Game Design, Attributes, and Jumping Sharks

In developing Sentinels of Echo City, the process of character creation has revealed something of a bug in the ointment... which is actually good. I'm happy when I find these wrinkles that need to be ironed out while the iron is still plugged in and hot.

In this case, it's powers - or rather a set of powers that fall under the umbrella of POWERS. I mean things like magnetic control, or weather control, or energy solidification, or telekinesis. There's nothing built into B/X that nicely governs these.

To this point, I've been handling these as Feat rolls (or contested Feat rolls, as necessary). Let's go with magnetic control for the moment as an example... Magneto wants to use his magnetic powers, and rolls a Feat to make it happen. Fair enough. He's pretty high level, so his Feat is going to be pretty solid. However... he's Magneto. It shouldn't be 'pretty solid'. This guy picked up a stadium with his powers. He routinely picks up dozens of cars at once. That's not 'pretty solid'. In fact, the biggest problem is that anyone of his level with magnetic control is going to be 'pretty solid'.

That's nice for game balance, but not so hot for the source material I'm trying to emulate.

And this is where we may jump the shark.

Now, while I don't feel BEHOLDEN to the foundations of the game, I don't want to make changes willy-nilly. I especially don't want to make changes that harm cross-compatibility with other OSR games. This has to look and feel like B/X with significant but nearly invisible surface changes.

At this point, a few attributes aren't really getting much mileage - INT, WIS, CHA - and the game has some needs. I can find places to use INT and CHA, and in fact can lean on them even more if I end up making a few tweaks, but WIS just isn't fitting. I've got a draft of the entire book done, and I have not found one situation where a character has to make a WIS check, or uses WIS for anything. Basically, B/X just has it there for clerics. No one else needs or uses it. This game has no clerics.

So, if I simply swap out WIS for a PWR (power) rating... I open up a world of possibility. Now all of those contested Feats become WIS actions against the target's Feat resist. Now Magneto can have his PWR 24 or so and rock out the magnetic control like he should. And, now I can have other attributes share the load a little more. All of the social control powers (mind control, emotion control, fear) get tied to your CHA. Most of the mind controlling characters in comics have high CHA - either they are attractive, or have strong personalities, or both. That's CHA. And this makes sense with how STR works. You make a STR check to lift a car with your hands... why would you roll a Feat to lift a car with your mind? Another Attribute check makes more sense.

This may feel like a minor change, swapping out wisdom for power, but to me it starts to gnaw at the foundations of the game a little too closely. However, it doesn't hurt its compatibility with SSR at all - a cleric can show up and be just fine. He happens to have wisdom that works one way, and the superhero he's working with happens to have power that works in a slightly different way. No harm, no foul.

Okay. Back to designing...

A Patreon Appeal

I have just updated my Patreon page to reflect my broader goals for the campaign. The plan is to move everything to Patreon, and use that as my 'one stop shop' for fundraising for my various projects. In short, I want to be able to publish everything I do for free (or as a pay-what-you-want download), and I'd like to be able to do all of the bonus things I did for the most recent Kickstarter as extras for Patrons. I'm working towards funneling all content (high-resolution images of maps and pictures) and exclusive comics content to that one Patreon page.

For example, the two maps I posted to my blog earlier today for Saga of the Splintered Realm are going to be posted for Patrons to grab as higher-resolution images to use as they will, under the Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution license. I want to keep releasing gaming things that way, and I want to use Patreon to make it happen.

If you've enjoyed my work, I'd truly appreciate your support. For just a dollar a month, you will be getting quite a bit of content.

Thanks!

Mike

Saga Maps

Because I'm not content using one of the dozens (if not hundreds) of maps I already have, I worked up two new maps for the Saga that starts tomorrow with my friend and his son... the Vale of Ravenswood, and the starter village of Wyvern Hollow.

EDIT:
Forgot to mention that because these are part of Saga of the Splintered Realm, they are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. You go ahead and have fun with these... if you need high-resolution copies, let me know.

Some Design Notes: Armor Class and Invulnerability in Sentinels of Echo City

Some of the current thinking for Sentinels of Echo City regarding Armor Class and Invulnerability:

Armor Class for supers is a base of 10 + DEX modifier + Level Modifier. Most supers don't wear armor or have invulnerability; they just have that base AC. AC has to improve a little as characters level, or they will eventually always get hit. The Level Modifier bonus keeps things relatively low-key. Spidey at level 8 (about where I'd put him) has AC 10 base + 7 (from his DEX bonus) +4 (level modifier) for a total AC 21. He's almost impossible for a common thug with a pistol to hit; that thug needs a natural 20, and won't get to crit against him. That makes sense to me.

Armor Class can be improved by the body armor talent. This gives a base +1d6 to your AC (in addition to the modifiers above - roll this at character creation). A character in chain mail armor might have a +4, while a character in heavy plate armor takes +6. This is the best way for a character with low DEX to improve his AC.

Invulnerability doesn't impact Armor Class; instead, the character ignores the first so many points of damage per attack equal to Invulnerability. This would also be rated +1d6 for a starting character; at Invulnerability 6, you effectively are immune to small arms fire (since most small arms weapons deal 1d6 damage), excepting a critical hit. The Hulk probably has invulnerability 10.

Some characters will have both Body Armor and Invulnerability. Superman probably just has Invulnerability (albeit a high degree of it - and his high DEX bonus makes sure he isn't hit too often), while Iron Man has both Body Armor and Invulnerability (albeit medium amounts of both).

A character could break the system: level 7 (so +4 level modifier) on top of AC 10 (base) with high DEX (maybe a +6 bonus) and body armor (let's say +6 for fun) has AC 26. We could balance this by saying you get the better of EITHER your DEX bonus OR body armor (since heavy armor would prohibit movement); this aligns with the existing rules, makes sense, and enforces some game balance. In this example, the character has AC 20. Personally, I'd trade out the body armor for a shield in this case, since the shield gives +1d4 to AC while you carry it, so the character could still have up to an AC of 24. This is a character who is heavily invested in defending himself (and might be along the lines of Captain America, although Cap doesn't have quite that much DEX; he's probably at +3 to his modifier, but 1 level modifier higher).

We could complicate things SLIGHTLY by allowing a combination of DEX and body armor, up to a maximum bonus of +10. This means that Cap gets +3 from DEX and +3 from wearing that sleek chainmail, +5 from his level modifier, for a total AC of 21 without his shield, and AC 26 with it (he's upgraded his shield over time). He is VERY hard to hit with that shield in hand. It also means that if you put Spidey in a suit of heavy plate armor, he's only getting a marginal bonus from that armor, since it's slowing him down and actually neutralizing part of his DEX bonus by its nature. I actually like this option better than the paragraph above. Make it so.

By the way, this all came out of play testing my character Tribune (think Mr. Incredible with flight- I posted a pic of him yesterday), and having him lose half of his hit points to a few very lucky rolls by a group of thugs. Sorry, but six thugs are not going to almost take out Mr. Incredible. Not happening. Just a few points of invulnerability (let's say 3 points) makes it 50% likely that small arms fire bounces off of his skin altogether.

Superhero Art

Throughout Sentinels of Echo City, the art is going to alternate between original pieces (mostly high-contrast black and white images of 'iconic' characters and poses), I'm going to create pieces modeled on some of my favorite superhero cover designs. I've already shared the cover, based on Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars #1 (from 84, baby), but this piece is an homage to this cover of Action Comics 810 by Bullock. I'm really happy with this one...

Starting a New Campaign

In talking with one of my best friends last night, he suggested that he and his son (who is 8) would like to play a few games of Saga of the Splintered Realm... and as we talked, we realized that with summer nigh, we could schedule a weekly game that would go at least for a few months. They're both new to RPGs (although both have played a lot of miniatures games, so they have some grounding in what goes on, and I've run two sessions before, one of my game and one of the intro scenario in the new D+D boxed set). This is the first time they want to sign on for something longer with brand new characters starting at level 1.

Suddenly a campaign was born.

Right away, I knew I didn't want to use anything from the two books for SSR... he and his son may end up playing later some time, and it would be great that they have resources available to keep playing. If they have already run through the Vault of the Goblin, then they will have less fun the second time around. This means I get to design an actual campaign for real players for the first time in almost 20 years.

Nifty!

Since they don't read the blog (I know, right?), I figure it's safe to talk about the design of the game here. My initial thoughts...

- This happens (or at least starts) in a pocket realm disconnected from the Splintered Realm proper. Eventually, the characters will probably end up there, but for now they're (quite literally) in their own little corner of the universe.

- The pocket realm is VERY loosely inspired by the original Ravenloft module. There's a magical valley, a small village, a ruined castle, and a few small outposts of demi-humans spread around.

- Almost no one realizes this is just a pocket realm. They assume that there's a larger world beyond the mountains and southern gate held by dwarves. They are wrong.

The hook is this: the elder of the village (who magically kept the whole place in check) has recently died. He was actually a very powerful sphinx (some form of elder sphinx, I assume) that took human form, but no one knows this. He was 'the wizard'... the only magic-using human of the entire valley (as far as the people know)... he had put up magical wards that protected the village and kept the vampire lord (or maybe lady?) of the castle from taking over the village. Now, he's dead, and he has left in his will some... odd things for the player characters (who both had some tie to him in life). I'm not sure exactly what yet, but I keep thinking about a pocket dragon who just happens to cough up a fur ball ('scale ball'?) a few days later. In that half-digested mass will be a key... I want to wait until I see what kind of characters the two players create, but I've got a hook for almost any character archetype. As long as they don't both want to play thief grave-robbers, I should be able to make it all work. 

I assume I'll post maps/play materials/etc. as I make them up. First thing up will be an area map, and probably a map of the village. The castle itself is a bit further down the line, but I've already got ideas for the dwarven gate, the elfin tree fort, and the ruined stoutling hamlet.

A Sentinels of Echo City Sample Super (that's alliteration all y'all)

Let’s take the hero Bedrock (a standard ‘brick’ type) from level 1 (a new hero) to level 6 (an ‘average superhero’) to see what happens… using the alternate point buy system where every hero starts with 60 points to distribute, and is capped at a range of 3-18 in attributes at character creation:

Bedrock, Hero 1 (Altered Human)

AC 17; HD 1d6 (hp 16); Feat +8 (+13 physical resist); punch (+7/1d8+6)

STR 18 (+6); INT 7 (-); WIS 8 (+1); DEX 10 (+2); CON 16 (+5); CHA 5 (-1)

Qualities: Invulnerability; Striking (1d8)

Talents: Fortitude (+5 hit points)

Level 2: Adds improved dice, moving striking to 1d10; hp to 21

Level 3: hp to 26; punch now at +8; Feat now at +9 (+14 physical resist)

Level 4: adds expertise, taking STR to 19; hp to 31

Level 5: hp to 36; punch now at +9; Feat now at +10 (+15 physical resist)

Level 6: Adds expertise, taking STR to 20; hp to 41

AC 17; HD 6d6 (hp 41); Feat +10 (+15 physical resist); punch (+10/1d10+7)

STR 20 (+7); INT 7 (-); WIS 8 (+1); DEX 10 (+2); CON 16 (+5); CHA 5 (-1)

Qualities: Invulnerability; Striking (1d10)

Talents: Fortitude (+5 hit points); expertise (+2 to STR)

I like the way that levels allow for slow, incremental progress for a character without any world-shaking changes. Characters don’t have the opportunity (in the rules as currently presented) to ‘buy’ new powers. You have what you have, but you can get better at it as you grow. This aligns with the comics I’m trying to replicate.