Filling the Void I (starting to write the beta-set of rules for LSotN)

Well, I need to make my players happy and they started asking about advancement and skills and choices. This incidentally means the end of testing the bare-bones rules and making lists of skills and spells and shit, which also means stitching all those ideas together and making a binding beta-version of Lost Songs of the Nibelungs. I feel somewhat ready to attempt such a thing, too. So here's what's coming: a first write-up of the rules ...

Part II about the basics of combat in LSotN can be found here and Part III about Qualities and task resolution can be found here.

Character Creation

Fast and simple. Characters are Level 0 and have 6 Qualities: Muscle, Finesse, Grit, Wits, Nerve and Wyrd (Part 3 of this series will describe the qualities further, some ideas can be found here). Those are given fixed values. Players assign the values 18, 18, 16, 16, 14 and 14 to the Qualities to allow for some distinction between characters in the beginning (Qualities are shaped by what the characters experience, not by what's randomly generated in the beginning, my reasoning can be found here).

Next step is to generate Health and Endurance. This is one roll of 2d6, the low result is for Health, the high result is for Endurance (it's also the basic procedure for every new level).

The final step for character creation is rolling 3d6 for a characters bloodline. Every player rolls 3d6. The sum is a characters status in the group, with the lowest result being the highest in standing. Each rolled number represents now a facet of the society the character was born in (1 = royal bloodline; 2 = artisan bloodline; 3 = mercantile bloodline; 4 = artistic bloodline; 5 = foreign bloodline; 6 = magical/fairy bloodline).

Dominance of aspects in family trees: Doubles will mean a strong resonance of one aspect in a family tree (which will somehow translate to a bonus or better selection of skills/advantages/items). A triplet would mean a "true lineage", will always be a special case and also gets one advantage others won't have:

• A triple 1 will mean true royal blood, so that member of the group will not only have the highest status and best equipment, he'll (she'll) also be a direct descendant of a clans leader (bonus advantage: privilege).
• A triple 2 will mean a true craftsman, so maybe it's a character who knows (or has access to) some valuable technique in a craft no one else in a clan is able to reproduce. He'll definitely have good equipment, special skills and an influential family (bonus advantage: versatility).
• A triple 3 will mean a true tradesman. Those are well informed characters with access to special items and rich parents (bonus advantage: information).
• A triple 4 will mean a true artist. Here it'll have a selection of exotic skills associated with artists (acrobatics, knife throwing, see below) and entertainment (bonus advantage: showmanship).
• A triple 5 will mean a true foreigner. This is the lineage of a very different culture, maybe son of an African slave who found his freedom with the fall of Rome and settled among the people of a Germanic tribe or the daughter of an Asian traveler (bonus advantage: diversity).
• A triple 6 will mean a true fay. This character is a direct descendant of the fay folk and basically a fay himself. Might be a dwarf or even an elf, but most likely something that at least to some extent resembles a human being and has a reason to tag along (bonus advantage: superstition).

1 die in a bloodline means 2 points to buy skills/advantages/items, two dice in a bloodline mean 5 points to buy stuff (one of them related to the dominant bloodline, so it would be an item with a trade related bloodline, etc.), three dice means 9 points (with three to be distributed among skills/items/advantages associated with the true bloodline).

Additional points are generated with family tie to other characters in a group. Every two dice that are connected this way generate one more point and now character may have more than two family connections to other members in the group (with a double meaning they are distant cousins, a triple meaning they are close cousins and a quadruple meaning they are siblings, five dice would be twins and six dice (as rare as they are) could mean identical twins, even, if players want to go that way).

First Example: Let's assume three players generate characters this way and come up with (A) 1,1,4; (B) 2,4,6 and (C) 1,5,6 for their lineage. First character has a strong noble bloodline with some artistic aspect to it (resulting in 7 points to buy beginning skills/items/advantages so far). The second character has a mix of artisan, artistic and fairy-blood in his heritage (resulting in 6 points so far) and the third character noble, foreign and fairy aspects in his lineage (also 6 points). The players are now to discuss how they are related. (A) and (B) are connected with a four, so they are distant cousins (each getting getting one additional point  to distribute). (A) and (C) are connected with three 1s, so they are cousins (each getting one more point to distribute). (B) and (C) are connected through their fairy lineage. Again distant cousins (again one more point to distribute for each). So (A) has 9 points all together to distribute, while (B) and (C) end up having  8 points each. They also all have family ties connecting them as a reason to go on adventures together and a clear hierarchy to work with (as (A) clearly has the highest status in the group, which at least is important for future social interactions, but could also inform group dynamics).

Lineage and choices

As indicated above, those are level 0 characters, so their choices in the beginning are limited by default. It also doesn't necessarily mean that characters are fixed for their future development, it just means that what the players choose now is what they are taking with them on the road to adventure. Those lists are not necessarily complete. If a player has another idea that fits, just assign costs as appropriate and go from there. Highest status in the group also indicates basic travel equipment (see below for some ideas, but the whole thing will be part of a separate post). Their choices are:

1 - The Noble Bloodline:

Warriors and leaders come from this bloodline. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this.

Advantages

- Fighting with sword and shield (2 points, the advantage includes using lesser weaponry)

- Using heavy armor (2 points, the advantage includes using lesser armor)

- Using a bow (1 point)

- Reading, writing and speaking Latin (1 point)

- The art of rhetoric (1 point)

- Classic education (1 point)

Items

- Sword, Shield, Spear and dagger (2 points)

- A set of heavy armor (2 points)

- A horse (2 points)

- A Falcon (2 points)

- A bow (1 point)

Skills

- Intimidation (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Riding (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Hunting (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Politics (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Charm (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Falconry (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

2 - The Artisan Bloodline:

Craftsmen of a tribe. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this.

Advantages

- Fighting with sword and shield (3 points, the advantage includes using lesser weaponry)

- Using medium armor (2 points, the advantage includes using lesser armor)

- Using a bow (1 point)

- Reading, writing and speaking Latin (2 points)

- Basic knowledge of a craft (2 points, choose one craft like forging, mining, carpentry, masonry, etc.)

- Reading, writing and speaking Latin (2 points)

- Classic education (2 points)

Items

- Sword, Shield, Spear and dagger (3 points)

- A set of medium armor (2 points)

- A horse (3 points)

- A dog (2 points)

- A bow (1 point)

- Basic set of general tools (2 points)

- Basic set of specific tools (1 point, the advantage "basic knowledge of a craft" is supplementary for this)

Skills

- Basic craftsmanship (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Specific craft (each point spend buys plus 2 on the skill, the advantage "basic knowledge of a craft" is supplementary for this)

- Riding (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Foraging (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Basic healing (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Cooking (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

3 - The Mercantile Bloodline

The merchant bloodline, well connected and easy access to items. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this.

Advantages

- Fighting with dagger, spear or staff  (1 point each)

- Using light armor (1 point)

- Using a bow (1 point)

- Using a shield (1 point)

- Reading, writing and speaking Latin (1 point)

- The art of rhetoric (1 point)

- Classic education (1 point)

- Connections (2 points)

Items

- Spear, staff or dagger (1 point each)

- A set of light armor (1 point)

- A horse (1 points)

- A bow (1 point)

Skills

- Negotiation  (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Appraising (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Riding (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Charm (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Animal handling (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

4 - The Artistic Bloodline

Travelling folks and artists. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this.

Advantages

- Fighting with dagger or staff  (1 point each)

- Using light armor (1 point)

- Using a bow or throwing a dagger (1 point each)

- Reading, writing and speaking Latin (2 points)

Items

- Staff or dagger (1 point each)

- A set of light armor (1 point)

- A horse (3 points)

- A bow (1 point)

- A dog (2 points)

- A music instrument (1 point)

- Basic set of general tools (3 points)

Skills

- Negotiation  (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Appraising (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Riding (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Charm (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Stealth (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Foraging (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Hunting (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Entertaining (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Animal handling (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Basic healing (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Cooking (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

5 - The Exotic Bloodline

This bloodline connects a character to a foreign land like China or Africa. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this. In this case it means that while characters might have a similar skill set, advantage or item as other characters, but choosing it from this category will mean that they have different methods to achieve results and items look different. Customize according to culture used.

Advantages

- Fighting with sword and shield (3 points, the advantage includes using lesser weaponry)

- Using medium armor (2 points, the advantage includes using lesser armor)

- Using a bow (1 point)

- Reading, writing and speaking a foreign language (1 point)

- Using exotic combat styles and weaponry (2 points and includes, but is not limited to, martial arts)

Items

- Sword, Shield, Spear, dagger or exotic weaponry (1 point each)

- A set of medium armor (2 points)

- A horse (3 points)

- A dog or trained exotic animal (3 points)

- A bow (1 point)

- Cultural heritage (1 point, includes items important to act out cultural customs) 

Skills

- Riding (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Charm (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Stealth (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Foraging (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Hunting (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Animal handling (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Basic healing (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Cooking (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Cultural knowledge (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

6 - The Fairy Bloodline

Those will blood ties to the realm of magic. Skills, advantages and items should reflect this.

Advantages

- Fighting with dagger or staff  (1 point each)

- Using light armor (1 point)

- Using a bow or throwing a dagger (1 point each)

- Fairy heritage (magical abilities like seeing in the dark or precognition, scaled by power for 1 to 3 points per ability and usually have a tell, like if a character is able to see in the dark, his eyes could reflect the light like those of a cat, stuff like that)

- Calling fairy creatures for help (2 points, they come and help, but always for a price)

Items

- Dagger or staff (1 point each)

- A set of light armor (2 points)

- A fairy servant (3 points)

- A bow (1 point)

Skills

- Charm (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Stealth (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Foraging (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Hunting (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Animal handling (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Basic healing (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Cooking (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

- Fairy knowledge (each point spend buys plus 1 on the skill)

The points a player gets from a bloodline can only be spent for buying stuff from that bloodline. As soon as this is done, the clan a group comes from and names for the characters need to be chosen and the characters are ready for their first adventure!

Just enough points for a dagger and some fighting skills ...
Apparently a Germanic warrioress from the tv show Spartacus [source]

Second Example: Character (A) from the first example above has 9 points to spend, 5 points for his noble heritage and 3 for his artistic heritage. From the noble bloodline he chooses the advantage "Fighting with sword and shield", the items "Sword, Shield, Spear and dagger" and the skill "Intimidation" (for 1 point). From the artistic bloodline he chooses the advantage "Using light armor", as item "A set of light armor" and the skill "Entertaining" (for 1 point), because he has a funny bone.

Third Example: Character (B) has 8 points to spend, 2 for the artisan bloodline and 3 for his artistic and fairy bloodlines each. He learns to use the bow and owns one, two (from the artisan bloodline), takes the use of light armor, owns one and learns hunting (artistic bloodline) and he chooses to have a fairy servant (from the fairy bloodline).

Fourth Example: Character (C) has 8 points to spend, 3 for his noble bloodline, 2 for his exotic bloodline and 3 for his fairy bloodline. He takes "Reading, writing and speaking Latin" (1 point), "The art of rhetoric" (1 point) and a "Classic education" (1 point) from his noble background, "Charm" and "Stealth" (for 1 point each) from his exotic bloodline and he learned to use a dagger, owns one and has the light magical ability to know what a person is feeling when he is talking to them (for 1 point, because of this the character's eye color changes every day). His ancestors were African slaves under the Roman Empire, freed after the fall.

So with just two rolls of the dice and a few decisions we got a singing warrior of noble heritage, a hunter with a pixie friend and a charming and sneaky scholar with an unusually dark complexion and a strange dagger as heirloom.

Status and Basic Equipment

A few words on this. The family of the character with the highest status is privileged to give a troop of adventurers their basic starting equipment. This is just an outline so far, but it should work as guidelines what is possible.

3 would be the highest possible status and a group will be very well equipped with expensive and richly ornamented travel garments, horses, some gold (3d6 x 10 gold pieces), tents, food for a week, basic camping equipment and they will be able to use the families name to get shelter and food from clansmen (all benefits from the bonus advantage "privilege" mentioned above).

Everything below that will have some of those benefits to some degree, so if the highest status is connected to a merchant family, they might have more gold and all the equipment and they might have some connections to other merchant families for lodging. If the highest status is connected to traveling folks, they might have less gold and just solid travelling equipment, but should be welcome among other artists and entertainment is always welcome in taverns and with nobles. So each individual group will have individual means to get from a to b and get a roof over their head for the night or some food for empty bellies.

Appropriate equipment by A. McBride,
 featured in the Germanic Warrior (p. 35)

Lost Songs isn't as much about material oriented resource management, but about how characters are formed by the adventures they experience. But I will have to address this at some point in detail, this just isn't the post I'm doing it in.

So much for character creation

This concludes part 1. The second part will address combat and skill checks, the third part will be about Qualities and task resolution with an updated character sheet. I hope to get this done the next two days. Level advancement and character progression will take more time, but I hope I will get it done until end of next week. Which means there might be a playable beta-version of the game some time next month, for those of you interested ...

After that I aim to tackle DM procedures for Lost Songs, like the random generation of a clans land for instance.

Feedback about my very special snowflake here will be very welcome, of course.

State of mind, state of projects (Goblintribe-Simulator, S!A!C!, Lost Songs, Community Projects ...)

Since I'm right now up to my elbows in various projects here on the blog, I thought it's about time to give you all (and myself ...) a short summary of the state of affairs. I'll try and keep it fresh (or at least short).

The Analogue Goblintribe-Simulator:

It's developing slow, which is a shame, since it got quite popular and I fear loosing the wave here. I will dedicate a weekend in May pushing this forward. Here a glimpse of how that sheet is filling up:

A "0" indicates a place for a die, there'll be different forms of storage and you
see the angry/happy scale somewhat improved ... lots of stuff to discover if
you knew the last incarnation of this thing. This is still happening :)  

Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! - Combat:

The idea to use a deck of cards to build a dungeon got quite some legs. +Eric Nieudan and +John Payne took the ball and came to some great solutions in this regard (check here and here). I love it when those things happen. It's all far better than anything I could come up with.

Anyway, that's not what S!A!C! - Combat is about. Instead it's about cleaning random space stations from alien scum. And how far am I in finishing this baby? Well, I need to test it, that's how. The girlfriend and I are trying to make a test run happen, but no luck so far. We'll find the time this weekend, I'm sure. What I could do until now (it's what needs testing ...) is streamlining the combat as far as possible.

So instead of having armor and health, you have just one stat and loose action points as soon as you drop below 10 (when wounded you get slower). I came up with an idea to make firing a gun a bit more than using a die and bookkeeping ammunition (I think it's a dull exercise to keep track of those things).

What happens now is that each clip is a d6 and if you hit the target (roll d20 above card number, 11 is a true hit), you loose as much ammo as you rolled above the target number but never more than a d6 (this way you just change the die number or just take the clip from the sheet). If you miss, you roll the d6 to see what's left in your clip (keep the number you rolled and a 6 means the clip is emptied). We'll see if it holds in play-testing.

Another little problem I have is with what I call "Card Intelligence" (C.I.). How should cards move and all that. Should they move towards the player or take cover and let them come?. Again, we'll be testing all this the next few days.

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs:

We are still testing this in our Friday group and it's still developing further and further. Combat is getting somewhere but still not at a stage worth writing home about. Magic is a big gap and I need to do something about that soon, but level advancement is more important right now, as the players are already asking for it (not surprising, three sessions in).

I think the most important development so far is how ability scores are handled. Everyone starts more or less the same and the narrative (fate) decides how characters are shaped. Organic character growth, if you will, mixed with a level-based advancement system that allows some freedom in how a character develops in that regard.

Character creation takes 5 minutes and still creates unique snowflakes individuals.

In my head it keeps manifesting more and more. So much even, I'm way behind in writing this stuff down. And it's not just one thread either, but at least three sub categories that need updates. Let's see:

• Reading the Nibelungenlied: Will take time. I might even switch to writing about each chapter in a separate post. The first post was received quite well, as far as I could tell. We'll see if I can keep people interested, but I think it's a great story with some beautiful verse and really very much like a session report of sorts.
• Bare-Knuckle Fighter/Pub Brawl (the mini dice-game series): A bit neglected on the blog, but I test this stuff as often as possible. What needs to be happening is a complete re-evaluation of how the rules are presented. I got some ideas and I talked a good friend of mine into writing a guest post. As soon as this happens (or I know for a fact that it doesn't ...) I'll start with the updates and give this stuff a permanent home somewhere on the blog. I plan to make similar mini games for magic combat and armed duels. All of this should in it's final stage work as a skirmisher and I still plan to use this combat system for lost songs. It will take time, though.
• The Lost Songs Page here on the blog: Needs updating. ASAP, as they say. There are already lots of strays to collect and put there. Also need to do some work on the logo. Ah well, it will happen soon enough.
• Loose ends: Level advancement will be the next thing, but I'll start talking about layout and design of the game very soon. DM procedures will also be a topic in the near future. What I have in mind here is a method using 3d10 to generate a fully developed region for the characters to explore. I have some vague ideas how to make that happen, but all I can say is that it'll happen some time this year. Which is a shame, really, since I think it will be great fun exploring some old ideas further ...

Lost Songs is a big project and will most likely expand in many more directions I didn't think of right now. Being a weekend blogger doesn't help with all that either. I need to have some food and shelter, though :) Anyway, I'm getting there, step by step.

Community Projects

As of this writing I'm participating in two awesome community projects. Both were initiated by +Charles Akins over at Dyvers. The first will be about revenge, murder and mayhem in role playing games. I aim for two entries in this: one will be my first attempt at short fiction here on the blog and the second is a surprise (as in: no idea ...).

The second community project is about writing love letters for role playing games. I really love that idea, as it will collect a huge amount of essays about the games out there and what makes them special. It'll also get a pdf release and I imagine it a great help for introducing new people to the hobby. If we can spread it that far, which I really hope.

But look at the line-up linked to above! It's 5 names short of a Who's Who in the OSR, so it's sure to generate some noise. My entries will be the D&D Rules Cyclopedia and HackMaster 4e. Both are a big deal for me and I'll do my very best to do them justice.

So far it's been a great experience working with all those creative writers. As those things usually take lots of time to come to some sort of conclusion, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this to happen very soon. But it will happen eventually :)

Smell what (else) the Ranger is cooking!

Yeah, sorry, there is more. I'm going to take a close look at the blog and check it for loose ends. I need to come to a point where I actually finish the things I've started. Right now I'm thinking of one adventure and a series about clerics that need finishing/reactivating. I'll do this whenever I get the feeling I need some variation in what I'm writing about at the moment.

I also want to start doing interviews around the blogosphere to learn more about the people I read so much on a daily basis. A first shot on this will happen soon, featuring the great +Adam Muszkiewicz, finding out who he is and where he's going (if you for some reason never heard of his fantastic blog Dispatches from Kickassistan, go and check it out - you're in for a treat).

If it works, more of the same is going to happen on a monthly basis (I think).

And there is a vague idea to write about great old school products out there that people already lost out of sight (like this great D&D supplement by Cygnus, for instance). But it's just that for now, a vague idea.

That's it, folks. A lot is happening, it's just not happening fast ...

A picture of an OSR logo by Matthew Adams, because
it's fantastic and for other obvious reasons ...

Reading the Nibelungenlied - Murderhobo Edition (Part The First)

So I found a representative collection of Nibelung stories in a bin with free books the other day. Just like that. Most of them are in the public domain by now and there exist online versions of them (I'll be quoting from this English version for the posts, to give but one example), but finding the book like that was a strange coincidence. Anyway, I was checking that bin out because I had nothing to read with me, so I took that book and started reading it in the bus I had been waiting for. It was a prose version of the text and it was fantastic (find one of those, if you want to read to read it). I read it for playability, of course, and was quite surprised to find out that it was more Knights of the Dinner Table than Shakespeare.

Also in this series: Part 2 and Part 3

But let me start from the beginning ...

What is the Nibelungenlied?

First Adventure: Kriemhild's Dream

To us in olden story / are wonders many told

Of heroes rich in glory, / of trials manifold:

Of joy and festive greeting, / of weeping and of woe,

Of keenest warriors meeting, / shall ye now many a wonder know.

This first chapter is not much more of an introduction and full of foreshadowing. All noble and rich and pretty and all doomed to DIE. Because of hate, intrigue and betrayal, of course:

At Worms amid their warriors / they dwelt, the Rhine beside,

And in their lands did serve them / knights of mickle pride,

Who till their days were ended / maintained them high in state.

They later sadly perished / beneath two noble women's hate.

It's a bold choice to not only tell you in the beginning how it's all going to end, they keep telling you, too. It's all "Little did he know ..." and "Ah well, he shouldn't have done that ..." on a major scale. That produces a special sort of tension for the reader. You know someone is going to get betrayed and it's going to happen soon. But if you don't know the story, you couldn't possibly know which adventure is a hero's last. I like that and have to think about ways to put this into the game ...

Anyway, Kriemhild, a fair princess, dreams about owning a falcon that is slain by two eagles. Her mother tells her it's about her lover getting killed and she decides to never love a man. Of course this won't work and instead ...

He was that same falcon / she saw the dream within

Unfolded by her mother. / Upon her nearest kin,

That they did slay him later, / how wreaked she vengeance wild!

Through death of this one hero / died many another mother's child.

And that's even before that hero arrived. End of first chapter.

Second Adventure: Siegfried

Siegfried they did call him, / this bold knight and good;

Many a realm he tested, / for brave was he of mood.

He rode to prove his prowess / in many a land around:

Heigh-ho! what thanes of mettle / anon in Burgundy he found!

Here enters our high-level hero, the great Siegfried. And what a man he is. Already famous before he got knighted and a womanizer with rich parents. Another big theme of the story also unfolds here for the first time: the party they throw for the day he got his knighthood describes the very grandfather of the saying "Like pissing money down a drain ...". Here are just some basic expenses:

Four hundred lusty squires / were there to be clad

In knight's full garb with Siegfried. / Full many a beauteous maid

At work did never tire, / for dear they did him hold,

And many a stone full precious / those ladies laid within the gold,

Garbs with gold and jewels, just because. If you every ask yourself what to do with all the gold in D&D, read this book to get some ideas. At times they just give full hands of it to strangers just for showing up! It's almost obscene.

The other thing nobles do when throwing a party is encouraging others to bash their skulls in for their entertainment and the masses'. And you'll have that a plenty here:

Well-tried old knights and youthful / met there in frequent clash,

There was sound of shattered lances / that through the air did crash,

And along before the castle / were splinters seen to fly

From hands of knights a many: / each with other there did vie.

They party hard for seven days and even the common people attending the festivities go home rich afterwards. This is how Siegfried gets introduced, a noble hero with very generous parents. Here's another verse about spending it big time:

Never a wandering minstrel / was unprovided found:

Horses there and raiment / so free were dealt around,

As if to live they had not / beyond it one day more.

I ween a monarch's household / ne'er bestowed such gifts before.

 They gave away horses as presents, for Chrissakes. End of chapter two.

Third Adventure: How Siegfried came to Worms

Seldom in sooth, if ever, / the hero's heart was sad.

He heard them tell the story, / how that a winsome maid

There lived afar in Burgundy, / surpassing fair to see:

Great joy she brought him later, / but eke she brought him misery.

A fair but unapproachable maiden, a hero out for the booty and certain doom. Sounds like a high school drama about puberty ... And maybe that's not even so far off the mark, since they must have been around 16 (Kriemhild maybe even a bit younger, Siegfried maybe a bit older) when this went down.

Anyway, the guy's like "Nobody can have her? Than I will have her! Because, you know, I love her!", never has seen the girl, but that's how it was in the olden days. His parents are concerned that it might be dangerous and want to give him an army, but he acts all casual and takes just twelve man. A full sized group, in role playing terms:

"By my own hand—thus only— / trust I to win my bride;

With none but twelve in company / to Gunther's land I'll ride.

In this, O royal father, / thy present help I pray."

Gray and white fur raiment / had his companions for the way.

Of course they had to have the best and most expensive equipment. Nothing but the best for sonny:

His father bade a costly / garb for him prepare,

That leaving Siegmund's country / he the same might wear.

For all their glittering breastplates / were soon prepared beside,

And helmets firmly welded, / and shining shields long and wide.

And what would this chapter without some dark foreshadowing:

Stern warriors stood there sorrowing, / —in tears was many a maid.

I ween their hearts erred nothing, / as sad forebodings said

That 'mongst their friends so many / thereby were doomed to die.

Good cause had they to sorrow / at last o'er all their misery.

"... thereby were doomed to die." What a quote! Anyway, off they go to Worms. What follows is a very long description of their expensive equipment. I'll spare you the details. Just assume lots of gold and jewelry. It'll take them a while to get there, maybe the horses had to carry too much ...

As they finally arrive at Worms, it's with lots of noise. Obviously knights of station, but otherwise strangers in this city, the King of Burgund is not sure how to respond to their arrival. He asks one of his most experienced knights, Hagen von Tronje:

What were the king's good pleasure, / asked Hagen grim in war.

"In the court within my castle / are warriors from afar,

And no one here doth know them: / if them thou e'er didst see

In any land far distant, / now shalt thou, Hagen, tell to me."

And the guy knows his gossip, recognized Siegfried almost immediately from the stories he has been told. It's the first time we read of Siegfried's deeds and man, he had been a busy little adventurer. Had conquered a fairy realm in the early years and gained a powerful magic sword, a cloak of invisibility and the hoard of the Nibelungs, a treasure hoard so rich that nobody could count how large it really was.

Funny story right here. So our hero meets those two guys who own this big ass treasure and they hire him to help them divide it up as fair as possible. They'll give him a magic sword for it and all that jazz. Siegfried agrees, but fails to deliver and those guys get really angry about it which, in turn, pisses Siegfried off and he goes on a killing spree:

"They had there of their followers / twelve warriors keen,

And strong they were as giants: / what booted giants e'en?

Them slew straightway in anger / Siegfried's mighty hand,

And warriors seven hundred / he felled in Nibelungenland

Thinking about the xp he must have earned for this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That fight earned Siegfried a kingdom, too: the land of the Nibelungs.

The dwarf Alberich, former King of the Nibelungs, has to hand over
the cloak of invisibility [source]

We are talking high level campaign here, people. It's also our first evidence suggesting that Siegfried was one of history's first murderhobos ...

Hagen continues with the famous story about Siegfried slaying that dragon and bathing in his blood and adds that it made Siegfried invulnerable:

"Still know I more about him, / that has to me been told.

A dragon, wormlike monster, / slew once the hero bold.

Then in its blood he bathed him, / since when his skin hath been

So horn-hard, ne'er a weapon / can pierce it, as hath oft been seen.

So Hagen's suggestion is to be nice to the guy, because he could put some serious pain to the king:

"Let us the brave knight-errant / receive so courteously

That we in nought shall merit / his hate, for strong is he.

He is so keen of spirit / he must be treated fair:

He has by his own valor / done many a deed of prowess rare."

Translation to vulgar English: "We better not piss that MoFo off, because he could really fuck up our shit ...". They decide to be nice nice to him and the King goes out of his way to greet the guy in person.

The king takes now a few verses to ask Siegfried as polite as possible what the hell he would want here, of all places. The answer came to me, at least, as a surprise. Because Siegfried sits there with his twelve man behind him quite relaxed, I imagine, and tells the king that he has come to take his crown and his land. Just like that:

"I too am warrior noble / and born to wear a crown;

So would I right gladly / that thou of me shouldst own

That I of right am master / o'er people and o'er land.

Of this shall now my honor / and eke my head as pledges stand.

It's something I'd expect from a player with a high level character when he meets a king. That king now (in my head a NPC from now on) is like "WTF?!" and his knights ruffle their feathers a bit, as one would expect.

It becomes a dick-measuring contest in highest poetic form. Swords are drawn, people insulted for their low birth and the reader starts to wonder how that could have escalated so quickly. Did Siegfried really forget what he'd come to Worms for? As it turns out, he just had a bad day:

Then spake the stately monarch: / "But ask thou courteously,

And all that we call ours / stands at thy service free;

So with thee our fortune / we'll share in ill and good."

Thereat the noble Siegfried / a little milder was of mood.

After that it's lots of partying again and Kriemhild's starting to notice:

And when before the castle / they sped in tournament,

The good knights and squires, / oft-times the maiden went

And gazed adown from casement, / Kriemhild the princess rare.

Pastime there was none other / for her that could with this compare.

They're bashing skulls for sports over the course of a year, no less. And yet he never gets to see the girl he longs for. It's just guys being guys, riding around and making noise. And thus ends the third chapter:

Thus with his hosts he lingered / —'tis every tittle true—

In King Gunther's country / a year completely through,

And never once the meanwhile / the lovely maid did see,

Through whom such joy thereafter / for him, and eke such grief should be.

I'll stop here for now, but more wondrous tales await! Next is Siegfried giving some Saxons a beating, this time going full murderhobo ... But that'll be in part two.

Although I'm quoting a verse translation here, I really recommend reading a prose version of the piece. I'll provide links in Part 2.

Observations II: Daring a new perspective on ability scores ... (Design Post)

Yesterday we had the third session of testing bits and pieces of Lost Songs of the Nibelungs. It's true what they say, there are things that sound good on paper, but fall flat in the game. Ability scores in LSotN (I call them "qualities") are a good example for that. This post is about how I intend to address the flaws I saw. I'll challenge the general concept that high stats are good stats and that they need to grow with experience, so those not into LSotN might still find some meat to chew on in this post ...

Popular choices and the hard sell

This is going to be a hard sell. One could say that the principles behind ability scores are a universal scheme among almost all the role playing games out there. Regardless of how those ability scores (or what ever name the designers thought better/more distinctive) are generated, be it random or point buy or divine intervention, you'll have the general assumption that there is some sort of distinguishing scale to those stats, almost always in connection with the idea of possible growth and expansion.

So if "high" is "good" than "higher" must be "better", right? It's not far fetched to assume that those ideas are directly connected to in-game level advancement which, in turn, is (most likely) derived from our cultural conceptions of education, advertisement and achievements. "Better" in this context means "more" and/or "new", so if you advance a level it wouldn't feel like an achievement if you didn't get something for it to show.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course. "Needs" are, if you think a about it, the basic catalysts of every game. We want that new skill, more hit points, more spells and all that. It drives a player in a game to get that next advantage. There's also some importance to the illusion that there is no tangible limit to expansion.

So it's really understandable why high stats and mechanics associated with that are so popular in role playing games. It's quite natural. So natural, in fact, that tinkering with those mechanics might very well incur some people's displeasure with the proposed changes, despite the merits they might bring to the table.

But ability scores could instead ...

First of all, the problem I encountered. Ability scores in LSotN are considered pools that get drained during a game. A character could get damage to his sanity or health or, well, all of them, really. Once that damage reaches a certain point, it'll be harder to heal and even leave scars or permanent damage. Even to a point where the permanent damage lead to an unfortunate end for a character (too much damage, going insane, getting betrayed, stuff like that).

But generating ability scores kept following the good old "3d6 in a row" routine (here is the post explaining it in detail), which turned out to make book keeping that much more difficult.

It's not that the players didn't like the idea or how it affected the game, but the particulars made it cumbersome to use at the table. I think this is mostly due to the high level of abstract variety in the original results. It's too easy to loose track of what's happening, because math rears it's ugly head and smiles nasty. So yesterday I came to the conclusion that I needed to do something about that. It needs some streamlining.

I think the solution is already in the system, but instead of allowing a random generation of ability scores, every player gets a fixed set of ability scores. To allow some variety, I'd go with three sets of values. Players get to decide during character generation two high ability scores (18 each), two normal ability scores (16 each and two low ability scores (12 each). That's it.

Working with fixed numbers makes it easy to illustrate how getting them damaged affects them (since it's always the same procedures with the same numbers) and with that out of the way, the effects are more palpable during the game.

So level zero characters are all more or less of the same mold. They have the same potential. The rules for permanent damage ensure the development of individual characters over time, but the beauty of it is that those changes are always connected to what happened to the characters. It's personal, so to say, and as such easier to follow in each individual case because it forms the history of a character. It also allows for a learning curve as the mechanic is used in an organic way during play. It's a very different kind of bookkeeping, as a player not only notes the permanent damage his character gets, but also links it to how the character is affected by it and where the injury occurs. 

This is what ability scores could do in a game: they mirror what a character has experienced, translating it to solid data in the process. But it also means that ability scores will get lower and lower over time and that's the problem I was talking about earlier in the post. People want their characters to get stronger over time, not weaker.

Decreasing ability scores vs. level advancement

Although it's a hard point to sell, I believe it's the way to go. To some degree it's how it is in real life: we all have the same potential and life has a way of changing that over time. With age we get weak, collect our own little idiosyncrasies and little pains, all the small things that make individuals what they are.

But we also grow in areas. We learn things, we try to overcome our deficiencies (or not) and we fight to keep what we achieved in life. And if the system allows for the one aspect (collecting little scars over time) it needs to embrace the other aspects, too. This is where level advancement comes into play.

I'm lucky in that regard, as the advantages a character gets with level advancement are already disconnected from the ability scores. A player decides which ability score gets a +1 with level advancement and that's independent to how high that ability score is. The idea here was to keep ability scores flexible (they change a lot during play) and give some permanent values connected to advancement and the decisions a player makes for his character.

A character will be good with a sword, if the player decides so and the ability scores have some influence on that in the game, it's just not that much of an influence anymore. You keep what you learned, the body gets just weaker with age.

The Silver Horde: old and scarred, but also experienced as hell (from
Terry Pratchett's "The Last Hero", illustrated by Paul Kidby) [source*]

And the permanent damage doesn't need to be that permanent, too, as a character could regain some of it if he takes the time to heal those wounds (as described in this post).

All this forms a strong connection between system and narrative. The game changes and marks characters with what they encounter, but the players decide the directions their characters take in their journey to becoming heroes. I am quite happy with that.

The big picture and final observations

Character creation is fast and simple. A character starts as level zero, the player decides the values for his ability scores as described above. Then he rolls his bloodline (detailed post is here) which results in a (small) selection of starting skills, advantages and items. It's where a character comes from and what he could gather from his upbringing and family background. It also connects a character with the group, as he'll have a status and some family bonds with other group members. A roll of 2d6 finally determines a characters health (lower result) and his endurance (higher result). Give him or her a name and it's done.

As the story now unfolds a character gains experience and encounters difficulties. With experience he'll advance to what makes a hero. He'll learn to use magic, how to move with stealth or how to become a superior swordsman. But the things he'll encounter will form him, too, and he'll collect scars on soul and body along with the stories how they occurred. Some of those scars will stay with him for the rest of his life, some might even lead to his demise, but every so often he'll be able to overcome them if he takes the time and he could regain his former strength once more to face fate yet another season.

The system supports this struggle and a DM using the ability scores appropriately will have all the tools he needs to produce the tension that comes along with such struggles. And without much fuss, I might add.

But I am again at a point where I have to ask myself if it's justified to call this a clone of D&D, as what sure enough started as a retro-clone strays more and more away from the original design choices that made D&D what it is today (even in all it's variety). I'm still undecided, but I will say that it's still close enough to D&D to allow some reflection about what D&D does and how taking a different perspective on something like ability scores opens up new possibilities. Taking nothing for granted makes us free to end up with informed decisions about the way we play our games and I believe that's a good thing.

*Seems also to be a very interesting blog, by the way ...

How to play Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! (a card-based mini-skirmisher) Part 1

Still working on that title and it would be more accurate to call this a Third-Person-Shooter (I had FPSs in mind when I thought about it, but anyway ...). So, as I've written in my last post, I had to built this up from scratch after I had lost my notes. It is also most and for all an exercise in writing a game and exploring mechanics, so please keep this in mind (for now a random dungeon generator, among other things). This is part one because I wanted to keep the portions of information small. Part 1 mostly explains the set-up in detailed examples and will only give hints about the game play (which will be in part 2).

The set-up

A full poker deck (with jokers) will do the trick. You'll also need some dice, a pencil, a piece of paper and a counter of sorts for the soldier. The map will develop randomly. Here is the first important part of my last post to have it all in one place that illustrates how:

"You need a big table for this. Clubs and hearts will be corridors, diamonds are rooms (with some cards giving cover, too), spades are enemies. Pictures are doors with different difficulties, black aces are shops, red aces are healing stations. Jokers are the Big Bads. 

Now you'll make two piles. One has the corridors, all red doors and the enemy cards 2, 3 and 4. The rest is the second pile. Each pile is now shuffled, but the Joker needs to be the last card of that second pile."

I've played this now a few times and this holds. In the worst of cases you'll have some corridors left, but that's fine since no important cards are lost. The second important part of yesterdays teaser is this: 

The game starts now with the corridors until a door is drawn or there is a shift of colors. It'll expand now into a room (either behind a door or after the first card with a different color). How those cards are put on the table follows a simple pattern: 

 8     9     10

7     6     5

2     3     4

The first card gives the direction of the corridor, of if it's a 3 it will go up, if it's a 4 it'll go left and so on. After 10 it goes down. If a direction is for some reason not possible (end of the table is a reason, too) take the next available position clockwise for red cards and counter clockwise for black cards. Just follow the numbers and go where it's possible.

Rooms always start in the same direction as the corridor indicated, but let each card give directions for the next. The first room card needs to be a spade or an ace. If it's a door instead, put it in the direction of the corridor and move the next card in one direction (as color indicates, see example below). If the first card is an ace, put the next card after the ace in the same direction the ace got.

Built rooms and corridors until closed doors stop the development. You will end up with something like this:

Example 1 (open in new tab to see in detail)

So you see, corridors and shot doors are turned over. Drawn enemy cards are put aside, the counters for those enemies are put on the last card put for a room or corridor (but not a door). In this case it was the ace of hearts and one just in a corridor.

Detailed example

The set-up for this scenario started in the upper right corner and went two cards to left, opening in a room. That room started with a shop, so the next card needed to be in the same direction. A 2 of spades, which means the next card after that will go right, but since that's not possible, it will appear on the next position clockwise from that, so it'll go down. The card after the 2 was a door (now shot to pieces), which ends the development of the map until the door is opened into a new corridor.

It's always like that, corridor until shift of color or door, after that it's a room until a door is drawn (unless the first card was a door, see above) and it's a corridor after that, repeat ...

in this case the door was shot down and opened into a corridor downwards (because of the 2 of spades) of two cards. In this case a change of color indicated that the corridor ended in a room without a door in between, but the first room card had been a door. That was (as the picture shows) put in the direction of the corridor (the queen). The next card after that was, again, a door, so it was put into the next position clockwise (must have been a red card that ended the corridor). That's where the jack landed.

The third card had finally been a room card. Still going clockwise, the 3 of spades had no other place to go than where it landed.

This room now is another good example how the cards go. The next card after the 3 needed to go up, there is room, so that's where the 4 of spades went. But the direction of the needs to be to the left and that's just not possible because of the corridor/shot door in that direction. Up isn't an alternative, because the is already a room, so going clockwise, going to the right is the only option.

That's a ten, the room develops down to a 7, which would have gone up, but goes right instead to the ace. The ace now keeps the direction given from the seven, so the king (a door) ends up on the right and finishes the room.

Further exploration would mean opening doors.

Teaser for the game play

The picture gives already some of it away. The area a character can access is laid out first. Monsters that are drawn are put aside and dice showing the value of the monster cards are used as counters and put on the last card of the segment (room or corridor) that spawned them.

A character has 20 health, 20 armor and 20 rounds ammunition. He has 5 actions per round. 1 action moves him from card to card during exploration (as soon as everything is explored, a character may move from room to room or door in one round). Shooting one shot is also one point, shooting a salve is 3 points.

Doors have difficulty levels (jacks are level 1, queens are level 2 and kings are level 3). The level is the amount of ammunition needed to shoot it open (but there will be keys, too). Searching a room is another action and costs 1 point per room card.

Shooting enemies and searching rooms will give a character credits, stronger enemies also drop health armor or ammunition. Health stations recharge a character's armor and health. Recharging a full round will give 5 health and 5 armor back.

Enemies re-spawn cyclic every six rounds, so time and resource management is important.

Combat will be in the second part, as will be enemy movement, weapons and tactics. I just need to test this with two players to see if it works as supposed. I can say as much, you roll a d20 every time you shoot at something. The number rolled is the damage you deal, but if it doesn't kill the monster, you get the health it has left as damage instead. Jokers will be the only ones that attack themselves, close combat is quite deadly right now (and subject to change). But that's enough teasing for now ...

This is also a random dungeon generator!

If someone needs a fast way to generate a dungeon, this could be it. Just key the monster cards to a random encounter chart and you should be good to go. You might even use more cards for bigger dungeons or more monsters (start with adding more room cards, as you'll most likely have more than enough corridor cards as it is). So that's something, I guess.

But I'm still sorry that this needs to be in two parts. As if I'm not having enough on my plate as it is. Anyway, another post about this game and maybe a pdf with the rules and a character sheet to seal the deal doesn't sound too much. So stay tuned for more before too long.

This game still needs a better name, though.

Soldiers! Aliens! Carnage! An Analogue Card-Based FPS

I don't even know if some of you remember this, but I wrote a post once upon a time about the idea of writing a little strategic mini-game about an alien invasion. Just like in the film Battle: LA (haters be damned, I really love that movie!). Anyway, I started fiddling with it and, as those things sometimes do, came up with a completely different game. A game in which drawing cards builds the halls and rooms of a space station with aliens in it and you have one (or more) players exploring it, shooting everything down that spawns, collecting what they dropped.

It turned out to feel like a First Person Shooter, so the rules started to mirror that. I wrote it down, played a few games with a friend and it worked. It even had shops to buy stuff and health boosts, ammunition, all the things we know from doom and the like. I wanted to post about it, too, but got derailed (I know, happens far to often ...). Then I lost my notes and with that I sort of lost my ideas about it, too. But the game kept lingering and festering in my brain, rearing it's ugly head every now and then to remind me of what I couldn't recreate.

The Doom series had been so much fun! [source]

Well,  I have a long weekend right now and I needed a break from Lost Songs of the Nibelungs, so I thought why not make this weekend about writing board games instead. One post will discuss the rules for S!A!C! (I really don't know about the acronym, though ... might need another name) and with another post on Sunday I'll be back writing about the Goblin-Tribe Simulator (which is over-due again).

Teaser (how to build a space station with cards)

You need a big table for this. Clubs and hearts will be corridors, diamonds are rooms (with some cards giving cover, too), spades are enemies. Pictures are doors with different difficulties, black aces are shops, red aces are healing stations. Jokers are the Big Bads.

Now you'll make two piles. One has the corridors, all red doors and the enemy cards 2, 3 and 4. The rest is the second pile. Each pile is now shuffled, but the Joker needs to be the last card of that second pile.

The game starts now with the corridors until a door is drawn or there is a shift of colors. It'll expand now into a room (either behind a door or after the first card with a different color). How those cards are put on the table follows a simple pattern:

 8     9     10

7     6     5

2     3     4

The first card of a corridor gives the direction of the corridor, the last card gives the direction of the door and the room behind it. Just follow the numbers (a ten goes always down ...). If a direction isn't possible, resolve clockwise for red and counter-clockwise for black cards.

While corridors only go into the directions the first card is indicating, it's decided with every card when laying down rooms. Room cards are drawn until the next door is drawn (black doors in the pile). A door is put on the highest card in a room and in the direction it indicates (if the indicated direction is not possible, resolve clockwise).

A opened door (indicate by turning the card) is always the first part of the first room/corridor, so if another door is drawn next, it blocks passage in the first indicated direction and the room or corridor expands in the next possible direction (depending on color clockwise or counter-clockwise).

The next card after an ace follows the direction of the last card before the ace. Enemies are always put aside first and start acting from the last card of a room or corridor ...

More tomorrow!

I gave this a few spins and it definitely creates a dungeon. The number of cards will indicate the movement needed from A to B. The rest is shooting at things, taking their loot and buying ammunition or better guns to confront the boss monster at the end. Combat will be based on some light D&D rules variants.

But more on that tomorrow (with examples and pictures). I'm still looking for a name of this, so if any of you got an idea, I'd be open for suggestions :)