Role-Playing Games, Interactive Narratives, plus anything science-fiction or fantasy
Monday, May 27, 2019
New post later this week
With it being Memorial Day and me having a big get-together with friends there isn't going to be a post today, should be around Wednesday.
Monday, May 20, 2019
Mobile Game Review - Marvel Puzzle Quest
Okay, so my opening might have been just a touch melodramatic (if there is such a thing for a term that innately means to excess?) but there is some truth to how MPQ has hurt me. I've never been a big fan of mobile games: which I will call this even though I played it on my Windows 10 laptop through Steam (my screenshots are from a phone emulator though). The mobile mindset seems to be to make a game fun enough to get someone interested, and then not fun at all unless they pay money, and the more they pay the better things are for them. That horrible generalization (though perhaps not unfounded) describes MPQ very well. For proper perspective, I am not against paying for games, I know from my own projects that programming a game is hard, hard work. And having artistic talent is something that you should be rewarded for using. But as someone who's lived most of his life below the poverty level I am very keen about getting a good return for my limited money. And MPQ does not give you nearly enough for how the game is deliberately designed to constantly suck the cash/ Steam gift cards out of your wallet. That said, let's take a look at how the game works.
Match 3 pop-culture-style, or, Bejeweled with Eye Beams
So I remember the release of Bejeweled by Pop Cap Games back in 2001, it was a monster. Everyone I knew was losing hours upon hours to that damn game. I resisted for a while, but even I gave in (and this was back on a Windows 98 desktop computer). It was fun, I will give it that. Oddly, it was also the only "match 3" game I played until MPQ. The match 3 format is easy enough, usually you move two adjacent pieces to make a match of 3 or more in the same colored pieces. The matched pieces disappear, and new ones drop into place. It's a simple mechanic, it's really just about pattern recognition and some luck. Easy to get into, and engrossing enough to be fun.MPQ takes that basic formula and adds it's central concept, superheroes. Each match you make earns "Action Points (AP)" for each tile matched (so matching 3 red tiles gives 3 red AP). You choose up to 3 heroes, and each has up to 3 abilities. Some abilities are passive, so they are always in effect, while the rest have an AP cost. For example Iron Man's Repulsor Blast power costs 10 red AP to use.
Your heroes and your opponents (also up to 3 at a time) each have health points. The goal is to reduce the other guy's health to 0, which knocks them out of the fight. Each hero (I use the term generally, there are playable villains like Doc Ock) does a different amount of damage for each color, so out of your group the hero who does the highest damage will 'move to the front' after each match (making them the one to take damage). In addition to doing damage from each tile matched most abilities also do damage or create special tiles.
Special tiles change a tile of a certain color on the board into a new hybrid tile. So Iron Fist can make a Green Attack Tile, which means a green tile on the board - that is not already special - gains a fist symbol and automatically does a certain amount of damage at the start of Iron Fist's side's turn. Luke Cage can make a Red Protect Tile, which reduces the damage his side (whoever's in front, not just him) takes by a certain amount.
The most common special tile though is the Countdown Tile. This makes a counter that decreases each turn, and when it hits 0 it triggers some effect. Because all of these special tiles alter ones on the board a big part of the game is trying to match away your opponenet's special tiles while protecting your own.
Having these powers adds a whole extra dimension to the basic match 3 game. You don't want to make a match that includes one of your special tiles (you destroy your own if you match them). Likewise, you may not need a certain color, but make the match to get rid of an opponent's special tiles. So there's an extra layer of decision-making to each turn, and strategically there are some heroes who work better with others. Since most powers cost AP, you don't want a lot of heroes who have the same colored powers since you won't be able to use them all. And some abilities just combine in very useful ways.
Also, the artwork is good and most of the powers look pretty cool with their short animations.
Why Hulk No My Friend?
Sadly, it is in this cool concept, having a roster of heroes, where the evil creeps in.You get a few free heroes at the start of the game. And they all have a "Level" that determines their overall power and "Covers" that determine what powers they can use and how strong (combined with the hero's Level) those powers are. You have to gain covers to increase a hero's maximum level, but you win covers at random from earning "Tokens" that you turn in for a random hero from a pool of them. These tokens can be won, but usually just the least powerful - heroes themselves are rated by "Stars." A 1 Star hero is the lowest and least powerful, with a low maximum level. 5 Star heroes are the most powerful and can be upgraded the most. This makes it hard to talk about characters, since there is a 1 Star Iron Man, a 3 Star Iron Man as well as 4 and 5 Star versions (each with different art). I have no idea why there isn't a 2 Star Shellhead though.
Confused yet? Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe (for being pretty simple really). Anyways, so you can earn tokens for playing the game and even just for logging in. But, those are almost always lesser 1 or 2 Star heroes. Each token has a small chance (sometimes just 1% or so) of giving you a higher-Star hero's cover, so occasionally you'll get a great deal.
To review, you get heroes at random, and the free heroes are the least powerful ones. Then it gets better. Each hero can have up to 5 covers in each of it's 3 powers, but can only have a total of 13 covers. So you cannot get all 5 covers in all 3 powers, you'll have to choose some to under-power. And after you've gotten those 5 covers in one power, or 13 covers in one hero, all the same covers are useless. You can 'sell,' or really convert, them into purple currency (ISO? I forget, I always called it "purple crap" for how useful it was). Purple Crap is spent to level up a hero, which you cannot do unless/ until you get a cover, within their limits, so it is really easy to get Purple Crap. I usually had at least 300,000 points of the stuff (my friend was always over 1 million). It was hard to get a lot of heroes to level up.
One of the biggest reasons why it was so hard was the game's other system designed to screw over the players, your limited Roster size. You can only have a number of heroes up to your Roster size. So at the beginning of the game you have around a 6-hero sized Roster. Once you get all 6 slots filled you have to sell off ones you have to make room for different heroes. In order to increase your Roster size you have to spend real money (called Hero Points) - and the kick in the pants is that It Gets More And More Expensive The More Heroes You Buy!!! So you just started the game, the tutorial pretty much filled your roster, and you like the game so you decide to buy some more character slots. Well, look, it's only 300 Hero Points for 3 slots. That's pretty good, like under a dollar per slot, not too bad. So you fill those up. No big, only spent a few bucks on the game, I'll buy some more. Oh, wait, now it's 350 points for 3 slots. And then 500 points for 3 slots. And then 400 points for 2 slots. And eventually 700 points for 1 slot. And the cost just keeps on rising.
This is crap. It is total, 100% scum-sucking garbage CRAP! The longer you play the game the higher the tax on playing.
Well, no problem, I'll just get rid of any characters I don't really like, and I'll slowly buy slots with the few free Hero Points I can get from playing. Yeah, that kind of works. But you see, some tokens stay good forever, and some are limited-time events (called "Vaults" to drive home how they're stealing your money), and once you open a token and get a cover a timer starts. You can only hold onto a cover for 14 days, at the end it is automatically converted to Purple Crap. So over and over you're going to keep losing covers, and watching all the tokens you don't have room for pile up, and then you'll need to open those higher-level tokens to keep up with the game, but what if it has a cool character you don't have any room for? Either you shell out ever-increasing money or say goodbye to a hero you might not see again for months (remember, the tokens produce random covers) or just get disappointed because you didn't want that hero in the first place. Literally whatever the outcome is it's bad, unless you have a lot of money to burn.
I Hate Myself For Loving You
And that sucks, because the game itself is pretty damn fun.It's got just the right amount of complexity to be interesting without becoming so hard that it loses the 'casual game' appeal. It's actually pretty fun to play, but every second in-between matches is filled with the frustration of managing your roster. The joy of getting a new token quickly becomes the disappointment of it not being the hero you need to go with the other one you've got, or the frustration of not having enough space. And it's not one of those games you can just spend a little on, the cost keeps going up and up and up the longer you play. There are over 300 heroes total, I cannot imagine just how much real money it would take, or hundreds of hours of playing, to be able to poke-catch them all.
Adding insult to injury, most of the gameplay revolves around events. These are a pool of opponents that change every 3-4 days. Each match you win in the event gives you points. And there are rewards for the top 100-500 players of each difficulty. These are covers, so you can get exactly who you want - if you can out-score other people. Which really means the people who play the most have the best chances of getting better characters.
The other thing you can do is "PvP." This is not real PvP, I don't know a good term for it, I've seen a few games do this same thing. What happens is that the servers look for another player, pick 3 random heroes in that player's inventory, and those are your opponents. The computer is controlling them, you never directly face another live person. And this is the other way to try to get good covers, except the match-making algorythm is so terrible you will often be fighting level 255 enemies when your highest hero is level 70. So good luck. And whenever the computer picks one of your teams and someone defeats them you lose points/ standing - unless, of course, you pay real money for a 'shield' to protect yourself a day or two or three.
Crap.
I really want to like this game. I like the Marvel heroes, I like the gameplay and the graphics are solid. I like having a game I can log into for a few minutes and not have to really commit to playing, it gives me a break in-between other (admittedly more productive) things. But the suck-you-dry business model that never gets any better is just too much to put up with. I respect myself and value my time more than that. If you like match 3 games and either have money to burn or a high frustration tolerence then give it a try - but my advise to most people is don't bother, and don't reward this company for being so disrespectful to it's players.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 13 - Discovery, Manipulation and Communication Actions
I've been using a system that breaks a game's rules into 5 categories: Exploring, Investigating, Manipulating, Communicating and Fighting. Last post I looked at what Exploring rules the 5e SRD has. This post I am going to try to go through the next 3 types, because I'm pretty sure there isn't a lot to talk about in any one of them, I know Fighting has the most page count (so it will be next post).
What kinds of skills does the SRD have for this type of challenge? Well...
And what sections of the rules cover this type?
None, none at all really
This type is rough in the SRD because while there are a few skills in the system, there is nothing at all about how exactly to use them. If I want to use Religion to identify the type or abilities of an undead creature, can I? What's the DC? What information can I get? If there is a puzzle about moving rings or a riddle about carrying geese and foxes and beans across a pond is that just a plain Intelligence check? Again, what DC? Or are we supposed to "role-play" it only and if I can't personally figure it out then I'm tough out of luck?
Mysteries and puzzles are some of the hardest things to pull off in an RPG, it's too bad that the SRD doesn't give you any help with them.
So what skills are there in the SRD?
Well, none of the skills really apply except for Medicine
Mostly this is the area of Tool Proficiencies, which I haven't really addressed until now because the SRD itself doesn't really address them at all, so now's as good a time as any.
Tool Proficencies
Tools are a strange thing in the SRD. They feel like an afterthought, like somebody designed the rules and then went, hey, wait, we totally forgot about crafting items, and we don't really know how we want to handle crafting items, and we don't want to add more skills so let's make them skills that are not skills so we can say they're there and hopefully nobody will really care or notice that we totally had no idea about what we were doing.
Okay, I'm being hostile, actually there is a sort of sense to the skill vs tools system. If skills are things you can do innately, and tools profs are things you cannot do on your own, then there is a sense in dividing them. The problem is that they don't really divide that way cleanly. Take Stealth, that should be a skill because you can hide any time you want, right? But then what about camouflage clothing? A black ninja outfit? Those should help you hide (in the appropriate environments at least) weather you're personally 'good' or 'skilled' at hiding or not, right?
An easy way to see this is in the system itself. There is the Medicine skill and the Herbalist Tools, or the Perform skill and Musical Instrument tools. Heck, there are even tool kits, like woodworking and the forger's kit - which overlap if you want to make a forgery of a wooden carving. So if you only have one of these (kit or skill) can you do the same things? And what if you have both?
Now, the system did try to clarify some of this in Xanathar's Guide To Everything. The thing is though, they didn't add any of that material to the SRD (as of this writing). Right now I'm not reviewing DnD, I'm reviewing just the SRD, the part of it that you can use to build your own games (which I intend to do down the road). So for the purposes of this review, these are all questions with no answers.
Okay, back to the SRD. So most of Manipulating is in the Tool Proficiencies, but what other rules are there?
Diseases are just over a page, with 4 examples, and no useful advise or guidance at all for creating your own or how to treat them
Madness is another just-over-page of random tables. I hate random tables in madness/ sanity systems- trauma is not random, it is very much based on whatever the triggering event was (though, granted, it can pop up at seemingly random times/associations)
Objects is a 1 page section that gives you some basic guidelines to dealing with inanimate stuff, okay for being so short
Poisons is a little over a page, and has the same problems as in earlier editions of the d20 system. Poison tends to be over-priced for the effects, the save DCs are pretty low so they're mostly just good against low-level monsters, and there are no DCs or steps mentioned for how to cure them with either the Medicine skill or Herbalist Kit Proficiency (in fact, neither the skill nor kit say they can actually be used to cure a poison or disease, only to "diagnose" for medicine or "create antitoxin" for herbalist)
So basically the SRD has very few rules and most of them are useless.
Sadly, just as with Manipulation there is a lack of any sort of rules. There are a whopping 5 skills related directly to Communication:
And in terms of rules there are none at all. No guidance whatsoever on how to set up or run a conversation or an adventure that relied on interpersonal interactions. No DCs or what should be/ shouldn't be possible. So if you wanted to run a Game of Thrones-inspired campaign good luck with all the politics and drama.
Okay, so we've covered 4 of the 5 Challenge Types, and while these have had few useful rules at least the last one I know has some detailed material, because we're going to wrap things up with a look at Fighting - next post.
You can find the rest of this series here
Discovery Challenges
So Discovery is all about learning information, as you might guess from the title. This is different from Perception, which is actually a part of Exploring. Perception is about noticing the environment, the things around you weather living or not (well, as used in the SRD, I personally don't think perception should be a separate skill as I mentioned in one of my posts). Discovery is about understanding something, about seeing it deeper than the surface level. This is the core challenge type in a mystery story (seeing what happened is not the problem, look at that big blood stain, it's interpreting what you see, what weapon did that/ who did that, is the challenge), and also encompasses riddles and puzzles. Things that have a deeper, hidden complexity by nature.What kinds of skills does the SRD have for this type of challenge? Well...
- Arcana
- History
- Insight
- Investigation
- Medicine
- Nature
- Religion
And what sections of the rules cover this type?
None, none at all really
This type is rough in the SRD because while there are a few skills in the system, there is nothing at all about how exactly to use them. If I want to use Religion to identify the type or abilities of an undead creature, can I? What's the DC? What information can I get? If there is a puzzle about moving rings or a riddle about carrying geese and foxes and beans across a pond is that just a plain Intelligence check? Again, what DC? Or are we supposed to "role-play" it only and if I can't personally figure it out then I'm tough out of luck?
Mysteries and puzzles are some of the hardest things to pull off in an RPG, it's too bad that the SRD doesn't give you any help with them.
Manipulation Challenges
Exploring set the environment, and let you see and interact with the surface of the things around you. Discovery let's you see under the surface. And then Manipulating is about changing that inner nature of things and people. Crafting is changing raw material into items, healing is changing a damaged body back into a whole one, so both are Manipulation. An adventure that focused on Manipulation challenges would be something like a hacker in a heist or cyberpunk story - manipulating security - or creating a forgery to replace an item with, or trying to stop a plague. Of course, while I categorize the challenges to try to organize related skills, abilities and rules together- in a typical adventure there would be a mix of challenge types.So what skills are there in the SRD?
Well, none of the skills really apply except for Medicine
Mostly this is the area of Tool Proficiencies, which I haven't really addressed until now because the SRD itself doesn't really address them at all, so now's as good a time as any.
Tool Proficencies
Tools are a strange thing in the SRD. They feel like an afterthought, like somebody designed the rules and then went, hey, wait, we totally forgot about crafting items, and we don't really know how we want to handle crafting items, and we don't want to add more skills so let's make them skills that are not skills so we can say they're there and hopefully nobody will really care or notice that we totally had no idea about what we were doing.
Okay, I'm being hostile, actually there is a sort of sense to the skill vs tools system. If skills are things you can do innately, and tools profs are things you cannot do on your own, then there is a sense in dividing them. The problem is that they don't really divide that way cleanly. Take Stealth, that should be a skill because you can hide any time you want, right? But then what about camouflage clothing? A black ninja outfit? Those should help you hide (in the appropriate environments at least) weather you're personally 'good' or 'skilled' at hiding or not, right?
An easy way to see this is in the system itself. There is the Medicine skill and the Herbalist Tools, or the Perform skill and Musical Instrument tools. Heck, there are even tool kits, like woodworking and the forger's kit - which overlap if you want to make a forgery of a wooden carving. So if you only have one of these (kit or skill) can you do the same things? And what if you have both?
Now, the system did try to clarify some of this in Xanathar's Guide To Everything. The thing is though, they didn't add any of that material to the SRD (as of this writing). Right now I'm not reviewing DnD, I'm reviewing just the SRD, the part of it that you can use to build your own games (which I intend to do down the road). So for the purposes of this review, these are all questions with no answers.
Okay, back to the SRD. So most of Manipulating is in the Tool Proficiencies, but what other rules are there?
Diseases are just over a page, with 4 examples, and no useful advise or guidance at all for creating your own or how to treat them
Madness is another just-over-page of random tables. I hate random tables in madness/ sanity systems- trauma is not random, it is very much based on whatever the triggering event was (though, granted, it can pop up at seemingly random times/associations)
Objects is a 1 page section that gives you some basic guidelines to dealing with inanimate stuff, okay for being so short
Poisons is a little over a page, and has the same problems as in earlier editions of the d20 system. Poison tends to be over-priced for the effects, the save DCs are pretty low so they're mostly just good against low-level monsters, and there are no DCs or steps mentioned for how to cure them with either the Medicine skill or Herbalist Kit Proficiency (in fact, neither the skill nor kit say they can actually be used to cure a poison or disease, only to "diagnose" for medicine or "create antitoxin" for herbalist)
So basically the SRD has very few rules and most of them are useless.
Communication Challenges
Manipulation deals with the player/ active character making changes in something else. Talking between two sentient creatures falls into it's own category, Communication. People are complex, and layered in their motivations and actions, so this subject is worth its own Challenge Type.Sadly, just as with Manipulation there is a lack of any sort of rules. There are a whopping 5 skills related directly to Communication:
- Insight - used to figure out what a character is thinking/ feeling
- Deception - for lying to people, including disguise (though, of course there is also a disguise kit)
- Intimidation - to threaten someone
- Performance - to entertain someone/ a group
- Persuasion - to 'play nice' with others (almost its exact description)
And in terms of rules there are none at all. No guidance whatsoever on how to set up or run a conversation or an adventure that relied on interpersonal interactions. No DCs or what should be/ shouldn't be possible. So if you wanted to run a Game of Thrones-inspired campaign good luck with all the politics and drama.
Okay, so we've covered 4 of the 5 Challenge Types, and while these have had few useful rules at least the last one I know has some detailed material, because we're going to wrap things up with a look at Fighting - next post.
You can find the rest of this series here
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Looking at the 5th Edition SRD - part 12 - Exploration Actions
A Quick Side Note- this post did not come out, as the last predicted, a week later :( In fact it's been several months since I last updated this series. I want to apologize for that, and say that I'm re-committing on finishing this series as quickly as possible while still being worth reading.
Having looked over the attributes, and how skills modify them, let's look at the rules for different types of actions. In my 5-fold system for describing RPG actions/ challenges my categories are: Exploring, Investigating, Manipulating, Communicating and Fighting.
That list starts with Exploring because it covers how the character interacts with the game world. This is the very first starting point, you need a world to inhabit to do anything/ exist in after all. This category includes both "natural" and "man made" environmental factors. So traps are a part of the Exploring rules here. So is stealth, since it's not really about the person looking for you as it is your ability to 'blend in' with the environment somehow (same way Perception is the ability to identify your environment). Survival, tracking, movement - both gross like running and swimming, and fine like acrobatics - are also Exploration, obviously, since they move you through the environment.
Here are the skills that I put as being exploring-
⦁ Acrobatics
⦁ Animal Handling
⦁ Athletics
⦁ Perception
⦁ Sleight of Hand
⦁ Stealth
⦁ Survival
And here are the sections of the SRD that I think go along with those:
⦁ some of the Attributes & Skills
⦁ Time & Movement
⦁ The Environment
⦁ Traps
I don't consider objects a part of Exploring, because I put working with/ changing objects as a part of "Manipulation." Traps are in Exploring however because a trap denies access to a place/ items. And movement, ie changing places, is a part of Exploration. Likewise poisons and diseases can afflict a character from a trap or location, but treating or removing them is also Manipulation (that is, manipulating bodies, ie healing).
So these are the core things to Exploring challenges, in my own system (which I use here only because the 5e SRD has no system at all, and I want to have a logical and well-constructed discussion [as opposed to just listing all my thoughts alphabetically, like too darn many RPG books])...
⦁ Perception / Stealth (stealth hides your whole being while sleight of hand hides your actions)
⦁ Movement
⦁ Access and Barriers (incld. Traps)
⦁ Weather/ Environmental Effects (including falling) [while healing these may be in Manipulation, taking them in the first place works best here]
With that as a filter, just how many rules are there and what are they like for Exploring challenges? Well, we have about 4 pages in 'The Environment' section, 2 pages of 'Time and Movement', and 4 pages of 'Traps' - and let's say 2 pages from the 'Abilities and Skills' section, for about 12 pages of Exploring-styled rules: out of 403 pages total (though a lot of that is characters, spells and monsters). There are maybe 50 pages of rules on running the game (estimating generously). Looked at that way the Exploring rules take up a decent proportion of the total rules.
So what all do we get in those 12 pages? Well, let's look at each section.
In the Abilities and Skills we have the skills I listed above. There are some examples of what each attribute/ skill might be used for, but as I mentioned in my last post there are no examples of DCs - weather each action might be easy or hard. While that does give the GM flexibility it also sucks if you're a new GM and don't feel comfortable with the DC system, or you're a player and the GM hides your DCs, in which case you have no idea how likely an attempt might be, and thus weather it could be worth any potential risks. Something is better than nothing, but I wouldn't call this section very useful.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. There is a little sidebar in the Dexterity section that talks about hiding. It has exactly one sentence about hiding while invisible, "An invisible creature can always try to hide. Signs of it's passage might still be noticed, and it does have to stay quiet." Okay, now how does that tell you anything you wouldn't have figured out on your own when thinking about invisibility and hiding? Instead of being written by Captain Obvious, how about we get a game designer to write about this - because a game designer would say something like: invisible creatures don't need to make Stealth checks unless the environment might give them away (ie, leaves or twigs that could break), or maybe, invisible creatures always have advantage on Stealth checks, or maybe, if an invisible creature makes noise/ tracks other characters who rely on sight still have Disadvantage to attack or interact with them, or anything that might actually help you adjudicate an invisible player/ monster at the table? I'm not saying the game needs precise rules, just some quick advise to the GM about how to use the system. A good thing to have, even in a "rules light" styled game.
Time and Movement is next. Time in RPGs is always screwy. No matter how detailed your rules it's impossible to simulate reality enough to measure things in exact seconds. And it's useless to try. The most valuable thing is figuring out who gets a task done first, or arrives at a location first. And given that DnD has always used identical numbers for a group (ie, all Humans move at exactly 30 feet per round) (DnD Olympics must suck), then it's really important to say what gets checked in a contest. If two players are having a foot race what do they roll to determine the winner? Dexterity? Strength? Constitution? Wisdom, what ?!?! That's the only really useful thing at the table, counting minutes and seconds is actually more of a waste of time than anything else.
Sadly the 5e SRD doesn't have a lot of useful information. And again it is very wasteful of its word count. Pretty much the entire Movement section can be boiled down to this:
Walking: choose a pace-
Fast- covers the most distance (automatically beating/ arriving before any slower creatures), but Disadvantage to Perception
Normal - the default speed, cannot use Stealth
Slow - the slowest speed, automatically beaten by all others, but can use Stealth
*Forced March - can treat your speed as 1 category higher, but have to make a Constitution save or gain 1 level of Exhaustion
*Difficult Terrain - move at half speed
Climbing and Swimming: move at half your normal speed
Jumping:
Vertical - can jump roughly half your height from standing, or just over your height with a running start
Horizontal - with a running start you can jump your Strength score in feet, half that from a standing start
*difficult or longer jumps require an Acrobatics check
What the rules miss (IMHO) are:
Flying creatures ignore ground terrain (and hazards), and will beat any ground characters at the same Pace. High winds may count as difficult terrain (headwind) or a free 'forced march' (tailwind) for fliers however.
Short-term movement is a contested Acrobatics check to determine a winner in the same Pace. Long-term movement is a Constitution save/ check.
Normal Pace should allow Stealth, just at disadvantage, while at Fast Pace Stealth is impossible (without a special ability). Also a Fast Pace may impose Disadvantage to other skills than just Perception (like Survival to track).
Hazardous Terrain (like Desert, Arctic, Volcanic) requires a save, typically Dex (? Con?) but could be another attribute, or the creatures take damage (use the Trap tables for save DCs and ignore attack roll, just apply damage). For ease of bookkeeping Hazardous terrain should only be applied once per journey, ie a Desert may be a Con Save vs the heat to the Oasis, then another Hazard check from the Oasis to the City the PCs were headed to (making checks for every day seems like it would just slow the game, no way to heal the damage though so that's the state you arrive in). Proper equipment/ abilities may negate Hazardous terrain, like being Fire Resistant may reduce or ignore hot environments, and using camels and buying extra water (or hiring native guides) may negate the hazards from the Desert example above.
Characters may need extra supplies (like food and water) if they travel at a Slow Pace, or fewer supplies traveling at a Fast Pace. Not having enough supplies requires a Con save (like for a forced march, but without the speed boost; and forced march w-low supplies is Con save at disadvantage).
Since a Forced March represents moving when others are normally resting, ie at night or just by making a smaller camp and shorter rest/ sleeping breaks, then any creatures moving this way need to be able to see in the dark, or else make any Hazard checks at Disadvantage.
Animal Handling - animals and the AH skill are usually either used to ride a mount or direct a carriage, or as a save against an animal hazard (ie, you recognize the dangerous animal's signs and avoid them).
Again, this list has my personal house rules, the book doesn't say anything about them. I only mention my thoughts to show how much the SRD is missing that might be needed at the table.
The Environment section has a decent amount to unpack, so I'll hit on each element in order:
Falling - as in previous editions falling damage is 1d6 per 10 feet, which works for me. While I'm not a fan of exact foot measurements, ten foot increments are broad enough and not too hard to approximate (you could say 1d6 per 'floor' or 'story' I guess). Hit Point inflation does make this wonky, but that's another problem.
Suffocating - the SRD says a creature can hold it's breath for it's Con modifier in minutes, min of 30 sec (with a 0 mod). I decided to try a scientific (I wrote it down, like Adam Savage said to do :) test and held my breath three times. I got 0:29, 0:33 and 0:28 - I'm a middle-aged overweight guy, no Con mod here, so I'd say the low end sounds about right. I kind of feel like it should be an extra 30 sec for your Con mod, a full minute seems like a long time - I seem to remember hearing that brain damage occurred around 6 minutes without oxygen. This sounds logical overall, and I'm not sure just how often it will come up, but the rule makes sense and is short and sweet, so I like it.
Vision and Light - again the SRD gets excessively wordy, basically there are 3 possible visibility levels: Normal, Lightly Obscured and Heavily Obscured. Lightly Obscured can be caused by dim light (the edge of the torch, twilight, full moon), patchy fog or light/mod foliage and gives Disadvantage on Perception checks relying on sight. Heavily Obscured can be caused by darkness, full fog or heavy foliage and creatures gain the 'blinded' condition. That's simple enough and works. (though, overly-bright light could have similar effects I guess)
Then the book talks about other types of perception, which gets a little odd. Blindsight lets a creature perceive it's surroundings within a radius, but that's all the SRD says. What kinds of details can it perceive? Can it sense colors? Can it detect a limb moving while the main body is standing still? Read lips? You really have to work this out on your own. Darkvision makes Heavily Obscured into Lightly Obscured instead, and only sees in black and white. That's detailed enough. Truesight lets a creature see, well everything, which works since it tends to be a high level ability.
Food and Water - like suffocating I'm not sure just how often this will come up at the table, but the rules deal with hunger and thirst by gaining levels of exhaustion. On page 358 is the conditions list, and there are six levels of exhaustion, with level 6 being death. That means you could survive 4 days without any water, which I think is pretty "realistic" (as weird as that gets when dealing with an RPG), I remember it being 3 days. For food you can go 3 + Con Mod (min 1) and then gain 1 level of exhaustion each day, for a minimum of 10 days and a max of about 14 - I seem to remember 30 days being the average you could survive without food (it was 3 min w/o air, 3 days w/o water and 30 days w/o food, and I don't remember where I heard that from). So I might house rule gaining a level of exhaustion every 2 days, but again I'm nit-picking something that might not ever come up.
The last section is about traps. Traps are a huge topic, there have been books written about traps and using them in RPGs. I don't want to get into it here, that will be a post for another day, but I will just say that the 5e SRD rules are okay. They're fairly detailed, they tell you to think about what the players are doing and the circumstances and not just rely on die rolls. There are not a lot of sample traps, but there are a few tables as guides and I think enough to get your house ruling pointed in the right direction.
Okay, so we've covered 1/5th of my Challenge categories, next post we'll cover some more.
You can find the rest of this series here
Having looked over the attributes, and how skills modify them, let's look at the rules for different types of actions. In my 5-fold system for describing RPG actions/ challenges my categories are: Exploring, Investigating, Manipulating, Communicating and Fighting.
That list starts with Exploring because it covers how the character interacts with the game world. This is the very first starting point, you need a world to inhabit to do anything/ exist in after all. This category includes both "natural" and "man made" environmental factors. So traps are a part of the Exploring rules here. So is stealth, since it's not really about the person looking for you as it is your ability to 'blend in' with the environment somehow (same way Perception is the ability to identify your environment). Survival, tracking, movement - both gross like running and swimming, and fine like acrobatics - are also Exploration, obviously, since they move you through the environment.
Here are the skills that I put as being exploring-
⦁ Acrobatics
⦁ Animal Handling
⦁ Athletics
⦁ Perception
⦁ Sleight of Hand
⦁ Stealth
⦁ Survival
And here are the sections of the SRD that I think go along with those:
⦁ some of the Attributes & Skills
⦁ Time & Movement
⦁ The Environment
⦁ Traps
I don't consider objects a part of Exploring, because I put working with/ changing objects as a part of "Manipulation." Traps are in Exploring however because a trap denies access to a place/ items. And movement, ie changing places, is a part of Exploration. Likewise poisons and diseases can afflict a character from a trap or location, but treating or removing them is also Manipulation (that is, manipulating bodies, ie healing).
So these are the core things to Exploring challenges, in my own system (which I use here only because the 5e SRD has no system at all, and I want to have a logical and well-constructed discussion [as opposed to just listing all my thoughts alphabetically, like too darn many RPG books])...
⦁ Perception / Stealth (stealth hides your whole being while sleight of hand hides your actions)
⦁ Movement
⦁ Access and Barriers (incld. Traps)
⦁ Weather/ Environmental Effects (including falling) [while healing these may be in Manipulation, taking them in the first place works best here]
With that as a filter, just how many rules are there and what are they like for Exploring challenges? Well, we have about 4 pages in 'The Environment' section, 2 pages of 'Time and Movement', and 4 pages of 'Traps' - and let's say 2 pages from the 'Abilities and Skills' section, for about 12 pages of Exploring-styled rules: out of 403 pages total (though a lot of that is characters, spells and monsters). There are maybe 50 pages of rules on running the game (estimating generously). Looked at that way the Exploring rules take up a decent proportion of the total rules.
So what all do we get in those 12 pages? Well, let's look at each section.
In the Abilities and Skills we have the skills I listed above. There are some examples of what each attribute/ skill might be used for, but as I mentioned in my last post there are no examples of DCs - weather each action might be easy or hard. While that does give the GM flexibility it also sucks if you're a new GM and don't feel comfortable with the DC system, or you're a player and the GM hides your DCs, in which case you have no idea how likely an attempt might be, and thus weather it could be worth any potential risks. Something is better than nothing, but I wouldn't call this section very useful.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. There is a little sidebar in the Dexterity section that talks about hiding. It has exactly one sentence about hiding while invisible, "An invisible creature can always try to hide. Signs of it's passage might still be noticed, and it does have to stay quiet." Okay, now how does that tell you anything you wouldn't have figured out on your own when thinking about invisibility and hiding? Instead of being written by Captain Obvious, how about we get a game designer to write about this - because a game designer would say something like: invisible creatures don't need to make Stealth checks unless the environment might give them away (ie, leaves or twigs that could break), or maybe, invisible creatures always have advantage on Stealth checks, or maybe, if an invisible creature makes noise/ tracks other characters who rely on sight still have Disadvantage to attack or interact with them, or anything that might actually help you adjudicate an invisible player/ monster at the table? I'm not saying the game needs precise rules, just some quick advise to the GM about how to use the system. A good thing to have, even in a "rules light" styled game.
Time and Movement is next. Time in RPGs is always screwy. No matter how detailed your rules it's impossible to simulate reality enough to measure things in exact seconds. And it's useless to try. The most valuable thing is figuring out who gets a task done first, or arrives at a location first. And given that DnD has always used identical numbers for a group (ie, all Humans move at exactly 30 feet per round) (DnD Olympics must suck), then it's really important to say what gets checked in a contest. If two players are having a foot race what do they roll to determine the winner? Dexterity? Strength? Constitution? Wisdom, what ?!?! That's the only really useful thing at the table, counting minutes and seconds is actually more of a waste of time than anything else.
Sadly the 5e SRD doesn't have a lot of useful information. And again it is very wasteful of its word count. Pretty much the entire Movement section can be boiled down to this:
Walking: choose a pace-
Fast- covers the most distance (automatically beating/ arriving before any slower creatures), but Disadvantage to Perception
Normal - the default speed, cannot use Stealth
Slow - the slowest speed, automatically beaten by all others, but can use Stealth
*Forced March - can treat your speed as 1 category higher, but have to make a Constitution save or gain 1 level of Exhaustion
*Difficult Terrain - move at half speed
Climbing and Swimming: move at half your normal speed
Jumping:
Vertical - can jump roughly half your height from standing, or just over your height with a running start
Horizontal - with a running start you can jump your Strength score in feet, half that from a standing start
*difficult or longer jumps require an Acrobatics check
What the rules miss (IMHO) are:
Flying creatures ignore ground terrain (and hazards), and will beat any ground characters at the same Pace. High winds may count as difficult terrain (headwind) or a free 'forced march' (tailwind) for fliers however.
Short-term movement is a contested Acrobatics check to determine a winner in the same Pace. Long-term movement is a Constitution save/ check.
Normal Pace should allow Stealth, just at disadvantage, while at Fast Pace Stealth is impossible (without a special ability). Also a Fast Pace may impose Disadvantage to other skills than just Perception (like Survival to track).
Hazardous Terrain (like Desert, Arctic, Volcanic) requires a save, typically Dex (? Con?) but could be another attribute, or the creatures take damage (use the Trap tables for save DCs and ignore attack roll, just apply damage). For ease of bookkeeping Hazardous terrain should only be applied once per journey, ie a Desert may be a Con Save vs the heat to the Oasis, then another Hazard check from the Oasis to the City the PCs were headed to (making checks for every day seems like it would just slow the game, no way to heal the damage though so that's the state you arrive in). Proper equipment/ abilities may negate Hazardous terrain, like being Fire Resistant may reduce or ignore hot environments, and using camels and buying extra water (or hiring native guides) may negate the hazards from the Desert example above.
Characters may need extra supplies (like food and water) if they travel at a Slow Pace, or fewer supplies traveling at a Fast Pace. Not having enough supplies requires a Con save (like for a forced march, but without the speed boost; and forced march w-low supplies is Con save at disadvantage).
Since a Forced March represents moving when others are normally resting, ie at night or just by making a smaller camp and shorter rest/ sleeping breaks, then any creatures moving this way need to be able to see in the dark, or else make any Hazard checks at Disadvantage.
Animal Handling - animals and the AH skill are usually either used to ride a mount or direct a carriage, or as a save against an animal hazard (ie, you recognize the dangerous animal's signs and avoid them).
Again, this list has my personal house rules, the book doesn't say anything about them. I only mention my thoughts to show how much the SRD is missing that might be needed at the table.
The Environment section has a decent amount to unpack, so I'll hit on each element in order:
Falling - as in previous editions falling damage is 1d6 per 10 feet, which works for me. While I'm not a fan of exact foot measurements, ten foot increments are broad enough and not too hard to approximate (you could say 1d6 per 'floor' or 'story' I guess). Hit Point inflation does make this wonky, but that's another problem.
Suffocating - the SRD says a creature can hold it's breath for it's Con modifier in minutes, min of 30 sec (with a 0 mod). I decided to try a scientific (I wrote it down, like Adam Savage said to do :) test and held my breath three times. I got 0:29, 0:33 and 0:28 - I'm a middle-aged overweight guy, no Con mod here, so I'd say the low end sounds about right. I kind of feel like it should be an extra 30 sec for your Con mod, a full minute seems like a long time - I seem to remember hearing that brain damage occurred around 6 minutes without oxygen. This sounds logical overall, and I'm not sure just how often it will come up, but the rule makes sense and is short and sweet, so I like it.
Vision and Light - again the SRD gets excessively wordy, basically there are 3 possible visibility levels: Normal, Lightly Obscured and Heavily Obscured. Lightly Obscured can be caused by dim light (the edge of the torch, twilight, full moon), patchy fog or light/mod foliage and gives Disadvantage on Perception checks relying on sight. Heavily Obscured can be caused by darkness, full fog or heavy foliage and creatures gain the 'blinded' condition. That's simple enough and works. (though, overly-bright light could have similar effects I guess)
Then the book talks about other types of perception, which gets a little odd. Blindsight lets a creature perceive it's surroundings within a radius, but that's all the SRD says. What kinds of details can it perceive? Can it sense colors? Can it detect a limb moving while the main body is standing still? Read lips? You really have to work this out on your own. Darkvision makes Heavily Obscured into Lightly Obscured instead, and only sees in black and white. That's detailed enough. Truesight lets a creature see, well everything, which works since it tends to be a high level ability.
Food and Water - like suffocating I'm not sure just how often this will come up at the table, but the rules deal with hunger and thirst by gaining levels of exhaustion. On page 358 is the conditions list, and there are six levels of exhaustion, with level 6 being death. That means you could survive 4 days without any water, which I think is pretty "realistic" (as weird as that gets when dealing with an RPG), I remember it being 3 days. For food you can go 3 + Con Mod (min 1) and then gain 1 level of exhaustion each day, for a minimum of 10 days and a max of about 14 - I seem to remember 30 days being the average you could survive without food (it was 3 min w/o air, 3 days w/o water and 30 days w/o food, and I don't remember where I heard that from). So I might house rule gaining a level of exhaustion every 2 days, but again I'm nit-picking something that might not ever come up.
The last section is about traps. Traps are a huge topic, there have been books written about traps and using them in RPGs. I don't want to get into it here, that will be a post for another day, but I will just say that the 5e SRD rules are okay. They're fairly detailed, they tell you to think about what the players are doing and the circumstances and not just rely on die rolls. There are not a lot of sample traps, but there are a few tables as guides and I think enough to get your house ruling pointed in the right direction.
Okay, so we've covered 1/5th of my Challenge categories, next post we'll cover some more.
You can find the rest of this series here
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
A Thank You during my "dark" time
So I've been wrapped up in my own head, and then dragged into some of my friends' troubles, and thus the blog has not started off the new year with a grand re-opening as I was hoping for at the end of last year. In fact, I've hardly even looked at it in months. So I was very surprised to see just how many hits I've gotten when I popped into my dashboard this morning.
I really want to say a deep and heartfelt "Thank You" to everybody who's visited the blog during these many months of inactivity. I'm ashamed that I haven't been sharing more and working on the oh-so-many ideas in my head. I'm not sure just when I'll get back to a regular schedule, but I do have some reviews written (just need to mix in all the screenshots) and a few more articles about 5e DnD. So there is likely only going to be 1 or 2 posts a week coming up - I do have a big project I want to tackle, but it would mean putting the other projects on hold; not that they're going anywhere at the moment :(
So, if you've stuck around I really, really appreciate it. There is going to be some more stuff coming soon. And if there are any specific topics you want me to talk about - like, anything at all - drop a comment and I will definitely get working on it. It's nice to know that some people are interested and I like sharing my crazy disjointed thoughts with anyone foolish enough to listen :)
I really want to say a deep and heartfelt "Thank You" to everybody who's visited the blog during these many months of inactivity. I'm ashamed that I haven't been sharing more and working on the oh-so-many ideas in my head. I'm not sure just when I'll get back to a regular schedule, but I do have some reviews written (just need to mix in all the screenshots) and a few more articles about 5e DnD. So there is likely only going to be 1 or 2 posts a week coming up - I do have a big project I want to tackle, but it would mean putting the other projects on hold; not that they're going anywhere at the moment :(
So, if you've stuck around I really, really appreciate it. There is going to be some more stuff coming soon. And if there are any specific topics you want me to talk about - like, anything at all - drop a comment and I will definitely get working on it. It's nice to know that some people are interested and I like sharing my crazy disjointed thoughts with anyone foolish enough to listen :)
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