What I'm looking for and why

[temnix]

Hi everyone. I'm fairly new here. I registered to join in on TristenC's Ravenloft game. Yesterday he and I talked about magic and wizards in D&D and AD&D, because I felt provoked to a philosophical rant. Poor guy. But I think my ideas have been coming together and fermenting over years of dissatisfaction with fantasy literature and games. And now the storm broke.

You see, there are some things I really admire in D&D and AD&D, but other elements of these games and similar ones have become unpalatable. I'm trying to figure out why. More, I'm trying to figure out what kind of game I should look for or run to have those wonderful things but not the other kind. Let me tell you a little about myself. I'm 35 now. I grew up on sword&sorcery books of Sprague de Camp, Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber et al. I've also read a good amount of general classics, I'm relatively educated with a humanities M.A. All that took time, but time didn't cause the change in my mood. I didn't become dissatisfied with books from the Golden Age of Fantasy as I grew up. On the contrary, with appreciation of Homer and Dante came an even clearer view of the merits of S&S – but not of contemporary fantasy, even when it manages to be thought-provoking or tackles serious issues. As time went by, I realized there are more important things in art than “issues” – imagination, creative consistency and full, rational, strict awareness. If you want an example of a fantasy/sci-fi writer who was a paragon of that last quality in particular, I can name Roger Zelazny, but the old S&S crowd outdoes him in sweet old imagination. As for consistency, it’s another name for style, and it is what gets a writer in the halls of fame – and imitated for a game.

An Amber RPG has been around for a long time, and there is a game based on Conan’s Hyboria, even a CRPG, and D&D borrows a lot from you-know-who and Jack Vance – just a few examples I’m most familiar with. Even though role-playing games are very different, what I will now say applies, I think, to almost all. The promise of games was to open up book worlds for exploration; however, to explore can never be enough. Any world we, humans, get in, we begin to change, including imaginary ones. Delivery of this promise of freedom in a fantasy world quickly ran up against a reverence for the texts.

Take D&D. The worlds of Jack Vance and Tolkien and Howard, comic book material had been exported piecemeal and thrown in at random, but the elements were not to be altered. A hobbit (halfling) couldn’t breed with an elf, alignments were limited to Good, Neutral and Chaotic (clear enough), up was up, down was down. It was satisfactory for a while, but after the novelty of the roles wore off the game had to change. We know what happened next. Restrictions began to melt, the alignments bore triplets, more classes came in, the expansion hasn’t stopped since. Playing an AD&D campaign now, I must admit the old limitations are cozy. The modern game is now tending towards the formless without becoming, in my opinion, really free-form. (The so-called free-form RPG genre bears more resemblance to collective story-writing than any game.) Inside the ballooning D&D game and others I’ve looked into there are still limitations: an excessive concern with rules, balance, fairness or (and) atmosphere and setting integrity. Random borrowings and grafts of Lovecraft for the Far Realm are a tribute to fashion, not a true decision to put style and content into the hands of players. On the surface there is complete freedom, countless options, deeper there is distrust of players and denial of the fact that fans could just as well have done it with house rules. The RPG genre is split between games that boast of rules and games that deny rules.

This situation prevents games from becoming genuinely free-form. Rules must exist but with players their masters. They need to learn working all the time and as a matter of course with their GMs to set their own story goals, bring about change in the setting, make room in the world for themselves and their desires. Instead players just get to enjoy a good ready-made piece from the GM, a kind of performance with bits of improv. They are passive. Now it’s not surprising that people’s usual hang-ups and fears carry over to their imaginary personas and even whole fantasy environments, especially in teenage years. But eventually we may outgrow family issues, dogma, reverence for the legal system, obsession with looks and so on. After we do that, how do we play?

What’s obvious to me is that real free-form, interactive play with players in the driver’s seat but also a GM to set an objective standard is not for everyone. I have to say it’s for adults only. Learning to find and express your (character’s) desires, then shaping the world to them is very difficult. It takes a measure of education and discipline and a departure from conventional morality to even want to do that, so there will never be very many capable players or GMs. But it’s worth it to try and adapt AD&D or D&D or another fantasy game to adult sensibilities and thirst for freedom. Recover the fairy-tale charm of the old S&S books. Pull ideas from various settings and authors, retain them as rules that give players the most freedom in the expression of self and keep them most grounded in the virtual world’s reality. Those are the rules that should stay. But, of course, I’m also looking for a game and a group that would suit me, delight me and empower me. I have no other choice than to go by own preferences, most of which tend to that stated goal of realism and freedom of expression. So what do I like? And what turns me off?

1) I like games for grown-ups. Grown-ups are people who have loved, suffered, traveled, worked, fought, thought in their real lives, know facts from bullshit and, as I said, have a measure of education. And now they want to imagine and create. If you think S&S is necessarily childish or immature, look in Howard's Conan stories. There is absolutely nothing for-teens about that world. So what don’t I like? The opposite: I have to say, I don't like games for people who've done none of the above and only read comic books.

2) I like amoral games. I don't like ones where a player is presumed to be a hero – or, for that matter, a free-roaming mercenary shark. When amorality gets official, it becomes a new creed. But this is also something grown-ups understand.

3) I like playing with people who don't expect me to be nice. I don't expect them to be nice either, and as a result we can all relax and be incredible. Let’s dare to touch each other for caresses and friendly prods. I don't like games with people whose most treasured feeling is pouting offense.

4) I like games where forgiveness is the normal state of relations between players and a standing rule for the GM. Where absolutely everything is forgiven by default or they kick you out of the group. I don't like games where forgiveness is a privilege to thank for or a resource to tally.

5) I like games with some rules to give the players and the GM common ground and flesh out the world. But not fearful games with rules for every eventuality and an obsession with balance.

6) I like balanced games. Where "balance" means as much power as possible for everyone just short of compromising adventures, breaking the setting or inflating the currency. Which may be more or less, but to take the case of wizards, I like them to be normal people who can fight. I don't like them getting a d4 HD and a quarterstaff out of a concern that someone may abuse the rules and rule the board.

7) I don't like boards or anything that is a wargame or a game of miniatures disguised as an RPG.

8 ) I like classes. I don't like it when classes are substituted for personalities – or constitute them. Classes are a more vivid concept than skills, they have this advantage.

9) I like fighting. I don't like fighting as expected entertainment or with specified people and creatures only or on a plot, while everyone else is a peaceful 0-level "commoner" not to be touched.

10) I don't like disfigurement or lost limbs. In real life disability disables, precludes experiences. Why imitate it in fantasy? This kind of naturalism misses the point.

11) I like to have many opportunities to avoid death. I don't like Raise Dead if they don’t work out. Goners should stay goners, for the most part.

12) I like it when role-played decisions determine outcomes or give bonuses to rolls. I don't like flat and mechanical dice-rolling deciding my fate. I play fantasy because fantasy worlds are shaped by living beings in them, not by blind forces like gravity, evolution or the trajectory of a shell (or a die). Adjusted rolling is all right, but submitting to a standard vs. save or a THAC0 roll makes me feel displaced from my character’s body, as if it suddenly turned into a robot.

13) I like it when information is power and accumulation of knowledge is a sensible goal. A wizard, for example, needs incentives to hunt after ancient tomes and inquire into the principles that keep a fire elemental burning. Eventually he should be able to control or make an elemental, and so with everything. Knowing the world is also one way of interacting with it. What I don't like is a GM who drops rare hints about the world, just enough for the players to figure out where the dungeon is, and afterwards they can expect a few prods to the next "stage," and so on – crawling onward like blind mice. I don't like being kept in the dark, don't like cryptic hints. I want to be able to ask and get answers. And I don't care for a GM who himself is undecided as to whether the world is a planet or a plane or what the politics of the kingdom are. What am I supposed to discover, then? Or pursue?

14) Experience and rewards. Cause and effect. I like it when my character achieves only what I, the player, have earned by my intelligence, initiative and role-playing. It must be relevant to the character's actions. If a wizard has been practicing a spell, let him get better at the spell or all spells. If a rogue has been looking for a treasure chest and found it, let him have what's inside. If a priest has spent the same time obtaining a boon of longevity from his god, let him have that. The GM can do it with a skill-based system or a level-based system or no system at all, in the case of free-play, so long as the reward is appropriate for the effort. What don't I like? When experience points or skill points can go towards upgrading any ability, even one that hasn't been used. Cause disconnects from effect, so any joy at the upgrade is remarkably shallow.

15) I don't like Fate points or any other "gameplay conveniences" without physical existence and meaning in the played world.

16) Wizards and all magic-users need to be able to cast whatever they need at the moment. Most S&S wizards can. The memorization slot system is an odd creation of Jack Vance, meaningful only on his Dying Earth with its ignorant and decadent magicians who learn spells by rote. That world was necessarily restricted for aesthetic reasons. Other worlds, ones we want characters to live in and change, shouldn’t be. 3E sorcerers are still slot types. The alternative I prefer to memorization in my eyes is the fatigue system from Spells&Magic – it connects magic with the character’s body, makes it grittier.

17) I like spells with permanent effects. I don't like spells with a duration, especially if they require no concentration from the caster to maintain. Everything we achieve should be tied to what we do, and a spell just lasting so long or extending so far by itself is too mechanical.

18) I don't like the fantasy races at their stereotypical. I don’t dislike them either, but in the whole D&D game only humans aren’t a given personality type.

19) I like psionics so long as it means telepathy and telekinesis rather than a weird and irrelevant magic.

20) I don't particularly like items with charges – wands and such. Running out of ammo is not a good dramatic device from the GM's 3rd-person view and it isn't interesting from the player's 1st-person view. There can be other limitations on use, or perhaps charges can stay but treatment of magic items change.

21) I have a singular dislike of the Deck of Many Things. It feels at first as if there is no reason, but a little thinking finds the cause. I hate randomness, it interferes with my free will. But perhaps others’ will is more enlightened and they can find pleasure even in random fate. Wishes as a spell are a bad idea, I think. That everything can be rolled back and corrected, that rules of reality can be cancelled goes, I think, against the spirit of irrevocability that makes adventures possible. But others may enjoy a malleable reality. How far would they take this, though? If they got more wishes, more freebies, wouldn’t they eventually tire of staying in-character at all? The sick feeling of munchkinism, “I can do whatever,” the Caligula complex. The role would lose all worth.

22) I like economies, crafted goods, architecture and GMs or writers who take the time to describe how a silk feels as it runs through the fingers or the construction priniciple of a great dome. I don't like those who go over the sensuous part of life unless it's because they are fixed on the plot, world-building and characters.

23) I like over-the-top features like a Tomb of Horrors or Bone City, Stygian pyramids, floating corpses of dead gods in Planescape. I respect Baba Yaga's hut with skulls on stakes. I have absolutely no trouble believing in those things. More modest inventions like Sigil city in the same Planescape are more dubious to me. Everything well thought-out and original goes. Magic swords, crystal balls, poisoned lotus, see-through ghouls, draconians and other great inventions of writers are fine by me. On the other hand, attempts to write up imaginary kingdoms and empires and social life in fantasy books rarely come off well. Most authors and game writers are too ignorant to describe what life really was like in Europe's Middle Ages or in ancient Greece. They have absolutely no historical sense. They just haven’t read enough. Some kind of combination of well-researched history and fantasy usually works the best.

24) I like fantasy worlds with a future. Future isn't necessarily about rockets in the sky. It’s just potential. A fantasy world can have a future. It need not end in an Age of Mortals or a Fourth Era of Middle-Earth. Fantasy can remain fantasy: new sorcerer-emperors can arrive, continents can sink or rise, rat-men or snake-men or snake-women can conquer the world or the gods can sex up an orgy and blend into a supergod. So long as they all do it with an expanded assortment of spells, weapons, feelings and thoughts every time, so long as their society changes, it's a future. In a genuine free-form game players would effect these changes, not the GM or writer.

25) I like it when a GM isn't afraid to treat imagination's work as art. And I dislike it when a GM sets out with a stated purpose to provide entertainment, so same-old it’s not even announced.

With these values in mind, is there any game happening here that might fit the bill?

[TristenC]

Have you ever read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan? The weaving of 'the power' is closely tied to the body in a way that seems consistent with what you're describing. I think there was a Pathfinder based system created for it. I don't know the gameplay specifics, or how widespread/diversified the mechanics are; but it might be worth looking into.

I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on magic in our discussion, I have had many of the same thoughts myself with regard to consistency/diversity/explanation of how magic works. As I mentioned then, the d&d system strikes me as more of a 'magic as science' rather than 'magic as art' that draws power from the body. The WoT thing takes the latter view, however; and magic-users can be 'burned out' by pushing too hard/using too much, etc. Also, they are not considered arcane or divine, but any 'channeler' can heal or throw fireballs. Each individual has a different strength in one of the five traditional elements (I bet anyone could name them easily). In addition there are 'lesser' and 'greater' talents that allow special, more specific skills. Some examples are: creating items of power, making difficult weaves more effective, prophecy, identifying things based on feel, etc.

[TristenC]

I glanced over Player's Option: Spells and magic, and it has lots of options and considerations for using a spell point-system, as well as a fatigue chart. It is on the purple worm site

[temnix]

Thanks, Tristen. I used to own both Spells&Magic and Skills&Powers... good stuff, I thought, but without a chance to play, it was a moot point. I'll make sure to look at the Pathfinder treatment of Jordan's magic, may be a good system. The Wheel of Time books themselves, well, I think they are on the cheesy side of the fantasy spectrum.

As far as magic goes and the science vs. art aspect, the setting that has me in awe is Conan's Hyboria. I don't know how Howard did it, it must come with being a great writer, but he's made it mysterious and diverse and eerie... In one story he has Chinese sorcerers, definitely the learned kind, in another he had that Baal-Pteor, the strangler I told you about. How would a huge wrestler know hypnosis and whatnot? That kind of question throws D&D off, breaks up the "roles," but Howard, he just didn't care. He just wrote in whatever could make the story fun.

And that's what I'd like to have in a game. You want to play a swordsman who can fly? Let's talk it over, I'll get you a fighter with an XP penalty and flying three times a day. You want to play a frigging ghoul in diguise? No problem, but he'll have zero Charisma. It's up to you how to survive. And so on. Out with the assumption that the characters will fall in an "adventuring party," wizards in the back, the thief scouting in front... that's, like, the Yellow School Bus. Instead let players pitch ideas. You want to place in the world a flesh-eating toad idol, make that a god? No problem, I'll make space for him in the pantheon, and then we can have an adventure. Obviously it's very different from the usual approach, when the GM draws up the universe in advance, establishes plot, decides what magic is and how it works once and for all, and other things too, so the characters are characters in his drama.

Novella approach vs. novel approach? Something to think about.

[Jenara]

You should probably have a chat with Namenlos, I mean he's basically letting me play a fairy godmother who sold her soul to the devil..... Why not some of your ideas?

My suggestion would be a free form savage worlds game, it's pretty loose with the rules but still has some structure, Myself and others used such an idea to play a game for over a year using Google documents it worked out really well.

Or.. We used the same concept to run a game using the Stars without numbers rules that would NEVER be allowed on the boards due to the content.

I agree with you on the rules, they are a framework, I say if you want to try something you should be allowed a shot, regardless of what the rules say.. No matter how small.

If I wasn't spending every night going to the hospital I could probably manage something that might fit the bill, but I truly don't have the time right now.

[TristenC]

Time is the issue for me as well. I have been DMing for well over 15 years and I've run plenty of non-standard and monster campaigns, created new kits, races, classes and all of that. Unfortunately I am very time-poor right now between home life, work, and extended family responsiblities. For the moment I'm relegated to running preconstructed (wheter by me or another) modules that I have a strong familiarity with in order to get my d&d 'fix'.

I like/am intrigued by most of your views on how magic can be handled. if you or another were to start a game on here, I would be interested as a player, but I fear I wouldn't be able to concoct the game myself given my prior commitments. Actually many of the 'problems' you mention regarding playing monsters, non-good alignments, etc have been addressed in various official 2e supplements without even getting into the 'player's option series. Basically kits were designed to make class options more versatile. To name a couple, the 'Militant Wizard' can use swords, bows, axes, etc. The 'Savage wizard' can make vodoo dolls and protective talismand even at lvl 1.

As jenara said, namenlos has a game going now (I play a fledgeling doppleganger bard taking both monster and class levels). JadedDM has several monster PCs in his sandbox Dragonlance campaign including a Minotaur, Phaethon fighter(fire-elf with wings of flame; so literally a flying swordsman...), and a goblin cleric of the fire god Sirrion (that's my char ).

[temnix]

What was so forbidding about the Stars Without Number campaign?

P.S. Savage Worlds seems like a great system. Fast and sensible. Probably the most sensible rolling system. It doesn't look like it accommodates extensive inventories of skills or powers very well, though. I mean, if I've assembled twenty spells, each with its own purpose and effect, or learned twenty inflections in the Tongue of Ee, that isn't very relevant to rolling anything, is it?

I'm shaking my head here. There's something about RPGs I just can't get a grip on. Some flaw. Some basic dilemma: write up the powers and have characters limited to those powers or have a generic system that lets them try anything - and then every ability becomes like every other.

I wonder if I can try this approach: all characters start out able to do all normal actions for their milieu, time period, origin. So in a Wild Wild West game anyone can ride, in a naval world anyone knows rigging and cannons. Just assume average proficiency with ordinary stuff, no checks. If a character doesn't know something himself, we can presume there are people around to give pointers. So that's how everyone starts out. After that when there is a challenge the player needs to role-play a response. Bring in his own knowledge to the character or improvise. The GM decides how well that's actually done (he knows the world, knows what's appropriate). So, for example, to convince someone the player needs to come up with a real argument. If the player doesn't provide know-how details - just says "I draw the bowstring, put on the arrow and shoot" - the GM decides what the chance is, on, say, 1d10. Unless it's trained-only, like with magic. So that's how everyone goes along, with players putting in the effort. Or they can obtain help for their characters in-game. Find a trainer and pay him, dig up an ancient scroll.

Either way, after they've laboured at something enough times one way or another, the GM can decide that effort coalesced into an ability for the character sheet. Diplomacy, Archery, what have you. Means they can handle easy tasks without a check. And the GM can allow some abilities from the start, of course. If someone wants to be a natural sorcerer or some such. Give everyone maybe two abilities each. But you still have to role-play everything not covered by the sheet.

Same with hit points. Are people so different in how much damage they can take? Average is average. Assume everyone can take two hits from a large weapon or four from a small one. If they want better health, let them take Tough in the beginning or have their characters swim and run whenever possible to develop. The GM can invent abilities as he goes along.

What do you think, people? Seen this anywhere? I'm trying to tie achievement to player effort. This is like a skills-based system but with impromptu skills.

P.P.S. To Tristen. Playing unusual characters is a little different from what I'm feeling for here. I've played some weird ones, heck, I played a ghoul knight who turned more ghoul by the end of every month and then back human again on a cycle. I played a paladin whose eyes have been replaced with magic gems so extra-planars could enjoy first-person cam views. But with all these histories they invent players expect to base their future actions on the backgrounds. So I'm a ghoul knight and I'll focus on playing my ghoul knight. "Of myself I sing," you know? Too much jerking-off in that. Plus, I don't like it when the future revolves around histories. I'd rather have players become somebody than start out that way.

[TristenC]

It was merely an address to your specific examples of a flying swordsman amd a ghoul character.

[temnix]

Speaking of special abilities, here is an idea I just had. We know that to balance them out you have to hung the PC over with disadvantages or limit the ability's use somehow. Well, what about an XP cost? Instead of a more difficult progression table, which kills enthusiasm, we could have per-use XP cost of GM's choosing. That way a character could fly any number of times per day, but at 100 or 200 XP a time. If he doesn't use it, he doesn't have to suffer debilities. It would make players shrewd about the use of powers, and add to dramatic effect too - because they won't use them except in desperate situations. In less desperate ones they will have to rely on their wits. Also it sort of makes sense from the literary perspective. I mean, if Thoth-Amon can throw a lightning bolt, why doesn't he in every encounter? Zap zap. But if he could do it anytime, Conan would never have put him down. Plus, XP cost isn't detrimental. It's not like getting a step closer to eternal damnation or anything.

Alternative: aging. Why only wish? Maybe all powers. "Golden Voyage of Sindbad" anyone?

[Jenara]

What was so forbidding about the Stars Without Number campaign?

Let's just say that the content was not something that I would like to see here. And I'm saying that as the administrator here, there are occasions when my own PCs (particularly in the Waterdeep campaign) push the boundaries of what is acceptable, but there is a line.

As for your other points, which If you forgive me for saying are pushing this post into more of a discussion that belongs in the Tavern. Many people like rules, they like to feel they have achieved something and the rules give them that.

Personally and I hope this shows I'm more of a storyteller, the story and the images matter more to me than progression and loot.

My point is you can please everyone, there has to be a line that keeps the majority happy.

[TristenC]

Haste does artificial aging as well. 1 yr is a pretty hefty price for just doubling your speed and actions for 8+ rounds. I agree with it in principal, but usage leaves something to be desired. Maybe a toll on the body, hps, temp constitution/str damage, or even temporary int/wis damage (mind rattled after all that crazy energy).

[temnix]

Jenara will soon transport this thread to the Tavern (the one in Harmony, I'm sure) if we continue to discuss gameplay. I'll just agree with you on Haste. But I think I've worked out what I'm looking for with this thread, with everyone's help. It's that model where you start out more or less blank and then take on whatever qualities you've role-played well or found resources to develop within the game world, where you constantly exchange ideas with the GM to base adventures on or introduce features to the world, think in novella terms rather than novel terms, don't strive for total consistency and keep dicing to a minimum.