Tag: gurps

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Rules Options for Domain Level Play

In my recent post Plotting Grand Campaigns, I’ve written about domain level, or patron style play at length. Here are some references to rules systems one might want to consider to support domain level play. They’re mostly rules for large scale conflict simulation, war games in other words.

Now, before I go on, let me say this: “war game” is a term, I abhor. While I’m obviously mighty fascinated by the derivatives of war games, I consider myself a pacifist. “Conflict simulation” sounds innocent and sophisticated, academically interesting, but let’s face it: we’re talking about armor values and damage potentials and violent death.

Especially at the time of this writing, even thinking about war games feels utterly wrong. There is a real war going on in Ukraine right now. I wish nothing more than the fighting to stop at once! Then again, most of the time we’re playing there’s is some violent conflict going on in the world somewhere. We should always be mindful of this.

If setting up conflict in games teaches us one thing, it’s the fact, that it’s actually quite hard to construct credible reasons for armed conflict. Motives we come up with, are either criminal or corrupt, often both. So, let me say this: reaons to go to war are always made up, they’re always messed up! Reasons to go to war are always fabricated, messed up bullshit, driven by the interests of few corrupt individuals in their criminal pursuit of power.

As H.G. Wells put it in his adendum to Little Wars: “You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be.“

Rules for Political Scheming

This would be the place to link to the original Braunstein rules. But as I already said in my previous blog post, there seem to be no published rules. The best documentation I’ve found is on Ben Robbin’s blog Ars ludi: https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/106/braunstein-memories/

The Adventurer, Conqueror, King System, might be useful here, but I can’t claim any experience with this game.

If you have any other suggestions, please do add them to the comments.

Rules for mass combat and large scale conflict

Basically crude mass combat rules can be achieved by simply lumping together a certain number of combatants into one larger “meta-creature”. For example 20 “normal men” in OD&D with one hit die each, dealing one die of damage each, might become one unit with 20 hit dice dealing 20d6 of damage to an opposing similar unit. Only one to hit roll is performed for each unit. Armor class and bonuses remain the same, as for single characters. Combined with the usual rules for morale. This simple scaling of figures might do all that is needed.

Actually the importance of morale can’t be overstated, since in any larger scale conflict, the question is not only survival or death, but whether one side prevails, routs, gains or loses ground.

If anything more is needed, here are a host of various rules sets.

  • Chainmail by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, published in 1971 by Guidon Games, and later by TSR. A rules set for medieval miniatures games. It’s “Fantasy Supplement” is considered to be the predecessor of Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Swords & Spells, and amalgam of D&D’s “alternative” d20 based combat system and Chainmail, published by TSR in 1976
  • Daniel “Delta” Collins’ Book of War
  • Alex Schroeder’s Mass Combat Rules
  • Robin Stacey’s Mass Combat Rules
  • Don’t give up the ship, a rules set for naval fleet combat in the age of sail, published in 1972 by Guidon Games, and later by TSR.
  • Warriors of Barsoom, a rules set for war games set on Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ John Carter of Mars Setting. While it’s available on archive.org, it’s copyright status seems to remain unclear.
  • War Machine, a set of mass combat rules described in the D&D Companion Rules.
  • Battle System, mass combat rules designed for use with AD&D 2nd edition.
  • Classic Traveller’s Book 4 Mercenary for a rather abstract, sort of birds eye view approach on infantery mass combat.
  • Classic Traveller’s Book 5 High Guard, for battles of large space fleets.
  • Full Thrust by Ground Zero Games, for even more detailed fleet battle in space.
  • Striker, the rules for modern day to far future miniatures combat accompanying Classic Traveller, available from Far Future Enterprises on the Classic Traveller CDROM.
  • GURPS Mass Combat, another abstract system somewhat similar to D&D’s War Machine and Traveller’s Mercenary.
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Satans World

Eine GURPS-Kampagne basierend auf einem Roman von Poul Anderson

Hintergrund

Weit draußen, 240 Lichtjahre von Sol entfernt, ist ein Rogue Planet detektiert worden, ein interstellarer Einzelgänger, der nur alle paar Jahrmillionen in die Nähe einer Sonne kommt, um dann für einige Jahrzehnte aus seiner ewigen Nacht aufzutauen. Jeder weiß, Rogues bergen absurde Mengen an Rohstoffen — Reichtum für Generationen. Kein Wunder also, dass Euer Geldgeber, der alte Nicholas Van Rijn, hoch erfreut ist, als ihr die Triebwerke eurer treuen Muddlehead zündet. Es ist ja auch nicht viel Zeit, denn Ihr seid nicht die einzigen im Rennen um “Satans Welt”.

Die Geschichte beginnt damit, dass die Charaktere sich in Lunograd treffen, der von einer riesigen Kuppel überdachten, in den Plato Krater eingebauten City auf unserem Erdtrabanten. Neben Amüsierviertel und schicken Hotels gibt es dort auch die anonyme Datenanalyse- und Beratungsfirma Serendipity Inc., wo die Charaktere hoffen mehr zu erfahren. Doch dann ist es mit den glücklichen Zufällen auch schon vorbei, denn da draußen braut sich mehr zusammen, als nur ein Rennen um Rohstoffe.

Als Orte der Handlung kommen neben futuristischen Mondhotels, klaustrophobischen Raumschiff-Interieurs, und den wundersamen Welten uralter Zivilisationen auch van Rijns Motoryacht, die irgendwo in der Sonne der südost-asiatischen Inselwelt vor Anker liegt, in Frage — und natürlich die höllische Oberfläche des lebensfeindlichen Rogue Planet.

Spielercharaktere

Die Spielercharaktere sind kompetente, erfahrene Sci-Fi-Abenteurer. An Fertigkeiten ist alles gefragt, was in einer pulpigen Space Story gefragt sein könnte: Rocket Science und Raumschifffertigkeiten, Handgemenge und Laserkanonen, und natürlich ist Geheimnistuerei und Investigation ebenso gefragt. Neben normalen Menschen sind als Charakterspezies auch Wodeniten möglich: sanfte zentaurenartige Drachenwesen mit einem Faible für Philosophie und Spiritualität, oder Cynthianer: an irdische Katzen erinnernde Haudegen, die mit ihrem Greifschwanz so gut klettern wie Affen.

Kampagnenregeln

Als Spielsystem nutzt diese Kampagne GURPS 3. Edition, welches als Light-Version kostenlos erhältlich ist. Das System könnte simpler nicht sein: mit 3 Würfeln muss unter einen Zielwert gewürfelt werden. Hat ein Charakter zum Beispiel die Fertigkeit Astrogation-13 so müsste er mit 3W6 eine 13 oder weniger würfeln, um den Kurs von Luna nach Proxima centauri korrekt zu berechnen. Um eine verklemmte Automatiktür aufzubrechen, wäre vielleicht eine Stärkeprobe erforderlich: bei Stärke 11 müsste entsprechend auf 3W6 eine 11 oder weniger gewürfelt werden – easy as pie. Den Ruf kompliziert zu sein hat GURPS zu unrecht.

Obwohl ich auch dieses Spiel grundsätzlich mit vielen freien Handlungsoptionen einrichten würde, ist diese Kampagne eher ein Point Crawl. Sie geht eindeutig in Richtung geskriptetes Abenteuer. Daher wäre sie auch nicht als Open Table geeignet. Satans World ist was für 3 bis 4 Spieler, die Lust haben gegelmäßig über vielleicht 8 bis 10 Sessions an einer kontinuierlichen Kampagne teilzunehmen.

Appendix N

Poul Anderson tauchte mit seinen drei Fantasy-Romanen Three Hearts and Three Lions, The High Crusade und The Broken Sword übrigens an erster Stelle in Gary Gygax berühmtem Appendix N auf … wollte ich nur noch sagen … um die Verbindung zu D&D herzustellen 😉

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A system-agnostic magic system?

System-agnostic seems like a contradiction in itself. Let it be a conundrum to solve (thanks @anahata).

What I’m actually pondering here is a set of magic rules for tabletop rpgs, that would work across a variety of systems. Say it should plug in effortlessly into OD&D and Classic Traveller, but also work with GURPS or Fudge, and maybe even more story telling focused games like FATE or PbtA-Games.

If you think of magic spells as entities that actually break or alter the rules of any given game, it doesn’t seem too far fetched, to have them interface in a sensible way with differing base rules … I hope.

Why?

The undeniable advantage of popular gaming systems is their relatively wide spread availability, a lot of players might already have the relevant book, or can access it easily.

As I like to play old games, or maybe not so popular game systems, I usually don’t expect my players to shell out money for a non-main stream gaming book, or to tediously search the second hand market for a copy.

For players of mundane types as fighting-men, rogues or simple adventurers this usually isn’t a big deal, but the magic users player will at some point want to reference the exact wording of some spell … so she’ll need a book … a spell book possibly.

For this exact situation a freely available (think Creative Commons, OGL …) and easily accessible (free indexed PDF, print yourself at cost at the local copy shop) would be ideal.

So let’s see what can be done …

What’s in a Spell?

I think if you look at the various spells in, say D&D and GURPS, there are certain recurring elements:

  • The spells effect
  • Time to cast
  • Range to cast
  • Duration of the spell
  • Restrictions

The spells effect usually conveys a narrative right, like legitimating the player to state how the magic user moves through a wall, conjures a demon or transforms into a giant mantis or whatever. Under other circumstances, this narration would break the rules of the game. That’s why you need magic. Sometimes the narration directly accesses gaming mechanics, like a fire ball doing 6d6 damage … that’s rules system specific … that’s going to be the difficult part.

Time to cast, range and duration are simple and universal. Even in the far future or in the most unlikely fantasy realm time will come in seconds, minutes and probably also hours days, and so on, and range can always be measured in terms of real world length measurement. Nothing gamey here, use SI units.

Restrictions are important – they tell you when, and only when it is allowed to break the rules by using magic and what kind of effect this has on the base game moving along. Those restrictions make the game fair and playable. Common restrictions are:

  • Spell slots
  • Spell levels
  • Spell cost, in terms of mana, fatigue points, gold, rare ingredients
  • Time and range also act as restrictions
  • agreement and / or support of some super natural being in case of clerical magic

As already said, time and range come in real world SI units, and gold, ingredients and a deities opinion about magic are part of the narrative. But spell slots, levels, mana points are rules-specific, so this is where a “system-agnostic” system would need to substitute alternative, self-contained rules.

First take at universal magic *rules*

This is a work in progress … two basic ideas:

Spells have varying impact and effectiveness, this could be modeled by an abstract spell complexity on a range from 1 (low complexity, easy to cast), to 10 (high complexity, hard to cast).

Magic users probably will be more or less apt at working spells. This could be modeled by some magical aptitude stat. This might be an existing stat, like intelligence (INT) in the original game, it might be derived from a combination of existing stats, or it might be newly added to a given game system.

I think a magical aptitude in the usual 3d6 range from 3 to 18 should be in order. I know, this is somewhat specific, but it also is a very common range for gaming stats, facilitating success rolls with 1d20, 3d6 or derivatives thereof like 2d6, 4d6 or 2d20 with advantage/disadvantage. Also, if multiplied by 5 the 3-18 range converts to 15-90, which is convenient for percentile based systems, and there are commonly known ways, do convert 3-18 to the -4 to +4 range as used in Fudge and FATE.

Now put this together … How about this, just set up a matrix with the difference of magical aptitude and spell complexity:

Spell Complexity
Aptitude12345678910
3210-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
43210-1-2-3-4-5-6
543210-1-2-3-4-5
6543210-1-2-3-4
76543210-1-2-3
876543210-1-2
9876543210-1
109876543210
1110987654321
12111098765432
131211109876543
1413121110987654
15141312111098765
161514131211109876
1716151413121110987
18171615141312111098

This already seems to be somewhat usable to me.

For example, if a magic user with magical aptitude of 12 wanted to cast a spell of complexity level 2, he’d need to roll a 10 or lower on 1d20 or 3d6 … depending on the base rules in action. On a success, the spell would work as expected, on a failure it would fail with some narrative consequence told by the GM.

In a system with vancian magic spell slots, this success roll could indicate, whether the mage managed to learn the spell, and is able to use it safely from then on.

It’s obvious that a character with low magical aptitude and little experience will never manage to work high complexity spells. Or only under certain circumstances, yet to be defined. Seems alright to me.

Now, since those odds seem somewhat depressing, lets add some modifiers:

Experience

Measured on an abstract scale from 1 to 10, experience could be used as a direct modifier. The experience number could represent years of study in a story telling game, or be a derivative of character level in a more classical approach.

As an example, a Mage with aptitude 12 and 5 years of experience would need to roll a 12 or less in order to work a complexity level 5 spell (base number 7 and +5 for experience).

Time

A magic user might invest more or less time into working a spell. Modifiers could look like this, with a basic time to work a spell being hours:

SecondsMinutesHoursDaysWeeksMonthYears
-2-10+1+2+3+4

In essence, this would make it possible for a high experience mage to cast a spell within seconds, while his apprentice might take month or even years to master the complicated ritual.

The time to cast could be further quantified by rolling a d6, so 1-6 seconds for a combat spell, or 1-6 days for some necromantic ritual.

Cost

The magic users might invest a fraction or multiple of the base cost into working the spell. Again, think mana, fatigue points, gold … what ever your system uses. Modifiers could look like this:

Cost multiplier1/101/41/21210100
Modifier-3-2-10+1+2+3

You might think of yet other possible modifiers, but I think this basically covers it.

The actual Spells

I think in order to approach a wide range of spells in a generic way, I’d try a syntax based approach like in GURPS improvised magic, Maze Rats or Magic in the Moment, over on the Papers and Pencils blog: combinations of generic magical nouns and verbs like conjure, banish, hasten, heal, harm, fire, water, demon, monster and so on.

The actual number of magical words going into a spell could be used as yet another modifier. The more words, the higher the penalty ….

As I said, it’s a work in progress. I’ll try to model some commonly known spells with this system and see how it goes. Maybe start with good old light, heal light wounds, sleep and fireball. The players will certainly want those 😉