D30 - Day 4 Favourite Gameworld

This is a real toughie, when i'm running a game its usually homebrew or at least an amalgamation of different things. My major problem with canon is that its exactly that, canon. As my usual games are a mixture of me feeding players info and them coming up with stuff its really hard to fit that inside a strict cannon setting, hence things usually become a hodgepodge of stuff re-labelled or changed slightly.

I like the current Nentir Vale setting for 4e, aside from the actual Vale very little is documented, there are hints of stuff which is great - threads I can spin a story from. Aside from that if I had to choose a very detailed setting it would probably be Darksun? Maybe even Ebberron? I like both. So whats my favourite gameworld? Heck if i know, they're all pretty good i suppose!

Hazards and Obstacles in 13th Age

So i've been thinking about injecting a more tactical 'feeling' into combat and i've been looking at movement and how to track it, but I guess its due to a a bit of disappointment in how traps and hazards are handled within 13th Age.

Now I do totally get that 13A explicitly doesn't place an emphasis tactical combat, thats the whole point and one of the reasons combats run so fast and I love it. But I do think there could be a way of handling hazards and obstacles that perhaps treats them more like 4e giving them pseudo monster attributes, something given the way monsters function in 13A could be very rewarding.

Hazards and Obstacles as Monsters

Creating a Hazard or Obstacle is going to be pretty simple, the easiest route is to use information we have available to us already. The monster tables give us statistics, such as HP Defences and Damage. We also have impromptu damage for single/multiple targets. I'd go with the damage numbers from the Monster stat table - they're less swingy and you have a better range of results, but its worth considering both options.

Another great thing about the monster stat tables is that it lets us balance the number of offensive hazards within the system of building encounters. Its up to you if you feel the balancing values are equal to monsters, remember that a monster will always act and attempt to do damage but an obstacle or hazard wont necessarily unless its triggered.

The main thing we have to look at is movement and how other creature move around and interact with the hazard. First its obvious that a Hazard or Obstacle should occupy a space in the world in a similar way creatures do, you can be engaged with it, nearby, far away and behind it. The only ones really worth explaining are engaged and behind. It makes perfect sense  that a creature could be behind a hazard or obstacle, and the the hazard or obstacle would intercept ANY creature moving to engage.

Its worth noting that I dont really think that the creature needs to make a disengage check to get away (unless thats part of the trap, such as an iron maiden) it just makes sense to think of it this way.

And if the hazard or obstacle is successful in intercepting the creature then its engaged with it, this would typically trigger an attack, check or some sort of status effect - you would record these as you would attacks and powers for regular monsters. You could also have powers that trigger an attack when a creature moves behind a Hazard or Obstacle if they don't know the location of a trigger mechanism (to represent a blow gun trap) The powers could also determine difficulties for certain ways of disarming OR you could leave it freeform and judge each attempt to disable them as you see fit (Normal, Hard, Ridiculously Hard)

Some Hazards and Obstacles wont move, a non-magical pit trap stays where it was built so we don't have to worry about it moving but of course we can use movement if we want, again i'd take exiting creatures lead on movement rules.

I think that pretty much makes sense, but to further illustrate i've come up with a couple of verysimple examples of traps we probably all recognise:

Example Traps

Hole in the ground
Level 1 (Trap) 
Init: -
HP: -  AC: -  PD: - MD: -

Fall : +6 vs AC - 5 damage and the target is stuck save ends.

Spot : A creature spots the Hole on a Regular wisdom background check.

Trigger : The hole makes a Fall attack against any creature moving to be behind it that has not spotted it

Flame Nozzles

Level 4 (Trap) 
Init: +7
HP: -  AC: -  PD: - MD: -

Gout of Flame : +9 vs AC (1d6 nearby creatures) - 14 damage and 7 ongoing damage.
Miss : 7 ongoing damage.

Spot : A creature spots the Flame Nozzles on a Hard wisdom background check.

Trigger : The hole makes a Gout of Flame attack when any creature moves Nearby it. 

Disarm : Once spotted the Flame Nozzle can be disarmed with 2 Hard Dexterity Background checks.

I've purposefully left the details of spotting and disarming, ie the logical real world elements of the traps very vague. Some people are happy with this level of abstraction, but you can easily build upon it to devise something more tangible that players could disarm (proper mechanism's, control panels etc) Its your call.

I hope this give some food for thought! Happy gaming all!

Bringing tactical combat back to 13th Age.

So after some time playing 13th Age my friday night group has come to the realisation that were missing using miniatures for more in depth tactical combat. The group definitely enjoys the speed of fights, especially seeing as we've just come off a long stint of 4e (where the combats were excruciatingly long) and the slightly more abstract rules handling placement are great but we like maps and terrain, obstacles and hazards and other fun stuff like that.

So in order to slake the players thirst for tactical combat, and crucially without having to add substantial houserules and hacks - so i've modified the standard 1inch grid to fit in with the Engaged/Nearby/Far away format. It features much bigger squares (roughly 5" x 5") so that anyone in the same square as you is nearby and if they're in any other square they're far away.

I've got an A3 Battlematt for you to download (see the bottom of the post) featuring 6 large squares, each divided up very faintly into the normal 1 inch squares (for mapping corridors and straight stuff) but its worth considering how we use the maps with the rules designed for theatre of the mind play. Currently you can move anywhere that is far away in two moves, but the matt is 3 measures long, so how do we handle maps like this? This is what we do at our table:

A move will let you go anywhere inside your current square, or move into an adjacent square. You cannot however engage an enemy if you move into an adjacent square as you have just moved to be nearby them. In order to engage them you would need to make another move inside that square so you are in base to base contact (basing?) creatures that are more the 1 square away still are treated as 'far-away' - although we like to add a -2 modifier on attacks for the extreme range.

This lets me as a GM do a couple of things, one it keeps the players happy - they have their grid and meaningful movement decisions. Secondly and possibly more importantly it lets me keep track of hazards and scenery elements such as pit traps and the like. By putting them into the squares they are given a proximity and i can track whether a player moves nearby and whether an attack or roll is required. 

We'd tried the standard 1" grid and it was too confusing when a player moved around an obstacle or hazard as its unclear as to how close they would be moving to it (and of course if asked the player would have given it a wide berth, thus removing any risk and as such any point in the obstacle being there, to a degree)

Grab the Battlemat here and you can see what it looks like below before taking the plunge :

EDIT : Since writing this post I've also looked at giving Hazards and Obstacles a more 'tactical' 4e feel, read it here.

D30 - Day 3 Favourite Playable Class

Again i'm more of a GM than player, but if I were to roll up a class that I know and love it would be the Rogue/Thief. The earlier editions of D&D were great for a Thief, but its really the later editions that I like better, Martial characters have been brought up to speed combat wise so i've always felt like I could contribute more inside combat than before. (not that it hasn't always been fun mechanically, it has)

Im not always about acrobatics, although thats cool - for me its about the knowledge of how to detect and disarm traps, knowing the best way to get in and out - and crucially being able to do it silently.

I especially like the thief class because of the ambiguity it inherently offers, i've always found character with questionable or undetermined moral compasses much more appealing to play. I tend to play the good guys, albeit ones who keep everyone guessing that fact. Maybe thats the GM in. Keep 'em guessing.

D30 - Day 2 Favourite Playable Race

Hmm, tough one. I'm usually behind the screen 95% of the time when playing but when I d get the chance/compulsion to play i'll usually lean towards the Githyanki/Githzerai - sometimes it can be a struggle to fit a character in more 'vanilla' fantasy campaigns but its always fun trying to get a cohesive backstory. Space pirates. Whats not to love?

D30 - Day 1 How you got started

How you got started

I think it was around '94 with this awesome box of goodness :

Heres the link to it over at BoardGameGeek.com, its basically a variant of HeroQuest (or at least that how I remember it) it also came with a VHS that i think we watched once, maybe. It was definitely the gateway drug for rpg's for me as you were able to photocopy the blank maps and create new scenarios for your players. I remember spending many happy saturdays round my friends house painting the miniatures and playing through the different scenarios until it was time for my parents to pick me up.

I remember some of the other box sets, the classic red dragon on black box rings a bell, but this is definitely the one I remember vividly.

After that my next 'proper' systems was AD&D, I was definitely a kid of the TSR 90's golden era. I've still got the 3 black books and they take pride of place on my bookshelf as my first edition of 'the game'. And from there all sorts at school: Vampire, Heavy Gear, Dark Sun Al-Quadim, Cyberpunk and a few others i cant remember -  But it was definitely Dragonstrike that got me hooked.

D&D 30 Day Challenge

If you haven't seen it in the blogosphere here's what i'm doing:

I forget where the original image came from as I was surfing blogs during my lunch break and came across it (and completely forgot to note down where it came from!) so if anyone can enlighten me that would be great! 30 days in september so a barrage of post here we go!