4e For Grognards?
Posted by Joshua on Mar 18, 2009
The Core Mechanics offers up 10 House Rules to Make Grognards Like 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, most of the house rules are of the Racing Stripes on a Yugo variety. (Or, if you’re a 4e fan, putting Fuzzy Dice and lowrider hydraulics on a Formula 1.) Except for Rule 7 (Don’t scale the Campaign Setting), they change the surface details like number of classes or races without getting at the essence of the play style. For instance, Rule 4: Limit Races to 3. White Box D&D from 1974 had the rule
There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.
So it’s not the Dragonborn that are keeping the Grognards away, ok? (Btw, just for comparison, that single rule is the same amount of space as devoted to Halflings, and only about a sentence or two shorter than the rules for Elves or Dwarves.)
So what would you really have to do to make 4e Grognard-friendly, assuming you wanted to? There are really three major things, and they’re comparatively simple, but profound.
First, you have to reverse the direction of causality in the system: cause and effect have to flow from the game-world to the rules, not from the rules to the game-world as it currently stands. What does that really mean for 4e? It means that you have to visualize what’s really going on in the world, and reason out the consequences from there. What 4e calls “the flavor text” is the power. You can’t just invoke “Tide of Iron” and move the mini, it actually has to make game-world sense that the character be able to push the opponent in that direction given everything you know about the combatants such as their relative mass, whether one of them is made of some substance that makes pushing/being pushed wierd or would have some other consequence–think about using your shield to shove a Gelatinous Cube around and you’ll see what I mean. And if the effect is not supposed to be magical, if you can’t explain how it would actually happen (frankly, most of the pull and slide powers) then you can’t do it. If the flavor text of the power causes small flames, that’s different from a power that creates icicles, even if the rules are otherwise identical. And just because two powers have rules that interact (the whole “exception-based design”) means nothing if it’s not clear how the interaction would play out/make any sense in the game-world. I expect that a lot of 4e players would balk at this, despite it being the same as Mike Mearls’ advice on running 4e without minis, but do you want to game with Grognards or don’t you?
The second thing you have to do is eliminate any vestiges of any rule or mechanic that can’t be understood in game world terms, and talked about in-character. That doesn’t mean that the characters have to use the exact same terms, but they have to be able to think about the concept. A Fighting Man might not actually say “Saving Throw”, but he could fully understand and discuss with the other characters that he’s much better at dodging a death ray or beam from a magic wand than he is at resisting a spell. He can talk about how hard it is to hurt or kill something, even if he doesn’t literally say AC or HP, and how experienced he is even if he doesn’t divide it into points of XP. For 4e that means dropping Skill Challenges. Sorry, but there’s no in-game way I can conceive of to explain the spooky action at a distance implied by the accumulating successes and failures (particularly the failures). You’re just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, by reasoning about the logical consequences of each individual failure and success and whether there’s any causal reason one would influence the next. You also have to eliminate Action Points, possibly Healing Surges, and probably a raft of other things (“minions” for instance–a creature of the same type as another you’re fighting that can only take 1/100th or less damage can really put a dent in the old verisimilitude). You could try to “reify” them…make them actual things that the game-world inhabitants really do understand and talk about (perhaps with magical or divine explanations), but you risk turning your game into The Order of the Stick.
The final thing that you have to do, and this is really the culmination of the other two, is that you have to stop looking at the character sheet and the rulebooks to tell you whether you’re permitted to do something. If the player can describe the action in such a way that it makes a lick of sense in the game-world, the character can attempt it. The GM can assign a probability to whether it works (even if it’s so low as to be in effect impossible), or just rule directly, but everybody can attempt anything they can imagine unless it’s specifically called out as forbidden to their class (e.g. fighters learning spells, magic users wearing armor). Skills, feats, powers…they mean you’ve got a better shot, but the lack of one should never be cause for the GM to say no.
And that’s it. You don’t have to strip out the laughable names “Moon Prism Power Divine Strike!™” “Bloody-Riptooth All Cool And Spiky Badass MoFo Crocodile™.” You don’t have to put save-or-die effects in, enforce completely random chargen, have level-draining undead, or make magic Vancian. All of those things were indeed common enough back in the day…but they weren’t the essence of game-play; plenty of undeniably old-school games didn’t have those features….even if they were using a system that did (3d6 in order was one of the first things that many groups discarded; by the time of Basic D&D there were official, if optional, rules for discarding characters with no score above 9, or swapping attributes). You could add one or more of those, but the plain truth is that the Grognards who would insist on them aren’t likely to touch even a revamped 4e with the proverbial 10′ pole, and those are the things that 4e players are most likely to strongly object to. On the other side, I think that many of the things that are show-stoppers for the Grognards literally fall beneath the 4e fans’ notice….in prior conversations trying to explain the differences I get the distinct impression that they don’t even realize (and some don’t believe) that these actually are differences between the way the editions work, or they discuss them solely in terms of design goals (this is faster, everything you need to know is written on this card) without even considering whether it has implications for how you think about the world.
So on the one hand, I do actually think a 4e for Grognards is possible…in some sense even easy: just ignore a bunch of these rules, and interpret these ones in a different light. On the other, I’m not entirely sure whether the result would be still be 4e.
Obligatory St. Patrick’s Day Post
Posted by Joshua on Mar 17, 2009
Just want to point out that Leprechauns are one of the five “common” Kindred in Tunnels & Trolls. Their modifiers are:
| STR | 0.5 |
| CON | 1 |
| DEX | 1.5 |
| INT | 1.5 |
| LK | 1.5 |
| CHR | 1 |
| WIZ | 1 |
| HT | 0.25 |
| WT | 0.33 |
Leprechauns are automatically Wizards, and they have a natural Wink-Wing (teleportation) spell that they can do without magical training or cost (though that means that they can’t pump extra WIZ into it for more distance).
So play a Leprechaun today!
Multi-Classing
Posted by Joshua on Mar 13, 2009
The Valley of the Blue Snails, a really interesting blog mostly about an unusual setting that Canecorpus has created, has a post about Multi-Classing in his D&D setting:
Valley of Blue Snails: Multi-Classes Revisited
I will be changing a few of the multi-class titles though I’m a bit mixed on what direction to take it. The titles are similar to normal class titles (Veteran, Cutpurse, Wizard, etc) in that they are mostly for fluff with perhaps a minor ability to adhere the two classes better. I’m deciding on wither to make it very setting specific or use more intuitive titles.
Example, a Fighter-Cleric would be a Paladin. Pretty intuitive. Setting specific would be something like a Dwarven Fighter-Cleric would be a Whitebeard. Not so intuitive but perhaps a better choice since this sort of multi-class fluff is well outside of the realm of B/X anyhow. The main problem is the setting specifics titles would indeed be rather specific, slanting towards race with specific classes.
I did something similar for a (for now abandoned) retro game I was working on, which I might as well share in case somebody finds it interesting:
| Primary/Secondary | Fighter | Mage | Priest | Thief | Actor | Ranger |
| Fighter | Warrior | Magic Knight | Paladin | Brigand | Swashbuckler | Barbarian |
| Mage | Wizard | Mage | Seer | Warlock | Witch | Hermit |
| Priest | Monk | Thaumaturge | Priest | Charlatan | Oracle | Druid |
| Thief | Rogue | Mountebank | Fraud | Thief | Spy | Outlaw |
| Actor | Bard | Conjurer | Idol | Jester | Actor | Minstrel |
| Ranger | Scout | Shaman | Pilgrim | Vagabond | Emissary | Ranger |
Basically, there are six primary classes (one for each of the six standard stats) and they combine into 36 different classes, with differing emphasis depending on whether a particular class is primary or secondary. Somebody who’s primarily a Thief but uses magic to steal and con is a Mountebank, while somebody who is primarily a Mage, but uses stealth and deception to accomplish his ends and impress people with his power is a Charlatan, etc. You mostly got the armor restrictions of your primary class, and the weapon restrictions of your secondary class, with most other abilities splitting the difference. Spell user progressed as in their primary as if they were one level lower, and their secondary two levels lower. And so forth.
I actually think it’s pretty workable, but it’s not something my main face-to-face play group would be interested in, and I have too much on my plate right now to pursue it further. If I start a play-by-forum or play-by-post campaign, I’ll probably use Tunnels & Trolls instead of trying to sell people on and play-test some wacky homebrew.
Tunnels & Trolls: Magic
Posted by Joshua on Mar 10, 2009
Magic in Tunnels & Trolls is a fairly standard (though innovative back in ’76) system of individual spells that cost spell-points to cast. In earlier editions, your spell-points were your STR, now they’re your WIZ, which seems to me widen the range of possible character types quite a bit. The names of the spells are whimsical, like “Take That You Fiend!” (the basic magic blast spell), “Dis-Spell”, “Oh, Go Away!”, which some people find a bit off-putting, but the spell effects are generally straightforward: do damage, turn invisible, heal wounds, and so forth. Not always: “Troll God’s Blessing” causes a big club to appear over the head of the target and bash it, but if that kind of thing is a problem for your players you can easily substitute more “serious” flavor text. Spells range in level from 1 to 13 (or more, I suppose, but that’s as far as the books go). Wizards begin with all the standard 1st level spells, and learn new spells from the Wizard’s Guild, by paying 1000 GP per level of spell. Spells can only be taught by direct instruction (presumably by casting the first level Teacher spell until the Wizard succeeds at the SR to impress it in his mind). Casting a spell requires a Saving Roll against the level of the spell, which should mostly be a “gimme” except for very low level casters or when trying to cast a spell at a higher level than you’ve reached.
That brings up an unusual feature of T&T magic. While spells have a minimum DEX and INT to cast, they aren’t restricted by the level of the caster. A 1st level Wizard can attempt to cast a higher level spell, it just requires a harder Saving Roll and higher stat minimums. A 1st level spell requires 10 INT and DEX, a 2nd level 12, all the way up to 100 for a 13th level spell. Many spells can also be cast at higher level than their minimum in order to ramp up their effects, e.g. Take That You Fiend! costs 6 WIZ and does damage equal to the caster’s INT at 1st level. If a Wizard with INT 15 casts it as a 2nd level spell, it costs 12 WIZ but does 30 points of damage, as a 3rd level spell it costs 18 WIZ but does 60 points of damage, etc. Whether a spell can be “Powered Up” and the effects of doing so vary depending on the spell.
Spell costs can be reduced in a variety of ways. If you’re higher level than the spell you’re casting you get a discount, with a bigger discount the higher level you are compared to the spell level, though there’s a minimum cost of 1. You also get a discount for using a “focus” such as a wand or ring. In fact, the primary purpose of wands and staves in T&T is as spell foci rather than bearers of independent spell effects. Specialist Wizards get to cast all the spells in their specialty at half cost, but can’t cast spells outside their specialty at all. WIZ recovers fairly quickly, 1 point per ten minutes of non-strenuous activity (no combat or running, but you don’t need a lie-down), but high-level spell can still take hours to recover from casting since they can cost 30, 40, 50, even 200 points to cast (for the 13th level “Born Again” spell).
An even more unusual feature, and one that’s apparently new and somewhat controversial, is that spells cannot be directly cast on any target with a current WIZ higher than the caster’s. That means that not only are Wizards unable to affect more powerful wizards (at least until their targets have expended enough WIZ to make them weaker), but Wizards may find themselves unable to bespell Warriors and monsters if they have built up their WIZ. Monsters typically have WIZ equal to 1/10 of their monster rating, so a dragon with MR 500 has quite a substantial barrier against direct-effect spells. Wizards who attempt to cast against a target with higher WIZ get a “bad feeling” that lets them stop before they actually waste any of their own WIZ.
I’m not entirely sure what I think of this. On the one hand, I certainly see roleplaying possibilities, particularly since spells that indirectly affect the target (e.g. its clothes, or by affecting the ground under it, or drop something on it) are possible regardless of differences in WIZ. It also gives magic a very otherworldly feel, not at all equivalent to simply having a laser pistol or even crossbow. On the other hand, since WIZ amounts vary round by round in combat based on the spells the magic users are casting, it might become something of a pain to track, and even if it didn’t you could potentially lose a lot of actions to “bad feelings” when your estimates of the current WIZ of your opponent miss the mark. On the third hand, it adds another tactical dimension when unleashing a huge spell at the beginning of combat can render you vulnerable to lesser magicians for the rest of the combat, and I’m in favor of increasing the number of tactical decisions, at least in moderation. As with other things T&T, I really have to see how it plays out in practice.
Get Awesome!
Posted by Joshua on Mar 4, 2009
Awesome! The Storytelling Game is now available as a PDF or Open Office file. There’s also character sheets.
Download it and give it a whirl!
Mucho thanks to Mike DeSanto, who took the original blog post and turned it into a nifty brochure. Truly Awesome indeed!