Dungeon Chatter

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...

Dungeon Chatter Podcast Episode 6: F is for Fail In this episode, Travis and Victoria discuss modeling failure in an RPG. It seems clear enough that a successful attack hits and deals damange, but what does a failed attack mean? We discuss failure in combat, moving maneuvers, perception, and persuasion. iTunes Link https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dungeon-chatter-rpg-podcast/id1435743168 Works Discussed TTRPGs AD&D, Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) Video Games Super Mario Bros., Wasteland Concepts Failure, Critical Failure, Natural 20, Natural 1, The DM Screen Show Notes Victoria is becoming an editing pro. This episode sounds great, and she should soon edit out an F-bomb that she missed in the first edit through. The Pitch Simple Failure: Die rolls of 0-9 represent rough percentage of task completed. So, 10% x die roll = % of action completed (6x10% = 60%). Critical failures In general, they set you back, offering a penalty to further attempts. neg...

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           ...