Compromise and Conceit

Infernal adventuring…

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An Australian statistician and role-player living in Japan, interested in the theory and practice of role-playing…

  • What I’m reading: Orientalism

    Having lived in Japan, I have on occasion been called a “Japanophile” or an “Orientalist” because there are some things about Japanese life I think are good and should be adopted in the West. I am interested in the possibility that these accusations actually represent a racist rejection of critiques of the West based on comparison of cultures, and that the phrase “Orientalism” has come to mean something very different to the original intention of its author (Edward Said). I am particularly reminded of an exchange on my blog about Japanese life, in which a critic of my position accused me of being “just” a “Japanophile”. This person’s concern for my apparently racist and patronising blanket acceptance of Japanese ways was somewhat belied by their use of the term “Jap” to refer to the Japanese.

    In order to investigate the possibility that Orientalism‘s critique of Orientalism has been rebranded by racists as a rejection of Oriental critiques of the West, I thought I should read the original text. This is, of course, slow going, since it’s full of wanky academic writing. Here are some opinions so far:

    • It’s full of wank. There are some classic passages of wank, but one particular sort of wank which stands out so far is the casual scattering of untranslated French and German through the text. That, my friends, is uber-wank. I suspect that Dr. Said won’t be scattering untranslated Arabic through the text, but I am pretty sure he can read and speak Arabic. Is it Orientalism to treat French as immediately understandable, but Arabic as requiring translation? (Note it hasn’t happened yet)
    • He has not convinced me that Orientalism is different to racism, and until he does I see no reason for writing a book about it
    • He speaks in the introduction of his experience, as a Palestinian citizen, of being “rendered invisible” by Western (and particularly American) accounts of the destruction of Palestine. Unfortunately, when he does this Dr. Said uses the gendered words “he”, “him” and “his”, and very clearly throughout the book uses language intended to render invisible all women, but particularly Oriental women. I am struck by the hypocrisy of writing a book about the backgrounding of the real experience of a class of people (Orientals) in language which backgrounds a whole class of people (women). The book was first published in 1978, after the issue of gendered language had been well covered by other authors (e.g. Friedan and Greer) so he has no excuse for this
    • I’m pretty confident he has got the history of Japan wrong. In part 3 of chapter 1 he makes the claim that throughout history no part of the Orient outside of the Islamic world has resisted incursion by the West, and he even gives an example of a 2 year period in Japanese history (in the 17th century) when the Japanese did resist incursion, so we know he is speaking of a pretty broad time span. But in fact Japan resisted all foreign incursion up until 1945, and there was a 150 year period when they allowed no westerners into Japan. The 2 year period of resistance which Said mentions was by Japanese Christians, who kicked out the Portuguese (in his account); but Japanese Christians are a tiny minority in Japan precisely because the Japanese have so thoroughly resisted foreign incursion. Even today Japan is undiscovered country for Westerners, academic and non-academic alike, while it has very effectively infiltrated western society. If he can’t get his history right, I am very suspicious of his overall thesis. 
    So far it’s an interesting but not a challenging read, and I am unconvinced that it has anything much to add to the general discourse on racism then or since.

  • Reconfiguring AD&D: Combat

    Having described the imbalances between the combat and skill systems in the d20 system, I here present my proposal for an alternative combat system which combines them properly. This description relies on use of my proposal for ability scores which are represented entirely in the form of the ability modifiers; and it should be assumed that all skill checks are conducted with 2d10 (much better probabilistically; I may have something to say about this at the end).

    The requisite skills: Under this system saving throws are developed as skills, labelled Fortitude, Reflexes and Will, and the Fortitude skill total also indicates the total number of wounds a PC can sustain (lethal or non-lethal). The base attack bonus is also developed separately as two skills (Melee and Missile). 

     Wounds: Health is measured not in hit points but as a total number of wounds which can be sustained, equal to the Fortitude skill total. Exact handling of wounds can be campaign-specific, but I envisage a character becoming incapacitated and capable only of limited movement when wounds received equal total wounds, then unconscious when wounds increase further; and dead after a failed Fortitude skill check (i.e. a failed Fortitude save).

    Armour Class: Armour class is determined using the Reflex skill, with armour penalty applied and no armour bonus. In combat armour class is considered to be a Reflex skill save, which is usually done by taking 10, so armour class becomes 10+Reflex total. However, characters with a shield or the dodge can choose to make a skill check to improve their armour class, and take the better of the skill check or taking 10. This turns the combat roll into an opposed skill check. The armour bonus of the armour worn counts as damage reduction.

    Example skills and wounds: Depending on the skill development system few characters will have rapid advancement in all these skills. A first level fighter might have 3 ranks in Fortitude and melee, and perhaps 1-3 ranks in reflexes. Let us assume for now 3 ranks in Fortitude and 1 in reflexes, giving skill totals of 5 and 3 respectively, assuming above-average ability scores of +2 in Constitution and Dexterity. Further suppose a melee skill of 3 with a +3 in Strength, giving a total of +6. This means a first level fighter can sustain 5 wounds. Wearing a chain shirt, the fighter will have a total reflex skill of 1 (due to armour penalty of -2) and damage reduction of 4. Usually this will give an armour class of 11 and damage reduction 4, but with a shield the PC can opt to make a challenged skill check, raising armour class as high as 21 depending on the roll.

    The attack roll: The attack roll is a combat skill check challenged by the defenders reflex skill, which is usually resolved with the defender taking 10. The difference between the attacker’s roll and the target DC is damage done, which is reduced by damage reduction. The result is the number of wounds of damage done. The weapon used sets the maximum damage done after damage reduction (which may differ by armour types), and if the damage is reduced to 0 or below it becomes simply 1 non-lethal wound. For example, a dagger may have a maximum damage of 1 wound, while a greatsword has a maximum of 5. (We will see later that this rebalances spells so that they are not as dangerous as the bigger weapons). Criticals occur automatically when the critical range is rolled (which happens much less frequently on 2d10) and do not automatically double damage; rather, they increase the wounds done by the roll, and the maximum number of wounds, by some figure. A rapier, for example, may have a critical effect of +2; it increases the damage done on a critical roll by 2, and increases the maximum damage by 2.

    Wounds as a penalty: Wounds received are applied as a penalty to the attack roll but not the reflex save, so that as combatants suffer wounds there is a simple game mechanic for reducing their effectiveness. In character development this leads to a trade-off between focussing on toughness, defensive ability and offensive ability. Too much focus on offense means that the PC will collapse rapidly in combat; too much focus on wounds means that the PC can keep fighting through damage, but will rapidly lose efficacy; too much focus on defensive ability means that the character is hard to hit but dies quickly (and will likely be at their best in light armour with low penalties). Note also that much damage sustained by heavily armed fighters will be non-lethal wounds. Making non-lethal wounds easy to heal will mean that they can be seen as shock, bruising and stunning effects rather than actual wounds.

    Multiple attacks: As a fighter gains combat skill they can pick up multiple attacks. Rather than resolving these as multiple dice rolls, these multiple attacks increase the maximum damage the fighter can do by a multiple, enabling the single combat roll to have a more effective maximum ceiling. For example, a fighter with 2 attacks wielding a weapon with maximum damage of 3 will be able to do a maximum damage of 6 in a single round. This maintains the old description of combat as an abstract process, with the round containing multiple feints and attacks (under such a description there is no justification for multiple attack rolls); it also allows a fighter’s lethality with a weapon to increase beyond the weapon’s basic statistics.

    Initiative: can be resolved as a challenged reflex skill check, though I am considering introducing a new skill, Presence, which covers initiative, fear, and Cleric’s turning checks. If initiative is resolved using reflex, we can incorporate character’s dodge/shield defensive skill checks in the roll.

    Example attack: Imagine our example first level fighter fighting himself, with a longsword whose maximum damage is, say, 4, with a critical effect of +2. First our antagonists roll initiative, and because they have shields we use the result also as their reflex skill check to set the DC of attacks. Fighter 1 rolls a 4, so his initiative is 5; Fighter 2 gets a 12, for a total of 13. Since Fighter 1 rolled less than 10 he takes 10 on his reflex skill check, which sets the DC of attacks against him as 11 for this round; Fighter 2 uses the initiative check result as the DC of attacks against her. Fighter 2 then rolls to attack Fighter 1, rolling 7 for a total of 13. This beats the DC by 2, doing 2 damage, which is absorbed to 0 by Fighter 1’s damage reduction. Fighter 1 therefore suffers a single non-lethal wound. This acts as a penalty on Fighter 1’s melee skill, whose total reduces to 5. Fortunately Fighter 1 rolls a 13, giving a total of 18. This beats Fighter 2’s hit DC of 13 by 5, doing 5 wounds; after damage reduction this becomes 1, i.e. 1 lethal wound.

    We now commence round 2. We retain the initial initiative roll but reroll reflex for the shield defense checks. Both players roll 9, so the combatants take 10 on their defense rolls, therefore setting attack DCs of 11. Fighter 2 attacks first with a penalty of 1 (for her 1 lethal wound) for a total adjustment of 5. She rolls 19 – a critical! The total of her attack roll is 24, which does beats Fighter 1’s defensive DC of 11 by 13, doing 13 wounds, which is reduced to 9 wounds after damage reduction. Usually the maximum damage Fighter 2 could do with a longsword is 4, but the critical has increased this to 6, so Fighter 2 does 6 wounds to fighter 1 after damage reduction. Since Fighter 1 only has 5 wounds remaining, Fighter 1 goes unconscious. Game over.

    Rationale: This system merges combat and its results entirely within the skill system, and introduces some elements of the Rolemaster system, specifically the idea that heavily armoured fighters are easy to hit but hard to damage. It encourages the development of combat styles by establishing clear tactical differences between agile, tough or offensive combatants, and making it difficult for PCs to be all 3. It removes the damage roll and (by dint of using 2d10) the threat roll for criticals; at higher levels it removes all rolls for extra attacks. It introduces a single roll for the challenged combat skill check, but only when a combatant is parrying, has the dodge feat or is wielding a shield. It increases the lethality of heavy weapons, and gives a direct comparability between magical and physical attacks, both in damage done and the skill checks to be used. Under this system combat should require a maximum of 3 dice rolls in the first combat round and a maximum of 2 thereafter. Finally, it introduces an armour penalty on reflex saves (now handled by the reflex skills) but allows the possibility that armour protects against traps and magical attacks through its damage reduction. It also makes non-lethal damage a more important part of adventuring.

  • Dutch Conversations

    Cruising the canals of Amsterdam over the weekend, I discussed my musings on virtual economies with my good friend (and WoWer) the good Dr. A. His response to my ideas about a virtual economy built on real money was to ask “why”?

    Good enough question, I suppose. Why would a company make a risky game where players can lose money when a perfectly good subscription model exists?

    One obvious answer is that, well, it works with poker. The company would be gambling that it can make money from low-level players to cover losses to high level players (kind of like insurance).

    Another possibility is that, by opening up a world based on real money, the company could license out bits of it to other companies, to design adventures or campaigns or just spaces. This would lead to diversity in role-playing experience, which presumably the consumers are after (sometimes, looking at WoW, this is hard to see – but I play NWN2, so what can I complain?) There could also be the lure of players at high level getting to build their strongholds as a kind of licensed instance.

    To this suggestion my friend Dr A replied – “But Blizzard do this perfectly well and people are willing to pay decent money to adventure in a world entirely controlled by Blizzard”.

    To which I replied – “So you think players are happy with socialism, and unwilling to try a transition to a market economy?” By socialism I meant, of course, that this is exactly what Blizzard are doing. Everyone pays a fixed amount of monthly money, and in exchange they get everything provided for them – the economy, the environment, their workplace rights, and of course even the price of health care (i.e. potions) is fixed… that’s socialism man. My model is radical free marketeering!

    My friend Dr. A’s response? “Of course – look at me, I live in Amsterdam!”

    And Amsterdam certainly does seem to be a better place to live than London…

  • Reconfiguring D&D: stats, and unbalanced levelling

    There are a few things about the d20 system which I think are unnecessarily cumbersome or burdensome and serve no real purpose, or are a historical artifact. Two which I think definitely need adjustment – one because it is just so silly, and one because it is so clumsy – are the stats system, and the way power increases unevenly in different areas of the system.

    Stats: It is completely unnecessary to have a system of basic stats (strength, dexterity etc.) in which the ability modifier (i.e. the bonus) is separate and determined entirely by the ability score, particularly when the relationship between the two is formulaic – i.e. a +2 increase in score gives a +1 increase in modifier. Just write the stat as a bonus or penalty, and make ability modifying items and spells half as powerful or half as frequent. Level-based ability increases occur every 8 levels instead of every 4; +1 ability score magic items are half as frequent; Bull’s Strength gives a +2 to strength; and so on. I have DM’d for beginners many times, and they always say the same thing – this is stupid.

    Uneven levelling: The disconnect between the hit point and spell systems and the skill system means that there is a fundamental difference in power increases between the two. Consider, for example, the move from 1st to 2nd level for a well-powered character. This character will have a roughly +6 bonus in their main skill (which for rogues, particularly, is an essential skill) and a +4 to their main save or base attack. They will have a single die of hit points with (if a fighter) a small constitution modifier. When they go to 2nd level the main skill will increase by 2, i.e. 30%; the main save by 1, i.e. 25%. But if they rolled 2 hps at 1st level, the chances of an at least 100% increase in hit points are very high – 3 in 4 for a mage, 9 in 10 for a Fighter. Sure, if they rolled high at level 1 and then roll poorly at level 2 the opposite may occur, but chances are they will experience essentially a 100% increase in their survival ability; but their opponents will become only slightly more dangerous. Meanwhile, the wizard’s spell DC does not change at all, and in fact only goes up by 1 at 3rd level. In fact in general the main save for any class increases at twice the rate of spell DCs, and gets many more magical enhancements over time. The weak save of all classes increases slower than a wizard’s spell DC, but after adding in a level-appropriate magic item it will always be equal to the spell DC. For example, at 3rd level a weak save is +1; the Wizard gains 2nd level spells, so the wizard’s spell DC increases by +2. So any character with a +1 to saving throws due to magic has essentially equalled the wizard’s spell DC, with the only difference occurring if the wizard has high intelligence or feats.

    This problem of differential powering occurs because of the disjunction between the skill system (which is secondary for all non-rogue/non-ranger characters) and the save/combat system, on the one hand, and the hit point and spell systems on the other. Were character health and spell power handled as skills, they would level up in the same general way as combat/saves and skills. Because weapon damage doesn’t increase with skill, and because spell DCs are weak compared to saves, character hit points and resistance to magic increase rapidly compared to weapon and spell power. There is no way for a fighter to kill another fighter of more than 3rd level with a single, well-timed hit except by means of a  critical, so no fight carries serious risk if the odds are in a PC’s favour. Similarly there is no way that a character at higher levels will regularly fall prey to spells except by very bad luck, since they only need to roll over 10 on their weak save, or 5 or 6 on their strong save, to beat most magic. Hence the phenomenon of parties tending to have opponents of much greater power than their individual levels.

    By comparison, in rolemaster every fight was potentially deadly. Low-level opponents were always dismissed eventually, but there was always a risk of a very nasty accident. Sometimes rolemaster errs a little on the side of deadliness, and certainly games like Traveller and WFRP are way too dangerous to encourage swashbuckling. But the d20 system as it stands hardly encourages fear or caution… unless you are that ultimate in useless creatures, a wizard with no back-up…

  • A model for a real virtual economy

    In an earlier post I suggested a business model in a virtual world based around establishing a manufacturing industry whose products were sold for gold in the world, and/or real money to players. Under this model the business process of the manufacturer is still separate from the economy in which the manufacturing occurs.

    i.e. the manufacturing occurs in the virtual economy of the MMORPG, but the business process occurs when the gold gained or the items made are  sold by credit card in the real world. The virtual economy is arid and perhaps quite limits the ability of manufacturing to succeed there, though some researchers are finding that real economic “laws” function in virtual worlds.

    I wonder if there is a way that activity in a virtual world could be construed directly as real money, so that all economic transactions in the virtual world functioned with real money. Under such a system, all objects and items collected in game could be sold in game for money, which would start out as a pittance at a low level and gain value at higher levels. Obviously for the game company to make a profit they would need to arrange the licensing fee kind of like life insurance, so that at low levels your monthly subscription could not possibly be less than the amount of money you made, but at high levels you might make more money than your subscription fee – the game company would essentially be paying high level characters to play. Further profit might arise from the swarms of players who (like me) pay a few months’ subscription fee and then drop out without ever being economically burdensome. 

    Of course the gaming company doesn’t have to pay real money in game to create resources (like items on monsters, or herbs) though it does have to pay real money in the real world to developers to design these things. Resources it created would act like a kind of money supply, so that (for example) if they increased the supply of a certain herb the value of potions made thereof might decrease (as one would expect). But within this corporate-controlled world, one would be able to make and sell potions for real money, with the lure being that the more you play the more chance you have of neutralising your subscription costs or even making money. 

    I can only think of one real-world business model under which such a virtual economy might be considered sensible by a company – if the company were paid by third parties to put advertising in the game. If it were, then it would serve to benefit financially from any system which encouraged people to play for longer hours, since it would expose more  players to more advertising. I can’t imagine such a game world appealing in fantasy settings, but a bladerunner-style sci-fi setting would certainly be able to have in-game advertising without losing its flavour. I suppose something like this might also work in a synthetic world like Second Life. 

    The other way such a business model might work is if beginning players were allowed to bring real-world money into the game to buy starting (and subsequent) equipment. The game company would then make money from players (on top of subscriptions) to sell them the equipment they need for their gaming. Players would then  have to make much stricter decisions about the type of equipment they are willing to buy and how often to use it, since they would be burning real money every time they used a potion, etc. If the company felt it wasn’t making sufficient profit from its own stores it could make raw materials scarcer. It could even make licenses to run stores available to actors from outside the game, along with licenses to change the world, and to make new items. Other gaming companies could buy these rights and set up their own adventures in their own sections of the world, with their own flavour, and charge a customs tax or duty for characters to enter these realms.

    Under this model a gaming company could even license expansions out to other companies, so that those companies just build on a new world or a new castle/kingdom, etc. Powerful players could be given the chance to buy a section of land, build a fortress, and defend their treasure – with the incentive being, of course, that failure to build good traps and install powerful monsters would lead to loss of treasure, which would correspond with real money (or at least historical investments).

    Around these bones the flesh of a fully-functioning virtual economy might actually grow. But the risk for any company which established such a business would be too great, I think, for it to be considered by rational people. But that, I suppose, is what random blog-thoughts are for… irrational ideas from irrational people…

  • The source of warcraft dancing…

    … is described, in video format, here. But no news on the source of the troll’s style. I suspect it’s from a capoeira video.

  • Shitty DM-ing

    Of course one complains about one’s DM in private, but it is not often that one gets the opportunity to complain about a DM in public. Today I joined a new role-playing group (one of these pub-based ones) and went along for my first ever session, proudly clutching my newly-created character, and my session was completely ruined by the DM-ing. So badly ruined, in fact, because the DM kicked me out after 2 hours.

    In a nutshell: our party went the wrong way through the dungeon and ended up in the final battle way before we were ready. My character was the first to be attacked and died instantly. After the survivors ran away and the battle was over, I was told that, since I had died, I should leave.

    No shit.

    Of course, it didn’t happen quite this simply. The DM had 2 opportunities to prevent us reaching the final battle early, he had an opportunity to prevent the battle going quite as badly as it had, and he had ample opportunities after the battle to provide me with a new character to play. But he didn’t, because he was completely unwilling to deviate from the adventure-as-written. That is shitty DM-ing!

    In detail, the mistakes ran in this order:

    1. I suggest searching a little shrine outside our target, the main temple, thinking it might have a secret tunnel to the temple. It doesn’t, but has a teleportation room behind the altar which teleports anyone who steps into it to the most deadly level of the main temple. Even though I did a really good search check and I’m an elven wizard, I get no hint of magic or risk, and there is no triggering device. You just step into the alcove and you’re gone. The DM doesn’t bother changing this to include a triggering device, of course – why should he care if a 1st level elf character gets teleported to the Room of Death? The obvious triggering device – a holy symbol of the religion in question – would have been sufficient for us to know that  there was a secret route there but that we couldn’t use it…
    2. So everyone followed me through the teleporter, into the deepest level beneath the temple (we didn’t know this of course) and we were immediately attacked by 2 Ogres who we slew very tidily. To slay them, our Half-Orc Barbarian had to go into a frenzy so, being a Half-Orc barbarian, he decided to charge off to make the most of his frenzy after he had killed the Ogres. This is good role-playing, folks! While everyone else looted corpses, I followed the barbarian in case he ran into trouble. We reached a trapdoor in a side corridor, which (unbeknownst to us) was the escape trapdoor from the room where the Head Priest of Evil and his Bastard Skeleton Construct were hiding out. Again, here the DM could have stopped our Progress to Destruction by making the escape route locked from above (hardly unusual!) He didn’t, so the Barbarian did what a frenzied barbarian would do, and hauled himself through to attack the occupants. I did what any stupid elf would do, and followed to try and help…
    3. Instead of finding a way for the other characters to join us immediately, the DM followed the adventure-as-written and had them all stop in the middle of the previous room  to communicate with a ghost that provided some helpful clues. This delayed them all long enough for our Date with Doom to proceed casually…
    4. Back in the Room of Destiny, the Barbarian had managed to haul open the trapdoor and climb into the room, in the process  knocking over the Head Priest, who was standing on it (incidentally, another very good way to prevent us entering in the first place…) He followed this up with a good solid blow to the head, but even though prone and stabbed the priest managed to reel off a (successful) Hold Person, paralysing the only fighter in the room. Seeing this, I cast my only offensive spell (Colour Spray, which hurls lots of bright colours everywhere) and ran behind a pillar to avoid magic. The DM asked me if I would like to hide but, seeing I had just brought attention to myself with a big rainbow spell, I said no. Of course my spell failed (stupid ADnD spell rules) so the Priest wasn’t stunned, so he called forth his Emergency Guardian, a massive four armed skeletal construct that was in the pillar I was hiding behind. With nobody else in the room or moving, this construct naturally attacked me first, and since I was a level 1 wizard it sliced me and diced me.
    5. Now, of course, the remainder of the party reached the room but because some were in plate armour they couldn’t climb through the trapdoor quickly and took some rounds to gather. In the meantime this crazy Construct stalked around the room and killed off both NPCs. The Barbarian escaped his paralysis and killed the priest, and we discovered that the only weapon which could harm the construct was in the possession of one of the dead NPCs. So, having nothing else to do, the Rogue looted the body of the Priest while everyone else desperately tried to find a way to deal with the Construct. Here were 2 more opportunities to end the battle  early – the Priest’s death could have disabled the construct, or he could have had a magic control device on his body which the rogue could destroy. But neither condition was in the adventure-as-written so… everyone fled, in 2 different directions
    6. Once everyone was safe out of the room, I asked the DM if I might have another character to play. The other players pointed out to him that since the Priest had died, all of the monks from the temple who he had specially enchanted to be his prisoners would be free of his spell and I could play one of them. He said no, and I said  “so what? I just go home now?” and  he said “Yep”. 
    So I left, 2 hours into a 4 or 5 hour session. I have never seen a player kicked out of a game for dying before. I had barely taken part, this was my first session in this new group, and multiple plot junctions where my (and the NPCs) deaths could have been averted were ignored because the DM refused to change the adventure-as-written. I can’t imagine that he conceived of such a poor opinion of me in just 2 hours that he really needed to work that hard to get rid of me. He went against the wishes of the whole party in denying me a new character (he even said “I don’t accept your argument” as if it were a debate about the damage a longbow does or something). Everyone else was getting along fine. I really do think this was just a case of bad DM-ing, combined with a good dose of good old-fashioned bullying control freak.
    This is the second pub-based rpg group I have tried in London, and the other one is hardly going much better. It is a sad irony to me that having arrived in a city where I will finally get an opportunity to experience a variety of role-playing, I can’t because the nerds in question are so horribly socially maladjusted. I suppose there is, however, no option but to persevere…

  • Neo-con blogger self-hate

    It appears that John McCain’s campaign blogger has covered himself in infamy by saying bad things about Dungeons and Dragons. His particular comment:

    Goldfarb compared the editors to a blogger “sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons.”

    This is apparently terribly offensive… so offensive he had to apologise (I won’t link to or print the apology, it’s so bad and useless it burns my brain). 

    I don’t think it’s offensive at all. That quote perfectly describes the average chicken-hawk member of the  right-wing blogging community (minus references to cheetos, of course). This would explain why right wing bloggers like “Ace of Spades” were so offended… witness, oh fat libertarian cheeto-sucking lunatics, how even John McCain – a man who has his emails printed for him – has you all worked out. 

    Of course Ace Of Spades responded to the apology with typical style – “I think he meant to make that crack about Rifts or Vampire or some gay-wad game anyway.”

    When someone sneers at you, the best solution is always just to sneer at someone else, more sneerily.

    Anyway, the actual relevance of this issue – one can only hope that somewhere a pre-teen, one-hande-reading 30 year old who thinks he is eligible to join the Navy SEALS because he has, like, a killer score in Medal of Honour is now infinitesimally less likely to vote for McCain.

    (Also, the comments at Pandagon are pretty funny…)

  • Reconfiguring D&D: the skill system

    In explaining why I am considering a reconfiguration of D&D and the d20 system, I mentioned the key goal of making a single universal skill system the driver of the entire gaming process, so that it would cover skill resolution, combat, magic and saving throws. Under such a model there would be no process which could not be resolved by application of a suitable skill to a task. This begs the obvious question, since I am reconfiguring D&D: why the d20 skill system?

    I used to be quite enamoured of the idea of a skill system with grades of success, as represented by the over-complexity of Rolemaster. Under this model, a skill check gives a series of possible outcomes – complete or partial failure, partial or complete success. However, continuing attempts to apply this skill system in actual gaming situations over many years (using Rolemaster, derivatives of Rolemaster, and various homebrewed systems) all led to the same problem: many tasks aren’t amenable to a graded system of categories of outcome, and these categories often bear little relationship either to reality or to the relative powers of the characters as represented in their attributes. For example, should a Rolemaster thief with a pick locks bonus of 36 be the sort of character who routinely gets partial or complete success against a lock which is, say, “difficult” to open? The whole process of assigning difficulties and results is too abstract. And in the case of opening a lock, what is “partial success” anyway? Either it opened or it didn’t. All too frequently, “partial success” meant “try again”, which really just slows gameplay down considerably. In situations where partial success might be relevant – say, trying to sneak up on someone – then it was the skill of the opponent which ultimately became  relevant to success, when they got a chance to do a search check as a consequence of their partial awareness of their stalker. And then how does one resolve a result of “partial success” on both sides of this challenged skill check?

    In such instances the character is essentially making a challenged skill check against their target’s skill, but mediated through the assignment of difficulty levels dependent upon the environment. To follow our previous example, first one assigns a difficulty to the thief’s stealth attempt dependent upon lighting, cover, perhaps also the target’s degree of alertness; and then, one assigns a difficulty to the target’s perception check dependent upon the result of the player’s roll. It would be much easier just to have a direct challenged roll – one skill against the other – and apply a net adjustment to the player’s roll dependent upon the environment.

    This is exactly how the d20 system works. The difficulty is set by the environment or by the target’s skill check, and the result is either success or failure. The success contains within it a certain level of magnitude, given by the difference between the roll and the target number. This skill check system significantly simplifies the process of skill resolution, and speeds it up. Even combat rolls as currently envisaged contain an element of this. The attacker makes a skill check, and the target is the enemy’s AC, which behaves very much like a challenging skill. If one were to replace AC by, for example, the result of a reflexes save, one has essentially a challenged skill check. One could then go further, and rule that all combatants are assumed to be “taking 10” if they also attack … which is what the current rule system pretty much assumes with AC. 

    This can be taken even further if one takes the difference between the target number and the roll as damage done, with some appropriate weapon-related modifiers. So if the opponent’s AC is 15, and the attacker rolls 18, 3 hps damage are done (plus strength and a weapon-related modifier).  In such a case we have wrapped the skill roll and its consequences into a single determination, removing the need for further dice rolls and decisions, and relating damage done in combat directly to level of skill. 

    Of course, the same considerations could be applied to magic. The target for the spell is set by some kind of saving throw, and the difference between the spellcraft roll and the target number, multiplied by spell level, is the damage. From this determination system it is a simple step to eliminating spells altogether. Effects could be given a level, so that for example daze is level 0, stun is level 1, fear is level 2, etc., and  the duration of the effect is determined by the spell roll… 

    This covers all the major aspects of the role-playing process. The best part, however, is that under the d20 system the scale on which difficulty is determined for an action (usually between 9 and 20, for example, or a d20 roll plus a skill) is very similar to the scale  on which skill bonusses operate (usually between 1 and 20). So there is a natural symmetry in using skills to determine the difficulty of all tasks, and using skills to determine the success of those tasks. We can complete this symmetry by finding a way to relate hps to a skill in some way, and also relate the availability of spells to a skill in the same way. Having done this we have reduced the entire process of character development to the process of generating attributes, and generating skills. There will be no saving throws and no armour class; just skills, and skill modifiers.

    This completes the other part of the challenge which I have always seen in role-playing systems – making a single, internally consistent system for resolving all tasks in an imagined world. There is no particular reason that one would have to do this except a sense of completeness, and it is this completeness I want to achieve by reconfiguring the D&D skill system.

  • Baldur’s Gate 2 – my 3 favourite moments

    There are only 3 computer games I have ever played start to finish – Halo, Freedom Force vs. the 3rd Reich (hilarious) and Baldur’s Gate 2. I think Baldur’s Gate 2 would have to qualify as absolutely the best computer game I have ever played. It was challenging, it had excellent dialogue, excellent plot and a fine atmosphere. Recently brought to reminiscing about its excellence by some of the second-rate games I have played in the last few years, I thought I would share with the uncaring internet my 3 favourite moments (i.e. battles) from the game.

    1. The Umber Hulks in Nalia’s Castle

    According to the walkthrough which I visited to refresh my memory as to the name of this place, the 4 Umber Hulks in the basement of Nalia’s Castle only qualify for the comment “there  are 4 Umber Hulks in here”. This comment hardly encapsulates the 5 hours of pain (on christmas day, 2001) which I went through to slay the bastards. At this time I was about 8th level, and since this was my first ever computer game (honestly) I was still labouring under the illusion that using loopholes in the rules was “bad faith” play. So I didn’t rest at all in Nalia’s castle and by the time I got to the basement I had no spells left. I completed this adventure using only magic items. I had, for example, no spells to protect my players against confusion and no healing left. So there was no way I cold fight 4 Umber Hulks directly. In order to get through this room I had to use a tactic, and developing the tactic convinced me that BG2 is the siznich. The tactic was: send Yoshimo (the assassin) into the room under stealth, with all the other PCs lined up as far as possible from the door, my mage in front carrying a wand of cone of cold, that had only 5 charges… Yoshimo ambushed the closest Umber Hulk and fled, drawing that single Umber Hulk into the room. If he cut to the side of the door quickly, the Umber Hulk’s confusion ray would fall harmlessly into empty space. Yoshimo then stealthed himself, and once the Hulk was through the door he shut it to prevent any others straying through. At the same time my mage would unleash cone of cold on the charging Hulk and all 3 other characters would unleash their most powerful ranged attacks. Yoshimo would lay in a second backstab and then peg it for the back of the room as Minsc charged forward to finish off the Hulk, which was hopefully frozen still by the cone of cold. Save, and repeat 3 times. Disaster would occur if any of the following happened:

    1. Yoshimo failed his stealth roll in the Umber Hulk room – if so, 4 confusion rays hit him at once, the room turned black and a horrible grunting, screeching rending cacophony ensued as the 4 Hulks tore him apart
    2. Yoshimo failed to backstab the Hulk successfully – if so, the above would also occur
    3. Yoshimo didn’t make the right distance between himself and the Hulk once he was outside of the room – if so he would be caught in the cone of cold and/or confused by the Hulk
    4. Yoshimo failed to close the door – if so more than one Hulk might slip through, and we were all doomed
    5. the mage (Imoen, I think) failed to deliver cone of cold and back away in an orderly fashion – if so, the Hulk caught her and tore her apart before Minsc could intervene (I had maximum gore settings, and I liked Imoen, so this was a bad sight for me)
    This is an example of effective use of all party members, I think. In one of the 4 battles, Yoshimo was confused and wandered about the room while the battle proceeded, but after 5 hours of learning and then applying this tactic it finally worked. Needless to say this was the last time I tried to stick to the spirit, rather than the letter, of the AD&D second edition rules in playing the game – from now on I rested wherever possible.
    2. The Portal Warden
    For some reason my lead character was a bard, so I had to undertake the mission to free the actors from the Five Flagons Tavern to start my own theatre. This involves going into a pocket dimension and battling a big tough magic user demon chap to rescue them. For some reason I found this battle hideously difficult, perhaps because I didn’t yet understand magic resistance, so I was fighting uphill. The magic user in question summoned huge quantities of Demons and the like, and the battle was entirely uphill. Fortunately for me, I had a rod of resurrection, and the last half of this battle (which took an hour of real time!) was spent with my PCs dying, and me resurrecting them using the rod. After each resurrection the PC would have to scrabble around picking up all the magic items he or she had dropped, while under attack, before returning to the fray, only to die again… this battle ended with my lead character down to nearly no hps, and all the other PCs dead, and the remaining charges of my rod of resurrection (and possibly some scrolls) used to raise them all. Nothing quite captures the thrill of skin-of-your-teeth fighting than resurrecting multiple PCs mid-battle to launch straight back into the fray. I felt like Stalin!
    3. The final confrontation with Irenicus
    All the walkthroughs tell you that in the final battle, Irenicus will summon 4 demons and if you have protection from evil spells on you, they will attack him instead of you. Needless to say, I didn’t read the walkthroughs. This was another battle that took an hour, and it didn’t seem to go according to the book at all. I don’t remember Irenicus adopting his slayer form – instead, he cast some kind of tricksy spell (Shadow Walk?) in which he becomes invisible and his perfectly functional simulacrum runs around distracting you, while you fight the demons. I killed the demons and realised that the Irenicus I could see was a simulacrum, but sometime during the combination of spells he used (the withering spell, and a web or darkness-type spell) he and his simulacrum cast another one of those tricky shadow walk spells, and when I next looked there were Irenicusses everywhere, and I lost track of the real one, even using True Seeing. There followed a period of intense combat in which a great many spells were wasted, and darkness fell (in meat world), and it ended up with all of my PCs hors de combat except Imoen, who was down to her last magic missile. She cast this on Irenicus, but he still had a spell reflection on – as did Imoen. So I sat stupified with horror in front of my screen, watching as the little sparkling mote of my last offensive spell bounced backwards and forwards between Imoen and Irenicus – who were almost in melee range. Unfortunately for me, Imoen was well below the level of health at which a magic missile cast by Imoen could be ignored, so I sat there biting my nails and waiting for the inevitable… only to find that Irenicus’ spell deflection failed one level before Imoen’s, and the magic missile hit him – and killed him. That’s right, I gnawed my nails down watching a game of highly elaborate pong finish the most complicated and interesting game I have ever played… but the worst of it is, something was wrong with my installation of BG2, so after I had killed Irenicus, the cut scene crashed and I lost the game! So I never got to save the final scene, loot Irenicus’ body or get the reward the elves had promised me. I didn’t even get to export my characters, so I’m not sure now  who I even played.
    So it was that my favourite game ever ended in torrid confusion, but ever since that day when Irenicus’ shield fell and my elf-girls’ lowest level spell brought his tyrannical reign to an end, I have been questing to find a game with a similar mixture of complexity, difficulty and fun. I fear that in the new era of computer games it  will never come…