On OD&D, Skills, & Attributes

Cross-Posted from RPGnet

Our ideas of what the game should be like are informed by our preferred fantasy fiction.

The D&D rules are loose enough that you can "superimpose," for lack of a better word, a lot of different paradigms on top of them. I'm a much bigger fan of books like The Demon Princes* and The Name of the Wind than I am of, frex, The Wheel of Time or the earlier Dragonlance novels. Not every PC is going to be as big of a badass as Kirth Gersen, but he's somewhat illustrative of what I think a high-level PC should be like. And, essentially, that's what I like my D&D characters to be like. Even if it turns out that there's something I don't think they're likely to succeed at, they aren't at a loss.

If anybody happens to have a copy of the Chronicles of Amber around, bust that open and read the first few pages. You know what you'll notice? The protagonist wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. He's got a busted leg or arm, I forget which. Doesn't know his name or where he is. But he decides he doesn't like the cut of their gibberish, and he's stolen a gun, car, and money before you hit page ten. He doesn't fuck around. His GM isn't making him roll to see if he can use his Law and Intimidate skills in concert.

Anyway, it makes sense to use different approaches depending on what kind of campaign you want to run. If you want to run a game about peasant kids finding their place in the world and learning important lessons about friendship, absolutely, use 5E-style background packages and make them come up the hard way. If you are like me and you want PCs who have been around the block, then assume broad competence and only question it if what they want to do is very specialized. 

Also, I really hate it if things happen like the following: The PCs are in a position to steal a ship and go become pirates. This sounds like a great idea to the GM. But then people start looking at their sheets, and nobody has the Command or Navigation or Seafaring skill, and it all shuts down. See, that's crap. Conan would have just stolen the ship and gone reaving.

What Attributes Mean

In later editions of D&D, it is very clear that attributes are supposed to have a great deal of correlation with what's going on in the game world. Like, it seems to be the intent that you could take the bell curve for Intelligence scores, correlate it with the real-world bell curve for IQ scores, and that they're intended to mean kind of the same thing. If you have a high Int, you have a high IQ. Similarly, if you look at your Strength score, you can probably figure it means something like what "being really strong" means in the real world. Someone with an 18 strength is assumed to be, like, an Olympic powerlifter or whatever. So on and so forth.

I'm not actually convinced that this was the intent in OD&D. Old Geezer, of course, is welcome to tell me that I've got this wrong.

There are actually two different kinds of ability score in OD&D, before you add in the expansions. I first started thinking about this when I read Lars Dangly's Platemail 27th Edition, where he said that PCs were much more like "toys" than the modern conception of "characters." Their actual game statistics were pretty vague and generic, and then you had to layer imaginative elements on top of that. It got me thinking.

For the sake of applying a label to them, let's call them Aptitude Attributes and Customization Attributes.

Aptitude Attributes are Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom. Note that in OD&D, they're listed in that order. Those three come first. The only thing they do, mechanically, ismodify your XP gain if you are a member of that class. If you are a fighter, then your Strength modifies how fast you advance. Intelligence and Wisdom scores do essentially nothing. The reverse holds true if you play a Cleric or Magic User. If you play an MU, your strength is irrelevant. There's no damage or hit bonus or penalty. There's no modification to your encumbrance capacity. The Aptitude attributes are just that: they determine your attribute for various classes, and give you an incentive to try this class or that class at random.

The Customization Attributes are listed last. Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma. These three will actually give you mechanical modifiers regardless of class. They modify AC & Missile Weapons, HP, and Reaction Rolls/Henchmen/Morale, respectively. These can be important for any character. 

How might this look in practice?

If you carried this idea farther than I ever did, you might do something like the following:

1. Roll your six attributes in order, 3d6. 

2. Note any modifiers from your Customization Attributes. Once you've done this, erase the name and the attribute score. So, now you've got maybe a modifier to your AC or your reaction rolls, but you don't actually have anything called Dex, Con, or Cha on your sheet.

3. Pick a class. Write down the XP modifier for the relevant Aptitude Attribute. 

4. Erase all those attributes and their values, too.

5. Yes, dead serious. Now you've got maybe an XP modifier, maybe a couple other mods, nothing else. If you rolled, for example, straight tens and elevens and wanted to play a Fighting Man, you might have a sheet that looked like this:

Berthold the Grim
Level 1 Lawful Fighting Man
XP: 0/2000

Background: Berthold wandered out of the wastelands with a broadsword and a bad attitude. He has a cool scar on his face and wears his hair in dreadlocks.

HP: 6
AC: 4
Movement Rate: 9"

Saves: 
*Death Ray or Poison: 12
*Wands: 13
*Stone: 14
*Dragon Breath: 15
*Spells: 16

Equipment: (total encumbrance goes here, I don't feel like calculating it)
Chain Mail
Shield
Broadsword
Backpack
1 week rations & Waterskin
Tinderbox
6 torches
Belt Pouch with 10GP

Now, if I were to steal somewhat from Lars Dangly, and you were interested in what OG has to say about level being determinative of competency, here is what I would do for a skill system.

1. If a character wants to do an adventurer-ey thing, you either let them succeed, rule that it requires specialized skills they don't have, or make them roll.

2. If they have to roll, just have them roll D6 equal to their level. If they roll any 5s or 6s, they succeed. If it matters how well they succeed, count them up. 3 or more dice coming up successes is very good. If they're opposed by another character or creature with hit dice, make an opposed roll. You guys have done this kind of shit before in tons of other games, you can figure it out.

3. For things requiring special skills, just put a space on their sheet called "Skills." Whenever they do something for a substantial length of game time, they can gain that as a skill. If they are on a sailing vessel crossing the sea, they can say they help sail it. If they do that, just write down Sailing. If they buy a bunch of books on alchemy and read them over the winter, write down Alchemy. Don't make them jump through a bunch of hoops or anything, just keep track of what they've done. Keep things moving and fun.

4. All PCs are assumed to gain leadership ability in proportion to their level and other skills. If they know how to fight, they can lead fighting men. If they know academics, they can function as the dean of a university. 

*This is some of the best sci-fi I've ever read. I recommend reading them at your earliest convenience, if you haven't read them before.

The following is something I initially posted to the RPGnet usergroup on Facebook. Not everyone can see that, so I'm cross-posting here. I'm way too sleep-deprived (which will be obvious when you read this) to add in rich-text formatting, which FB doesn't allow, and so it's crazy and littered with all-caps and shit. So it goes!

THE RANT

[User Redacted]: I think you have just invited me to make an enormous post that I've been mulling over for a while. After this, any time I say "you" it is a general you and not you specifically.

CAVEATS: This is just my personal opinion (although some of you might reasonably infer that I have some insight), if it was official stuff it would be in Trouble Tickets. It's going to be super fucking long, probably inappropriate for an FB post. I don't have access to rich text on FB, so I'm going to compensate by abusing the fuck out of parentheticals. I didn't sleep much last night so it's going to be rambling and I'll probably cuss a lot and man here comes the all-caps.

NOW THE STUFF THAT WYZARD WANTS TO SAY BUT SHOULDN"T SAY ON RPGNET BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL THINK IT"S OFFICIAL

If you feel that it can be hard to post on RPGnet if you don't have a specific mindset, you are (in some limited cases) correct. However, I think that it isn't clear to most users what that mindset is and why it exists. This became a noticeable problem when we instituted the sexism policy, which you might decry as the mandatory feminism policy if you're the kind of person who says shit like that. I think that is because the staff basically made a certain minimum degree of feminism near-mandatory for participating in certain discussions. I ALSO THINK THAT WAS A GOOD THING. If you don't agree with me then that's fine, but it would be cool if you understood why I think that. This is more about helping people understand why this stuff is happening than convincing anyone.

FEMINISM IS NOT ONE THING. It is an academic discipline related to history and sociology, which studies women's issues and what we generally refer to as "patriarchy." It is also a collection of distinct and often sharply incompatible social movements that are intended to help women and (implicitly or explicitly) dismantle the patriarchy. It is a set of ideological statements or values, which again can vary wildly or be grossly incompatible depending on what kind of feminist you are (I'm not going to get into types of feminism because I will fuck it up and everyone will laugh at me.) Feminism is ALSO what I call a "craft," a set of practices used to oppose patriarchy/privilege/whatever in the real world or on the internet, right off the cuff. That is, there are a bunch of practical techniques and rhetorical devices shared among feminists that are properly considered a part of feminism. Probably nobody in the world but me would call that a craft, but I don't care. This is my soapbox and I'm going to paint it however I damn well please.

NB: Feminism can look weird as an academic discipline because while it is Empirical in many places and times, it also rejects rigid empiricism as a prerequisite to being taken seriously. If a woman says that women get catcalled on the street all the time, and a bunch of women agree, then that is supposed to be sufficient and we should listen to their stories. We aren't supposed to be totally skeptical of the "lived experiences," and wait until there is hard, operationalized data to believe them. 

That change in approach exists SPECIFICALLY because of institutional barriers and power structures that keep marginalized groups from doing the research they want to do. If you want to do research on why oil and coal are totally not causing climate change (which is not a real thing anyway!) then the money will roll in. If you want to do research on shit that is important to rich white guys or establishment academics then you've got a shot.

The kind of people who are marginalized and want to do research into how much more often women get interrupted than men do (Hint: It is a fucking lot! That research finally got done, and the results are, in fact, empirical), then it was not until relatively recently that you could get the wherewithal to do it.

Short form, feminists and racial minorities and stuff don't necessarily  have the budget or the access to the levers of power needed to do rigorous experimental sociology, and that is bullshit, so to some extent Feminism accepts a relaxing of standards on these issues. Basically: If enough people tell you something happened to them in a certain way, you should listen. I'm a lawyer and I don't think that this idea should be controversial, but there are a lot of people who just won't buy it and demand hard data to back up every proposition. Too bad!

RPGnet has accepted Certain Things from feminism which are considered facts. Some of this is from the theory of feminism but some of them relate to what I above called the "craft" of feminism. If you have read Derailing for Dummies and seen people dinged for derailing threads, you have some idea of what I am talking about. 

NATHAN WHY ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT THIS PLEASE MAKE IT STOP

I think that a lot of the genuine (as opposed to feigned) confusion about our sexism policy comes from the fact that people do not understand the distinction between our policy and our factual premises. I accept that not everyone is going to agree with me (although I wish they did! I want everyone to take up hammers and help me smash the patriarchy! I promise it will be fun and we will have punch and pie!), but I really don't like it if people genuinely don't understand our policies and find them strange and frightening. I would much rather have ten people who think we're worse than Stalin than a hundred people who have no idea what the fuck is going on.

OH GOD HE IS STILL TALKING

To get to the thing, RPGnet as a whole basically accepts that privilege is real. You are not necessarily going to get dinged for saying "lol privilege is not real," or for just strongly disliking the term, or for speaking out against ideologies you think are based on faulty notions, but Imma tell you right now that privilege has a solid as a fucking rock empirical foundation, built over hundreds of experiments, and if you don't think it is real then you're basically like a climate change denier. That is why you are going to get met with hostility even if the staff doesn't do anything to you in terms of infracting you.

BUT THIS IS ACTUALLY RELEVANT TO THINGS THAT WILL GET YOU RED TEXTED

Because some of it relates to that craft of feminism stuff. Our policy on derailing is the centerpiece and most visible part of this. Part of what got me thinking about this was some disagreement on what derailing is (also, a feminist blogger or someone who is way smarter than me but whom I can't remember the name of wrote some stuff about this that I agree with, and I'm stealing her metaphor and then making it about D&D.)

Imagine you want to talk about D&D. In fact, that's a big part of why I come to RPGnet and I hope I'm not alone, so this shouldn't be a hard thing to imagine. You start threads about D&D. Imagine that every time you start a thread about D&D, some dudes roll in and want to know about hit points. "What are hit points?" You try to tell them what hit points are and they keep asking more questions. "If I have my max HP and someone casts one of these 'Cure' spells you mentioned on me, does that increase my max HP? This problem with the rules will allow everyone to gain infinite HP without question!" This goes on forever. They ask about XP: "Why do XP make sense? How do I get them? What do I do when my GM doesn't give me enough of them? Wait, what are experience levels again?" At some point they start disagreeing with your premises, "I don't think Saving Throws really work the way you say they do. YOu're probably mistaken, and your DM really wants you to roll a dex check. You probably misread the situation about whether that gargoyle could be hurt by magical weapons or not."

This is annoying. If you ignore these guys it's kind of rude, but you can't talk about any of the shit you want to talk about because they keep questioning everything and arguing with minor, niggling details.

Now, keep your imagination-ship fired up because I want you to imagine that not only does this happen to EVERY SINGLE THREAD, but that THE SAME GUYS DO IT.

Even if you explain to Bob Wizardpants (I'm sorry if that's a real user) what HP are this week and that no they are not related to Spell Slots why would you even think that, he will come back and ask you the same bullshit questions next week, maybe slightly rephrased, when you start another thread and want to talk about YOUR ACTUAL TOPIC.

At some point, I would step in and use the powers of the Crimson Word which the admins so unwisely bestowed upon me, and I would tell Bob Wizardpants to GTFO and go read Labyrinth Lord himself for the sake of Christ, it's a fucking free download you mouthbreather.

Now the kicker is YOU DON'T HAVE TO IMAGINE THIS, IT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU TRY TO TALK ABOUT FEMINISM ON THE INTERNET. Seriously, that is what it is like any time you want to talk about Feminism or women's issues or whatever you want to call it. IT IS EXACTLY LIKE BOB WIZARDPANTS ASKING YOU THE SAME STUPID-ASS QUESTIONS ABOUT HIT POINTS EVERY FUCKING WEEK WHEN HE COULD JUST GO READ ANY GODDAMN RETROCLONE AND THEN COME BACK AND BE ABLE TO SAY SOMETHING INTELLIGENT. Or maybe he wouldn't say something intelligent, maybe he'd say something dumb and awful, but at least if he was being dumb and awful in good faith then it would be an INFORMED dumb and awful, and hence possibly interesting in a train-wreck kind of way.

And this, in its most essential flavor, is why the derailing and sexism policy exists. It is so we can have an actual productive discussion without Bob Wizardpants and a dozen of his friends pulling at our fucking sleeves every five seconds asking for a citation to a study and a from-first-principles explanation of structural inequality every five seconds, forever, no matter how many times we've already explained it. In other words, we have this rule to exclude a lot of boring discussion so that we can have an interesting discussion. If we don't exclude this class of degenerate instructions, we NEVER GET TO HAVE the interesting discussions.

EXCEPT THAT IS NOT ENTIRELY TRUE, because in fact if you want to know about Feminism 101 and Privilege Explained For Freshmen and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS ARTICLE ON THE TOAST IS TALKING ABOUT then I guarantee you that you can start a Tangency  [+] thread and people like me will catch you up, with patience and even maybe citations, so long as we think you're asking in good faith. 

I AM GOING TO GIVE IT TO YOU STRAIGHT OUT

If you do not have a working knowledge of what derailing and sea-lioning is, if you don't know what privilege is, if you don't grasp how subaltern narratives are excluded from the discourse and the experiences of marginalized groups are made invisible, then I heartily encourage you to LOOK UP THOSE THINGS before you post in a thread about women or sexism or GBLT issues or racism or anything like that, because YOU ARE DRAMATICALLY INCREASING THE LIKELIHOOD THAT YOU WILL GET RED TEXT IF YOU WALK IN AND START TALKING WITHOUT A GROUNDING IN THE BASIC REALITIES OF THE SITUATION.

Now, I am allowing for the possibility that you can disagree that any of those things exist (although if you don't think privilege and discourse control and patriarchy exist, I think you are seriously in the same boat as YECs and THAT BOAT SUCKS BECAUSE IT IS IMAGINARY SERIOUSLY NOBODY BUILT A BOAT THAT TWO OF EVERY ANIMAL COULD FIT IN AND FORGOT THE UNICORNS OR SOME SHIT) and still get along okay in our threads, IF YOU HAVE A GOOD WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THOSE THINGS YOU DON"T BELIEVE IN, but you are going to be ice-skating uphill.

So, short form: No matter what you believe, if you do not have a working understanding of feminism (which anyone can get if they're willing to read some pages on the internet and ask a few questions in a thread designated for feminism noobs) then I would personally suggest they steer the hell clear of certain RPGnet threads. This is not a policy mandate or a mod instruction or whatever. This is me giving frank and free advice as a fellow user.

Schools of Sorcery

It amuses me to place primitive worlds in Stars Without Number campaigns.  I like the idea of PCs interacting with worlds that are TL3 or less.  Imagine!  You could visit a 1950s America-like and play The Day the Earth Stood Still from the other side of the conflict.

But maybe more interesting than that are worlds so primitive that the ability of centralized governments or mercantile interests to deal with you is effectively hobbled.  TL1 or so.  Medieval planets.  And, with the survival of strange alien megafauna, hostile flora, weird science phenomena, and psychic powers, those worlds could look a whole lot like a fantasy setting.  To that end, I'd like to create one or more new psychic disciplines.  The goal of these disciplines is to have a slightly weirder, more occult, more baroque feel than the powers in the book.  However, I don't want to violate the precepts underlying the design (avoid fight-winning powers, so not much damage and no dominate) nor do I want to eat too much into the territory of the existing disciplines (I can't throw Dimension Door into the middle of a discipline, that drinks too much of Teleportation's milkshake.)

So!

Schools of Sorcery look more occult.  In theory (and game mechanics) they're just like other psychic disciplines.  In practice, though, since TL1-2 worlds don't have access to advanced psitech training equipment, they have to rely on over-complicated kludges.  Specifically, highly technical systems of visualization and symbolic logic, recorded in books using various arcane ciphers and occult diagrams.  The Religion and Tech/Psitech skills (in-class for psychics) are used to memorize and understand the weird equations necessary for Sorcerous training.  There is nothing keeping an off-world Psychic from one of the established academies from journeying to whatever world I institute this on and learning Sorcery as one of their disciplines.  They would need to begin training Religion and Tech/Psitech when they leveled, if they had not already trained those skills to at least 0.

And now, onto the powers.

Level 1: Detect Evil
This power allows the user to detect the presence of sapient minds around them, within a twenty meter radius.  It does not grant a specific location for any person, but the psychic may gain a rough sense of direction.  People in close groups tend to blur together, and a precise count cannot be gained either.  The most useful aspect of this power is that it will allow the user to pick out if any of the minds are non-human or otherwise very deviant from the norm.  The psychic will know if there are alien sapients, AIs, persons whose minds have become sufficiently twisted by maltech, or who have become insane for other reasons. It does not detect psychic ability, unless the psychic has been driven mad by their powers.  It does not allow the reading of thoughts or states of emotion.  The user can exclude people whom they know well and can see, so it is possible for a member of a group of PCs to find out if anyone other than their colleagues is within range.

Level 2: Detect Magic
This power also works within a twenty meter radius, but gives a more accurate reading on location and numbers.  It identifies if any persons have psychic capability, and if any objects are psitech items.  The closer the user is to the thing that is "pinging" their radar, the more precise they can be about the source of the ping.  If they are touching a person or object when they use this power, they can tell for certain if that person or object has psychic abilities.  Otherwise, they gain only direction, whether it is a person or object, and a rough sense of the strength of the source.

Level 3: Invisibility
The psychic can use their Religion skill modified by Wisdom in place of the Stealth skill for the five minutes after using this power.  Furthermore, they can use their skill in circumstances where it would normally be unreasonable to do so, such as walking right past a guard (the guard would make a normal perception check versus the skill check of the user rather than automatically noticing them.)  This power fails if the user attacks or does anything else that would be conspicuously likely to draw attention to themselves.

Level 4: Dowsing
The psychic can tell if something is within 20 meters by using this power.  It can be general like "water" or "gold," or it can be specific such as "Captain Trask's Journal," if the PCs know such a thing to exist.  It cannot be a person or animal.  The power lasts five minutes.  If the thing to be found is hidden and the PCs must look for it, this power allows the psychic to use their Religion skill modified by Wisdom instead of Perception, and grants a +2 bonus to the search attempt in any case.

Level 5: Evil Eye
You can look at an object or person within ten meters, and gain visions of the most important events they have been involved in within the past 24 hours.  The vision of any given scene will not last more than three seconds, so only a momentary glimpse is possible.  However, it will usually be the most informative three seconds possible.  The GM should be generous, here.  No save.

Level 6: Curse
The psychic can strike someone within twenty meters with a curse.  The GM rolls a save for that person in secret.  If they succeed, they gain a sense of dread and foreboding, but nothing occurs.  If they fail, then at some point within the next 24 hours they will be the victim of an improbable accident, which deals 1d4 damage for each level the psychic has.  The GM is encouraged to be imaginative and lurid if this will result in the death of the target.

Level 7: Identify
The psychic can determine the function and purpose of an object.  This is most useful with psitech devices, where it can be fairly specific.  If used on technological equipment, the results of the power will be vague and general: "Point it at your enemy and pull this switch to harm them."

Level 8: Astral Projection
This power must be used before the psychic goes to sleep.  During the next few hours of rest, the psychic will be able to view places that are known to them (Have either been there before or know the precise location), and are no further away than from the surface of a planet to high orbit.  They cannot hear what is said while they are viewing, but if they are capable of lip-reading they may attempt that.  While invisible, unable to use any of their own other powers, and not truly physically present, it is theoretically possible for a psychic using this ability to be subject to the psychic powers of others while in this state.  If a telepath could gain knowledge that an astrally projecting psychic were present, they could potentially target them with telepathic powers, for example.

Level 9: Tulpa
The psychic is able to create a persistent psychic projection.  A psychic may only have one in existence at a time.  Use the sample stat block for any creature type (pg. 147 SWN Core Edition) OTHER THAN the party-butchering hell beast.  The player and the GM should work together to determine any additional or variant capabilities the creature might have.  For example, the GM should certainly allow an aquatic multi-limbed horror to represent some kind of nightmare squid.  The player can always make a humanoid tulpa regardless of the statblock, and can customize their appearance as they like.  However, a tulpa cannot have the precise appearance of any individual (except the creator, if the creator wants a twin...)

The creation of a new Tulpa takes one week of meditation, during which the Tulpa slowly comes into existence.  The psi points must be expended each day, including the last.  The Tulpa will come into existence with a personality and goals determined by the creator, and the creator can furthermore create them with a few skills, if they are skills the creator possesses (A tulpa can always use its natural weapons without skills.)  If the creator wishes, the Tulpa may have whatever memories the creator chooses to craft, and need not be aware that they are a tulpa.  If the creator has the Telepathy discipline, then no telepath with a lower level of the discipline than the creator had at the time of creation will be able to determine that the memories are artificial.

A creator can dissolve their own Tulpa by using this power again in the Tulpa's presence.  A Tulpa that is not dissolved may eventually gain its own independent existence, at which point the creator will forget that the Tulpa is their creation.  If a tulpa that is not independent is slain, the creator will lose a number of HP equal to half of the Tulpa's maximum HP.

Space Madness Update: Skill Philosophy & Dance-Offs

As I work my way toward an  Alpha 2 version, I'd like to start posting samples and tidbits of things that I just couldn't fit into the Alpha 1.  I was anxious to get it posted, and didn't have time to do everything I wanted.

Skill Hierarchies

First, I'm going to talk a bit about my philosophy of skills.

Some skills are basic, immediate things, that any character who wants to do things should have. For example, if you want to beat the hell out of someone, you should have Boxing. It gives you a straight-up, linearly increasing bonus to-hit. This compensates for the fact that an Immortal gets a slightly less favorable to-hit advancement than a B/X Fighter. Some of these skills are so essential that characters need to have them outright. Multitasking, for example, is the skill that most contributes to Immortals being better starship pilots than the typical crew. Getting more action cards gives you more options for when you can act, even before you start getting other kinds of bonuses and access to extra actions per round.

Other skills are more like what a skill means in a normal RPG. The basic Science skill, for example, means that you know science stuff in a vague and hand-wavey sort of way. I actually don't like that. My goal for skills is that they give fairly definite and mechanistic (if not mechanical) benefits. A magic user in the old school who wants to do spell research doesn't have to make a lot if intelligence checks or have a spellcraft skill; their chance of success is based on time, money, and their level. That's how I want it to work. If you want to bio-engineer a duckbunny, I don't want the Referee to have to make up a lot of difficulties and for you to have to roll skills to do it. Really, it should be more like:

1. You need this amount of lab equipment (This is actually a great kind of requirement, because it means the PCs have to set down roots somewhere, maybe guard their facilities, etc.

2. You need certain skills (again, I want there to be a mechanistic requirement.)

3. You need the two critters to be melded together into an abomination of science (easy for a duck and a bunny, could be an adventure hook for anything more interesting.)

4. You need a certain amount of money in supplies or whatever (Keep the characters poor and greedy at all times!)

5. Time.

And then poof, there's a duckbunny. Maybe there's a check that isn't too hard, and you can roll every week until you succeed. Or maybe it just takes 1d4+1 weeks. Give the player some variance so they can't plan everything precisely. Unless they've made a duckbunny before, or hacked a corporate mainframe and stole another scientists' work. If it's the former, this is too boring to be worth time. if it's the latter, you've already got an adventure hook out of it and you can just let them have it.

***

Skills come in hierarchies. I'm going to use Science as an example, but there are certainly more different skills than that.

The basic Science skill doesn't do much on its own. It's a way for the Referee to hand out information. If a player finds a weird phenomenon floating out in space and they have Science IV and nothing else, the Referee shouldn't give them a lot of data. "It's some kind of gravitic-dimensional vortex. You don't have any idea what it might do, but it's at least potentially dangerous. You can use your ship's computer to store the readings you're getting. You could possibly sell the data, but you don't know what it is or what it's worth. If someone wants to do some research you could find a professor of dimensional mechanics or someone like that to do a consultation with...or you could just throw an avatoid in a vacc suit through it and see what happens." (Suggestions like this are good, because they give the players a sense of the setting and context. Also, the players often come up with the best plans when they are like "Well, that is bullshit, we'll do something totally different and throw the referee a curveball.")

Science makes a good introductory skill because it's a cheap Factor I skill that has obvious RP implications.  Everyone knows kinda what science is and has an idea of what someone who took a bunch of science survey courses in college should know.  Or at least you could figure it out with wikipedia.  Actually, that's a pretty good mechanic: At this level, you can consult wikipedia OOC to see what your character knows.

A tier above introductory skills are specialization skills. This is like Biology Specialization. It's a higher factor, it's more expensive. It lets a player who is most interested in a given part of a general skill get additional bonuses in that skill. Depending on the prerequisites, it can let them get more bonus more cheaply at a cost of general skill.

The third tier in the chain is where things start to get interesting. Third-Tier skills should be adding new capabilities. In this case, Bioengineering lets you start making your own monsters. It's not necessarily directly combat-relevant (although it could be, if you make some kind of cool war-python that you can ride on, instead of an adorable litter of duckbunnies.)

Fourth-tier skills should be major rulebreaking bullshit. They have high Factors, are expensive, have major prerequisites, and let you break the game rules by doing things like jacking up all your attributes.  The skill that does that, by the way, is Clone Enhancement.  If you read it, you'll note that it requires facilities, time, and money, in addition to being a Factor IV skill, and thus pretty expensive in terms of time and money.

Dance-Off Skills

First, start with your first-tier skill.

Athletics
Factor: 1, FREE
Unskilled: Human Characters with no Athletics skill can make at most one move action per round, and have Speed 4.
I: Character’s rank in this skill is added to any attempt to swim, jump, climb, play sports, etc.
II: Speed 5.
III: +1 Encumbrance Slot.
IV: Speed 6.
V: The character can make an additional Move action per round.

Secondly, you take a specialty in Dance. You only know you have to do this because "Dance Specialty" is listed as a prerequisite for competitive Dance.

Dance Specialty
Factor: 2
Prerequisites: Athletics III.
I: Like the other Athletics specialties, this skill will simply add to any attempts to do the specialized thing. In the case of Dance, we can assume that (like most Immortal skills) it's very broad, and covers anything from formal ballroom dance to impromptu mocking jigs.

Now, the third-tier skill. This one starts opening up weird new mechanical realms. Note that none of these skills require a IV or even V in their prerequisite. We want a character to be able to buy into this without a huge time investment. For a mid-level character (level 5, 10 SP per week), you could very easily become a professionally skilled dancer in just a few weeks, and start taking part in competitions as one of the lower-ranked competitors. I personally think that Level 5 is probably around the sweet spot for campaign play. Characters should have the skills, equipment, and competence to begin doing larger and more self-directed projects. They have room to pick skills up on a whim.

Competitive Dance
Factor: 3
Prerequisites: Dance Specialty III
Description: Any character may take part in a dance-off! They can use the skills and attribute bonuses they do possess, even if they don’t have the prerequisites to issue a challenge, or don’t have the Dance specialties. However, if they have this skill and the Challenge skill, they can Serve opponents to force a dance-off.
I: Your rank in this skill adds to any skill checks to dance. Specifically, it covers highly athletic breakdancing, or similar moves. You may Serve opponents with a dance-off challenge if you also have the Challenge skill. If you roll a natural 18 for your Move during a dance-off, you may use a special move. You gain access to the Step It Up move.
II: If you roll a natural 17 or 18 for your Move during a dance-off, you may use a special move. You gain access to the Tag In move.
III: If you roll a natural 16, 17, or 18 for your Move during a dance-off, you may use a special move. You gain access to the Denouement move.
IV: If you roll a natural 15, 16, 17, or 18 for your Move during a dance-off, you may use a special move. You gain access to the Stomp move.
V: If you roll a natural 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 for your Move during a dance-off, you may use a special move. You gain access to the Bite Their Style move.


I'm not going to belabor how the tiers work anymore. Just know that the Challenge skill requires the first-tier Social and the second-tier Intimidate Specialty.

Challenge
Factor: 3
Prerequisite: Intimidate Specialization III
Description: This skill allows your character to issue serves to their opponents. Someone getting Served is a necessary prerequisite to forcing another character to engage in a Dance-Off, Rap Battle, or other Challenge.
I: Your rank in this skill adds to attempts to Serve an NPC.

Dance-Off Mechanics

CHALLENGES

The tradition of various kinds of Challenges evolved across the galaxy to allow confrontations between heroic characters without death and bloodshed. It’s a way for characters to show off their skill and craft and still both walk away. They are viewed as sacred, and to violate their tradition is a source of crushing shame.

The kind of challenge available in the basic game is a dance-off. This displays the physical prowess of the parties and is viewed as suitable across cultures.

The following general rules apply to all challenges:

1. The target of the challenge must be a significant character or NPC within sight and hearing of the challenger. A horde of random hobgoblins cannot be Served. If there is a chieftain among the hobgoblins, though, then the chieftain could be the target of a challenge. Heroic characters like the PCs should almost always be able to tell which members of a group of NPCs are significant enough to warrant a challenge. Unintelligent creatures cannot be served. A horde of undead is immune to service, but the vampire leader can still be served. (Vampires are incredibly vain, they will almost never turn down a Challenge.)

2. A Serve must be issued before the fighting starts. Winning initiative and using your action card is good enough, so long as no one has made any attacks yet. Serves must be in person, they cannot be done via starship comms.

3. All hit point losses are rounded up, so that more damage is taken. However, no one can ever be reduced below 1HP by the results of Shame from a Challenge. The whole point is that they are non-lethal.

4. By serving or accepting a challenge, the party agrees on a meta-game level to allow the loser to retreat in peace. The loser is not so bound. They may, if they wish, attack the winner. This is regardless of who issued the serve.

5. If retreating would mandate abandoning a valuable position or treasure, that is, if the encounter has more stakes than simply being a loser or winner and ceding the field, then the party who receives the serve may receive a bonus to resist it at the discretion of the Referee. If the balance of forces is so hugely one-sided that the stronger party believes they are under no threat, then they may automatically refuse a successful challenge without sustaining Shame damage. However, it is obligatory in this case to then offer the Challenger reasonable terms for Surrender.

6. In order to serve, the serving party need merely announce it. If the target is within sight and hearing, and is able to understand the serv, they have the choice to simply accept without rolling. Serving someone to have a dance-off can be done without a common language, Rap Battles depend on mutual fluency in some shared language.

7. If the defending party does not wish to accept Service, then the parties can roll dice. The Server rolls 3d6 + Social + Intimidate Specialty + Challenge + Their Charisma modifier. The difficulty of issuing a successful challenge is 20. For every five by which they beat this difficulty, the defender's saving throw is penalized by 2. (-2 at 25, -4 at 30, etc.) If the Servee wishes to resist a successful Serve, they can roll a save v. spell, penalized as above.

8. If the Server beats the difficulty and the Servee forgoes or fails the saving throw, they have been Served. The Servee must now either accept the challenge or suffer Shame.

9. If the Servee rejects a successful Serve, they must take 25% of their current HP in damage. ALTERNATELY, one of their allies who is present may accept the Serve on their behalf. This relieves the original Servee, and the original Server may not withdraw their challenge. You want to make sure that the other side doesn't have an incredible dancer hidden in the back before you issue a challenge.

10. Once someone has given, rejected, or accepted a Serve in a given encounter, they cannot then Serve or be Served by anyone who was party to that encounter (that is, anyone who was served or served someone, or any of their allies who were present) for a period of 24 hours.

11. Once a challenge is accepted, either voluntarily or by force, then all the action must stop until the Challenge is complete. This does affect mindless NPCs if they are led by any character who is a valid target for a challenge. The referee is welcome to interpret this as broadly as they like.

12. Unless otherwise stated, the Server acts first in the Challenge.

There can be multiple different kinds of challenges, possibly unique to the individual campaign. Dance-offs are the most universal, and are described below.

Dance-Offs
The goal of a dance-off, mechanically, is to make the single best poker hand that it is possible for the player to have. All the poker cards issued are kept face-up on the table in front of the player collecting them; everyone can tell how well someone is doing. The way to accumulate cards is to have the character successfully execute moves.

Each round consists of three moves by each involved party. Each successful move gains the player one card from the poker deck. Special moves are used in addition to the regular move that triggers them, and do not give you additional cards. The most cards it is possible for a player to have, at the end of the dance-off, is 9. The standard roll in a dance-off is a D20 + the character’s Charisma modifier + the total of their physical attribute modifiers + Athletics + Dance Specialty + Competitive Dance.

The Round: Each party to the dance-off makes the standard roll three times, in sequence. The Server acts first. Each roll is a move. The Difficulty of the roll is 25. If they succeed, then they have executed the dance move correctly and they gain a card. If they roll a special move due to a high natural roll of the die, and that roll is high enough to succeed at the current Difficulty, they resolve that immediately, before making any further normal moves. It’s the special moves that make things interesting.

Step it Up: You can use your special move to step up your game, and use more impressive moves. If you choose to do this, immediately reroll your move at a difficulty two higher. If you fail, your regular and special move both fail, and you do not get a card for this move. If you succeed, you gain a card as normal and the difficulty for all moves after this are increased by two, for all dancers involved in this dance-off. This special move can be used multiple times by multiple dancers. It allows highly skilled characters to shut less-skilled characters out of the competition.

Tag In: You tag in one of your teammates. This does not require a roll, but the teammate must be willing. Immediately put your hand of cards (including the one from the move you just made, if it was successful) in between you and the teammate you just tagged in. In the final hand, either you or your teammate can use any of the cards in this common hand (this is very similar to Texas Hold ‘Em.) Any cards you earn after this division are yours only, and any cards your ally earns after this division are hers only.

Your teammate will take a turn (all three rolls) at the end of the round, and at each round thereafter. This Move is most successful when used in Round 1 with a highly skilled teammate. When you use this move, one of your opponent’s allies may immediately step up as well, with no roll required. If so, your opponent must divide off the common cards for their side in just the same way that you and your ally did.

Denouement: This special move may only be used during Round 3. Make a single Move roll, directly opposed, against any opponent currently participating in the dance-off. The winner may switch any one of the loser's cards with any other card that is currently in play.

Stomp: This can only be used if you have the agreement of a majority of your allies to use it, and requires a natural 18 regardless of what numbers you normally gain special moves on. Make an additional Move roll against a difficulty of 35. If you succeed, Shame will apply to everyone on the field who is party to the conflict. If you win the dance-off, all enemies suffer Shame. If you lose, you and all of your allies suffer Shame. Whether you succeed or fail on this roll, your opponent may immediately use the Tag In maneuver on any three of their allies, or alternately draw three more cards for themselves and keep them face-down. If there are already multiple opponents tagged in, the face-down cards can be used by any or all of them to form a hand at the end of the dance-off.

Bite Their Style: When you choose to use this special move, do not draw a card immediately. Instead, choose an opponent and roll 3d6 + your Wisdom mod + Cold Read against their roll of 3d6 + Charisma mod + Deceive Specialty (if they have it. Social does not count.) If you succeed, you can figure out your opponent’s dance strategy and pre-empt their favorite moves. Draw a card normally, and your opponent needs one higher number to get a special move result. For example, if they would normally need a natural 17 or 18, they now need a natural 18. On a failure, you do not draw a card as you flub the move.

This can be used multiple times on a single opponent. It can result in an opponent being unable to use special moves at all. Once you fail using this move, you cannot use it again for the rest of the day.

Finishing the Dance-Off
Determine which player has the best hand using normal poker rules. That player chooses which if any of the other characters who participated in the match are to suffer Shame. Shamed characters lose half of their current HP, rounded up. This cannot reduce any character below 1 HP. This is not considered to be taking damage, and no Armor, Shields, or other normal methods of reducing damage apply. At this point, the losers must be allowed to slink away by the winners. Jeers may be directed their way, but no hostile spells or other actions. However, if the losers decide to attack anyway, they may. Their names may live on in infamy, but this does not garner them any additional Shame (at least not of the kind that is mechanically represented by HP loss.)

SPACE MADNESS

Why have I been so quiet lately?  I've been working on my own Spaceships, Swords, & Sorcery OSR game.  It's currently at a very rough alpha stage, and I'd like to have people work it over for a while before I build further on a foundation that may turn out to be shaky.  Particularly, I'd appreciate it if people could stomp on the space combat system for a while and tell me what works and what doesn't.  All other commentary is also appreciated, of course.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3byNvOofZkMRmFsNVhTX29iRnc/edit?usp=sharing

Nonpareil, I

As I have mentioned before, I'm currently working on my own OSR-compatible game.  I think my influences will be fairly obvious, but I'm trying to remix them in an interesting way.  There's some recycling of ideas I've played with before, but I think that's inevitable when I'm basically writing a game that consists of all the things that I personally think are cool.

My goal here is not to write anything very sophisticated, or even necessarily something that I'd feel comfortable charging money for.  I'm trying to make something interesting, and hopefully playable.  It's a game that is going to work best with long-term campaign play, where the GM keeps track of months and years and the PCs have regular "down-time" periods.  This is due to a combination of factors:

1. Even low-level PCs will have access to the kinds of resources and considerations more typical of Name-level characters.

2. Characters gain XP and levels in the same way that OSR-fans will be used to, but their Skills train up as a function of in-game time.  They increase at the same rate per week regardless of the characters' activity, but a break of a month here or there to polish up some skills can be worth it if their next adventure promises to be a tough one.

On the other hand, higher-level characters gain more skill points than lower-level characters do, and buying new skills to train costs money, so sitting around for years as some Level 1 dweeb in an attempt to gain a skill-based advantage is a losing strategy.

And now, the Setting:

SETTING

The galaxy is a vast and mostly unexplored place. The dominion of humans covers hundreds of earthlike worlds, whether independent or bound up in one of the Empires. Alien menaces, otherworldly horrors, and simple internal strife threaten everyone. And now, the greatest discovery in the history of space exploration has begun to throw everything into chaos.

***

Humanity ascended into new heights of power when a certain set of technology was combined: Cybernetic amplification systems, quantum neurology, faster-than-light starships, bioengineering, and ansible communications. These things in combination allowed the creation of the Immortals.

An Immortal is a cloned human with Cybernetic Implant (CI) jack in the back of their skull and a lace of superconducting neural assistance hardware woven through their brain. Their CI allows them to control a warship as quickly and precisely as if it were their own body, and in the event of its destruction to transfer their brain-state to a waiting clone. Ansible hardware allows the instantaneous and absolutely secure transmission of information to anywhere in the galaxy, so long as it is tuned to an ansible capable of receiving it. This transfer destroys the ansible when it is used to transfer as much information as is required to rebuild a human brain, but most Immortals don’t mind paying for a new ansible and a new clone if it keeps them alive. A normal ansible is capable of moving a fair amount of data, probably as much as a healthy modern broadband internet connection, without risk of the waveform collapsing and destroying the ansible. An ansible that collapses in this way cannot be repaired. So, there is plenty for video, text, and voice communication. But some things strain even the ludicrous data storage capacity of galactic civilization, such as the quantum information packets that are used for skill software or an Immortal brain-state. Those must be either physically moved (for the former) or suffer the destruction of the sending and receiving ansible (for the latter.)

The use of Immortal starship pilots gave humanity a powerful edge in space warfare. Their ability to download skills and learn them at a vastly greater rate, plus to deploy them without any of the inefficiency or imprecision of normal starship controls, made an experienced Immortal the equal of dozens of mortal crew.

And, as time went on, they grew even beyond that. The whole wealth of space and the entire field of human achievement was open to them. By transferring to younger clones on a regular basis, Immortals did not age. Over the decades, they could use their ability to amass vast skill to become masters of every field of human endeavor. Unstoppable generals, brilliant scientists, experts on every kind of intrigue, captains of industry, lords of finance, and a match for a score of soldiers in personal combat, all of these things rolled into one. There was no stopping them. The greatest of the Immortals, the most ambitious, could not be prevented from taking over whole clusters of star systems, and declaring themselves God-Emperors. As many as a dozen have ascended to heights of power unimaginable to a mundane human. They sit in their palace-complexes deep within planetary cores, with post-singularity minds and hangars full of nanofabrication equipment, plotting unthinkable plots and pursuing incomprehensible goals.

***

The campaign begins twenty-four hours after an ansible signal from a lone deep space exploration frigate began transmitting to every major newsfeed in human civilization. Alyssa Marceaux, Immortal pilot of the Corbeau, had found something unprecedented.

A Dyson sphere, something infinitely far beyond the ability of any known civilization to construct, hanging like a black jewel in the infinite reach of space. The sphere was approximately 2 AU in diameter and spun to have an apparent internal gravity of 1.05g. There was a second inner “sphere,” a complex of gaps and solar collecting shades that produced a day-night cycle on the inner surface. Megastructure cables connected the shades to larger gaps at the north and south poles of the sphere, and transmitted power to whatever technology kept the whole thing running.

The base material of the sphere’s outer shell was impervious to any attempt to analyze it or even take a sample, so Captain Marceaux gave up on it quickly. A dotting of several thousand “vanes” penetrated from the outside of the sphere to the interior. Each one was a tunnel around a hundred kilometers across the interior and close to a thousand high. That was enough to keep the atmosphere settled around the habitable areas, rather than pouring out into space. Confident in her Immortality so long as she was inside her spaceship, Marceaux emerged from the inner portal of the vane to find an earthlike habitat that covered the entire inner surface of the sphere. Medieval civilizations of human (and inhuman…) peoples dotted a landscape that covered one hundred and seventy nine million times the surface area of old lost Terra. There was more habitable area than the entirety of humanity’s sphere of influence; maybe more than would be found in the entire galaxy combined. (There are five thousand vanes, not counting the larger gaps at the poles, evenly distributed about the surface of the sphere. Each vane therefore serves an area equivalent to about thirty-five thousand earths.)

She seeded micro-probes over the landscape and continued surveying. Every hour, a new update of photographs and scans came in. The locals had strange powers unexplainable by science. There was genetic diversity here beyond anything imaginable. There were nonhuman sapient species found nowhere else in the galaxy so far. There was untapped wealth here beyond measure, both in living space, resources, and information. Marceaux refused to sell the coordinates to a private party or even a government. A crowdfunded request met her ransom of one billion credits in a matter of only hours, deposited into her personal secure credit accounts. She gave the coordinates, officially registered the megastructure with the name Nonpareil, said goodbye, and disappeared from the information net. It has been four hours since transmissions ceased, and it seems that every freebooter, treasure hunter, and ambitious Immortal in the entirety of human civilization is making preparations to travel to those coordinates.

...

Any questions or comments may be directed to the comments section below.

Go Give People Money

The Bundle of Holding outfit is currently selling a nice package of Stars Without Number PDFs.  This is a great chance to donate some money to a food pantry and also get some electronic loot at less than the normal price.

The blog has been quiet because I'm working on my own OSR-compatible game.  I'll be posting about that soon, but I wanted to give any readers a heads-up about the above.