Monthly Archives: August 2010

Stunted Dragons

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I love the Stunt system in Dragon Age. The model is pretty simple: Roll 3d6 to do things, with one die (the dragon die) being an off color. If you roll a pair, you get a number of points to spend equal to the number showing on your dragon die. The points can be spent for a number of things like extra damage, moving some distance or otherwise being generally awesome. It’s fun, fast and colorful.

The problem is that there are stunts for combat and stunts for spellcasting, but none for other skill uses. This omission is frustrating because the stunt system is so cool that it’s hard not to want to see it show up in other situations. The problem, of course, is that there are so many specific and fiddly skills (sorry, “Focuses”) that you’d need to come up with stunts for all of them, and to be totally frank, that’s just not entirely practical. Coming up with Heraldry stunts stunts is an exercise that I do not really wish to partake in.

The trick is that the answer is already in the system, just not where you would expect it to be. It is not that the existing stunt exists to handle combat skills, it exists to handle fight scenes. By coming up with other type of scenes, it is possible to come up with other stunt lists that might be just as applicable.

This requires coming up with two different lists: types of scenes, and stunt actions. It’s important to acknowledge that neither list will be comprehensive, and it will behoove GMs to come up with new scene types and stunt effects as they run their own games.[1] For illustration, let’s start with a few scene types: Infiltration, Investigation, Social, Mingling and Travel.

Infiltration scenes are like they sound. The characters are trying to sneak in somewhere. Presumably, there are people on the lookout for them, and while dexterity and stealth are rolled the most here, other things may come up.

In an investigation scene, characters are trying to acquire knowledge, whether through research, investigation, interrogation or the like.

Social scenes are interaction driven, where the characters are obliged to the confines of the situation, like a party or some other formal event. Physical position and location are far less important than interaction and impressions on people around you.

Mingling scenes are more general than social scenes – there are people around, but there’s no structure holding anyone in place. This is really the default scene for just hanging around in a city or bar, where there are people around. Shopping expeditions and planning sessions are mostly mingling scenes.

Travel Scenes are general, like mingling scenes, except they take place in isolation. The environment is important, people not so much. These characters don’t have to be traveling for this kind of isolation, but its certainly the most common route to it.

Ok, this is by no means a comprehensive list, but it covers a lot of situations where the players are doing something and rolling dice to get it done. So with that as a basis, let’s look for some things stunts can do.

1 – Skirmish – As in combat, this allows the character to move two yards per point spent. (Infiltration, Mingling, Travel)
1 – Tell – (as in, a poker tell) Pick up one maybe-useful, random information about the situation. The GM can really just pull things off the top of his head here, like revealing someone is left handed, or seeing someone perform a suspicious action. (Investigative, Social, Mingling)
1 – Wow – If you have spent points to Impress someone (see below) each additional point increases the number of impressed people by one.(Social, Mingling)
2 – Find – Get your hands on something reasonably likely to be available (such as a drink at a party or suitable firewood in the wilderness) without interrupting your action – you were already on top if it. (Any)
2 – Lure – either with a come-hither glance or a well placed pebble, you send someone off in a useful direction. Move an NPC two yards. (Mingle, Infiltration)
2 – Read – Ask the GM “Who here is most likely to…” and get a good faith answer, though likelihood is not a guarantee. (Social, Mingling, Investigation)
3 – Impress – Someone else has noticed how good you are, and now has a favorable opinion of you. (Social, Mingling)
3 – Master – Doing this has given you as sense of how it’s done. Gain a +2 bonus to any further attempts to use the same focus for the rest of the scene. Does not stack. (Any)
3 – Guide – Allow an ally to benefit from your success as if they had rolled it (in addition to the benefit you gain).
4 – Follow up – The flow goes with you. Immediately take another action.(Any)
4 – Predict – Ask the GM an if question (such as, “if someone were going to attack, where would they come from?”) His answer is now true for the scene – if the event asked about happens, it will unfold (roughly) as outlined.(Any)

It’s almost certainly possible to come up with more of these, and in fact it’s desirable to do so, but they make a good starting point. Now, with these sets of tools, it’s easy to create a list. For example:

Social Stunts
SP Cost
1 Tell – (as in, a poker tell) Pick up one maybe-useful, random information about the situation. The GM can really just pull things off the top of his head here, like revealing someone is left handed, or seeing someone perform a suspicious action.
1+ Wow – If you have spent points to Impress someone (see below) each additional point increases the number of impressed people by one.
2 Find – Get your hands on something reasonably likely to be available (such as a drink at a party or suitable firewood in the wilderness) wihtout interrupting your action – you were already on top if it.
2 Read – Ask the GM “Who here is most likely to…” and get a good faith answer, though likelihood is not a guarantee.
3 Impress – Someone else has noticed how good you are, and now has a favorable opinion of you.
3 Master – Doing this has given you as sense of how it’s done. Gain a +2 bonus to any further attempts to use the same focus for the rest of the scene. Does not stack.
3 Guide – Allow an ally to benefit from your success as if they had rolled it (in addition to the benefit you gain).
4 Follow Up – The flow goes with you. Immediately take another action.
4 Predict – Ask the GM an if question (such as, “if someone were going to attack, where would they come from?”) His answer is now true for the scene – if the event asked about happens, it will unfold (roughly) as outlined.

Similar tables can be easily constructed for infiltration, mingling and so on, and I’ll probably do a page that does exactly that, but before I do, let’s open the floor to people who aren’t en route to Gencon: what scene or stunt effects should we add to this?

1 – This includes scene specific stunts. For example, if your fight scene has a specific prop, like a catapult, you might allow it to be fired s a two point stunt, causing whatever effect is appropriate. This is not a suitable stunt for EVERY fight, just for a specific one.

Choices and Action

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Adam Dray, who has been writing a fantastic series of posts about his game setting, Caldera, took a break the other day to write about his experience playing some old school D&D, running The Keep on the Borderlands.

It’s worth a read. Adam’s a sharp guy with knowledge of a lot of systems and a wide range of playstyles, including some less common ones such as online play, and he goes into this eyes open with both fists full of dice, and comes out the other side having had a great time. So much so that I think he surprised himself a little.

Now, I suspect that the thing that Adam is overlooking in his analysis is the impact of the quality of the GM[1] but that can be forgiven pretty easily. A lot of the positive things he speaks to (fruitful constraints, speed of play speed of character creation and so on) are things I’ve been enjoying in some new games and are also things I’m keeping in mind for the Heartbreaker project. But one bit in particular stood out and made me think, and let me quote it here.

Second, there are very few tactical options built into the rules: attack with a melee weapon, attack with a ranged weapon, cast a spell (if you have any), or run away. Of course, the game expects players to make up tactical options that aren’t in the rules and expects the DM to accommodate them; there’s just no rules support for this.

He is, of course, absolutely right. It also pushes players toward creativity, though how it does so is interesting to consider. On one hand, by removing the amount of thought that goes into choices and rules, it frees up the player to be more creative. On the other, by offering the player so few interesting choices, the player is pushed to be creative if only to stave off boredom. There’s more than a little truth to both of these explanations, and I think the real power comes from the combination of them.

Even more I think he’s put his finger on the pulse of something incredibly important. But while it’s a signifier, it’s not an answer. See, this issue – how many choices and how explicit the choices players have – is incredibly important, but it’s also one that has no one answer.

See, explicit choices with mechanically supported effects really are quite cool. They’re fun. They keep players from feeling like they have no options, and they help them feel like their actions matter because they can see the mechanical impact, right there at the table. That’s powerful[2]. It also protects players from a capricious GM whose interpretation of things may or may not end up favoring them.

But on the other hand, it can get overwhelming. 4e has a long list of explicit actions available (some, like powers, are character specific, others like drawing a weapon, are universal). It is technically possible to take an action outside of that list, but because the rules options are so thoroughly detailed, it’s not easy to think in those terms. The stunt system exists to mitigate this, but as much as I love it, it takes a mode of thought that is different than is encouraged by normal play.

And that, I think, comes back to the rub. Each approach has real flaws of too much and too little structure, respectiviely, but each approach can be made powerfully playable by a specific set of GM skills, skills that have a curious amount of overlap.

This may seem cynical, but the straight rules adjudication element of GMing is pretty easy to learn. Even if the game has reasonably complicated rules, mastery is just a function of study and attention. Now, just because it’s easy doesn’t mean its unimportant – this is the foundation for a lot of what the GM needs to do, and flaws will propagate – but this is the very basics. It’s the kiddie slopes.

One of the first real challenges to GM skill comes when things go off the rules. Not merely in terms of how to adjudicate things outside of the game’s sphere (like how to run non-fight encounters in D&D) but in things specifically within the games purview, such as fights. In one of those cycle of knowledge ironies, experience can end up looking like a novice. A GM who doesn’t even grasp the game will allow the players to do anything they describe and just fake it. The GM who really knows the game will do the same. But the GM in the middle often creates an invisible barrier that separates things within the rules from things outside of them, and that barrier can be hard to pass through.

Note. this is rarely poorly intentioned or intentional, it’s just a function of learning and perspective. If the GM can make rulings off the top of his had, but has to pause for a few minutes to check the book every time players go off the playbook, that’s a barrier. He’s training players to stick to the playbook to avoid inconvenience. Similarly, if the GM’s on the fly rulings are unreliable or problematic, that’s another barrier. Players will play to avoid triggering those.

Each type of game leans to its own kinds of barriers. Lighter games have barriers of uncertainty – in the lack of rules support, it an be very unclear how an idea will be expressed. Heavier games have lots of tools for how to express things mechanically, but they create a higher cognitive barrier for going off the rules. But in both cases, how much of a problem this is ultimately comes down to how well the GM (and players) handle that barrier.

On one level this is a long, roundabout argument for the importance of GM skill, which some would probably point out that an argument that doesn’t need to be made. And in a general sense – I agree. GM skill matters. But defining GM skill is something else, something much more difficult, so I’m planting a flag in this. The ability to thin the barrier between the rules and the great unknown is a skill, or more aptly a set of skills. Different types of games force the GM to lean on different parts of this skill, and can accent strengths and hide weaknesses. If you have a good personal rapport with your players, a light system will probably work because they trust your rulings. If you have the kind of rules-knowledge to allow robust extrapolation, a more rules-driven game allows you to showcase that. The means are important, in that they impact your game, but the ultimate yardstick is how fenced in (or unguided) your players feel with the rules in your game.


1 – Because System Does Matter, Just Less Than People.

2 – Note that even old D&D has them – that is more or less what spells are.

The Boring Part

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So, there are a few things you need to accept as baselines for a Fantasy heartbreaker. Characters will probably have some manner of race/class combination, there might or might not be some skills or feats (or feat-like things), maybe some levels, and perhaps most importantly, stats.

Statistics are one of the first things you think of when you look at a character’s sheets, so much so that “Stats” is conversationally synonymous with the character’s sheet. With that in mind, that’s the first mechanical thing I’m thinking about. The choice of stats can be a simple thing, but it’s worth some time and thought, specifically to determine how many stats to use and what they should represent.

Setting aside special stats[1], the classic split is between the mental and the physical. It’s entirely possible to get by with just those two stats, but fairly dull. Still, they make a good foundation, and how you split them says a lot about the game.

The first split is probably one that it may seem like I’m overlooking: Social. Only slightly less common than the 2 way split is the 3 way split between physical, mental (knowledge) and social (spiritual). This 3 way split is the basis of Tri-stat and Storyteller/Storytelling stats. In two-way splits fold social under mental, usually when social interaction doesn’t get a lot of mechanical support.

D&D is actually kind of fascinating to look at through this lens. From a physical/mental perspective, it’s a split set, 3 & 3. From a three way perspective you get a 3:2:1 split, which is probably more reflective of the real priorities of the game. Contrasted with White Wolf, which has a 3:3:3 split.[2]

I probably want to have at least a little social support, so let’s go with a 3 way split as the foundation.

Given that, I could stop at 3 stats, but that’s still pretty dull, so the question is how to split them.

The first option is to split them consistently. The Storytelling system does this by splitting each category into three subcategories that correspond roughly to power, finesse and resistance. This is pretty intuitive for physical stats, but not necessarily so much for mental, and it’s definitely jarring for social stuff.

The second is to look at how they’ll be used, and split it like that. Unfortunately, I’m starting from scratch here, so I have no real answer to that. Still, I may take a lesson from that.

Another possibility is to look at stat systems I like. Rolemaster left its mark on me, for example, but to be honest I’d be hard pressed to remember all the stats it used, so perhaps not the best example. Dragon Age has a pretty nice set of 8, though one of them (magic) is a special stat, with the rest having a 3:3:1 split, with social getting the short end of the stick with the nicely named “Communication” stats. However, arguably it’s actually 3:2:2 depending upon how you use Cunning.

Now, here’s where we start getting into the more trivial-seeming areas of the decision making process. First, I don’t want names of stats that sound too stupid or too technical. Second, I’d like an even number of stats within a given range, so 4, 6, 8 or 10. The good news is that these limits actually clarify things: 4 is too few, and 10 is more than I really want to try to keep in mind, so 6 or 8.

6 would be ideal. It’s easy to remember and the fact that it’s D&D’s number speaks well for it. Eight would be a function of necessity if I want to flesh out the possibilities. Part of the problem is that Strength, Dexterity and Endurance really are hard to go without, and that’s half of a 6 point spread right there.

Assuming we’re going to go with 8, I want at least a 3:2:2 split. This prospect leaves me waffling a bit, and this has me inclined to steal a page from Dragon Age, and shuffle magic back into the deck. This will introduce some complications – making the magic stat mean something for non-magical characters will be important, but I have a thought on that[3] – and it rounds things up to 8, nice and tidy.

So, we’ve got 4 stats already: Strength, Dexterity and Endurance (maybe Agility rather than Dex) and Magic. That leaves 4 slots, and I think I’m going to go with a structured split (active/passive). For mental, that’s say Cunning and Willpower, and for social I’ll steal from our own playbook and go with Rapport and Composure.

[EDIT: Discussion in comments has convinced me that the mental pair is actually Intellect and Focus.]

This almost certainly seems like overthinking a fairly simple decision, especially this early in, but it’s important to think about why you make a choice so you’re prepared to change it later on if you find the design suggests one thing, but your earlier decision is still saying something else. Right now, this spread of stats isn’t saying a lot (intentionally) but it’s suggesting an emphasis on the physical, classical sensibilities[4], the presence of magic, and a non-trivial role for mental and physical activity. Will those still be the case down the line? if it’s not, then by understanding why choices were made, it’s easy to understand how to change them.

1 – Such as for things like magic.

2 – There’s an instinctive desire to consider a symmetrical distribution to be automatically superior, but it’s an unfair assumption. The distribution should reflect the priorities of the game – if it does that well, it’s the right distribution.

3 – Theft continues to be fun, so I’m going to steal from the Liavek novels and tie magic to luck. No, I’m not sure what that means yet, but it seems like an idea to start with.

4 – Compare with my non-Amber stats (Force, resolve, grace, wits) or a non-stat system, like Aspects or the Smallville iteration of Cortex.