DGRPG Design Diary #9: Fightin'!

Combat is divided into rounds, little five-second parcels of time that make it easier for everyone to keep track of what's going on. Each round everyone gets an action - this can be something like opening or closing a door, retrieving something from a pocket, or trying to beat the tar out of an opponent. Everyone gets an action every round (unless constrained by something), and once everyone's taken an action a new round begins.

Combat Resolution

Alright, what do we need to know so that characters can hit each other until someone loses?

• Who goes first?
• How hard is it to hit the target?
• How much damage does a successful blow inflict?
• How much damage can a character sustain?

Who goes first?

At the start of each combat, roll a d20 and add your character's WILY and DEFT modifiers to represent (a) how quickly they decide what to do and (b) how quickly they can act on it. This is their Initiative. Character actions are processed from highest Initiative to lowest. Once everyone's acted, a new round begins.

How hard is it to hit the target?

By "hit" we mean a blow which connects well enough to do damage; in any individual combat round there's likely to be a back-and-forth exchange of blows, most of which miss or are intercepted or glance off without inflicting any appreciable harm.

Using the target numbers from Design Diary #7 we'll say that trying to hit someone in a combat situation is Taxing - you're trying to land a blow on them without getting hit yourself - so you need to roll higher than 15 to hit. Additionally, characters who are more agile will generally be harder to hit in the first place as they dodge around, and clumsy or sluggish characters will be easier. To reflect that, let's apply the defending character's DEFT modifier to the target number.

At the GM's option, characters who engage in tactics which give them an edge (attacking from ambush, taking the high ground, throwing dust in their opponent's eyes) might be granted bonuses to hit their target. Generally this should be on the order of a +1 per modifying factor, up to a maximum total of +3 if they really pile on the dirty tricks.

How much damage does a successful blow inflict? Damage is based on the attacker's weapon, adjusted by their BRUTE modifier, and reduced by the defender's armour. Heavier armour provides greater protection from blows, but also reduces the defender's maximum DEFT modifier accordingly.

So, roll dice (based on weapon type), add the attacker's BRUTE modifier and deduct the defender's armour rating; reduce the defender's Vigour by the result.

How much damage can a character sustain?

Vigour? What's that? Oh yes, that. As characters progress in experience they become better able to survive fights, which we'll represent with a stat called Vigour. This is something of an abstraction, representing their overall ability to keep fighting - a combination of stamina, pain threshold, physical resilience and raw determination. When a character runs out of Vigour they are out of the fight - unconscious or worse.

Vigour increases by a moderate amount as the character gains levels to represent characters becoming better at resisting exhaustion, enduring pain, and fighting on in spite of injury. Fighty classes will tend to gain Vigour at a faster rate than less-fighty classes. Whoever runs out of Vigour first is out of the fight - exhausted, unconscious, cowed, or otherwise incapacitated. Alternatively they could keep on fighting anyway - but this runs the risk of character death, and there's no coming back from that.

Summary

Combat is generally a matter of attrition. Some character classes (the Jinx in particular) will have abilities they can throw into the mix to make things more interesting, but at its heart it's a matter of characters hitting one another until someone falls over.

DGRPG Design Diary #8: Core Character Classes

At this point I'm working on the basis of four core character classes, based around broad archetypes with enough room for customisation that even characters from the same class can feel distinct from one another in play.

Grunt

Focus: Combat, martial prowess, heavy-hitting, intimidation, brutality, resilience.

The Grunt represents the Overlord's footsoldiers, typically tough battle-scarred slabs of gristle who get results by application of physical force, or the threat of same. Some specialise in dealing out as much damage as possible, others by absorbing it in order to slow enemies down or protect squishier minions. They might favour strict martial discipline and rigorous training, or they might drive themselves into a frothing berserker frenzy before charging headlong against their foes.

Sneak

Focus: Stealth, traps, thievery, infiltration, spying, assassination.

The Sneak represents the Overlord's spies, assassins, and others who get results by stealth and deceit. They have a very particular set of skills, and in combat tend to be the stiletto to the Grunt's sledgehammer. Some specialise in the construction of increasingly elaborate and deadly traps to hamper or incapacitate foes, others become expert at moving silent and unseen, striking from the shadows at an enemy's weakest spot.

Creep

Focus: Social, wrangling bureaucracy, currying favour, diverting blame, directing minions.

The Creep represents the Overlord's toadies, lackeys and sycophants - those who have learned how to manipulate, bribe, blackmail or trick others in order to advance their own aims. Some are sincerely loyal to the Overlord, others pay only lip-service as a way of getting what they want. The most dangerous harbour ambitions of becoming Overlords themselves some day, no matter who they have to step over. Some specialise in trading favours between factions and powerful individuals, others become adept at directing swarms of lesser minions to do their bidding - on their esteemed Overlord's behalf, of course.

Jinx

Focus: Arcane, spellcasting, sorcerous lore, bolstering allies, weakening foes.

The Jinx represents those among the Overlord's underlings who have some grasp of matters magical - they might be cultists, occultists, sorcerers, hedge-wizards, petty conjurors or anyone else who can channel arcane forces. They might have gained such powers by diligent study of dusty tomes, a gift in their blood, or by making pacts with unspeakable entities from beyond time and space. Some specialise in unleashing balefire and lightning upon their foes, others learn how to confer hideous strength or unnatural resilience upon their enemies, while others have a more... eclectic selection of spells to draw upon, forsaking raw power in favour of utility and flexibility.

DGRPG Design Diary #7: Core Mechanics Review

A quick recap of the core mechanics, with some provisional values.

Task Resolution:

The central task resolution mechanic used to determine success or failure. This can apply to setting or disarming a cunning trap, jumping over an obstacle, climbing a rope, attacking an adversary, intimidating a subordinate, whatever.

d20 + modifiers vs. target number

I'm going to try and keep the range of modifiers pretty tight to avoid undue inflation as characters improve over time.

Modifiers

Attribute modifiers are derived from the PC's Attributes, and use the Attribute most relevant to the task at hand. Such modifiers are kept deliberately low to reduce the emphasis on number-crunching character optimisation by ensuring that even a character with non-optimised Attributes remains playable.

Attribute	3	4-5	6-8	9-12	13-15	16-17	18
Modifier	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3

Equipment modifiers are conferred by special items, weapons, etc. An enchanted dagger might grant a +1 modifier to damage inflicted, an enchanted helm might grant a -1 modifier to damage received. Such items are likely to be rare and highly prized.

Situational modifiers are conferred by environmental factors which help or hinder the performance of a task - a PC might enjoy a positive modifier if assisted by companions, given extra time to perform the task, or similarly favourable conditions; correspondingly a PC might suffer a negative modifier while on fire, or in pitch darkness, or hanging by one leg from the ceiling, or likewise distracted. It is entirely possible (and indeed encouraged) to seek advantage by inflicting such negative modifiers upon adversaries.

There is a limit to the number of modifiers that can be applied to a task resolution attempt to keep things from getting silly - three modifiers or a total of +5 in each direction, whichever is lower.

Target Numbers

Target numbers vary based on the difficulty of the task at hand. To succeed at a task the total of d20 + modifiers must exceed the target number. Dice should only be rolled when there is a likelihood of failure having consequences - so hopping over a puddle of water wouldn't require a roll, but leaping a bottomless crevasse (or a puddle of acid) would.

Difficulty	Target	% success
Trivial	1	95%
Easy	5	75%
Standard	10	50%
Taxing	15	25%
Daunting	19	5%

The default target number is 10, which gives a 50-50 chance of success or failure for an individual of average ability. This can vary according to the task - jumping over a 3' gap might be Trivial, a 5' gap might be Easy, a 10' gap Standard, a 15' gap Taxing, and a 20' gap Daunting.

I've also been made aware of a game called Dungeon World which uses a "partial success" mechanic - such that borderline task resolution rolls might succeed, but with a cost or consequence. It's an idea that's intriguing to me, so I'll be researching it further.

DGRPG Design Diary: Back to Basics

It's been a while. I had a brief exploratory sidequest to check out the possibility of some kind of Dungeon Grind computer game, but that didn't pan out because coding is hard. Certainly harder than I anticipated. Making pixel-graphics is fun and I'm not bad at webdesign coding with CSS and HTML and even a bit of the ol' PHP/SQL stuff, so how tricky could it be, right? Suffice to say it turned into a rather brisk lesson in humility. But at least I tried.

So, back to the world of paper-and-pencils.

Part of the reason for the above digression was because I was having some trouble coming up with rules for the DGRPG - I've got a fairly good idea of what I want in terms of feel and texture for the game, but assigning actual numbers to things was challenging, because I kept getting tied up in working out which approach was "better" for everything - flat modifiers vs. dice modifiers, whether task resolution should be d20 + modifier, or d20 + attribute, how these things might affect balance and fairness, which option feels best, and so on and so forth. And looming on the horizon was the idea that I'd have to make this kind of decision for everything the rules might have to cover, because I'd been mentally modelling DGRPG on later editions of D&D, which tend to have rules for everything - if you want to do something there's probably a rule to cover it. Part of this likely stems from the attempt to make the d20 system a "universal" system (rather than just sticking to the Heroic Fantasy genre of previous editions), while the rest is probably because more rules means being able to sell more rulebooks detailing and explaining those rules.

Whatever the reason, that's really not what I'm aiming for. Ideally I'd like to get all the rules needed to play DGRPG into one booklet, maybe 32 pages or so tops. Character generation, a bit of setting information, some spells, equipment, task resolution, combat system, and that's about it. Something nice and lightweight.

Then I took a closer look at this OSR thing I've seen mentioned here and there online in RPG communities, read a few blogs, downloaded a few articles, and things are starting to click. The Quick Primer for OSR Gaming has been pretty informative, and meshes pretty well with what I have in mind.

Which is a slightly long-winded way of saying that I've got a clearer idea of where to take things from here, and will thus be able to start putting together an actual workable system, from the ground up.

DGRPG Design Diary #6: Favours as Currency

Some thinking-out-loud on the subject of using money as fuel for plot.

One of the things I'd like to highlight is that dungeons run by an Evil Overlord are pretty unpleasant places to work. Management are utterly uninterested in the wellbeing of their employees, and those employees, being nominally Evil, are much more interested in looking out for number one than engaging in acts of kindness, altruism or compassion. Cash is forbidden among minions (all coinage gleaned from dead adventurers is sent to Accounts and reassigned as loot for minions to drop when adventurers kill them), which means some alternative currency is needed.

The answer is favours.

If you want a fellow minion to help you then you either need to barter with them by offering them something tangible that they want, or promise to help them out in return - and you'd better be prepared for them to remember your debt. Maybe a favour will get you extra rations from the canteen, or let you avoid a shift mucking out the slime pits, or let you borrow a few heavies to teach a rival a lesson.

This favour-based economy pervades the entire dungeon, with minions trading their favours from one to another in exchange for, well, pretty much anything. The value of favours increases with the standing of the individual who owes it - so you might have shrewd investors who do favours for newcomers at Level 1 and call in their debt at Level 5 or higher, when the favour is correspondingly more valuable. Of course such speculators don't want to make risky investments, so they'll try to gauge how likely you are to survive before they'll help you out. Which in turn means it's very important to give the impression of having excellent long-term survival prospects, even if that's not actually the case. It's also very important to give the impression that one's word is one's bond - if you prove to be flaky or unreliable or reluctant to repay your debts when asked the value of your favours will drop precipitously.

My general inclination is to treat favours as money, perhaps even including the trade of I.O.U. tokens between minions. In effect each minion issues their own currency, with the value of that currency rising and falling as their fortunes change. Some might band together into groups, issuing and repaying favours collectively - their value is more stable, but not as likely to increase over time. For the most part the favour market is extremely volatile, heavily influenced by rumour, hearsay and speculation, with an emphasis on quick turnover of "portfolios" - the longer you hold onto a specific favour the higher the chances the issuer will get killed by some wandering adventurer, rendering it entirely worthless.

This could also provide plentiful plot hooks for PCs interested in playing the favour market - artificially inflating the reputation of someone who owes you so you can sell their favour to a third party for a juicy profit, or undermining that of someone whose assistance you need so you don't have to owe them as much in return; paying close attention to the grapevine to find out who's up-and-coming and whose fortunes are in decline.

My initial idea is to have the base value of favours be derived from a combination of (a) the difference in standing between two parties (by comparing their relative levels), (b) how much it helps out the recipient and (c) how risky or inconvenient the favour is to grant. This could range from trivial (covering their post for a couple of minutes while they dart to the latrines) to huge (risking severe reprimand for illicitly fiddling duty rosters in order to get someone out of a certain-death assignment).

This could lead to a pretty heavy bookkeeping burden (following who owes how much to whom and how much that's worth), so I'm inclined to save tracking specific favours for story-relevant interactions. Most day-to-day favour trading would be pretty low-level and uninteresting enough to just track as value of generic I.O.U. tokens on their character sheet.

If they need the assistance of a specific individual they might have to do their favour up-front, or make some kind of check to see if their hoard of favour tokens includes one issued by the individual in question, or do something for a bunch of other people to earn enough I.O.U. tokens to buy his services, or agree to let him call upon them for some unspecified task at a later date or sell that favour on to someone totally different - which makes big I.O.U. tokens a good way for the DM to send the PCs off on missions. Maybe it'd only be necessary to track NPCs who owe the PCs favours, as favours owed by the PCs can easily be traded off-screen and end up in unexpected hands.

It also means that at low levels the PCs can raise currency by running around doing favours for others, or even do very well for themselves by giving the impression of being bad dudes whose stars are on the rise - people will willingly do them favours with the expectation that they'll see a return on this investment when the PCs hit their stride - and if they owe an individual enough favours, maybe that individual will take steps to protect their investment. But this does mean that eventually those favours will need to be repaid, with interest.

Conclusion: Using favours as currency leaves a lot more room for story than a traditional copper-silver-gold fantasy economy - each I.O.U. token is a potential plot hook, whether the PCs are giving them out or accepting them as payment.

Who issued this token?
What was the original favour?
How did the token come to be in the PC's hands?
Where is the issuer now?
How can that be turned to the PC's advantage?

DGRPG Design Diary #5: Primary Attributes

Another crunchy Design Diary today, in which I flail around with numbers some more.

Each character has six primary attributes loosely mirroring the STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA characteristics of D&D, slightly tweaked for the sake of symmetry. The names of the attributes are provisional at this point, and may change if I find more appropriate or flavourful synonyms.

The primary attributes are divided between Physical and Mental; in each category, one attribute of each type:

• Action - Doing stuff.
• Evasion - Dodging stuff.
• Resistance - Enduring stuff.

Attribute	Type	Description
BRUTEishness	Action, Physical	Strength, physical power, ability to hit things and break stuff.
DEFTness	Evasion, Physical	Dexterity, physical agility, ability to jump out of the way, juggle, manipulate objects.
GUTSYness	Resistance, Physical	Constitution, physical resilience, ability to absorb damage, endure pain, resist disease or poison, perform acts of extended physical exertion.
CLEVERness	Action, Mental	Intelligence, mental power, ability to outsmart opponents, recall facts, notice details, present persuasive arguments, focus magical energy.
WILYness	Evasion, Mental	Wisdom, mental agility, ability to navigate bureaucracy, think on one's feet, react quickly, bend the rules, shirk responsibility, divert blame.
STUBbornness	Resistance, Mental	Charisma, mental resilience, strength of personality, ability to issue orders to subordinates or resist orders from superiors.

Direct vs. Derived Values

It'd be good to find a way for these values to be directly relevant to gameplay; this could be achieved by using the attribute values themselves in task resolution (as described in the previous Design Diary), but that can lead to cumbersome mental arithmetic in-game. It might be that attribute values are best left as a way of gauging relative ability between characters, with derived values being used in-game for the sake of speed and simplicity.

What kind of derived values could be used?

Assuming primary attributes follow the D&D model (usually between 3 and 18, with some outliers), a number of options are available.

• Flat modifiers - an unchanging numerical modifier depending on how far the attribute value is above or below the mean. Modifiers may be positive or negative, and are applied to the result of the task resolution roll.
• Dice modifiers - additional dice are rolled depending on how far the attribute value is above or below the mean. Results may be added to or subtracted from the result of the task resolution roll.

My current model has the primary attributes determined directly, either randomly by dice-roll (ie: 3d6 or some close variant), or (possibly) through a point-buy mechanic.

So some example attribute-derived modifiers might look something like this:

Attribute	Dist.	Flat 1	Flat 2	Dice (mean)
1	-	-9	-5	-1d10 (-5.5)
2	-	-8	-4	-1d10 (-5.5)
3	0.46%	-7	-4	-1d8 (-4.5)
4	1.39%	-6	-3	-1d8 (-4.5)
5	2.78%	-5	-3	-1d6 (-3.5)
6	4.63%	-4	-2	-1d6 (-3.5)
7	6.94%	-3	-2	-1d4 (-2.5)
8	9.72%	-2	-1	-1d4 (-2.5)
9	11.57%	-1	-1	0
10	12.50%	0	0	0
11	12.50%	0	0	0
12	11.57%	+1	+1	0
13	9.72%	+2	+1	+1d4 (+2.5)
14	6.94%	+3	+2	+1d4 (+2.5)
15	4.63%	+4	+2	+1d6 (+3.5)
16	2.78%	+5	+3	+1d6 (+3.5)
17	1.39%	+6	+3	+1d8 (+4.5)
18	0.46%	+7	+4	+1d8 (+4.5)
19	-	+8	+4	+1d10 (+5.5)
20	-	+9	+5	+1d10 (+5.5)

The modifiers here are pretty arbitrary for now, and presented to illustrate the options available.

The "Dist." column shows the probability distribution for each attribute value assuming they're generated by rolling 3d6 - this gives a normal distribution of results, in which you're much more likely to end up with a value close to the average than near the extremes. For example, the chance of rolling a 10 or 11 is 25% (and the chance of rolling between 9 and 12 is just shy of 50%), whereas the chance of rolling 17-18 (or 3-4) is only a little over 2%. This distribution is skewed if you use an alternative method of generating attributes (for example, roll 4d6 and ignore the lowest die, or roll 10 times and pick the best 6 results) but as a general guideline it's useful enough.

Adjusting the relationship between attributes and modifiers allows the value of each point of modifier to be increased or decreased. For example, an item that gives a +1 bonus is equivalent to a single extra attribute point under Flat 1, but two attribute points under Flat 2, so it makes a bigger difference.

Meanwhile the mean modifiers given by the Dice column are similar to those in Flat 2, except there's a much wider range of possible values - an attribute of 18 gives a reliable +4 bonus under Flat 2, and while +1d8 gives a mean value of +4.5 an individual roll could give a result anywhere between +1 and +8. There's a potential for it to make a really big difference to the outcome - or hardly any difference at all. This could be positive (as it means that even a sub-optimal attribute might still has a chance of success) or negative (as it means that even high attributes have a risk of failure).

Either way the additional randomness could be a desirable feature, as it encourages the player to rely on more than just having large numbers on their character sheet - every roleplayer knows how fickle the dice gods can be.

DGRPG Design Diary #4: Task Resolution

This involves a lot of poking numbers, wrangling probabilities, and dusting off some high-school probability and statistics lessons. I've found AnyDice to be very useful for visualising things.

The basic mechanism by which tasks are resolved; this part is pretty simple, the complexity comes with working out how and when to apply modifiers, and how to interpret the results.

d20 + modifiers vs. Target Number

There are a number of choices to be made here.

Use an attribute, or a modifier derived from that attribute?

The mean (average) value of a d20 roll is 10.5, so a target number of "more than 10" gives a chance of success of 50%. Assume the average attribute to be 10.5 (the mean result of rolling 3d6).

d20+attribute gives a mean result of 21, so a target number of "more than 20" gives a chance of success slightly above 50%.

If rolls are modified based on an attribute (for example, +/-1 point for every point above/below the average of 10-11) then as long as average attributes give a modifier of zero, a target number of "more than 10" gives a chance of success of 50%. For example:

Attribute	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10-11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
Modifier	-7	-6	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5	+6	+7

Using attributes keeps things simpler on the character sheet; modifiers generally use smaller values that are easier to deal with, but there may be more of them involved. For example:

14 (d20 roll) + 16 (attribute) + 2 (situational modifier), target number >20

vs.

14 (d20 roll) + 5 (attribute-derived modifier) + 2 (situational modifier), target number >10

Conclusion: Undecided at present; on the one hand using modifiers means adding smaller numbers together, which is less taxing from a mental arithmetic point of view; on the other hand I'm advised that players hate negative modifiers, even if the underlying mathematics are the same.

Use a flat modifier, or additional dice?

Even if we use "d20+attribute", there are circumstances in which we might still want to apply modifiers - skill tests, situational advantage, that kind of thing. So is it preferable to just apply a flat modifier, or roll extra dice?

1d20 gives a mean value of 10.5, with results between 1 and 20.

1d20+5 gives a mean value of 15.5, with results between 6 and 25.

1d20+1d10 gives a mean value of 16, with results between 2 and 30.

So while both of those modifiers give a similar mean result, the range of possible results is wider when using dice rather than a flat modifier, though the results are on a bell curve (higher likelihood of rolling values closer to the mean than to the extremes).

Conclusion: I quite like the idea of rolling extra dice, but that may dilute the "roll a d20" core mechanic. Also, rolling multiple dice can be quite "swingy" - +1d10 will on average act as a +5.5 bonus, in practice it can be anything from a +1 to a +10. Meanwhile a +5 bonus is always a +5 bonus. Using flat modifiers most of the time with extra dice in special circumstances might be a decent compromise.