Edge of the Blade: Backstabbing and Hiding Secrets

I've been wanting to run a game of courtly intrigue for some time now, but the systems that I typically use and know are really bad at dealing with such things and tend to reward players for stabbing things rather than not stabbing things. Looking through new systems, I've found a number which have interesting mechanics to help deal with more exploration- and roleplay-based challenges, but they often don't have the systems I can easily sit down with the players I've got and teach them how to use them in one sitting. So, instead, I'm working up a system that I'm pretty much only going to use to run this single campaign.

I'm building Classes and Perks that help the players understand that while they may participate in combat sometimes, it's risky business, and their particular roles in said combat aren't usually going to be the guys stabbing things. A captain doesn't always lead from the front, but they always need to rally their troops and organize their resources. An investigator isn't necessarily going to deal with a scuffle with a few hired thugs by slaying them, in fact it would probably be smarter to escape, and even smarter to lead the thugs into a trap where the police will take them into custody. If you're going in for the long con, you're not going to go into it by slicing throats, that draws too much attention.

So what happens when your character is a miserable pile of secrets but holds a place in society that they shouldn't necessarily have due to their history or backstory? How do you keep those who would tear you from your place from getting to the secrets while uncovering the plots of those around you? That's the fun part.

There's a multitude of skills that you have, plus your "professional skill". I've been using a mutation of the system that D&D 5e uses for skills, with your character gaining the ability to buy proficiency in skills through skill points, or use those skill points to boost skills you're already proficient in. You can engage in several different types of skill challenges, from the simple "Roll higher than this difficulty class" to the complex parrying and riposting of word and sword.

Similar to skills, I'm using a mutation of the typical D&D stat-line. Strength, Agility, Endurance, Dexterity, Willpower, Intellect, Perception, Personality, and Mystic are your 9 stats. Yes, nine. Why? Deus vult. Or something of that sort. In the end, I really wanted more stats, so I could give people more of a challenge to actually be effective in combat while giving them more skills to play with.

I'm trying to handle spells differently than D&D, though. Using magic is typically going to be more of skill-based thing, with the skills being tied to your Mystic stat. A few abilities are going to come from your class, but your spellcasting is going to be very limited, much like the D&D 3.5 Warlock rather than the Wizard. Anything more complex than basic thaumaturgy is sorcery, and sorcery takes rituals of different types to cast. Divination, Geomancy, Abjuration, etc. are all things that take skill and finesse to produce. I'm thinking that there will be various ways to create some spell items that complete much more complex spells than you would normally be able to throw out, but then you've spent that item or it has caused some disruption to your body that makes your perform worse for a time. For example, you can use arcane mathematics and Geomancy to craft a scroll which holds a mostly complete spell and you can lay the spell down and cause the spell to be complete with a few small words and actions.

I feel like this would make the magic more of a risk with some bad consequences, perhaps even permanent consequences. If you mess up your skill check, you could have a spell backfire on you, causing your character penalties depending on what sort of spell it can be.

The Professional Skill is something your character gets during character creation. They all know how to do something, at least. Whether this is carpentry or chemistry, your character can use this as a knowledge skill, a crafting skill, and an economic skill within his or her profession. If a character is a lumberjack, he can use this in place of his knowledge nature skill to identify trees, for example. If a character is an alchemist, she can use this in place of a crafts skill to create a poison. All professional skills can be used during downtime to gain a wage.

For health, I'm returning to the good old Vitality and Wounds system, with vitality being your near misses, your scrapes, your bruises, and wounds being your gut stabs, your crushed ribs, your broken bones. This one's simple, and it allows for people to take scrapes and get out of places that would kill them without them immediately dying, but it also allows me to gear up some of the enemies so that they'd inflict deadly wounds on the players if the players decided to waltz in and try to kill people instead of going about things other ways. If a player decides to clomp up to the bandit leader and try to run him through, he'll probably end up with a very dead character as the rest of the bandits fill him full of crossbow quarrels and throwing daggers, but if he sneaks up while the bandit leader is in the privy and puts a nice, quiet bolt through the man's head, his character will get out alive.

Most classes and perks are going to be geared at helping the players create characters that can go about doing skillful things in ways that other characters can't. For example, being able to use your willpower to lie properly despite the fact that you might have a bad personality stat, or being able to add your hulking strength to intimidate someone. You might even be able to use specific skills in place of others, but it will probably not be completely equal. Like using your senses to see magical effects and auras instead of having to use divination, which may be a very bad skill for your character.

In the end, stabbing people in the back can be fun, and keeping rules somewhat arcane can work for certain styles of game.

Linguistics and Things: Vannic Language Group

I've been working on fictional languages for a very long time. I created my first coded scripts when I was around 8 years old, using new symbols in replacement of the alphabet. My interest in all things linguistic has only grown since then to the point where I nearly went into linguistics as a job. The only reason I'm not doing it is because I get drained when I speak to people for too long. Being an introvert makes me have to spend energy when I'm interacting with people, and I just don't have a lot of energy to spend these days, so I tend to only focus on spending energy in environments where I feel the expenditure will produce results.

So, talking now about a fictional language group I've created. The Vannic language group is a number of languages which are all descended from the Vannic branch of the Vanno-Tponite Language Family, which also includes the Tponi, Broughnau, and Urvnal language groups. The Vannic group in notable for being isolated from the majority of the other related languages due to their separation across the Hynvælg ocean, and therefore keeping the system of vowel pairs, though the exact nature of pairs varies between specific languages. Most consonants have also shifted over time, including the Bilabial-Labiodental shift and the Plosive Decay shift.

There are three remaining modern language subsets remaining in the Vannic group including Vallromicc, Valisc, and Grauzorrec. While the Vannic-speaking peoples once had contiguous control of the continent of Huvvolþ, the central steppe became uninhabitable due to the return of the prehistoric tornado corridor across it. This has split the language group, with Valisc on the East, Grauzorrec on the West, and Vallromicc split across the center. The nobility in both the East and West have adopted the language called Vallromicc (the one the subset is named after) as their operational language, speaking it amongst fellow nobles and using it in legal documents. Technically, Vallromicc is a dead language, but due to the fact of the adoption and the changes each group has placed upon it, it is in fact two different living languages. The only remaining truly living languages of the Vallromicc subset are the variety of steppe barbarian tongues, which are termed as "Vallkorn", but each has it's own name.

The Valisc subset is thought to be a single language called Vulterric, however, Vulterric is much like all "High" languages, in that it doesn't exist except in legal documents. There are a variety of languages in Vultrom, most being known by toponyms of the regions they are spoken in. For example, Blirstunic is spoken in Blirstun, while Svorrgrondic is spoken in Svorrgrond. Notable is so-called "Royal" or Klintung, which is spoken in the Royal City of Gallrom.

The various Grauzorrec languages all share the greatest deformation from the original tongue of Proto Vanno-Tponite of all the Vannic languages to one extent or another due to their proximity to more language groups than all other branches of Vanno-Tponite. They interface with the Ulstamurr, the Jik, the Salmo, the Nýrþgåm, the Vrakirʒil, the Nehail, the Lofalin, and the Luminagh, with strong influences on their language coming from all parts.

Notable among ancient Vannic languages are the original Vallromicc and Wulfnærrlik. Wulfnærrung runes created the largest basis for the common alphabet shared by all modern forms of Vannic, while Vallromicc popularized the modern Vannic alphabet and created the system of ligating doubled consonants, which is used to differentiate paired vowels in all written forms of Vannic.

THE GREAT HUNT!: Crunchy Bits

A game is not a game without the crunch to make the mechanics move. So let's begin.

Starting Play:

In The Great Hunt, the game begins with the players selecting the characters, called hunters. This can be done through random selection through each player drawing a hunter, or by having the players simply select the hunters they want to play. Next, the players select a number of "supports". The supports are the hunter's team, the guys who make sure the hunter does what he does best. Each support provides an additional skill for the player to use each turn. After the supports are chosen, the players decide on which areas they're going to use, with up to six areas being chosen depending on the number of players in the game. Hexes are randomly laid on each area from a shuffled deck of tiles with the area dictating the terrain type of the tiles laid down.

The game now begins. The players decide who goes first by rolling a die, and then place their markers on any base camp space On each turn, each player has a number of options, but certain things must be done during the turn. Each player gets a single "Action" per turn. This "action" can be spent moving to another tile of the player's choice, baiting a monster, or resting to regain extra health and arcane. In addition to their action, a player can activate a skill provided by his or her hunter or supports. Certain skills can only be activated if the player has chosen to do a specific action on his or her turn.

Anytime during his or her turn, a player can spend a food to prevent hunger, otherwise the player's hunter takes one damage for each turn he has gone without spending food. If the player rested this turn, he or she does not need to spend food to prevent hunger and does not take damage for not preventing hunger, but he or she does not reset the number of turns without food.

If the Prize Monster is on the board, then at the start of his or her turn each player must roll 1d6 and move the prize monster in the designated direction stated by the roll. This only occurs if someone has drawn the Prize Monster.

So, a player's turn looks like:

• Move Prize Monster if on board
• Take Action
• Use a skill
• Spend food or take hunger damage

The only problems I'm having with these parts of the game are amounts. I can't decide on how many supports I want there to be, how many areas per player, or how many tiles per area. While I want to have the players feel like they're powerful, I also want to limit the options they have immediately available to them. While I want the players to feel isolated in Kulragkh, they also need to overlap and skirmish over territory with various abilities to make the game feel interesting. I'm thinking about giving the players 3 supports, which would mean they have the choice of 4 skills. Most of the time, a player can only use one skill per turn, however there may be some passive skills which trigger upon certain actions. 

For the board, I want the areas big enough to be engaging, but I don't want them to be too huge so that the game goes on forever. Due to the fact that most players will only be able to move one tile at a time and that they will have to return to base camp to restock and such, I can't have a board that's too big and takes too long to get around. I was thinking of having each area looking something like this:

The brown hex is the base camp. The blue hexes are shared between it and one adjacent area, and the orange are shared between this area and two other adjacent areas. The purple are simply tiles of its own and the gray are not part of this area. While I'm somewhat unsatisfied by the size of this area, this is the size I will be using for the initial test. If I'm still unsatisfied after testing the rate of play and how things work, then I'll add more hexes. I'm just worried about adding too many hexes and not being able to find a nice balance.

At this size, I think having one area per player with 3-6 players is reasonable. I kind of want to discourage people from simply separating and farming their own areas, so this will probably change as I work things out. For example, there may be a limited number of base camps, but I'm unsure how to work things.

What I may do is create several different scenarios which can have varied setups and have generalized play times and recommended levels of familiarity with the game. This allows people to learn the game in multiple ways and have a considerable amount of replayability as some settings could be considerably harder than others or have considerably different focuses than others.

Combat and Variables:

I slightly detailed the basics of combat, but I'd like to talk more about it and the parts relating to it. 

Combat is not necessarily complex, as most characters only have one ability that can effect combat, and there's only three stats to worry about, for the most part. You roll your dice, add your attack, compare it to the monster's defense, see how much damage it did, and then he does it back to you. The numbers are a bit of a problem, but they can be figured out with math. Since I'm probably using a d12 to randomize the results of an encounter, the probability of each result is 8.3-ish %. This means that each +1 bonus is an increase of about 8.3% chance of success, provided that the total bonus is not 12 below the check (Always failing) or 1 less than the check (Always succeeding).

So the problem I'm facing here is how far apart do I want to face the challenges stat-wise? The Prize Monster needs to be a large enough threat that you absolutely do not want to challenge it without added bonuses. These will probably come through leveling up and gathering items from various challenges. Certain monsters will drop totems that can provide power-ups to various stats. You can buy some items for boosts in the base camps. Some items will appear in special events that you probably don't want to encounter until you've powered up. You can also spend resources to level up your character, which costs various resources for different characters, but improves their abilities. Leveling up will be talked about later.

I'll probably have to set a basic baseline for stats of the hunters, and the baseline for different tiers of monsters. Prize Monsters should be tough and challenging with different skills that they can lay down on the hunters that they will have to cope with. However, I don't want them to have skills that can only be dealt with items or such things that will only come up at random and then it's easier to stomp them. For example, no monsters that confuse people and send them running in a random direction unless you have some helmet or portion that negates confusion or things touching your mind. That's okay for a random monster, but the prize monster needs to be something your can plan around. So, it would be okay for a Prize Monster to have a pattern of attacks or randomized attack patterns by dice with the hunter having a chance to react. Different reactions may be better at different times, such as trying to finish off a monster before it can get off another attack despite it falling into a defensive stance.

Other monsters can be more tricky and stupid. It's okay for a random monster to have a mind-affecting ability that sends you running to a random hex that can be negated by a random helm. It's okay to have a random sword that boosts its attack against demons of all kinds, or a shield that deflects most attacks from Orc raiders. These things are fine because they're not the main focus and not the main point of the game. You are not guaranteed to encounter all these enemies, and while defeating these encounters helps you complete the objectives of the game, you don't have to do it with the given item.

Creatures and Cards:

I've been considering having "tiers" of monsters which people would shuffle into their monster decks in each area for the first time anyone hits the next level. In other words, when a hunter levels up from level one to level two, you would add the tier 2 cards to each deck. This would allow a control to people not continuously getting stomped by monsters that are just way too difficult right at the beginning of the game, but it still allows people to get some easy resources near the end of the game. 

So, one of the ideas I just talked about that I've forgotten to mention before is the idea that there are different monster decks for each area. The idea I'm having right now is that there will be a single deck of event cards. Originally, I thought to simply have monsters strewn throughout the event deck, but that'd end up with weird monsters in not weird places and wouldn't allow for certain controls of certain areas simply being harder than others, but having greater rewards. So this way, there can be thematically appropriate monsters with controlled difficulties and rewards. I'm not sure if I'll keep this or if I'll have to scrap a lot of my ideas and go back to the drawing board.

Keeping the game entertaining may be my biggest challenge, but I hope to do so by making event cards that are fun and interact with multiple players. For example, cards that make you draw a monster and send it at another player, or having explosive charges set around the base camp. 

I feel like I don't want to get way too complex in mechanics or in the way that cards work. It would be easy to start making really complex and confusing mechanics, and that might be fun for some players, but are going to be hard to deal with at the table and could lead to certain caustic behaviors that I don't want to cultivate. The best way to deal with this is to keep things under consistent terms and not use derived stats. However, I would enjoy having lots of player interactions that people can use to mess with each other and come out on top.

Blah. I'm running out of words. I need to think on this stuff for a bit. Next time, I delve more into the mechanics of cards and player interactions.

THE GREAT HUNT!: Introducing the Great Hunt

The deadliest game in all of the world of Erv is The Great Hunt hosted in the endless wilds of Kulragkh, an ever-shifting patchwork wilderness named after the god-like man who owns it, and hunters, young and old, experienced and new, of all colors, races and creeds, converge every time a new Hunt is announced to prove their worth. The prestige, power, or prize that pushes each person varies, but all are here to experience the most deadly sport, for here in Kulragkh, you die a failure, or live as champion. Whatever monster Kulragkh has marked as the prize monster is to be tracked down and killed by the hunters when they are ready.

The Great Hunt is a competitive multiplayer tabletop boardgame where you take on the persona of one of the hunters and traverse a section of Kulragkh in search of the most ferocious and cruel monster, the Prize Monster. Each hunter is aided by a small team of supporters who help the hunters make up for their deficiencies or power up their strengths. They take their separate journeys through several designated areas. Every area has a set number of hexes that the players can move between. In most hexes, you are told to draw an event card, but some hexes are more treacherous while others hold special secrets. In each area, you can encounter a set of monsters, and perhaps trigger the prize monster to appear. The game ends whenever a player takes out the prize monster.

 As you can tell, I've started to create a new board game. I'm taking a bit of a break from working on my RPG system to put this together. While this may be disappointing to some of you, I am actually really excited about this game. I feel like it's a unique idea, and it's a smaller project that I can easily work on in bite-sized chunks. There's things I can learn from designing this game which I can apply to my system. For example, I can learn a lot from figuring out how to create challenges that are balanced against characters' stats.

Speaking of stats, I'd like to talk about the basic stats that every hunter will have.

Every hunter has:

• Attack
• Defense
• Stealth
• Health 
• Arcane

Attack and Defense are pretty straightforward. When you encounter a monster, you roll your attack and compare it to their defense. If your attack is greater than their defense, it deals the difference in damage. The baseline for defense is about 1/2 of the die being used to roll attack higher than the baseline for attack. Because I'm thinking about using a 12-sided die, that means if baseline attack is 0, then baseline defense would be 6. Various items can increase your attack and defense, while other items and various events check for your attack or defense to be able to activate them or survive them unscathed.

Health is also somewhat simple. You have a number of maximum health equal to the health score. When you take damage, you reduce your number of current health by the number of the damage. This doesn't effect your maximum health. By spending various resources or going to certain tiles, you can recover health. A small few events check your max health, and a few items increase your max health.

Stealth is used to get away from a monster that is too strong. Monsters have a sense score instead of a stealth score. Stealth plus the roll is checked against the monster's sense score, and if it's higher, you get away. If it's lower you take the difference in damage, but still get away. Some events check your stealth in order to escape them unscathed.

Arcane is the most complex stat. It, like health, has a pool which has a maximum equal to the score. You can spend points in this score to boost various things or activate some abilities. Most notably, any hunter that has a current arcane of more than 0 can spend arcane during a fight to boost his attack or damage. However, not all hunters start with arcane scores that allow them to boost things, and instead rely on their supports to grant them arcane scores or powers. Some hunters and supports grant abilities which can be activated by spending arcane. For example, one of the hunters is a witch whose main power is he can curse an enemy and decrease their attack and/or their defense as well as buffing himself, allowing him to kill his enemies easier. Some items and events may check for your max arcane, while others may make you use arcane to activate them or survive them unscathed. Various resources can be spent to recover arcane.

The three basic resources are:

• Food
• Money
• Herbs

Food is necessary for life. Food can be spent at specific times in a turn to regain health. One food is consumed at the end of every turn or your character takes 1 damage. Food can also be used to bait monsters out, set up traps, or power certain abilities. Several events deal with food by allowing you to gain easy food, making you lose food, etc. You usually gain food from killing monsters.

Money can be traded for goods and services at the base camp or in various tiles or events. There may also be some items that make you spend money to activate them. Quite a few different events deal with money in various ways, forcing you to part with it, giving you more, etc. You can also negotiate for other resources with the other players, trading money for things. Money is usually gained by selling items or resources at the base camp.

Herbs are probably the least useful resource, and not all characters have to carry herbs. Herbs are usually spent to recover arcane. However, they can also be used to fight easier monsters, deal with multiple checks, and can be sold for money at the base camp. Several events can deal with herbs in different ways. You usually gain herbs by killing monsters or from certain areas on the map.

So this is the first post on creating The Great Hunt and its mechanics. I hope to craft some engaging mechanics and make the game fun to play. Hope to see you on my next post about THE GREAT HUNT!

Re-evaluating the System that I Haven't Been Working On

Well. It's been a season or two, but I really wanted to get back to work on my system and re-evaluate the goals I was looking toward with it. I'm afraid in all my talking about it, I got a bit lost in all these systems and numbers and possibilities that I forgot what I want the system to do at its most basic.

At the most basic, this system is meant to provide a fun game. While in its initial form it might be better suited to being a strategic skirmish game and not a roleplaying game, as I want to make fun mechanics that work and expedite play, but I want this to eventually be able to support stories and conflicts that people will remember. So, what I want to focus on for the time being is creating good, solid mechanics and helping those mechanics support stories.

Another factor I want to consider is the creation of systems that support complexity of options, but help streamline play so that combat and other interactions can proceed at a fun pace. While I enjoy games where I can sit and create options for myself and my players with each turn, this tends to eat up lots of time and drag things out to where they start to become boring for all players. While allowing for complex interactions of skills and abilities that everyone can gain access to, I want to create systems that help those actions be easily dealt with rather than having nobody knowing what to do and searching through books for hours. D&D 5th edition actually does this pretty well by separating everything out into the 6 basic attributes and having all checks be quickly derived from your attribute modifier and your proficiency bonus, if applicable. No random extra bonuses, no searching through books, just that.

I don't really want to simply rip off the D&D attribute system, particularly since some of it doesn't make a lot of sense. What is the difference between intelligence and wisdom? And how would one measure charisma?

Either way, the D&D 5th edition system is quite good and easy to understand on both the DM's and Player's parts. I would like to create a system that is also easy to grasp and update like that, but rather than using that system, I'd like to create something with more options at the front but still keeps the quick and clean style that 5th ed. uses.

By folding things into basic categories that share the same bonus, I can keep things streamlined to the point where my players don't have to go scavenging their character sheets asking why there are nearly a thousand stats that all roll off of their own bonuses. With a few consistent bonuses and conditions that always act in predictable ways and give the same effects to whatever they target, it'll expedite the game.

In summary: Streamlines are good.

Song of the Post: Daft Punk - "Touch"