Roleplaying Methods for Beginners, and Thoughts on Programming

So, my attempt at using RPG methods to run a wargame for beginners didn't work out too well. This appears to have been because of confused expectations on the part of new players. I still intend to try the rules solo, as I won't have complaints or arguments. (This is not to say that the complaints or arguments were a bad thing! I made sure to tell the teens that afterward - that it was a playtest, and that I genuinely appreciated their feedback.)

I intended it as a testbed and taster for the weekly RPG I intend to run in summer. Several years ago, using free kriegspiel was successful, but these aren't the same kids or quite the same environment. I'm undecided whether to run FKR at this point (easier for me and any substitute GMs) or something with greater structure and granularity to excite the teens and get them to come to the next session to use their levelled-up stats.

Friday, the American Library Association Gamer Round Table had a short webinar on quick-and-simple RPGs for library programmers. I missed it, but excellent timing anyway, as just this week, I received the PDF version of a new edition of the book that got me started on that first campaign, Xtreme Dungeon Mastery by Tracy Hickman. 

I initially used the ruleset in the first book, eventually converting it to a set inspired by XDM and written by Andrei Baltakmens of the RPG Tinkerage blog. The Hickman rules have changed a bit and are slightly more granular - thus possibly more appealing to teens who, like my players last week, wanted greater specificity in their rules.

The book itself, while retaining the humor, is less wacky and better arranged, partly by putting the tables and over-the-top bits in the appendix. The sections on designing and running a game have been significantly expanded, technical aspects are updated, and there is an extremely useful added portion on making the game accessible, comfortable and safe for "nontraditional" players.

The rules are also better arranged - particularly the character sheet, which was barebones in the first book but now has sections for things like equipment, skills and background. It's also a more traditional "roll-over a target number and add your stat" thing (the three stats range from 1-8) and has more guidance and examples for the XDM. I will try it. My hope is to playtest some roleplaying rulesets and settle on one before the official weekly program starts in June, and I'm lucky to have a tolerant YouMedia staff and two potential backup gamemasters for emergencies.

What I do have to be careful about is making time for the playtesting. I was unable to run Dragon Rampant on Thursday because the day's schedule was already set in stone and I was on desk at the best time to play with the teens (4:30 to 6, it seems). I'll have to make sure that I'm free more often at that time for such impromptu games, and I have selected it for the registered programs. It was encouraging to know they wanted to play again, but discouraging to disappoint them - though when I poked my nose in the door of the teen space I found them making their own card standups of Warhammer Fantasy Skaven! So on Friday I brought in a few old Warhammer army books to whet their appetites. I have a couple Fantasy starter boxes that would be good for giveaways, game experiments and possibly painting-program test subjects.

This post was supposed to just be about the rules I was thinking of using, but at least that dovetails with other aspects of programming. I've two sets in mind at the moment - Gateway and my own "hack" of  Baltakmens' work.

Gateway is a free cut-down version of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition - it really retains only the skills, and uses the Advantage/Disadvantage system for adjudication. For those unfamiliar with DnD, this is a simplification of earlier rules which provided specific bonuses and detriments for specific circumstances: -2 for dim light, +2 for having masterwork tools, and the like. Instead, you roll your normal check with a D20, but include an extra D20 and choose either the highest or lowest score, depending on whether you are at an advantage or disadvantage. So character creation is fairly simple - you enter pluses and minuses on the character sheet to, for example, note that your Wizard has Advantage on Magic and Lore checks, but Disadvantage on Melee and Survival checks. Play involves no math - no addition and subtraction of skills, stats and equipment bonuses.

In the past, I've found that new players still struggle to build their first character, even though it's just selecting skills or abilities to give pluses or minuses, and devising starter characters beforehand is better. The reason I'm considering it is that my teens prefer games where they can level up, and it is easy to improve a character quickly by selecting new skills to have Advantage on, or Disadvantages to erase. It's relatively simplistic and openly designed not as a long-term campaign game, but as a "gateway" to more complex games. This is why it deliberately uses the simplest DnD mechanic, but there remains room for tinkering.

My other tentative set is the one mentioned above, a one-page, 500-word "hack" of Andrei Baltakmens' work. I haven't actually run it, but I've been writing and rewriting it off and on for several years, and it would be a good idea to actually playtest it before it becomes a mess, as things you rewrite over and over tend to do. I also condensed it into 200- and 100-word versions; you'll find the 100-word version here.

Jennifer's version of XD20

Like XD20, there are three stats, which I've named more clearly as Physical, Mental and Spiritual. I've also added two elements from the Fantasy Flight Warhammer 40,000 RPGs I was reading at the time: Corruption and Sanity mechanics, and a drastically simplified crit chart:

Roll a D10:

• 1-3: minor injury - bruising, scratches, etc.
• 4-6: major injury - bleeding, lost extremities etc.
• 7-9: critical injury - bleeding out, lost limbs, etc. At DM's discretion, roll to stay conscious or alive.
• 10: dead.

The corruption and sanity can be left out (except perhaps for Halloween sessions?), while for gritty games the crit chart can change to 7-8 crit injury, 9 dead, 10 messily dead, as in the 40K games. So basically a combination of Baltakmen's own very useful Rough Chances chart, Dark Heresy, Tristat, and DnD, suitable for quick creation and beginner play in any genre (though I'll stick to generic fantasy for now).

Which will I use? No idea at this point. Still hoping to get a wargame in next week, and after that I'll try to playtest simple RPGs and poll the players on what they think works. Wish me luck!

FKR Fantasy Wargaming ... in Action!

Today I ran a game at work. It was a bit messy, in part because it was done in a busy teen tech lab. At different times I had anywhere from two to five active players, plus a staff member taking photos!

The other reason was complaints about and hasty changes to the rules, but I'll come to that.

The rules were given me by Shawn Medero in a comment on my previous post. They're by Paul le Long, from Lone Warrior, the solo wargaming zine, and have much in common with FATE/FUDGE, to the extent that you roll four three-siders for each task. I only had three FATE dice handy, so stuck to regular dice rolling 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 to represent -, blank or + on the resolution chart.

The field of battle.

A halfling village and its defenders...

... are menaced by goblin skirmishers ...

... and a regiment of goblin warriors coming out of the forests.

The gobbos advance.

As the gobbos moved into range to shoot at the
buildings, one of the players asked if it had rained
recently. Good question! I tossed for it and declared
the crops and thatch were damp, thus harder to burn.

Approaching the village.

The badly-outnumbered halflings hide in their cropfield,
though some stay near the edge to shoot out.

Luckily, better armed and -armoured halfling militia
have mobilized and are heading for the hill. Horns
have been heard from potential allies...

Who appear on the edge of the battlespace.

The goblins split up; some to await the Men, the rest
to take the village.

After this, I failed to take photos for a while. Basically, the goblin archers and spearmen advanced to attempt burning the buildings; due to poor rolls they initially failed and had to get to close range before managing to burn a cabin. This enabled the defenders to fight them to a standstill, as some "No, and" and "Yes, but" results caused the gobbos to run out of ammo and have to resort to knives and teeth. The halflings also took a lot of casualties, though.

In the meantime, the Rangers, led by a Strider expy, approached and joined up with the rest of the halfling militia on the hill. The goblin warriors charged, scored a lot of pluses, and were busily winning when the last "good" player decided to give up.

He'd been rolling poorly, and was also frustrated and confused by the chart, which he felt should be more even. Our last roll of the Ranger/Goblin fight resorted to a twentysider:

... which rolled a 2.

So the Men and Halflings fled the smouldering village.

On the up side:

• The players were enthusiastic and engaged, asking pertinent questions and coming up with offbeat solutions.
• One at least was familiar with Warhammer Fantasy and understood the conventions of the genre.
• Two asked if they could play again tomorrow!

On the down side:

• One felt the chart was unfair; he thought it should be more even, or at least the results should be clearer. Not as interested in free-kriegspiel, I guess.
• He also felt the entire scenario was unbalanced, with the halflings badly outnumbered and having to wait a long while for their reinforcements. More even sides tomorrow, then.
• Finally, the terrain effects were unclear - for example, the forests are not obviously delineated. He was also unused to having to ask questions about the situation or to suggest effects on his own - so the use of the hill was not obvious. He did like that, when he asked if he could move faster, I offered him the option to force-march by taking a double move in exchange for not moving next turn while his militia rested.

So basically, more structure appears preferable. I will bring Dragon Rampant and see if it works better. FKR may not work as well as I hoped, at least not without more experienced players!

I'm also considering the Perrys' Travel Battle, a small gridded game that might seem more familiar and "gamist" to the teens.

So tomorrow, with luck, another round?

Free Kriegspiel Fantasy Wargaming

 I'm now actively planning some fantasy roleplay and figure-painting at work, with the help of the teen tech lab. While the programs won't be until summer, and I can't even advertise them until graphics sends me back some posters, I still intend to tease the game with some lite, impromptu gaming. Happily, Peter Dennis has published a small selection of fantasy figures to go with his Russian-fantasy mutants. I received a copy of Daniel Mersey's Dragon Rampant this week, which I will try with these figures. But for promotion with the teens, I'll make it simple and use some of the same rules as I'll be using in my Dungeons-and-Dragons pastiche.

A phalanx of goblins supported by skirmishers with spear and bow:

Will invade the Moot to face off against hobbits halflings:

Backed by Men of the Forest:

I haven't run fantasy battles with free-kriegspiel before, but I intend to do it as I did an 18th-century game last year, possibly with FUDGE dice. Another post will discuss the simple RPG rules I intend for my summer campaign.

My cat keeps stepping on the keyboard as I try to finish, so will stop here for now. Hopefully I will have a battle report next week!

More Colonial Reading

 I have not gamed at all for a while, whether work or home, fantasy or history. But I have been reading a lot, in several different periods. Here's the African colonial books I'm reading, three of them by Stephen Manning:

These are all relatively short but good overviews.

Britain at War With the Asante Nation covers the colonial presence in what is now Ghana from about 1600 on. The British and Dutch both had slaving stations there, and this is where the Asante (pronounced Ashanti) became a warrior nation - by dominating their neighbors. It wasn't until the early 1800s when the British began to actively suppress the slave trade that they came into conflict.

The 1823 war is the one that inspired the Brontes. Unlike their stories, there was never any substantial Western settlement beyond commercial (initially slaving stations), missionary and government elements which, as in India, accidentally grew rather than as part of a deliberate policy. The Asante were encouraged to take slaves from the surrounding tribes and then sell them to the white slavers, which of course led to a problem of the government's own making when it switched to anti-slavery. Treaties also caused trouble, as the Asante thought they were loaning or renting towns and fortresses that the British thought they held permanently. So the first war was a bit of a mess.

The second one was more deliberate, leading to the term "All Sir Garnet" after Wolseley's talent for organization. He gathered a ring of friends and proteges and prepared his expedition like his life depended on it - because it did. Thanks to extensive planning and acclimatization, there was little of the disease that had devastated earlier expeditions in the area (although the transport ships were barely seaworthy). Camps - what might have been called firebases a century later - were built along the road to reduce the load of the fighting troops, filled with food, water, and medical supplies. Even lighter, more comfortable uniforms were procured for the tropics.

Less successful was the attempt to form native regiments; part of the problem was that the locals couldn't protect themselves against the Asante, which is why the British were doing it for them. Against the wishes of the government, Wolseley demanded and got three battalions of British infantry. He took the Asante capital quickly and got out; the campaign lasted mere months and was carried out in the dry season, another cautious nod to the dangers of the tropics.

In the 1890s, they revolted, and their king was exiled. His mother was a strong woman who led the final revolt in 1900, which was entirely justified. The British governor demanded to sit on the Golden Stool of the Asante.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a throne, and he should have known that. It was the center of the Asante religion, and under the Queen Mother they rose. The rebellion was bloodily crushed, but the Golden Stool was never found, and is still kept by the Asante, still displayed on occasion but usually hidden.

The Brontes clearly didn't know this either. A wooden stool is a focal point of Pauline Clarke's The Twelve and the Genii, and the soldiers take it for their own with their kings standing on it. There are unspoken parallels here with the Boxer Rebellion, a war with which I'm completely unfamiliar and need to read up on.

Stephen Manning writes sympathetically, and is careful to quote Ghanaian historians and participants in the battles. A good short, if general, history, with many inspirations for The Sword in Africa.

Evelyn Wood, VC, covers the life of one of Wolseley's proteges, who gained important experience against the Asante. I first encountered him in Byron Farwell's Queen Victoria's Little Wars. There, it is pointed out that he was perhaps the unluckiest sod in the British Army, having been wounded, sickened or injured countless times in his career. These included falling down stairs twice, falling off and being trampled by a giraffe, and in Ashantiland being shot by a nail, and then left on an anthill by the stretcher bearers!

Wood's career stretched fifty years. He earned a VC in the Mutiny, and also served in Asante, India, Egypt and the Crimea. His role at the end of the First Boer War, however, scuttled his combat career. After three humiliating defeats and the death of another Asante veteran, Pomeroy Colley, Wood was sent out to take charge but ended up making peace with the Boers and returning their independence. Wolseley never forgave him, though openly he continued to support and assist Wood, who held several important posts in Britain - Aldershot, Quartermaster General and Adjutant General. These were actually his most far-reaching commands, as he was at the forefront of reorganization, the creation of reserve units, and the use of large-scale maneuvers on Salisbury Plain. So the British role in the First World War is down to him, perhaps as much as Kitchener.

His command in Ashantiland is useful for my hoped-for The Sword in Africa campaign. And while he saw no action in Egypt, he was at the forefront of the Egyptian Army's reorganization under British lines. His command of native units in Ghana was undistinguished, seemingly because he had very little time to train them. But two years in Egypt made his army what it needed to be to face the Mahdi, and provided useful background for his commands in Britain.

Despite his relative lack of combat experience later in his career, he retained an accident-prone tendency to "get out in front." Two instances are quoted of other officers pulling him out of the firing line and getting shot themselves, on the grounds that he wasn't supposed to be out in front. Reminds me of the Bill Mauldin cartoon where a GI asks his officer to get out of the open, "you're drawing enemy fire."

Overall a serviceable pair of books from Pen and Sword. I am working on the third, an overview of weapons improvements during the 19th century, as well as a short series of lectures by a Ghanaian professor on African responses to colonialism, to be discussed in a future post. And of course there are two more volumes of Wargaming in History, two 18th-century rulesets, and several books on Vietnam to be discussed! Gaming is falling well behind, but I am hoping to get in a couple small games in the next couple weeks, including my Picacho Pass scenario. See you then -