Good rules

Ron Edwards writes a lot. Sometimes, amidst heaps and heaps of words, he comes up with the best, most straightforward statements of role-playing truths. Here's one:

That by the way is a lesson my fellow role-players seem reluctant to grasp: that good rules are not there to prevent bad play but to enable good play, and that sometimes, the decisions of the moment may not be all that great – just as in any art form […]

(from this post about superpowers in Champions 1st-3rd edition, in Ron's Doctor Xaos comics madness blog.)

Well put! I'm quoting this because I think it's hugely important:

Good rules are not there to prevent bad play but to enable good play.

Indeed.

And my own experience agrees with Ron's here: far too often, "role-players" don't seem to get this point, and trite arguments about how you can "fix" a game/behavior/player by keeping them in check with rules come up over and over and over. F'rex, by far the most common piece of feedback you get from playtesters is: "Hey, I noticed that one (not me!) could possibly ruin the game by doing this and that, and the rules-as-written won't stop them from doing so." Except that's not what I design rule-sets for (and not only 'cause, frankly, no rules tome will ever be thick enough to list all the "don't"s for a role-playing game)…

Remember: the purpose of good rules it to enable good play.

A scuola di game-design coi Puffi, o qualcosa del genere

Il mio amico Giovanni Micolucci ha aperto un altro blog, intitolato "Creiamo insieme un gioco di ruolo", su cui sta conducendo un esperimento di open design sotto le fattezze di un "corso" per autori di gdr. Cerca di mostrare i propri processi mentali passo per passo e sollecita in un certo grado la partecipazione dei lettori, o almeno i loro suggerimenti su ciascuno di questi passi, con l'obiettivo di arrivare comunque a un gioco finito che pubblicherà sotto la sua solita etichetta "Vas Quas Editrice". Io sono stato brevemente coinvolto nella prima "lezione" con il ruolo di "specchio" (ciò che io forse chiamerei "cassa di risonanza") ed è stato piuttosto divertente.
Vi prego di non soffermarvi troppo sulla cattiveria/cupezza dei miei suggerimenti iniziali, a proposito: ero d'umore da humor nero (uhm, come spesso) e inizialmente non avevo capito che mi stessero "registrando". ;P

Consiglio di seguirlo, chiudendo un occhio sui testi di stesura frettolosa e non editati (in fondo si tratta solo di un blog). Giovanni è una specie di vulcano, capace di uscirsene continuamente con idee valide per nuovi giochi e, cosa meno comune, di svilupparle fino in fondo: scoprire qualcosa di più sul suo metodo di lavoro penso sarà effettivamente istruttivo.

Un commento dal Puffo Quattrocchi, vecchio forgista*: quando Giovanni parla di "scegliere il tema del gioco", in realtà si riferisce a quello che Edwards chiamerebbe il Color. Poi, come si vede nella prima "lezione", estrapolando dalle idee che ha per il Color giunge a diverse conclusioni su vari aspetti cruciali. Mi verrebbe da dire che il suo processo di design è "Color-first", e questo pure mi stuzzica.
(* = Vi tocca andare a leggere la prima lezione se volete scoprire che cosa c'entrano i Puffi.)

This is weird

Have you ever woken up in the morning having dreamed up a set of game mechanics? Not that what I've got are especially original, or even complete mechanics, but I'm like WTF?! — and now I feel obliged to give them a little more thought, make something out of them. In fact, what I dreamed up are mechanics for a specific part of an RPG, very traditional but with a twist; now I'd need to figure out the rest of the game which should come with them. Like: I've got this rules for driving you to the ground and razing whatever you built and sow salt on it; now of course I need a game structure in which you build things up.
Still, weird.

More thoughts as a pin-board for the mind: it's all about the roll-to-hit fetish, I guess (a fetish I used to swear I got over, go figure!) and how things go CLANG!, and you pile up on dice and then everything goes BOOM! Also, Hokuto no Ken, but not really (could be a very angry Jesus, or King Arthur).

Ability scores: roll #d6, some of them in order

That which follows is a method of Ability scores determination for use – during character creation – with any role-playing game employing six Abilities with scores in the 3-18 range. This includes all iterations of D&D I know about, retro-clones or other immediate derivatives of them, as well as Dungeon World and some others. The method can also be altered for a different number of Abilities or scores in a different range, of course.

My aim with this is to marry the “organic” feel of the roll-3d6-in-order method with some of the most desirable qualities of roll-and-arrange and fixed-set methods (namely, the ability to play the class you desire, to always have a character you can make sense of in your mind’s eye, and less power-disparity within the party).

Rafu’s matrix method

First you need to draw a grid of three columns by six rows. Outside the grid scribble the Abilities used in your game, one per row. It looks like this:

Str:
Int:
Wis:
Con:
Dex:
Cha:

STEP 1: roll 6d6. Write the results in the first column, arranging them as you wish.

STEP 2: in the second column, write the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, arranged as you wish.

STEP 3: for the third column, roll 1d6 per row and write down the results in order.

Finally, total up each row to get your Ability scores.

Example: I'm playing OD&D. I roll underwhelming dice in Step #1 (4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1), but I decide I'm gonna try and make this character a Cleric — a hardy and survivable, no-nonsense knight-templar type. Dice are kinder to me in Step #3.

Str:	3	4	5	=12
Int:	2	1	2	= 5
Wis:	4	6	4	=14
Con:	4	5	4	=13
Dex:	1	2	3	= 6
Cha:	2	3	6	=11

Variants

• If you like to use formal rules for “unplayable” characters, to establish when a player’s allowed to reroll, try devising some based on Step #1 (only): this saves everybody’s time. Something like: “if you got two or more 1s and/or your best die is a 4, you’re allowed to reroll”.
• If you want a more uniform power-level, and/or to make any one point of difference very meaningful (a flatter distribution):
  • for Step #1, roll 8d6 then drop highest and lowest die (or even 10d6 drop 2 highest and 2 lowest, etc.);
  • for Step #3, roll 3d6 and keep the median value (drop high and low) instead of 1d6.
• For a different number of Abilities (five scores, seven scores, etc.) you need to both:
  • roll nd6 in Step #1 where n is the number of Abilities;
  • alter the array of numbers in Step #2 by removing or adding (duplicating) values starting from the middle ones (3s and 4s): thus an array for an 8-Abilites game could be “1,2,3,3,4,4,5,6”, one for a 4-Abilities game is “1,2,5,6”.
• To generate Ability scores in a 2-12 range (Epées & Sorcellerie, World of Dungeons):
  • skip Step #1;
  • for Step #3, either:
    • use the 3d6-keep-median roll, or
    • repeat Step #3 twice, writing down both sets of results, then choose one (a whole set, not row-by-row).

Notes

I originally devised this method back in my 3E days, out of a desire to introduce some controlled randomness, but never got to put it to any real use. I wouldn’t use it for a 4E game, because it doesn’t fit with the small-squad tactics optimization those rules finally canonized as the “official” style of play, IMO. But in the present era of Old-School Renaissance, widely available OD&D retro-clones and free-licensed, D&D-themed Apocalypse World hacks… I believe there is now room and even demand for little house-rules like this to be circulated.

Dungeon-obsessed

I'm suffering from dungeon-obsession right now. I catch it sometimes, like an intermittent fever.
Not that I'm interested in playing any old-school games or anything (alright, there's Tunnels & Trolls, there's Kata Kumbas… but playing any of those requires jumping through hoops I don't want to be through right now; this moment, even Jason Morningstar's incredibly streamlined and promising Dungeon Squad 2 looks a bit heavy on the "DM" side to me). Rather, I'm obsessed with the idea of designing some kind of game which will again make dungeons work for me — except I've been running circles around this particular idea for, I don't know, two years now?
I draft down bits and pieces of rules, but the whole thing never gels, and I start from scratch again. I've got multiple notebooks half-full of this stuff by now. Only one thing I nailed down for sure: I want the map of the dungeon to be in the middle of the table during play, visible to all (the full map, yes).
Which finally brings me to the reason I posted about this today… I think I just realized something about my obsession, which is: I'm primarily in love with the graphical representation of dungeons — with maps, especially if cute, hand-drawn and detailed. I should have known: that's why I follow Tony Dowler's sweet Year of the Dungeon to get my regular fix, for example. In fact, what triggered this untimely realization was probably learning about Paul Hughes's kickstarter project for a giant random dungeon poster-map (I sure like his drawing style, involvement with the Gary Gygax personality-cult notwithstanding). Or was it the One-Page Dungeon Contest launching?

Running for the Ronnies

Another round of the Ronnies is just over and this time I was able to enter the contest, something I've been wanting to do since Ron re-started this endeavor in January but I haven't been able to. It seems to be a sort of a new tradition that you now have exactly one Italian participating in each round, though, so I'm happy I upheld it.
The reason I was able to participate, of course, is that this time I got an idea for a game which resonated strongly with me, and I got it early enough that I was able to actually start designing it before the final countdown. My game is called The Shackled Self, by the way, and it uses "lust" and "chains" for keywords out of the very inspiring "amazon lust queen chains" set (and, don't get me wrong: all of the Ronnies keyword sets have usually been amazing, but anything about lusting for chained queens apparently turns me on, polysemantically named e-bookshop or not).
One thing which didn't fit in the mad 24 hrs. design & writing crunch, though, is a Forge-style reference list… and then I noticed that other contestants managed to include it, which made me envious as fuck. So here you are:

· The Shackled Self's first and foremost inspiration, overall, is a couple of wonderful 2-players games: Ron Edward's S/lay w/Me and Tim C. Koppang's Mars Colony (for the Prince-Temptation or sometimes Prince-Mountain creative dynamics).
· Then, Ben Lehman's The Drifter's Escape, a 3-players game with fixed and asymmetrical player roles and a single protagonist.
· From Tobias Wrigstad's GR (you know I can't spell its full title on the interwebz!), which is the best jeepform ever, I lifted a good-sized chunk wholesale (keeping eye contact and knowing what to say as a pvp mechanic).
· A game of Danielle Lewon's Kagematsu which I played just the day before designing TSS suggested me the "player dominating a scene" concept (K. also being a game of asymmetrical 1 vs. 1 dynamics).
· Alessandro "Vito" Temporiti once made a game called La decisione di Giuda ("Judas' choice"), which was all about externalizing a single character's dilemma by crafting a three-players dynamic out of it, and it was wonderful to play.
· Jonathan Tweet's Everway and Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World (suggestive questions as a springboard for creating).
· Vincent Baker's In a Wicked Age…, Paul Tevis's A Penny for My Thoughts, Matthijs Holter's Archipelago II and, less directly but ultimately, Ben Lehman's Polaris (explicit verbal commands to signal/resolve a conflict; I confess I included this as a form of lazy design, since it's so expedient).
· Everything Nordic for showing me that you only need resolution mechanics in a game when you need 'em. Everything Nordic, yeah, but especially Matthijs Holter's Society of Dreamers (also for the ouja board thing, which I now realize I made into the mandala thing).
· Vincent Baker's In a Wicked Age… (again) and Meguey Baker's 1001 Nights are the first games I met with snacks & drinks recommendations included in their manuals (great stuff!). Vincent Baker's Toward One, also, for reminding me that coffee, too, is a meditation-enabling infusion.
· Plus lots of other games and stuff which I sort of interiorized, of course, so that I can't pinpoint the titles and authors specifically. But I'm made out of you, people, you know? Made of you! Love ♥.

So, what's left…? Yeah, wish me good luck, I guess.

Thought of the day

As of 2010, for the scholar or the curious in roleplaying games and roleplaying game design there are no public libraries, no university libraries, no museums — just private collections to rely on.

Aforisma del giorno

Il roleplaying game design è una forma d'arte la quale consiste, essenzialmente, nel porre domande di ordine cosmico e generale in forme e modi tali che esse possano ciascuna trovare le proprie risposte soggettive e particolari.