Now with added steam...
Jun. 10th, 2004 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morslaSome of you have seen snippets of my plans regarding the Iron Kingdoms game setting - now the book is actually at the printers, so it should be in shops in a few months :-)
Full Metal Fantasy Volume 1 is a behemoth - 400 pages long, with a ridiculous amount of information and artwork on the setting. I like this games company because the people in charge are the writers, illustrators, sculptors etc. The fact that the writing team have been actively answering questions about the game for a couple of years now is also cool - makes a nice change from the anonymous "Ivory Tower" proclamations that usually turn up in games stores.
I'll be running at least two games in the Iron Kingdoms:
* A freeform game, to run at Arcanacon next January. This will be a night of politcal manouevres for 20-25 players, in the last days before the Kingdoms are plunged into war. Alliances (and enmities) will be forged, mercenaries hired, trading agreements determined, and the stage will be set for the opening of the new age. Set in the realm of Cygnar, with visiting dignitaries from Lael, Ord, Rhul, Khador, the Protectorate, and other nearby lands.
* A campaign, using (where possible) most of the rules from the setting - I'd like to use the system as well as the setting. Of course, there will be some Modifications(tm) because the D&D system has some major problems...
Major modification: Experience is handled terribly in the D&D system. The rewards come from hacking monsters, and little else. There is also an increasingly large gap between requirements for each level; balanced (sort of) by the increasingly large piles of experience earned by tougher characters. All too much stuffing around, for me - lots of book-keeping and piles of numbers that don't add to the game at all. As long as each session is roughly as challenging as the others (regardless of the level of the characters), there's no need for the thousands of points...
New level system: 10 points per level. If you have a total of 0-9 XP, you have one level; if you have 100-109 you have eleven levels, etc.
Experience per session:
* Turning up to the session. 1 point.
* Good characterisation and "role" playing (not diceroll-playing or rule-playing). 1 point.
* The character learned something or developed some new aspect in the course of play. 1 point.
* The characters faced a reasonable challenge (combat roughly their equal, etc). 1 point.
* The characters faced significant threats - where failure could have ruined their ambitions (exiled, in a political game) or killed them (poor lever 1 characters tried to jump a dragon...) etc. 1 point.
This way, if an "average" session has some good character development and some kind of a threat, the characters gain a level roughly every three sessions that they attend.
Note that the last two points are always relative to the character level, in the storyteller's opinion - the tougher the characters get, the tougher their challenges need to be to get these. They don't have to be combat (the main departure from the D&D system) - and if they are fights, they need to be challenging to get these points. No points at all for the 30th level warrior who just stabbed a goblin...
If someone sucks (spends the whole session repeating "I hit it with my axe" with no other involvement in the game, that kind of thing), they advance a lot more slowly. (1 for turning up and 1 for fighting (if there was a fight...) - they'll shape up or slip behind, pretty fast...).
If the group grows as the characters are played; faces epic danger, and has good characterful interaction, then they deserve to move up levels faster. Players get to pore through books finding more cool Things (tm) to add to their characters, and the storyteller gets a group who make the story more interesting.
This way, I can use the things I like about the system (the wealth of detail available in the game setting, etc) and there's minimal book-keeping between sessions. It rewards players who actively make the game more interesting, and rewards character development instead of (just) hacking at things - although its flexible enough to still reward a combat-heavy game as well. Seems like a win-win situation to me...
Full Metal Fantasy Volume 1 is a behemoth - 400 pages long, with a ridiculous amount of information and artwork on the setting. I like this games company because the people in charge are the writers, illustrators, sculptors etc. The fact that the writing team have been actively answering questions about the game for a couple of years now is also cool - makes a nice change from the anonymous "Ivory Tower" proclamations that usually turn up in games stores.
I'll be running at least two games in the Iron Kingdoms:
* A freeform game, to run at Arcanacon next January. This will be a night of politcal manouevres for 20-25 players, in the last days before the Kingdoms are plunged into war. Alliances (and enmities) will be forged, mercenaries hired, trading agreements determined, and the stage will be set for the opening of the new age. Set in the realm of Cygnar, with visiting dignitaries from Lael, Ord, Rhul, Khador, the Protectorate, and other nearby lands.
* A campaign, using (where possible) most of the rules from the setting - I'd like to use the system as well as the setting. Of course, there will be some Modifications(tm) because the D&D system has some major problems...
Major modification: Experience is handled terribly in the D&D system. The rewards come from hacking monsters, and little else. There is also an increasingly large gap between requirements for each level; balanced (sort of) by the increasingly large piles of experience earned by tougher characters. All too much stuffing around, for me - lots of book-keeping and piles of numbers that don't add to the game at all. As long as each session is roughly as challenging as the others (regardless of the level of the characters), there's no need for the thousands of points...
New level system: 10 points per level. If you have a total of 0-9 XP, you have one level; if you have 100-109 you have eleven levels, etc.
Experience per session:
* Turning up to the session. 1 point.
* Good characterisation and "role" playing (not diceroll-playing or rule-playing). 1 point.
* The character learned something or developed some new aspect in the course of play. 1 point.
* The characters faced a reasonable challenge (combat roughly their equal, etc). 1 point.
* The characters faced significant threats - where failure could have ruined their ambitions (exiled, in a political game) or killed them (poor lever 1 characters tried to jump a dragon...) etc. 1 point.
This way, if an "average" session has some good character development and some kind of a threat, the characters gain a level roughly every three sessions that they attend.
Note that the last two points are always relative to the character level, in the storyteller's opinion - the tougher the characters get, the tougher their challenges need to be to get these. They don't have to be combat (the main departure from the D&D system) - and if they are fights, they need to be challenging to get these points. No points at all for the 30th level warrior who just stabbed a goblin...
If someone sucks (spends the whole session repeating "I hit it with my axe" with no other involvement in the game, that kind of thing), they advance a lot more slowly. (1 for turning up and 1 for fighting (if there was a fight...) - they'll shape up or slip behind, pretty fast...).
If the group grows as the characters are played; faces epic danger, and has good characterful interaction, then they deserve to move up levels faster. Players get to pore through books finding more cool Things (tm) to add to their characters, and the storyteller gets a group who make the story more interesting.
This way, I can use the things I like about the system (the wealth of detail available in the game setting, etc) and there's minimal book-keeping between sessions. It rewards players who actively make the game more interesting, and rewards character development instead of (just) hacking at things - although its flexible enough to still reward a combat-heavy game as well. Seems like a win-win situation to me...
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-10 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-10 05:50 am (UTC)Mainly, because the increasing gap between levels (2000, 4000, 8000, 12000, 20000 etc) is generally matched by the increasing challenge (bigger monsters, etc) given to the players. So it doesn't get exponentially harder to reach new levels (if each session is still challenging). I basically flattened out the curve, as common sense should be enough to make sure the players stay interested.
The other reason was wanting several increments per level - I think it should be just as hard for a 1st level character to reach level 2, as it is for a 14th level to reach level 15. Rounding the existing numbers down would have made it very easy to fly through the early levels, unless I gave out XP in fractions (I like whole numbers... much easier for my poor brain).
no subject
Date: 2004-06-11 05:26 am (UTC)Well, kinda TROS, I'm still trying to work out the diceless conversion.
-James