Dungeon Chatter

A Party Comes Together: A Modal Approach to Group Dynamics Travis Joseph Rodgers Ars Arcana Blog Volume III, Number 1 Two of the central struggles associated with an RPG party - as opposed to the players or the game itself - are how to bring a diverse group of characters together in the first place and how to keep them sufficiently together in the long run to keep them a party. I draw out two distinct polaristic approaches that are especially difficult to make work for most groups: hard railroad and utter chaos. I draw out a third possibility, based on modal operators (what is possible, what is necessary, what is impossible). Hard Railroad Whatever railroading is in an RPG, there is a bad version of it. Eliminating player agency altogether seems also to eliminate the role of the player. This seems antithetical to the nature of an RPG (it's a ROLE PLAYING game, after all). At the same time, what amounts to railroading will depend upon what an agent wants to do. If an agent w...

In Search of a Railroad (1 of 2 on Railroading) Travis Joseph Rodgers Evidently, one of the worst things that can happen in an RPG is railroading. It sounds terrible, at least, to hear from many who discuss the topic on Twitter’s #rpg or #ttrpg tags. So, consider this brief essay an exercise in conceptual analysis. I’m simply attempting to understand what railroading is, such that it is objectionable. The RPG Theory Review blog has the following to say: Railroading only takes place when player actions are prevented from having any effect on the flow of events . Stack Exchange diagnoses the central wrong of Railroading: It's generally frowned upon, because it disrupts the free-will oriented nature of roleplaying . The Angry GM agrees: Railroading used to refer to the GM forcing the players on a predetermined path through a story . Even TV Tropes.Org chimes in: In short, the GM takes any measure necessary to ensure there is only one direction the campaig...

After podcasting about the character SPARK in episdoe O is for Origins, we decided to put together a document that could be downloaded for free to demonstrate the concept. In this document, you'll find quick selection (choose) or generation (roll) tables to help you create a character concept. If you're feeling stumped or looking to play a different sort of character, give it a shot. There are literally millions of possible combinations of characteristics. This link SHOULD work... RPG Character Concept: SPARK

Ars Arcana Blog: Bringing Your Character to Life with SPARK Travis J. Rodgers The Challenge(s) For the grizzled vet of RPGs, creating a character is often a struggle of too many options rather than not knowing where to start. The character concept comes easily to mind, either because there is a character the vet has been wanting to play or because vets often have served as GM as well as player for so long, character concepts seem to spring from an endless font. The challenge becomes determining which of the system options is the best way to make use of your character concept. Let’s call this the “How? Question” of character design. On the other hand, for the relative novice to Roleplaying, the challenge is two-fold. In addition, to the struggles of navigating a system’s options, the novice may not have, and may struggle to create, the character concept. Let’s call this new question the “What? Question” of character design. The SPARK In an episode of the Dungeon Chat...

Why No One Understands Alignment Travis J. Rodgers Alignment was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons as a character (NPC or PC) attribute. It wasn’t rolled for; it was typically selected, but sometimes a particular alignment was necessitated by the character’s race or class. But what is ostensibly a kind of “outlook” piece, cross-indexing a regard for law and chaos on one axis and good and evil on the other is at best a concept evolving across game versions. This fact would explain why long-time gamers, or at least gamers who have played multiple iterations of D&D, might view alignment differently from others. At worst, however, it’s essentially meaningless. There’s a middle path, which may be its original intent, one according to which alignment is both meaningful and quite objective – but then it’s extremely contentious. My considered view is that alignment is either meaningless or objective in a way that many players do not like (which is accurate is undertermined – the...

Ars Arcana Blog 2.5 Travis Joseph Rodgers Levelling Encounters You’re planning a scenario for a new party, but you’re not sure of their precise capabilities. You don’t want them to be able to walk through every encounter without fear, but you also don’t want them to die before they have a chance to explore the scenario you’ve plotted. You need help levelling encounters. The advice contained herein comes with a few important caveats, but if you observe the caveats, you can tailor and tweak encounters to give the precise feel and flavor you and your players are striving for. First, this approach works best with games that use levels, but it can apply well to games without levels, too. It just takes another step. Second, levels might not scale exactly similarly in different games. Still, that doesn’t mean that helpful guidelines cannot be constructed. Third, parties and players are individuals; they may have unanticipated skills, plans, and the dice may be ever in their fa...

Ars Arcana Blog 2.4:  Spells: Points, Slots, and Abilities Travis Joseph Rodgers Do spellcasters in your game use spell points, spell slots, or can they call upon spells like other abilities (like climbing, throwing, and hacking)? Here are three potential problems your magic system will have to deal with and three approaches to solving those problems, with strengths and weaknesses of each approach considered. Part I: The Approaches These three approaches may not be exhaustive, but they do a good job of capturing the typical range of options one might see in an RPG. They are differentiated by the frequency one can cast and the relative customizability of the power of a “readied” spell. Spell Points (SP) Pool of points. Each spell has a cost. More points for more powerful spells. Systems: MERP, Role Master. E.g., Merlin and Magic Martha both cast “flame bolt” spell. Merlin easily pumps a dozen spell points into it, making it devastate his opponents. Martha fum...

Forking Paths in RPGs Ars Arcana 2.3 Travis Joseph Rodgers Roleplaying Games offer the possibility of solitude and solidarity. This might sound paradoxical. On one hand, however, RPGs afford something sometimes pejoratively called escapism. In an RPG, the players get away from things, or at least screen off things for a time being. The etymology of solitude is instructive: in its most extreme form, an RPG offers an escape for one. At the same time, RPGs offer solidarity: a shared, kindred experience. One of the ways this was accomplished in the past was by a sort of transgressive move: the adventure books and games in which individuals separately explored a foreign world then traded the books and experienced the world the other individual had experienced, though with some individual differences. I’ll call these Forking Paths, for the Borges story (strong recommend), and I’ll explain what they are and what value they still possess. Forking Paths In Jorge Luis Borges’s “The...

On the Value of Generics Ars Arcana 2.2 Travis Joseph Rodgers   Scenario 1: Someone has been captured. Version 1: A group of brigands are holding the Lord's child, asking for the release of one of their members. Version 2: Armed mercs stormed the local university, kidnapped a Senator's son, and are holding him as collateral, asking for the return of their seized funds. Scenario 2: Workplace Hazard The bots that patrol the nuclear facility have begun targeting workers for extermination. Victims of a recent trauma have risen from their slabs to attack the morgue workers. Adaptability The principal value of a generic approach to game design is its tremendous adaptability. By changing the setting, the technology level, and the flavor, you can very quickly adapt adventures - yes, even good ones - to different games. I here do two main things: explore why you might want to do this and then consider how you might do it. Why Adapt a Module? I sugges...

ROIL System for Campaign Design ARS ARCANA 2.1 Travis Joseph Rodgers Open-Endedness and Randomness You are a role player. You roll dice. You assume ridiculous voices. You might even don the garb of your character. You spend hours working on back stories, excruciating over the name of your great-great-uncle. You don’t want a random world to play in. You want the world you play in and the system you employ to do so to reflect the thought and planning you’ve put into it. You want open-endedness, not randomness. So, how does a GM (Game Master) or GD (Game Designer) manage to do such a thing? I think there are many ways to accomplish this, but I want to suggest one very helpful path for navigating a few desiderata on a gaming experience. On one hand, many players and parties want fast start capabilities. They don’t want a session zero . They want to be able to sit down and begin playing in the very first session. I’ll call this characteristic INCIPIENCE . On the other hand, part...

Combat and Conversation 2: Advantages (First Strike) Travis Joseph Rodgers In the last blog, I presented a general system for quickly resolving combat. There, I assumed that the combatants were equal in all regards. Because combatants are not often equal in all regards, in this section I introduce some new wrinkles – advantages. If someone has an advantage in a combat, the advantage can likely be categorized in one of the following ways: one opponent has greater effective strike range (RANGE), one has greater speed (SPEED), one has greater accuracy (ACCURACY), one has greater capacity for devastation (DAMAGE), one has different capacity to deal damage of a certain type (TYPE), one has greater ability to dodge (DODGE), or one has greater ability to “shrug” (ARMOR) damage or “deal with”/"soak" damage despite being struck (HEALTH). There may be further types of advantage, like situational and positional advantages, but for the time being let’s suppose that we can reclass...

Split Die Pools / Multiple Actions Travis Joseph Rodgers The Dungeon Chatter system uses a d20 base roll with a modifier of XD6. So a roll at "minus 3" means that you're rolling 1d20 minus 3d6. A "10" is always a success, a negative number is always a critical failure, and a 20 is always a critical success. I've just introduced rules for split die pools. I've done it with the following three rules: Rule 1. Skill Required Your relevant skill must be above 0. A zero represents familiarity but lack of skill, so if you're only familiar with something, you can't try to trade off skill for speed/frequency. Rule 2. Buy Frequency /Spend Skill You can double your actions (from 1 to 2) by rolling each check at two less than your total pool. So, if you have a +3, you can roll two +1 actions (+3 - 2 = +1). If you have a +2, you can roll two +0 actions. If you have a +1, you can roll two -1 actions. You cannot roll two actions if you have bel...

Combat and Conversation 1: The Basics Many who play RPGs love the combat experience, especially when it’s rife with opportunities for cool combat maneuvers and support options. Yet every wrinkle added to the mechanics of combat threatens to add more time and more complexity. Every addition to complexity and time should probably be regarded, at least prima facie, as undesirable in the system. Many who play RPGs also enjoy the conversational component of the RPG, even when the mechanics there are only lightly involved or wholly uninvolved. In this blog post, I begin a (hopefully brief) series of posts thinking through simple, conversational combat that affords options and flavor to players without adding so much to the machinery that it becomes a detriment to player enjoyment. A Simple Model Suppose two evenly matched foes face off. A simple d20 could model a range of combat outcomes, like the following: D20 Roll           ...