I.M.O. VIII: What Drahyr Taught Me

As you may have seen on the announcement board I have managed to get my own (free) roleplaying game online (and only a single year has passed since I decided I’d do it). To honor the occasion I’d like to share a few “revelations” that I stumbled upon in the process of designing Drahyr (my game). While I would be a fool to claim that the information that I will provide below is universally useful I do hope that it may provide an inspiration or two.

IMHO the most interesting and useful story and rules tweak that snuck itself into the game is what I call “trials of self”. In literature and movies some of the most interesting moments occur when a characters are faced with situations where they are forced to choose between two aspects of their personality (say between their love for someone and their respect for the law to take a classic example). A minor variation of the theme would be a situation in which a character can choose between material gain and following an aspect of her personality (e.g. a situation in which a character can either adhere to her desire to her fear of the dark or she can enter the unlit cave and perhaps discover deeper truths – oh the symbolism). Long before I consciously noticed these trials of self I had accidentally used them in my gaming sessions. Often the results produced some of my most intense (including the very best) roleplaying experiences. After actually realizing their usefulness I immediately made them a vital aspect of my game, one of the main indicators to regulate character development. IMO trials of self can be great fun, even without codified rules. Including them in the game is very easy: Get hold of a copy of your players’ characters background and personality notes and note down all potential conflicts. If you pre-plan adventures sneaking such a conflict into the adventure should be no problem at all; with the added benefit that, if you wish, you can have it occur during a dramatic turning point of the adventure. But even if you adlib adventures including trials of self can be rather easy. Make a list of a few possible trials (my list usually has four or five potential trials on it). Whenever your characters enter a new area or are confronted with a new situation take a quick glance at the list and see if the circumstances allow you to hit one of your players with a trial of self. I only use one trial of self (at most) per session and that has worked quite well. I do suspect however that, would they be used more often, trials of self would soon become an annoyance not an enhancement.

Before I go on to talk about the more general lessons I learned from Drahyr I would like to share another very simple rule. As you may have noticed in my past columns I believe that changing the game world is one of the most rewarding and interesting things that players can do. I furthermore believe that players are much happier with things that they can see, best as a numerical or paraphrased value, on their character sheets than with those things that only take place in their imagination. I combined these two simple concepts and got a simple rule: When a character sets out to change the world the player notes down his character’s goal on his character sheet. In brackets behind this note the player writes down how many successes he will need to bring the desired change about. This number should be set by the game master. A few samples would include:

Helping the homeless in an area: 5
Helping the drug addicted children in an area: 6
Controlling the people of a neighbourhood: 9
Taking over a shop: 3
Taking over a church: 4
Taking over a gang: 4
Taking over a political institution: 8
Inciting rebellion: 7
Of course these numbers must be varied in accordance to your style of play. Also note that these rules can only apply to large-scale changes. Attempts to influence individuals should be handled through normal roleplaying.

Now whenever a character does something significant to bring the desired change about he may note one success behind the goal. For every setback the character suffers the player must subtract one success. When a character has gained the required number of successes he will have changed the world. The change should, obviously, remain on the character sheet and the game master should do his best to ensure that the characters notice the effects of the change time again in their adventures. With a little luck your players will find this idea interesting enough in that they will be tricked into providing you with a good number of plot ideas.

During my first days of designing Drahyr the bulk of the rules of the game consisted of combat and magic rules. Over the course of the years the combat rules disappeared one by one due to reasons I will seek to explain below. While the magic rules also decreased in raw size their importance in the game steadily increased. The reason for this is quite simple, nothing provokes my players’ creativity quite as much as using magic. Below I will attempt to share the methods I employ to achieve this. Methods which I believe can be transferred to virtually any game with ease.

The big idea in my magic system is to provide parameters that are open enough to allow room for creativity while still being focused enough to not leave the players out in the cold. In most, especially fantasy-type, games getting the focus is no problem, the rules usually provide very specific guidelines how spells are to be cast and what effects they will achieve. Opening those rules is IMO likewise not a problem. All one has to do is give each type of magic a few additional parameters. For wizard magic I would take something along the lines of:

Sympathy:
How well the ritual (gestures, mental images –of course described by the player-, ceremony or what have you) corresponds to the effect of the spell. I would tend to see effect as intention, in which case a fireball aimed at destroying a bridge would be very different from one aimed at a group of orcs, but I guess that is merely a matter of preference.
Components:
IMO every wizard should have her own repertoire of personal components. Occult items (say the staff of your mentor) or types of items (say spider webs because you see them as replicas of the web of magic) that have meaning to her. Using these items appropriately and creatively during the casting of the spell (say striking a flint stone with the staff for fireballs) is the idea behind components. Allowing players to come up with new components on the spot, should they be creatively explained, is IMO a good idea.
Teachings:
This is IMO a good idea for worlds where wizards are very scholarly. In such a world wizards should invoke the name of one of the great archmages with every spell they cast. The name should be appropriate to the intent of the spell. For more important spells the wizard’s player should tell the other players what teachings he is using for the magic (Master Heliov says: “Opposition must be struck down with utmost force and eradicated lest one leave its roots untouched” for the fireball vs. orcs example).

This list should be expanded, reduces or changed completely as you prefer.

To give one example for a parameter I would use for priestly magic:

Prayer:
With every spell the priest must say a prayer appropriate to her faith and the desired effects of the magic (and the casting time if your system uses such a thing). You should make these prayers as pompous and archaic sounding as you can. Lest you are a servant of the good of mockery that is, then again &

Having these parameters affect the game is pretty simple. Whenever a player casts a spell rate each parameter as either: Not used at all, moderately used or well used (or any other degree of success levels you deem right for the complexity of the rules that you are using). Each degree of success should have some effect on the spell’s power or cost. By tailoring the power of these effects you can regulate how important you wish to make these parameters. Finally you might wish to use the parameters only for important or dramatic spells in games which include a lot of spell casting.

As I noted above I have almost completely eliminated combat from my game. This development occurred step by step. In the beginning of the design process I tried out over twenty unique combat systems. I was hoping that I would be able to capture the speed, fury and excitement of combat, something that IMHO no game has achieved. I failed as well. The systems I came up with where either too abstract or too complex. The abstract systems always turned combat, even when players did their very best to describe their actions, nothing but a series of dice rolls. (another reason why I believe statistics and notes on character sheets are what make RPGs real).
In retrospect the turning point came when I started playing Souledge (a fun beat’em up on the PSX). There was a game that captured with ease and elegance the entire fury & fun of sword combat. Blocks, dodges, roles and quick sword strikes where all simulated in real-time. With a good deal of melancholy I came to conclusion that gaming systems simply cannot even come close to computers when it comes to simulating battles. I would not be surprised in the least should the market for combat heavy RPGs will dwindle bit by bit, eroded by the ever more perfect computer fighting games.
This conclusion lead me down two further paths of thought. First if one wants combat in an RPG I guess it is best to use tactical battles. Something along the lines of Battletech. Strategic battles are IMO still more fun on the table top than on the computer, especially if miniatures are being used. The second path of thought lead me into darker and foreboding recesses of creativity. If on the one hand it is hard to simulate fast, hectic actions with rules but, on the other hand, it is quite possible to simulate all other types of actions then why should one not create role-playing games that concentrate on something completely other than combat. I truly believe that a investigative RPG, a exploratory trader RPG, a diplomatic RPG or even a lawyer RPG would be fun, especially if one has them take place on fantastic worlds (for the right people) and perfectly doable. I am not saying that such games would open a new market. In fact I would never sink a single penny into any endeavour that would attempt to sell such games for profit. I am also aware that such games would be of no interest to most RPGers (most of which play RPGs do to their interest in sword & sorcery fantasy). However, I do believe that such games could be fun for me and perhaps a few others. Now that I am finishing up my first really complete game maybe &
With these mad thoughts I leave you. Enjoy your gaming and roll those dice! Till next time.