Slow Work Toward New Worlds

Today has largely been acting as a chauffeur, managing errands, setting up an appointment to pickup my new contacts and glasses, and enjoying the beautiful weather.  Also, rest.  I didn't really start the day until 2:00 p.m. following some incredible insomnia.

I have started looking into creating a small business, not that I'm prepared to do so, but for the sake of understanding things better for possible future options.  There's a long way to go for that, since there's so much relevant information, but it's all been fairly comprehensible so far.  One thing that helps keep me going these days is the thought of potential futures and learning how to create them, regardless of what I actually end up doing.

One of my roommates and I did have a short discussion on the topic, sparked mainly by the inspiration she had to recreate an old character of hers, Mecca, now that the Player's Handbook 3 is available.  Mecca was a psion in older editions of the game, and while my roommate attempted to make versions of her in 4th Edition, none of them were satisfactory since the psionic power source hadn't been finalized and published until recently.

While the discussion was short, it did lead to potentially getting in touch with someone who does game design.  I do already know some people that could be helpful in that regard, but not many, so having someone else that might be able to help coax me through the process of getting into game design would be nice.

In particular, I'll need some people to help me get focused on it and keep me current on modern game systems, since right now I'm largely familiar with 4th Edition D&D.  I've played other games in the past, but I haven't played anything else that's been released in the past several years.  Which is OK for now, since there's plenty of room to work on supplemental material, and I'll certainly want to focus more on creating supplements than entirely new games, but I will want to become more familiar with a variety of games over time and consider creating supplements for other systems as well as designing my own games someday.

In the meantime, I'll be letting my various campaign setting ideas gestate for a while.  I should review the short document on the latest idea I had and see about updating it.

Delays and Progress

The weekend was a busy one, between a party and a D&D game to run.  The past couple days have been a small Hell of fatigue and poor health.  The game went fairly well, all things considered.  I'm considering a table "lose one turn" penalty for when a player causes serious problems.  During an encounter, the player's character would effectively be considered stunned until the end of their next turn.  Something like that.  Hopefully I won't need to implement it, but it was necessary this last session.

I completely forgot to test implementing the Swift Action Points rule, but I think things ran pretty well over all.  I didn't have thing planned as well as I might like and really need to place extra effort on considering things like, perhaps, creating a disease tract for spending a certain amount of time in raw sewage.  (The encounters took place in a sewer.)

In the meantime, I had the thought to attempt porting some Diablo material to 4th Edition, now that I'm more familiar with the game than I was when I last ran a session of this campaign.  First things first: aura powers for the paladin.  Here's a first draft attempt at establishing the aura keyword:

Auras
     Auras are tied to utility powers which have the aura keyword. Every aura power is a burst power which creates a zone. That zone is centered on a creature or an object and moves with the creature or object. Any one creature or object can only have one aura active on it at a time, and can only benefit from one aura power at a time.
     For example, should a creature be standing in a square that is covered by two overlapping zones, that creature must choose which benefit to gain, rather than gaining the benefits of both. In addition, any player who uses an aura power cannot use another aura power until after the original power’s effects have ended.

I've put more work into creating the aura powers themselves.  It's an interesting thing to try and downgrade the overpowered skills from Diablo II into something that can fit into a D&D game (or at least, a 4th Edition game).  I think I have the powers' concepts laid out fairly well, though I haven't done any rigorous balancing work yet.  It's a tricky thing.  Of course, none of this will be publishable, but it could be useful for the campaign I'm running and for practice.  Who knows: if I start creating material that's really satisfying and writing some decent flavor for it, I might consider pitching an article or two for D&D Insider.

Something Else

Today, other than realizing it's technically possible to gain a 25 square bonus to the distance of teleportation powers from items alone as an eladrin, was largely devoid of D&D (though gaining 125 feet or more distance with every move action is pretty impressive).

Instead, a friend of mine has been putting efforts into reviving an anime crossover role-playing chat room he'd started some time ago but wasn't able to develop.  The game itself is more or less free-form, within the boundaries of the select list of near-modern-day Japanese-metropolis-located anime currently approved for the setting.  There is no Dragonball here.  There is, however, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lupin III, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.  Only canon characters are currently allowed, and people need to apply for them.

In any case, he wants to create a simplistic game system as a form of mediation for the times when staff for the chat room aren't available to mediate disputes.  He wants to eliminate experience points in favor of tokens awarded for play.  There would be different kinds of tokens, each awarded as appropriate to the scene, and each could be used in a different way.  His initial list of eight tokens, while brainstorming, was Attack, Defense, Subversion, Power reserve, Legacy/history, Privilege, Mental, and Items/artifacts.

I suggested that his system didn't seem all that simple or concise as he described it with more detail and made some new suggestions, brainstorming myself.  The first was that tokens could be divided into two short lists of different types, say three each, which could be combined for new effects.  Instead of a somewhat vague list of eight tokens with eight basic effects, there would be a more concise list of six tokens in two different categories with nine possible base effects.  He seemed to like the idea, so I elaborated further.  I narrowed his token list to fit this picture:

Basic Tokens: Attack, Deliberate, Defend
Modifying Tokens: Boost, Legacy, Artifact

"Deliberate" was my word to encompass both Subversion and Mental.  Mental was meant as a token used for concentration, analyzing problems, and so forth, while Subversion was used as a sort of bluff, feint, or other means of diminishing a foe's defenses.  Deliberate would be used for both those things.  Boost is just s simplified word for "Power reserve," which was described as letting you "boost things."  I folded "Privelege" into "Legacy," since both of them were described as more or less the same thing: things you can "Just Do," "passive social stuff," et cetera.  (In society, privilege tends to be a result of legacy in some form or another.)

Going a step further, my friend mentioned wanting to have what sounded like the equivalent of daily powers in 4th Edition.  He wanted to incorporate things people could only do once in a while and that would last for an entire encounter.  I gave him the example of the fighter's harrier's ploy 1st-level daily power, which lets you shift your Dexterity modifier whenever the target moves until the end of the encounter, describing how it works and what it means in context.

I suggested that Basic Tokens — Attack, Deliberate, Defend — could be the equivalent of at-will powers, things any character can do all the time until exhausted, seriously wounded, unconscious, or what have you.  The Modifier Tokens, on the other hand — Boost, Legacy, Artifact — could only be used, say, once an encounter or once a day.  However, as one earns more tokens, one could use those modifiers as often as the number of tokens one has accumulated, since there won't be any experience levels gained or the like.

It's not a perfect system, of course, and it requires further consideration, but I like coming up with some fairly concise options on the fly and will enjoy contributing further ideas later.

Fighting with Shields

Yesterday, Wizards finally released a new D&D Insider subscriber-only article that I've been waiting to see for some time: Fighter Shield Options.  Not long after 4th Edition was released, I couldn't get the silly notion of a character wielding two shields out of my head.  It had just the right sort of pulpy ridiculousness that games like D&D are good for.  (I tend to be a fan of ridiculous things, fictional or otherwise, so long as they're not blatantly offensive.)

Sometime after I'd considered the idea, I thought about how I would make it work.  Should it be as simple as a feat or as complex as a new class?  I kept coming back to the idea of either a multiclass path, similar to the Spiked Chain Mastery path in the Playing Shadar-kai article from Dragon 372, or a paragon path with some key requirements.  I hadn't settled on what the requirements should be; one version of the paragon path had these prerequisites: "Any martial class or defender role, proficiency with light shields and heavy shields."  Some versions required proficiency with the spiked shield, while others granted it.

What's interesting about the new "Class Acts: Fighters" article is that none of the new feats, nor the paragon path provided, grant a character the ability to wield two shields, even though the paragon path is specifically designed with features which require a character to be wielding two shields.  On the other hand, the only reference of being unable to wield two shields is in the description of the spiked shield in the Adventurer's Vault, not in the Player's Handbook or any other Core materials.  The problem is that wielding two shields doesn't further boost one's defenses: since shields provide shield bonuses to your defenses, rather than untyped bonuses, two heavy shields merely overlap and grant the same bonus to AC and Reflex as one heavy shield (disregarding any features which might increase this).

The paragon path in the article circumvents this by allowing a character to increase the bonus from one of their shields while wielding two shields.  This amounts to the same as wielding one light shield and one heavy shield (and gaining bonuses from each), so one can never have bonuses as high as two heavy shields conceptually could grant, but it's more than we had before.  In any case, the article does introduce new magic items, all of which are enchantments for any shield which allow that shield to be used as a melee weapon, in addition to other benefits.  The assumption of this article seems to be either that there is, in fact, no rule against wielding two shields — merely that there's normally no benefit to doing so — or that shields which can be used as weapons, such as these magic shields or a spiked shield, do not count toward the number of shields you're using, if we trust the rule introduced in the spiked shield's description.

One thing that's clear is they're finally planning to add weapon enchantments for the spiked shield, as any of these new magic items could apply, though they only go through the upper paragon tier so far; there are no such items for the epic tier yet.  Perhaps we'll see some new enchantments later, while we wait for these updates to be added to the Character Builder and Compendium on May 4.  The essential design scheme seems to be for a character to wield a heavy shield and a spiked shield simultaneously, though in a sense, the spiked shield has been made virtually obsolete by these enchantments.  Since they can be used on any shield, the spiked shield doesn't have a substantial purpose past 1st level, unless your character has the need for a shield with the light blade and off-hand properties.  I'm sure they'll create new rules and errata for all these things later in the year.  In the meantime, at least it's a step toward something I've wanted to see for a while.

Game System License

Having read through the 4th Edition Game System License (GSL), it seems pretty straightforward.  Don't directly define or redefine anything from the Core materials in original, licensed products, only relying on the System Reference Document (SRD) for usable references and otherwise referencing the title of a Core book containing relevant information — but no page numbers, since they might revise the books.  Other than that, it's the usual rules against depicting excessive violence and pornography, present your product as if it was theirs or vice versa, and so forth.

So next will be reading through the 85 pages of the SRD, once I get the time and focus to spare, to get a better idea of how all the rules usage comes together.  It looks like you're also not supposed to publish any materials, freely or for profit, without first submitting a completed and signed copy of the Statement of Acceptance document and then waited at least 14 days to see whether or not you receive a notice of decline.  Let's hope that with the disclaimer that this is not official part of any game produced by Wizards of the Coast, myself, or anyone else (as far as I know); that I am not currently licensed to publish material for any Wizards of the Coast product; and that I currently have no intention of using this rule, as stated, in any fashion, I can post this sample freely and without expectation of profit, reception, use, or legal action:

Swift Action Points (optional rule):  Whenever you drop a foe to 0 hit points or fewer, you gain one swift action point which you must use before the end of your next turn or it is lost.  A swift action point can be spent as a free action to gain an extra standard, move, or minor action on your turn and does not count against your use of action points in an encounter.  Only one action point or swift action point can be used per round, and swift action points do not grant you the benefit of features which are activated by spending an action point.  Swift action points are gained in addition to any other benefits you gain from dropping a foe to 0 or fewer hit points.

I've received to criticisms to this rule so far.  One is that it will change the tactics of the game so that players will try and go after weaker monsters and minions before anything else to gain the benefit of the kill, but in my experience players typically do that anyway if they can identify the weaker monsters.  I would argue that a good strategy would be to try and target both a minion and a nonminion on the same turn, reaping the benefit of killing the minion first to then attack a stronger foe, maximizing a character's potential effectiveness on each turn, rather than taking out two minions.  On the other hand, one could hypothetically drop one minion, spend the swift action point to drop another, and save that extra swift action point for the next round.  Still, I don't think that unbalances the game in any appreciable way; it just gives players something else to consider.

The other criticism I've received, which is certainly valid, is that a feature like this favors strikers, which will usually deal more damage and thus have a higher probability of dropping a foe.  That's true in some sense, though without knowing a monster's hit-point total, one can never be certain who will drop a given foe; it will always be the person who hits and reduces the monster's last hit point, which could be anyone as chaotic as battles tend to be.  The rule does somewhat favor strikers, but not entirely.  One could also consider the Very Long Range optional rule in The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, which favors characters who use ranged weapons over melee attackers and casters of various sorts who use implement powers rather than ranged weapon powers.  Very Long Range also doesn't offer as much of a benefit as Swift Action Points, of course, but there isn't necessarily a reason to revise the feature because one role might be slightly favored over the others, particularly when it largely means allowing characters to fulfill that role a bit better than they already do.

I'm not planning to publish that rule officially in any form at this time; it's just been a consideration for a hack-and-slash campaign inspired by the Diablo video games.  I may play-test it this weekend to see how it works and consider either revising it or scrapping it entirely.

A New Beginning

I've never been all that much of a gamer. OK, so back in high school, I played games on the Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, had a subscription to Gamepro magazine, and all that. I'd barely had an introduction by a couple friends to tabletop role-playing games such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Dark Ages. I've had cursory experiences with friends in college playing a variety of games such as Big Eyes, Small Mouth; World Tree; and 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

It wasn't until after a bit of a social crisis that I moved into an apartment with people who've been playing D&D all their lives. At the time, they were playing every Sunday, and eventually I decided to join the weekly social activities. I realized how limited I was compared to everyone else, how little I understood, and how bad I was at keeping track of everything. When 4th Edition was released in 2008, I decided to start getting into it and, over time, I've put more effort into learning all the quirks of the game, its play, its design, how to modify things, ways of designing campaigns to eventually run some of my own, and so on.

I've always been a pretty creative person with a wild imagination. There are, of course, practical limits to how wild one's imagination can be and still make a good game. I'm starting this blog — whose name originates from an old playful hobby of coming up with band, album, and song names — as a way of exploring these games and developing my own material for them. Since 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is currently the system with which I'm most familiar, it will be the primary basis of these explorations for now.

The ultimate goal will be to devise new rules, characters, and settings that fit into an expanded game mold until the work is of sufficient quality to be worthy of publishing, whether or not I actually choose to publish anything. Here's hoping I can manage it!