When to say yes and when to say no

There’s a common wisdom in gaming circles with regards to running an RPG. That wisdom goes somewhere along the lines of “Never say no to something the player wants. Always say ‘yes, but…” And for most situations that works just fine. However, there’s also a few situations when saying ‘no’ is the appropriate response. And that’s what we’ll be looking at today.

Sometimes the choice is easy.

In today’s post, we’ll be looking at a few situations where the traditional response is either the wrong one and why or where doing the exact opposite is more interesting for your game. So without further ado, let’s dig into it.

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I cast Feather Fall and other situational abilities

This week, we’re talking about situational abilities. D&D’s feather fall is probably the most egregious example but there are plenty of others in different games. Anima’s ktechniques had the ability to build moves that would work on a specific opponent or only at night and games like World of Darkness’ Werewolf had abilities that dealt only with specific targets (Spirits).
Other examples include characters that are highly specialized in a specific skillset (Pilots or Drivers are a good example here) or carry very specific tools (like explosives)

I am a feather on the wind.

How do you, as a GM give these people the opportunity to shine without making that specific element of play the focus of the campaign? And how do you, as a player, make sure you actually get to use those cool spells and abilities you’ve worked so hard for to have?

That’s what we’ll be looking at today.

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“It’s not me, it’s you” and other conversations with problem players

Sometimes your group doesn’t work out. Maybe there’s a player in there who just isn’t having fun. Maybe the game you’re running isn’t the one they want to play. Maybe they’ve broken up with their partner and are taking out their anger in the game or perhaps their personality just doesn’t mesh at all with another member of the group. Or perhaps your game is planned for the end of their week and they’re sleep-deprived and cranky.

Whatever the reason, a situation like this means it’s time to have one of the the hardest conversations you can have as a GM. And while this shouldn’t only be the GM’s responsibility, often the task falls to the GM. And that’s what i’ll be discussing here today.

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Non-Combat Combat

Non-combat combat. A weird combination of words, I’m sure, which is exactly why I want to talk about it today. First, let’s break down what I mean by it in the context of roleplaying games.

Combat, in roleplaying games is a remarkably common affair. A group of goblins show up, the adventurers draw their swords and axes and a few minutes later, there’s bloody corpses everywhere.

“Beardman, your turn.”
“I use cunning rethoric!”

What it also is, is a very regimented affair. The goblins show up, everyone rolls for initiative. One by one, everyone takes their turn to perform whatever actions they’re allowed and when everyone’s been, the turn rolls around again. This has a noticable effect on players, who know that when Initiative has been rolled, shit just got real.  Initiative means there’s things on the line and people are going to die.

Which brings us to non-combat, which is generally safe, a little freeform and lower-takes than the life-or-death of combat.

So why not combine both?
That’s right, today we’re talking about introducing combat mechanics to ratchet up the tension in non-combat situations.

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Player Ability vs Player Challenge

A few weeks ago my sunday D&D group reached 7th level and with 7th level came a whole host of new spells and abilities that gave them several brand new ways of murdering their enemies and taking their things. This also meant that the standard way of providing them with a challenging encounter didn’t quite work anymore so I had to go looking for new ways of threatening their treasure, lives and friends (in that order).

Tarrasque
Appropriate challenge for a lvl 20 party? yes
Appropriate challenge for a lvl 5 party? probably not

This post, I’d like to take a moment to look at challenging players in the context of their abilities, especially at higher levels. I’ll be going over when to let players revel in their power and how to properly challenge their more powerful abilities.

So without furder ado, let’s get into it.

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The heat is on

This week, I’d like to take a moment and spotlight a specific mechanic found in a roleplaying system that I’ve been running for a good few sessions now.

The system is Infinity and the mechanic I’d like to spotlight is Heat & Momentum. These two combine to turn Infinity from a fairly standard game into a tense game of give and take when it works and a bit of a stomp when it doesn’t work.

Generating Heat the traditional way: insult the city you’re in and bringing a steel folding chair. Not the subject of this post.

So if you’re  interesting in learning about generating some heat, and perhaps learning about an interesting system that maybe wasn’t entirely well thought out, read on.

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Getting on with it!

I’ll admit, I was working on another post when the idea for this one hit me. And I’ll even admit that part of the seed for this one comes from frustration in my own games. That said, there’s some interesting things to discuss with regards to this topic, so let’s dive in!

For next year’s Christmas, I want another hour in my day.

As you may have guessed from the title and the above picture, this post is about those sessions where a lot happens and nothing ever gets done. It’s about sessions where you spend hours chasing down a clue that leads absolutely no-where and sessions where you spend your hard-earned resources to open a door that leads, you guessed it, no-where.

So without wasting any more of your precious time, let’s dig in and talk about how to avoid wasting everyone’s precious RPG time.

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The Party as a Mirror for the world

I ran into an interesting phenomenon when running my bi-weekly Infinity: The Roleplaying Game. The game itself was a kickstarter and is currently shipping (check out the quickstart), though that’s not what this post is about.

By default, in the Infinity RPG, characters come from very different backgrounds, from the hyper-capitalist hyperpower PanOceania or the Neo-Anarchist megaships of the Nomad Nation to the rugged backwater nations of Ariadne or the cloning vats of Aleph, humanity’s sole AI. However, as per the standard design of the game, the characters will be working together in a supra-national team, usually dealing with crises that threaten the stability of humanity as a whole. This of course results in wildly different personalities and loyalties, something the game loves to play with. You see, there’s a layer placed on top of the normal special operations, diplomatic wrangling and rooting out alien infiltrators that the game usually deals with.

Get down john connor!
Just a normal day in the life of an Infinity character.

Every character has a handler (or more) that represents the interests of the nation state they ostensibly are loyal to. These handlers will provide side-missions to the character and that character alone. And that is where it gets interesting.

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Checks, Saves and Rolls: When?

No post on my homebrew system this week. That has been shelved for a few weeks until I can get a proper writeup of the system as it stands done.

Instead, this week, I’m going to try and answer a question that has plagued roleplaying games since the dawn of time: When to roll dice?

“Roll for initiative, suckaz!” – Tiny Tina, Borderlands 2

You might think this an easy question to answer.. After all, most systems spell out explicitly what to roll dice for and when. That is, until you start reading a little more into them and you find out that everything’s not quite so cut and dry.

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[Homebrew] Bye Bye Twelve-Sided Die

Last week I talked about my ideas for an stat system for the RPG I’m designing. Since then, I’ve talked to a few people about my ideas and I’ve had a proper think on the subject. I ended up doing some mock rolls and firing up the old spreadsheet to get an idea of the probabilities and as it turns out, it’s not really workable. If you’re interested in the process, you can see some of my notes here.

A sad D12
Pictured, a D-12 after learning they would not be used in a roll-under system.

What I ended up realizing is that for a roll-under system like what I had in mind, good old D12 just doesn’t have the range necessary to be a good fit for a roll-under system. The delta between a 50-50 chance and nearly impossible to fail is only 6 points and given that I want characters to at least feel competent, that puts the range of stats characters can have in a very narrow band.

So, keep what I learned, throw everything else under the bus and start over. I suspect that will become a theme as I write this system. Come up with an idea, give it a test and then chuck it out for sucking. So on to idea v0.2

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