had to outright force the DM/bus driver to not open the door. I was ready to shoot someone, but it didn't come to that. Needless to say that we did encounter that bus stop again some time later. As if we were to change our mind about it ...

More strangeness was about to happen. Still between forks, and yet for the first time, we find an abandoned car in the woods near the road. There are signs of a fight and a blood trail. Sanity loss was unavoidable. We were about to ignore that noise and thought about driving some more around, when our bus driver got killed. Nothing to do about it but listening to Small guy describing it. Saw what did it, too (a small frog, obviously). But we couldn't catch it (although from the positioning of the characters as I remember it, it should have been possible to do something).

In the end we were left with no choice but following that blood trail. We took all the gasoline we could get and did just that. We did it quite cautious, securing our way back to the bus and all that. At the end of the path given, we found a house surrounded by thousands of those frogs. Some gasoline later we had a fine 2 by 2 meter burned path through that. You wouldn't believe how difficult it got to go those two meters. Lost one player while doing so. All the good ideas and preparation aside, the DM wanted to see someone dead. And made it happen.

It was nearing the end. Not much to do but exploring that house a bit. Some candles, a bed, a chest that made some scratching noise, a pedestal with an open book on it and a cellar door. We ignored the chest after checking for sentient life by knocking at it and asking if somebody was in there (with an option to burn it later ...).

Next was the book. We even got a handout. I looked at it and the flavour text in connection with the symbols on it (variations of F and T) let me to believe this was showing the pattern one had to use the forks with (you know, left, left, right, left, right, something like that) to get out of this mess. I said so to the group and the DM dismissed it officially (that is, stating in answer to a direct question from another player what I was talking about), that I was just talking crazy. Well, it turned out later that it had been the way out all along. But at that time it was to late to do anything about it.

We soldiered on.

To the cellar door we went. I positioned myself guarding the door (I was no use for anything else, after all) and Mr. Jazz opened the door to get swarmed by hundreds of rats. Again with the sanity loss. In the cellar we see a pile of corpses and we decide there is nothing to be done here but torching the place and leave. Some gasoline later we had a nice fire in the cellar, going for the slow burn to have enough time to carry my sorry ass out of there. The DM decision was to let the fire spread very fast. Contrary to what we intended to do. Anyway, away we went.

Again with the frogs. We used the bed and blankets. One more dead player and as soon as we are out there, we realize the forest around us is burning, too. So Mr. Jazz had the (rather brilliant) idea that the fire in the cellar and the fire in the woods are connected to the book. He goes back, takes the book from the pedestal it was lying on and ... dies. There was, of course, a death trap beneath it.

I was the last man standing. Admittedly only on one leg, but there I was. I knew I had to die, too. So my character sat down, lid a cigarette and did what he was expected to do ...

The DMs final words where some praise. We did solve the mystery alright, but we had to die nonetheless. All the groups he did this with before had died, too, so there is no shame in it. That's what Cthulhu is supposed to be like, you know.

This is, of course, bullshit.

Never bother with the story behind this. It's negligible. But this had been an official adventure, aimed to introduce new players to the game. I don't know what they were thinking. If there were to be an official entry in a dictionary what railroad means (there isn't, by the way), it would show a summary of this adventure. It's an utter fail and the people who wrote it should give the money back they got for doing it.

But that Dungeon Master was even worse. At times I felt like Walter in The Big Lebowski ...

You know what I mean? This was a supported game. As official as it gets. This guy fed us his bullshit and even went as far as boasting with how deadly his games are. It makes me angry and that really doesn't happen often. A bad adventure does not necessarily ruin a game, but a bad Dungeon Master will do it all the time.

The game can't do nothing about it

What can be done about stuff like this? Nothing, I guess. But sometimes I wonder. A referee in a soccer game will be trained and if he's no good, he won't be in official games (I know that's making it a bit easy ...). And our hobby is so big, it should be possible to avoid stuff like this. Maybe it needs a turing test for DMs. I mean (and i just can't get over it), the guy was representing and if I were to believe his antisocial behaviour was a direct result of how the game is to be played, I'd never touch it again ...

But I don't want to be one of those angry people, talking about elites all the time. Live and let live, I say. Cthulhu is a fine game. The atmosphere was right and the rules, well, the rules leave room for interpretation.

So the two things I could take with me from that abomination of a game were that skill checks should only be used if somehow relevant to the game and loss of sanity should not be a punishment, but the price you pay for willingly facing the dark side.

This hobby of ours leaves room for a lot of bad behaviour and as long as those that publish the games we play try to earn an earnest buck with it, they won't write in their books that it is possible to play this games wrong or that you more than likely will be bad at it, at least in the beginning. They won't tell you that you have to invest into it to get the full benefit of it.

If you take it serious, you will work on your skills, be it as a DM or a player. But the work is yours to do and the freedom to do so by yourself always means you might as well ignore it and do as you please. I'm trying hard here to believe that there is nothing wrong with that and those things sort themselves out easy enough.

I'm glad I could get this poison out of my system. Sorry to bother you all with this.


*Based on events that happened to yours truly. I will be unfair in this and I believe it is well deserved. But see for yourselves ...

Con Diary - Day 3

Small steps. Yesterday we established the set up. The characters are thrown in the middle the of ze aktion and have to survive by using only their wits. At least at first. There will be plenty opportunities to get better or worse. Until then I need a check list of all the things needed for this gig.

I'm well covered regarding aimed hits and bashing or protecting skulls. 

The Zombies will be easy, too.

I think I have a pretty solid idea about random dungeon generation. I'll have something written by tomorrow (couldn't do that on my mobile...).

I'm not that happy with initiative. Neither the way we use it nor as written. Initiative is boring and... I wouldn't say "unrealistic", but no one could deny the fact that most initiative systems are somewhat, well, static. I'd really like something a bit more dynamic. The best initiative system I've encountered so far was for a superheroes game (new Marvel?). The idea is to let the acting player decide who's next. The DM decides when it's time for the enemy to choose the next in line. Simple, yet engaging and even tactical. But it doesn't go well with hordes of zombies, I guess.

Also need to think about movement, something I did avoid so far. As far as I'm concerned are all moving rules obsolete as soon as you stop using miniatures (same goes for initiative, by the way...). But in this scenario, movement will be crucial, so I have to decide what to with it.

A lot to chew on. But enough for today. Tomorrow I'll present an analogue dungeon construction tool. Until then, have a nice, y'all...

Con Diary - Day 1 (Test)

I'm trying something new and write a few posts on my mobile the next few days. Main reason is, I'm a lot on the road and I miss posting. Now I've found a good reason to do so, too: I'm preparing for convention. Sorry in advance for the lack of editing...

So here it is. It's been at least 10 years, but I've decided to go to a role playing convention again. And I'm scheduled to run a game, too. In theory this is no big thing, DMing strangers and all, but still, I'm somewhat shy about it. And I hestitated to do it almost too long. Couldn't get a table at a convenient and decided to take one at 1 o'clock in the morning. It sucks. Big time. Wanted to playtest an adventure I'm working on (Tales of Karek Thel 1, for those following the blog, it's not forgotten...). No dice. Don't think I'll get the crowd needed for it. And I'm the only one offering something remotely close to the OSR (there's one guy offering a game of AD&D and a bit Pathfinder support, but it's a rather big con). So there is that. Maybe I should get a t-shirt with a big OSR logo...

All in all it means I have to come up with something in the next 12 days. And it needs to be suited for exhausted strangers in the middle of the night. While working full time, no less. But I'm up for the challenge.

More thoughts, some impressions and first ideas will follow tomorrow.