Meandering Thoughts About Combat

I mentioned recently how I was feeling creatively empty, which gave me a bit of a creative burst, but I appear to have run out of steam and can't seem to finish my Martians setting even though I have a bestiary post already 75% drafted and would like to make some Martian Mechs for TNT by way of Mechs & Monstrosities and Gamma Knights. But that probably won't happen unless I will it to happen by mentioning it here.

On a theory level, I've been thinking about combat in tabletop RPGs, and how to handle it. While I actually do find character builds and tactical combat in games like D&D 3.+ compelling when I've done a sufficient amount of research into them, I prefer that style of play in videogames, not tabletop. I've come to respect that style of game design a bit more again. By integrating all of the mechanics together, a relatively crunchy game can be made much more streamlined (as opposed to many of the overly complex bolt-on mechanics of D&D 2e and other games from that era, see Star Frontiers Advanced which I should but probably won't write a review of bc tbh I was a little disappointed that my Gamma Knights review didn't make it on the thought eater humpday blogarama). However, it also becomes much less modular, so unless you want to redesign the whole game any time you want to hack something, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got. Which is great if you lack the time, creativity, or general inclination to make stuff yourself. But at that point, I'd rather just play a videogame.

Anyway, that was an unintended tangent, this is a bit stream of consciousness. I've been thinking about this stuff because of games like TNT and Gamma Knights. I don't necessarily prefer opposed rolls to hit vs. armor type combat systems, but I do find them interesting, and I wish more OSR people would look to TNT for inspiration even if they aren't interested in switching systems. I like how in TNT ranged weapons have fewer damage dice but can bypass the opposed roll, or how rolling a six on any damage die gives 1 spite damage that also bypasses opposed rolls, such that a sufficient number of weak monsters can still make a mark on player characters, without necessarily being an hyper-deadly game. Likewise, while I generally don't like character builds and tactical crunch in tabletop, I do like the idea of that being a differentiation between regular PCs and mechs or power armored PCs. If I were playing a whole mech game I wouldn't bother, I'd just reskin any other game, but there is something kind of appealing to me that I can't fully articulate about the different sensors and power management and force fields and computerized systems in Gamma Knights (or maybe it's more generally related to the point I will be making below, which is supposed to be the main point of this meandering post).

That being said, in practice, I almost always prefer to minimize combat, or add saving rolls or other non-combat mechanics into combat scenarios. I don't find GMing combat fun, I only kind of find being a PC in combat fun, if the GM did a good job setting up the encounter, and anecdotally, I find that a lot of the fun leaves the table when things get too solely combat-driven. It could just be that I'm not a good combat GM. Or it could be that good combat encounters should include non-combat actions, and I'm doing it correctly after all.

While I haven't played it, I find the Pyrrhic Weaselry, Or At What Cost? system so intriguing because it's willing to defy the norm of combat systems in an otherwise D&D-style game space, and is really conscientious of fictional positioning and how to leverage that to create interesting encounters. I think the term fictional positioning gets thrown around a lot by storygame people, but frankly I've found that many of the people who sling that term around don't really understand what it means, or haven't thought it through all the way, just making common sense needlessly pretentious (this statement is not intended as an attack on all storygamers or all storygames! I'm not one of those obnoxious anti-storygame people! In fact there are many things I like about FATE and PbtA!). Anyway, If you really want to understand what fictional positioning means, read Pyrrhic Weaselry (we've had some good conversations about it on the underutilized SWORDDREAM_unofficial subreddit). I do genuinely think FATE and PbtA do good fictional positioning as well, and also deserve credit for abstracting away combat as not fundamentally different from other mechanics; it's more that I think other people sometimes reduce it to something less meaningful.

Despite all of what I just said, the idea of a combat-less system just seems... wrong. I want a combat system! I don't care that I generally don't like it, or that my players generally don't like it, or that I usually try to minimize its use as much as possible, I still want it there! In small doses it's nice. Just knowing it's there adds to the experience. Maybe that's crazy, but such is life.

That got me thinking though, while there are certain things I don't like about FATE, one thing I really do like about FATE is how it re-constructs tactical combat in a way that doesn't remove combat mechanics altogether, but abstracts them into different kinds of actions that play into the fictional positioning system (aspects). Skills can be designed flexibly for any setting, and can be used as either an attack, defense, to overcome an obstacle, or one other thing that I'm forgetting off-hand because I haven't played it in a while and also I may be getting some of this terminology wrong. That in tandem with the two kinds of stress tracks (one more physical, one more mental, I think called Will) and the ease with which one could hack in more stress tracks, allows you to have your cake and eat it to when it comes to tactical combat vs. fictional positioning. I actually think it's a shame how FATE has to some extent become a victim of its own success, because personally I think FATE is much more interesting, flexible, and DIY than PbtA, which I think has become (or by its nature is) really just the D&D of storygames (for better and worse), but that's also post for another day (I should really be keeping track of these tangents...).

So I don't have a concrete idea at the moment, but I'd like to think about how to, rather than remove combat altogether in games like TNT and OSR, abstract it across other mechanics or situations in ways that are both tactically and fictionally interesting. How could one bend combat to social conflict, or fire fighting, or ghost hunting with a proton pack, or to cooking a dish / line cooking as a team during the dinner rush? I suspect creating a FATE bolt-on to TNT or OSR, or a TNT or OSR-inspired hack of FATE, will play a part in this, but I don't want to commit to anything yet.

I've created TNT character types such as the War Dogs or Warlord that add more fictional-positioning Saving Rolls to combat, but I'd like to maybe try coming up with some character types or general mechanics that go the other way, adding combat-like mechanics to scenarios that are not combat per se. The idea isn't so much to increase the overall amount of combat, but to smooth out the delineation between combat encounters and everything else.

Fitting for this post, I'm going to end on yet another tangent that is dubiously related to the intended point of this post. I've also been thinking about a Poker combat-type mechanic for TNT, inspired partially by the poker mechanics in Deadlands. Because of how TNT uses D6s, I think TNT lends itself better to this kind of mechanic than OSR, but there's no reason why it couldn't also be bolted on to OSR. But again, that's a post for another day...

High Level Games: 4 Reasons Why Your Game And Mine Are Less Different Than You Think

I wrote another HLG article! In line why my recent interest in SWORDDREAM (check out the subreddit!), this article is about defying our preconceived notions of what differentiates different kinds of games, and to what extent it's authorial intent, culture, dice probabilities, etc., and also how to go about leveraging that knowledge. Even if you disagree with the particulars, the point of this article is more about just encouraging people to think about their games more critically, or at least differently.

High Level Games: 3 Ways to Modify Any Game

Image Source

I'm breaking my "posting only every other week" rule to share that high level games has posted my next article! In the article, I discuss, in very broad strokes, a handful of system-neutral ways to modify games. I think if you're reading this blog there's a good chance you're already familiar with my suggestions, but even so, my discussion of dice probabilities and how modifiers affect different dice or how dice can affect character progression may be interesting if you have not given that much consideration.

You can read the article here!

Vortekka One-Shot Play Report / Adventure Module Outline

While my home group has unfortunately not been able to meet in months, my roommate and I had some friends visiting from out of town and we got to run a one-shot with them! I GMed the game, set in my Vortekka micro-setting. We used Dungeon World, which I have never played before but have wanted to try for forever, so that was cool! I'm writing this as sort of a hybrid play report and Adventure Module Outline, since I think it's simple and straightforward, but also was a lot of fun and I could see myself running it again, and I hope other people can get some value out of it as well. While I think it worked as a one-shot, I also think it would be better spread out over a few sessions.

Premise / NPCs

Players are privateers aboard The Brown Bowser, with the mission of discovering new islands for colonization and for the acquisition of lost treasures, gold, and other resources. In addition to players, a few core crewmembers are:

Captain Noah “No Face” Fairman: His entire head and face is covered in bandages. He uses three parrot-shaped golems as his eyes; one blue, one red, one green. He is not especially large but is a ferocious hand-to-hand brawler and sharpshot. He wears an elaborate rainbow-colored frilly coat, a tall hat, and a curly gold wig. He appears friendlier and more relaxed than one might expect from a Captain, but has a low tolerance for insubordination and will turn ruthlessly cutthroat at a moment’s notice, if necessary. No Face is actually a Shark. He intends to take their treasure to an island dominated by sharks and kill the rest of the crew.

Cowan: A zapatotian mercenary hired as security officer and second-mate. He is disliked by much of the crew, in part due to racism, and in part due to him being a hard-ass. He is frequently seen swinging from the masts of the ship. Except for a clear disdain for Diego, he does not otherwise express his feelings towards others openly. In addition to his natural weapons, he is a master of phalanx tactics with a spear and shield.

Diego Jaramillo: First-mate. Casually dressed, bronze skin, short black hair, long hoop earrings, wears a lot of makeup. A drunken lay about, but brilliant ship and airplane pilot, decent fighter, and charismatic gentleman. He has a dark past; he was once a captain, but after a mission gone horribly wrong, he was demoted. He will avoid discussing this, but when drunk, or if he gets to know players better, he may reveal how his ship was somehow erroneously routed to a dangerous island, and most of his crew were killed and his precious cargo destroyed. Has an adversarial relationship both with Captain No Face and Cowan. Cowan may develop a begrudging respect for him if organized by the players against No Face. On the other hand, No Face was in fact the one who secretly organized the mishap on Diego’s ship, and sees Diego as a loose end. He insisted on Diego as his first-mate to kill him off once and for all. 

Characters

Oskar: A swashbuckling rogue with a magnetic energy sword known as the omni-sword. He dresses elaborately and flamboyantly with the full accouterments of a 17th century-esque gentleman. We used the mutant playbook from adventures on dungeon planet, where we re-flavored the "mutations" as abilities from his omni-sword, and I just wrote some custom moves for it. Played by my roommate (referred to as R).

Wilhellem: A scientist and technologist with an all-terrain, amphibious and aerial mech suit. I used the mechanic playbook from Inverse World. Played by our male visiting friend (referred to as M)

Lana: A wizard who desires drink and adventure. Not content to read from arcane books, she wants to explore the islands of the vortex and discover new magics first-hand. This was the only core Dungeon World playbook of the party. Played by our female visiting friend (referred to as F).

Play Report

• I wrote a quick-and-dirty weird science fantasy island generator for this one-shot and pre-generated 4 islands. I knew that there was no way the players would hit all of them in a single one-shot, but I wanted there to be options. Of course I rolled for the largest one, so the bulk of the adventure was on the island or on the ship.
• Randomly roll islands (either in advance or as needed) using island generator. This can go indefinitely. As the session is wrapping up, Captain No Face will lead the ship to the drop-off colony, which has been overrun by sharks. If the players realize Captain No Face is a shark and mutiny, or manage to escape the shark colony alive, they “win”.
• Roll 1d12 for random encounter between islands. (NOTE that in this one-shot, the players only traveled to one island, but for a longer adventure this is what I would have done)
• 1-4: nothing happens. 
• 5-6: 1d6 small or 1d4 medium aquatic or aerial hostile creature.
• 7: 1 massive or 1 large and 1d4 medium/small aquatic or aerial hostile creatures.
• 8: Dangerous natural phenomenon (waves/storm/rocky/etc.).
• 9: Friendly ships, merchants, prey aquatic or aerial creatures.
• 10-11: 1d4 small hostile pirate ships.
• 12: Large hostile battleship and 1d4 small ships.
• For each island, there should be some conflict:
• The captain wants to take more resources than would be sustainable for the island’s ecosystem.
• The ancient relic / natural oddity is more powerful than the captain is letting on. He will feign ignorance, adamantly disagree, or authoritatively shut down any conversation on the matter.
• The live specimen is being kept under inhumane (but survivable) conditions.
• The Captain demands they avoid an encounter with a friendly human ship. He either provides no explanation and demands obedience, or makes a weak/speculative argument like it may be a trap or something seems “fishy”.
• The Captain forces the party/crew to do needlessly risky things and holds no regard for their lives. This should be towards the end of the session, when the Captain wants to thin out the crew to make the inevitable betrayal easier.
• Below is the one island that my players visited this game, but if you like this, in the island generator post that I linked above you'll find three others.

Island 4 (Large)
A partially submerged island covered in a vibrant, metallic-colored coral forest. The corals produce usually pleasant humming and singing noises.
Apex Predators: Starfish-shaped robots harvest the coral, without discernment for other present lifeforms within.
Threat 1: Large robots disguised as coral which trap threats to the apex robots.
Threat 2: An underwater hive of flying bee-like pistol shrimp which have evolved to ballistically propel themselves by producing sonic booms, as a means of rapidly targeting prey within the coral forest and avoiding the traps of disguised robots.
Threat 3: Packs of raptors with vibrant metallic colors and frills which disguise them within the coral.
Non-threat 1: Pteranodons with sharp beaks and claws capable of chewing through hard coral. They are only dangerous if threatened.
Non-threat 2: A photosynthetic, slime-like yeast which has developed a symbiotic relationship with the coral. Can provide sustenance, but also causes inebriation or intense hallucinations.
Non-threat 3: A metallic gold-colored tree which produces a multi-metallic-colored tropical fruit pollinated by the flying pistol shrimp. The fruit contains a chemical harmful to the slime yeast, and by extension the coral forest itself. Seemingly an invasive species outcompeting the coral for the same ecological niche.
Treasure: 1200 gold value in slime yeast, to be sold as a recreational drug or as medicine.
Conflict: While the metallic trees were eventually going to overtake the coral forest anyway, collecting so much yeast will give the trees an even larger advantage. The trees will overtake the island faster than the ecosystem can adapt, and the ecosystem will collapse. Additionally, the captain will be draconian in not allowing the crew to consume the slime, threatening death, while flagrantly abusing as much of the slime as he wants. Eventually a crew member will be caught stealing slime and the captain will force them to walk the plank. 

•  The players investigated the island, encountering all the wildlife. After running some analyses (and consulting with Diego and Captain No-Face), they learned that the slime was extremely valuable, and made it their mission to extract as much slime as possible. They also learned first-hand about the intoxicating effects of the slime, which was quite fun ;). The captain gave them 24 hours to extract the slime.
• There were 4 major pockets of slime. They had to clear out each area of threats so that a safe and efficient pipeline could be established. Their actions, or spending time coming up with plans, would affect how long it took to clear out each pocket.
• They learned that by extracting the slime, they were creating an imbalance in the ecosystem. They decided that they did not want to destroy the ecosystem of the island, so they had to clear out a proportional number of trees to counterbalance the amount of slime they extracted, nearly doubling the time and creating additional complications.
• After encountering and defeating the apex predator, they were able to extract enough slime to satisfy the captain in just the nick of time.
• Upon returning to the ship, Captain No-Face throws a party in honor of a successful mission. While he consumes as much slime as he could want, he does not allow anyone else to sample the goods. 
• The players stumble upon Cowan and Captain No-Face getting into a heated argument. They hear shouting, followed by violent noises. They rush in too late, and find Cowan's body brutally torn apart, the office covered in blood.
• No-Face tells the party Cowan had gone crazy. Oskar follows No-Face to discuss the matter further, while Lana and Wilhellem investigate the office.
• In their investigations, they discover that the official documentation of the Brown Bowser's status as a privateer ship have been falsified. Additionally, they find a magical shark tooth.
• Simultaneously, Oskar, not convinced by No-Face, engages him in a duel of honor, where No-Face removes his bandages and reveals himself as a shark.
• The other players, hearing the conflict, rush to his aid, and they all face off against No-Face and his parrot golems. 
• Lana magically activates the shark tooth. It turns into a magical sword, but shark teeth in the pommel cut into her hand, embedding the sword into her.
• The party manages to kill No-Face and keep the ship and slime, Diego survives, but Lana's fate is left uncertain.

The Breakdown

Given that this was a setting I've never run before, and a system I've never run before, and M and F have little RPG experience, I was worried about how this was going to go, but actually everyone had a really good time! In retrospect I wish I had just developed one island and put more depth into it, since for a one-shot of course they weren't going to get far, but still they really liked the island. I also felt like I hadn't utilized the NPCs as well as I would have liked, but again I think for a one-shot that's to be expected. I will definitely say that R crushed it! He and I have been roleplaying together for nearly 2 years now and he's always been great, but he really nailed the character concept with Oskar right away, and that kept the game exciting and engaging.

In regards to Dungeon World itself, I thought it was a fun system and I want to play with it more, but also I struggled with the reactive nature of the player/GM relationship and I don't think I leveraged the system to full effect. I also ignored a lot of the GM moves and other mechanics that felt like obvious stuff I would have done anyway, but I wonder if that would have changed the experience if I had stayed closer to those rules. While we discussed the bonds during character creation, they also didn't really come into play during the one-shot. In a longer game where character progression is determined by fulfilling bonds maybe things would have been different, but in a one-shot with limited time, the idea of fulfilling bonds seems at odds with a D&D-style adventure. That being said, even with just this one one-shot, it was clear to me how this system applies a "storygame" approach to a D&D framework that I think is really cool. It feels like a similar thing to what I was trying to do with my WIP LotFP: Decyphered game, where I attempted to fit the design philosophy of the Cypher System to a D&D framework.