Alexis wrote some time ago about a settlement campaign. For those of you not familiar with the idea, the gist is that the characters decide to create a settlement, and the campaign consists of preparing for the settlement, acquiring all the materials necessary to start it, constructing buildings and enticing villagers to live there, and then building relationships with neighboring settlements to ensure the continuing viability of the character's town.
For those of us interested in grittier games, the idea of a settlement campaign is incredibly appealing - it gives our players a place to call home and immediately generates play - war with neighboring groups over resources, doing adventures as 'favors' for other powers to extend some privilege to the settlement (freedom from the local lord's rule, tax exemption, etc.), and so on. However, there aren't many resources to facilitate such a campaign. Alexis, again, has a huge quantity of materials that are incredibly useful (his NTME posts and subhex generation are quite applicable), but this only supplies a limited framework for such an endeavor: the subhex generation procedures help communicate what natural resources are nearby in terms of food production, while the NTME series offers a way to think about settlement growth and productivity. This post, too offers insights.
I don't have any new mechanical ideas to add to the discussion at the moment - I have many other more pressing game matters to address - but, having gone back to Fallout 4 recently, I had a couple of thoughts as to how settlements are addressed in Fallout 4.
For those less familiar with Fallout, a brief introduction. The Fallout series of video games are set in a post-apocalyptic America, following global thermonuclear detonations as the result of the unabated Cold War in the late 21st century, with those same underlying 50s/60s ideologies and a raft of nuclear-powered futuristic technologies. The games are set several hundred years after the detonation as individuals band together to reclaim civilization.
In the most recent game, Fallout 4, one of the player objectives is to found settlements throughout the wasteland. These locations are infested with some kind of predator (bugs, bandits, Super Mutants, etc.) which must be cleared, and then the player may clean up the site, install amenities (water sources, food, sleeping accommodations, and defenses), and attract settlers.
It is exactly the first several stages of the settlement campaign.
One of the things that Fallout 4 nailed was that the player has complete control over how each site is laid out: with the exception of a few permanent, preexisting structures, the player can determine where and what food crops are grown, design any buildings, and attempt to figure out how to best defend the settlement via placement of traps, turrets, and guard stations (and one quickly realizes the benefits of walls). Actually, that's pretty much all the player can do with a settlement: build it and hope that it all works. That design process gives the player ownership of the space in an unparalleled way.
From my own experience, my players really committed to building their town as they dreamed up and designed their castle. Now, the construction costs are too high for them right now, and it may never be built, but the act of designing how the space will be used is a powerful way to give players the feeling of ownership.
However, the Fallout 4 model does leave a great deal to be desired. My first, and largest, issue with it actually comes from an underlying assumption in the Fallout universe: within the world of Fallout, almost every single individual is committed to scavenging, salvaging, and recycling the remains of the pre-nuclear world, from wearing 1950s-esque fashions to repurposing old war robots and arms. However, I can't think of a time in human history when people were not producing something, whether that be material artifacts or cultural ones. The total lack of social infrastructure and structuring of human populations resembles, sort of, medieval Europe (actually medieval, not Renaissance) without massive influence of the Pope to keep everyone in line. What that means is that there are but two factors to consider in placing a settlement: defensibility and land quality. The only thing available for trade is food, so communities have little incentive to trade with one another. However, scavengers, who venture into the cities for weapons, clothing, and other miscellaneous items, would be the preferred trading partners - almost exactly like how peddlers worked, back in the Middle Ages.
The problem is that this lack of an inter-settlement trade incentive means that there is little reason for communities to band together, which is the foundation of the end-stage of the settlement campaign: developing relationships with other communities. In Fallout, a large part of this results from the few attributes settlements have (food, water, beds, and defense). When there are more things a settlement produces (livestock, food variants, grain, booze, etc.), then we can begin differentiating between different ones and find reasons to trade (and reasons to war over resources!).
My second problem with the settlement system in Fallout 4 is that the scale is too small - most settlements have between 2 and 8 people each. There is an achievement for a 20-person settlement, since such a population requires a great deal of work. Obviously, even 20 people is miniscule in a medieval context - that's a tiny village with maybe 4 or 5 cottages. That would be the very beginning of step 3 in our settlement campaign, with much more to do with regard to the development of industries (mills, livestock, smithies, tanneries, etc.) and constant expansion.
All in all, I think Fallout provides an excellent way to begin thinking about a settlement campaign, but it only provides the beginning. We need more tools in our toolbox to continue where the game leaves off.
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Sunday, March 27, 2016
Friday, March 18, 2016
Morale Continued
From the previous post, I started talking about the morale system as expressed in the BECMI book (via noism's posts on the subject). I concluded with saying that I wanted a morale system that drove behavior, as per the BECMI system, but made more specific, without going to noism's extremes: rules that use the morale system to create whole encounters.
I trust myself to generate motivations and settings for encounters when they happen. But beat-by-beat morale is a much harder nut to crack.
Alexis Smolensk recently had a post talking about his morale rules. I highly recommend you read his rules on the wiki and then his discussion about his recent revelation regarding them.
If you didn't, morale in Alexis' world governs the behavior of the NPCs allied with the party (hirelings, followers, retainers, etc.) - each is assigned a morale value which can be improved or worsened through the behaviors of the party. It is an excellent system for modelling long-term relationships between the party and their NPC associates. A morale score, in this sense, represents the degree to which the associated NPC 'buys into' the PCs' goal and methodology. Another way of putting this would be their faith in the party - good leadership and respecting the NPCs will raise the score, whereas shitty management, disrespecting, and disregarding the NPCs will lower it (and prompt morale checks for all hired help to see if they decide to subvert the PCs or not).
However, this system also isn't what I want. What I want from a morale system is a simple mechanic (preferably no more than one or two die rolls) that will tell me the mood of a group of NPCs.
I might want a breakdown of moods as follows:
Cocksure
Dominating
Neutral
Submitting
Fearful
Rather than using 2d6 to determine the mood, each creature have a default state - bandits will usually be dominating, goblins submitting, etc. Now, depending upon the situation, this state might escalate or deescalate - if the NPCs are roughly equal in number (within ~5%), nothing will change. If they are larger (perhaps by 150%), then their status is improved by one, doubled in size increases morale by another step, then quadruple the party's size, and so on, while being 75% of the party's size will reduce it by one, 50% by two, 25% by three, and so on.
Lastly, the actions taken during the encounter will impact morale. The first (and probably most relevant one) is that if the party surprises the NPCs - my party is fond of pulling out wands of lightning, which are a fairly rare commodity in the rest of the world. These are tools that produce a very visible magical effect while also decimating clumped opponents. If the NPCs are not expecting this, they will be shaken and lose morale. Likewise, a counter-ambush will also make the NPCs lose morale. If the party proves to be especially combat effective (i.e. the NPCs take more than acceptable losses, perhaps 20% of their total number) without the party losing a member, this will make the NPCs reconsider their position and lose morale. Lastly, if the NPCs have a leader, losing that leader will make morale drop twice.
I'll have to use this to see if it works the way I want it to - I may need to insert in a couple more states above and below Neutral, but I think this will give me the tool I want.
I trust myself to generate motivations and settings for encounters when they happen. But beat-by-beat morale is a much harder nut to crack.
Alexis Smolensk recently had a post talking about his morale rules. I highly recommend you read his rules on the wiki and then his discussion about his recent revelation regarding them.
If you didn't, morale in Alexis' world governs the behavior of the NPCs allied with the party (hirelings, followers, retainers, etc.) - each is assigned a morale value which can be improved or worsened through the behaviors of the party. It is an excellent system for modelling long-term relationships between the party and their NPC associates. A morale score, in this sense, represents the degree to which the associated NPC 'buys into' the PCs' goal and methodology. Another way of putting this would be their faith in the party - good leadership and respecting the NPCs will raise the score, whereas shitty management, disrespecting, and disregarding the NPCs will lower it (and prompt morale checks for all hired help to see if they decide to subvert the PCs or not).
However, this system also isn't what I want. What I want from a morale system is a simple mechanic (preferably no more than one or two die rolls) that will tell me the mood of a group of NPCs.
I might want a breakdown of moods as follows:
Cocksure
Dominating
Neutral
Submitting
Fearful
Rather than using 2d6 to determine the mood, each creature have a default state - bandits will usually be dominating, goblins submitting, etc. Now, depending upon the situation, this state might escalate or deescalate - if the NPCs are roughly equal in number (within ~5%), nothing will change. If they are larger (perhaps by 150%), then their status is improved by one, doubled in size increases morale by another step, then quadruple the party's size, and so on, while being 75% of the party's size will reduce it by one, 50% by two, 25% by three, and so on.
Lastly, the actions taken during the encounter will impact morale. The first (and probably most relevant one) is that if the party surprises the NPCs - my party is fond of pulling out wands of lightning, which are a fairly rare commodity in the rest of the world. These are tools that produce a very visible magical effect while also decimating clumped opponents. If the NPCs are not expecting this, they will be shaken and lose morale. Likewise, a counter-ambush will also make the NPCs lose morale. If the party proves to be especially combat effective (i.e. the NPCs take more than acceptable losses, perhaps 20% of their total number) without the party losing a member, this will make the NPCs reconsider their position and lose morale. Lastly, if the NPCs have a leader, losing that leader will make morale drop twice.
I'll have to use this to see if it works the way I want it to - I may need to insert in a couple more states above and below Neutral, but I think this will give me the tool I want.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
And the Zeitgeist says: Morale
In the small corner of the blogosphere that I am able to observe, the D&D morale system has been the source of recent rumination based upon events in the bloggers' games.
First, I read noism's posts on morale as a world-building tool (here and here). The proposal was that the BECMI morale rules work acceptably well but could be improved (read: overhauled) by creating a morale table for each monster detailing specific behaviors/encounters for each of the morale results.
One of his points, made more explicit with the slow worm example, is that there are a number of creatures for whom the standard morale system makes absolutely no sense - any prey-status animal (rabbits, deer, etc.), barring some extraordinary circumstance, would not attack or be hostile to the party. They would flee. And this extraordinary circumstance would not happen once every 36 times such an animal was encountered. This is a good observation - the morale system, as written in BECMI, does an acceptable job of producing 'reasonable' behavior in most of the enemies present in a standard D&D game.
This morale system generates enemy behavior based upon a mostly arbitrary die roll (one might apply modifiers, but the 2d6 roll is highly variable), and noisms' modifications use it as an encounter generator, shaded by the attitudes of the original enemy behavior.
I think the idea of a morale table for each creature one might encounter is an excellent idea, in theory. I am opposed to the idea not because of the work such a project would entail but in that I already spend too much time consulting tables during play. I have barely begun to flesh out my world, and already there are at least 20 or 30 creatures they can encounter in the areas for which I have data, based upon the time of day at which the encounter is determined. To then give each creature their own table means that I am adding a another sizeable step to my encounter procedure.
It seems unnecessary, since what is perhaps more helpful is understanding what each creature's motivations are, and what might drive them to encounter the party.
Most creatures will see a group of well-armed, battle-seasoned individuals and steer clear. With the exception of super-apex predators, the kind that only exist in D&D games (trolls, manticores, etc.), most regular predators will not go after a group of humanoids. A lone humanoid, or maybe a pair? Absolutely. But 4+ large creatures traveling together? There are deer and rabbits aplenty to eat. And if they do engage, unless the first round of combat is fairly successful (weakest prey incapacitated), they will break and run, and the worst they will do is run in and harry the party over time - it's how most predators (those that don't ambush or swoop in for a single kill and swiftly depart) get their food. And so an encounter with such a creature or creatures will likely be the characters becoming aware of (or failing to perceive) their presence nearby and then choosing to pursue or ignore it.
Especially since this understanding of a creature's motivations is a necessary part of using that creature in your world - and if you haven't, I'd suggest you consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So if I choose goblins for my encounter, I roll the group's size and then let that number, combined with the location for the encounter and the time of day, determine the goals of that group which immediately tells me how this group might interact with the characters.
What is useful to me is a tool that will help me generate realistic combat behavior for my creatures - to determine if they rally when things are going poorly or flee even when they hold the advantage - and I'll continue the brainstorm next post.
First, I read noism's posts on morale as a world-building tool (here and here). The proposal was that the BECMI morale rules work acceptably well but could be improved (read: overhauled) by creating a morale table for each monster detailing specific behaviors/encounters for each of the morale results.
One of his points, made more explicit with the slow worm example, is that there are a number of creatures for whom the standard morale system makes absolutely no sense - any prey-status animal (rabbits, deer, etc.), barring some extraordinary circumstance, would not attack or be hostile to the party. They would flee. And this extraordinary circumstance would not happen once every 36 times such an animal was encountered. This is a good observation - the morale system, as written in BECMI, does an acceptable job of producing 'reasonable' behavior in most of the enemies present in a standard D&D game.
This morale system generates enemy behavior based upon a mostly arbitrary die roll (one might apply modifiers, but the 2d6 roll is highly variable), and noisms' modifications use it as an encounter generator, shaded by the attitudes of the original enemy behavior.
I think the idea of a morale table for each creature one might encounter is an excellent idea, in theory. I am opposed to the idea not because of the work such a project would entail but in that I already spend too much time consulting tables during play. I have barely begun to flesh out my world, and already there are at least 20 or 30 creatures they can encounter in the areas for which I have data, based upon the time of day at which the encounter is determined. To then give each creature their own table means that I am adding a another sizeable step to my encounter procedure.
It seems unnecessary, since what is perhaps more helpful is understanding what each creature's motivations are, and what might drive them to encounter the party.
Most creatures will see a group of well-armed, battle-seasoned individuals and steer clear. With the exception of super-apex predators, the kind that only exist in D&D games (trolls, manticores, etc.), most regular predators will not go after a group of humanoids. A lone humanoid, or maybe a pair? Absolutely. But 4+ large creatures traveling together? There are deer and rabbits aplenty to eat. And if they do engage, unless the first round of combat is fairly successful (weakest prey incapacitated), they will break and run, and the worst they will do is run in and harry the party over time - it's how most predators (those that don't ambush or swoop in for a single kill and swiftly depart) get their food. And so an encounter with such a creature or creatures will likely be the characters becoming aware of (or failing to perceive) their presence nearby and then choosing to pursue or ignore it.
Especially since this understanding of a creature's motivations is a necessary part of using that creature in your world - and if you haven't, I'd suggest you consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So if I choose goblins for my encounter, I roll the group's size and then let that number, combined with the location for the encounter and the time of day, determine the goals of that group which immediately tells me how this group might interact with the characters.
What is useful to me is a tool that will help me generate realistic combat behavior for my creatures - to determine if they rally when things are going poorly or flee even when they hold the advantage - and I'll continue the brainstorm next post.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Powerful Toys
Because all of the magic in my world is of my own creation (I used a modified version of the Cleric spell list), I frequently encounter situations where my players use magic in a completely new way that catches me by surprise and can obviate the challenges in front of them. While this can and does happen with all magic systems, the two the party favors (rituals and sorcery) lend themselves well to creative interpretations.
Rituals are magical ceremonies that enact a temporary physical change in an object. My Saturday players primarily use rituals to enchant wands, which everyone can use. Each ritual requires a consumable component (shard fragments) which are expensive, but the party has amassed a rather significant collection of them and feels free to perform all the rituals they want. One of the wands they really enjoy using is a wand of lightning. It creates a version of the default Lightning Bolt spell found in most D&D games - straight line of energy dealing 5d6 damage to whatever it passes through, with a length of perhaps 40 yards. Against a formidable opponent, the party armed each member with such a wand and blasted it to smithereens in two rounds (admittedly, on the beast's turn, it killed two characters and almost killed a third). The fight was much briefer than I anticipated.
Now, the question comes to me: how do I present a challenge to a party with this power? I know a great many DMs who would respond by presenting the party with enemies resistant or immune to the effect, making it useless. I know others who might weaken the spell. The problem with both strategies is that it creates an arms race between players and DM. The question itself places the DM and players in competition with each other.
A better question is "how do I respond to the party having this power?" Except the answer to this question is to do nothing different. 'You' mustn't respond, you must run the world in exactly the same fashion as before - to do otherwise is to compromise the world for the sake of you, the DM, feeling like you have 'challenged' the party. It's an ego trip. You can do better.
And here lies the tricky bit. Your world will respond. Running your world the same way doesn't mean your players will find the same encounters, fight the same foes. My players have demonstrated, rather frequently, that they have access to a lot of wands of lightning. So their enemies won't line up obediently to be slaughtered. They will use their own wands of lightning. They will respond to the players' tactics with tactics of their own.
And this works well for enemies that know the party's skillset and tactics. But the rest of the world? They will be blindsided.
Rituals are magical ceremonies that enact a temporary physical change in an object. My Saturday players primarily use rituals to enchant wands, which everyone can use. Each ritual requires a consumable component (shard fragments) which are expensive, but the party has amassed a rather significant collection of them and feels free to perform all the rituals they want. One of the wands they really enjoy using is a wand of lightning. It creates a version of the default Lightning Bolt spell found in most D&D games - straight line of energy dealing 5d6 damage to whatever it passes through, with a length of perhaps 40 yards. Against a formidable opponent, the party armed each member with such a wand and blasted it to smithereens in two rounds (admittedly, on the beast's turn, it killed two characters and almost killed a third). The fight was much briefer than I anticipated.
Now, the question comes to me: how do I present a challenge to a party with this power? I know a great many DMs who would respond by presenting the party with enemies resistant or immune to the effect, making it useless. I know others who might weaken the spell. The problem with both strategies is that it creates an arms race between players and DM. The question itself places the DM and players in competition with each other.
A better question is "how do I respond to the party having this power?" Except the answer to this question is to do nothing different. 'You' mustn't respond, you must run the world in exactly the same fashion as before - to do otherwise is to compromise the world for the sake of you, the DM, feeling like you have 'challenged' the party. It's an ego trip. You can do better.
And here lies the tricky bit. Your world will respond. Running your world the same way doesn't mean your players will find the same encounters, fight the same foes. My players have demonstrated, rather frequently, that they have access to a lot of wands of lightning. So their enemies won't line up obediently to be slaughtered. They will use their own wands of lightning. They will respond to the players' tactics with tactics of their own.
And this works well for enemies that know the party's skillset and tactics. But the rest of the world? They will be blindsided.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Weapons List, Revised
Now that I've opened this can of worms, I can't seem to help myself. Here is a list of each weapon and its attributes, a la Alexis' own table.
EDIT: I forgot a weapon in the midst of the table, and the font color was illegible.
I feel better having stats for each weapon. The 'Space Required' column indicates the number of empty hexes that must surround the character using the weapon in order for them to manage it efficiently - it's a -2 penalty to use a weapon without enough room for it.
EDIT: I forgot a weapon in the midst of the table, and the font color was illegible.
|
Weapon
|
Damage
|
Hands
|
Durability
|
Attack Form
|
Damage Type
|
Space Required
|
Range (yards)
|
|
Atlatl
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 8
|
Hurled
|
Pierce
|
3
|
15, 22, 100
|
|
Ball Club
|
2 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 8
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
0
|
|
|
Baston
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 8
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
0
|
|
|
Boarding Axe
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
2
|
|
|
Bolas
|
1 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Hurled
|
Smash
|
1
|
10, 20, 40
|
|
Bow, Composite
|
2 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
4
|
40, 80, 160
|
|
Bow, Long
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
6
|
35, 105, 175
|
|
Bow, Recurved
|
1 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
4
|
30, 60, 100
|
|
Claymore; Greatsword
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
3
|
|
|
Crossbow, Heavy
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
6
|
30, 60, 120
|
|
Crossbow, Light
|
2 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
6
|
20, 40, 80
|
|
Cudgel; Club
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 4
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
0
|
|
|
Cutlass
|
1 to 8
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
1
|
|
|
Dagger; Knife
|
1 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Hurled; Melee
|
Pierce
|
0
|
2, 4, 8
|
|
Dart
|
1 to 2
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Hurled
|
Pierce
|
0
|
2, 4, 8
|
|
Eiku
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 10
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
3
|
|
|
Glaive
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 10
|
Melee (Reach)
|
Slash
|
3
|
|
|
Halberd
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Melee (Reach)
|
Slash; Pierce
|
3
|
|
|
Hatchet, Tomahawk
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
1
|
|
|
Heavy Chain
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 8
|
Melee (Reach)
|
Smash
|
3
|
|
|
Hurlbat; Throwing Axe
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Hurled
|
Slash
|
1
|
2, 4, 8
|
|
Javelin; Sibat
|
1 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Hurled; Melee
|
Slash
|
3
|
6, 12, 25
|
|
Katar
|
2 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash; Pierce
|
0
|
|
|
Khanda; Longsword
|
1 to 8
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
2
|
|
|
Khopesh
|
2 to 8
|
One
|
1 in 4
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
2
|
|
|
Kukri
|
2 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
0
|
|
|
Longbow
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
6
|
35, 105, 175
|
|
Mace
|
2 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
1
|
|
|
Maul
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
3
|
|
|
Nekode
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 4
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
0
|
|
|
Quarterstaff
|
1 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 8
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
3
|
|
|
Rapier
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Pierce
|
2
|
|
|
Rope Dart
|
1 to 4
|
Both
|
1 in 6
|
Fired
|
Pierce
|
6
|
2, 4, 8
|
|
Sap
|
1 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Melee
|
Smash
|
0
|
|
|
Shortspear
|
1 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 8
|
Hurled; Melee
|
Pierce
|
3
|
6,
12, 25
|
|
Sling
|
1 to 4
|
One
|
1 in 6
|
Hurled
|
Smash
|
3
|
15, 35,69
|
|
Spear
|
1 to 6
|
Both
|
1 in 4
|
Melee (Reach)
|
Pierce
|
3
|
|
|
Tulwar
|
1 to 10
|
Both
|
1 in 5
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
3
|
|
|
Warhammer
|
2 to 8
|
Both
|
1 in 5
|
Melee
|
Smash; Pierce
|
3
|
|
|
Xiphos; Shortsword
|
1 to 6
|
One
|
1 in 8
|
Melee
|
Slash
|
1
|
|
I feel better having stats for each weapon. The 'Space Required' column indicates the number of empty hexes that must surround the character using the weapon in order for them to manage it efficiently - it's a -2 penalty to use a weapon without enough room for it.
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