In-Game SOPs

I was watching...something, not the salient point here...and one of the characters basically SOPs the door and it struck me as odd because it wasn't a bunch of military or police "stacking up". I'm not used to seeing this too often out in the wild...

..."too often" because I am a Veteran and in that capacity I am quite used to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs or "sop/sops"), but honestly higher-level established SOPs are usually (at least in my experience) called TTPs, or Tactics Techniques, & Procedures. I have seen unit-level SOPs and I like to think that I had some individualized SOPs....I know I do on my job now, but it took me a few minutes to think about it. I have a little black book I use to keep notes in and that's where I keep a record of my SOPs....

...well, I thought I kept a record of those SOPs. I just took a look at the book and it's filled with notes on how to do certain things for each of my main work tasks, but no actual SOPs, more like remarks on how the big boss likes specific things done...again, more like problem solving than SOPs.

My current home group kind of has some SOPs, but as far as I know they aren't written down and they were established (probably decades) before I joined the group. It's more a short-hand between the party Thief and the GM.

"You going to SOP the door?"

"Yes, but I'll let the junior thief do it and I'll follow up to check their work."

Now to me it makes a lot of sense for Thieves to naturally have a series of SOPs and maybe a party when it comes to certain things:

• Marching Order
• Room searching
• Post-battle recovery
• Night Watches

Some SOPs are clearly the product of player experience vs. player-character experience, but not necessarily in the realm of using Out Of Character knowledge. Often in pick-up or convention games I'm more than happy to take a backseat, as it were, and be the rear-guard, assuming I have an appropriate PC. When I get to do this, I make sure to tell the GM my main SOP is to regularly be looking up ahead of the group and behind the group, even if that's to my PC's detriment. If everybody ahead of me falls silently into a trap there's a good chance I'll fall in as well if I happen to be shuffling backwards during that moment. 

In my old HackMaster group I recall two specific SOPs, both of which really seemed like OOC, I'll dare say "cheating", but both were established kind of painfully (well, as far as PCs go). I'll be a bit generic in the explanation 'cause there's no need to be bogged down by rules for a game you're not playing....

1. The first happened after a long zombie campaign. In HackMaster a zombie is no big deal, but put a few together, and you're on the menu. Zombie have an interesting mechanic in that when you get a couple "on you" pretty much every other zombie in reach gets a free bite. Thing is that in HackMaster armor technically makes it easier to be hit, but reduces the amount of damage taken......and these free bites bypass this damage reduction. Armor can also make you fight/swing slower so.......when zombies come around, it's time to remove the armor. One group figure this out in-character after several large zombie battles where they barely survived and this TTP became party lore shared long after the original group's members were no longer around. Also, we kind of got in the habit of decapitating foes as a matter of course........to prevent zombie retaliation (so kind of a zombie twofer).
2. Speaking of armor, when fighting HUGE foes, like really big humanoids/anything (Bugbears, Ogres, up to & including Giants), ditch the shield. Shields are literally designed to take a hit, and if the foes hits really hard to begin with, sometimes it's better to reduce the number of times you're hit instead of getting your shit kicked in because you put up this piece of wood and metal as an intentional target, backed by your body. We learned this one after having a couple of shields just shattered off of our PC's arms...and of course the PCs took some decent damage as well. 

Now these were two specific SOP examples, but they were actually developed during the course of the game as opposed to players reading the rules and doing the math. Now I'm not saying that players doing player type stuff is bad per se, but I like the idea of SOPs developing as lore that gets passed down from one set of PCs to another over the course of (hopefully) years of in-game adventuring.

Now we just need to establish a SOP of an in-character journal to pass these nuggets down the line....

Is Rules as Written Really Still a Thing?

 

I was scrolling through Facebook, which as an aside I'm kind of sad to see Facebook supplant Forum Boards as seemingly the place to find interaction between players online, and I came across a request from one GM on how to do something Rules As Written (RAW).

That was a playful "lovetap" to the nuts because I have a love/hate relationship with RAW.

Unless you've not read much of my previous posts, which I wouldn't blame you, you'll know I used to play quite a bit of HackMaster and organized a lot of tournaments for KenzerCo. Thing is tournaments really require everyone to play RAW so there is a baseline for fair play. Believe me, this is a HUGE pain in the ass.

Now one thing you probably don't know about me is that I am extremely predicable when playing a new game system: I always try to play the best archer I can make. Now I do like archers, but not enough to warrant this choice. No, I always run archers first because this gives me a baseline to compare the different systems.

I mention this because archers, more specifically Fighters specializing with a bow, kind of suck at the 1st/2nd Edition + home rules blend that was HackMaster 4th Edition. Big cost, terrible payoff and at high level fricken Crossbow specialists were as fast (if not faster) than bow specialists! What was worse was the firing in combat rules....well not the rules so much, but the RAW work-around.

I won't go too far into the weeds here, but what would happen is if you wanted to fire into combat, as a player you would specifically indicate you were trying to make an extremely difficult called shot on a friendly combatant! I think the most common was telling the GM, "My guy is aiming to shoot off the left piggy toe of my buddy engaged over there in melee."

You see, RAW had the GM secretly determining the "actual" target the PC ended up aiming at, based on size, and then if the "actual" target aligned with the the declared target, all those called shot penalties were applied. If they didn't align basically all the penalties went away.

Now I was able to write a new set of rules handling a couple of archer issues that was accepted by HackJournal, so they basically replaced this mess and became new RAW, but every time I hear Rules as Written I inwardly cringe, thinking of how many perfectly good games have been tainted by bad rules.

OK, "bad rules" might be a bit of an oversimplification and a judgement call, but I know I've seen plenty of what I think are bad rules. Thing is we all have what we think are great ideas. Things we think we can do better, and sometimes we're right and sometimes we're wrong. I got to write up some drowning rules for the new/current edition of HackMaster when writing an adventure and they were thrown out in favor of some much clunkier rules that probably fit better with the existing rules. I remember thinking my rules were better at the time, but I'm biased, and I cannot even remember what they were, so they couldn't have been all that.

Now I could be waaaaay off-base here, but I think that this whole idea of people (ok, game designers) thinking they know best and some inherent desire to play RAW is one of the reasons we have some many, gobs even, of OSR game systems right now. It seems like everyone has their own take on B/X and access to a printing press. Now don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great stuff out there now, but there's a lot I look at once and think, "I don't see the point".

I've already mentioned that I have a love/hate relationship with RAW and what I'm seeing really makes me think that I'm not alone in this regard. Thinking about the current market for these OSR games, and what I perceive as a potentially-fractured-but-not-really player base what I've concluded is that the average GM/players kind of wants a RAW game, but ends up taking the closest system to their liking and lays a few tweaks to the rules for use in their game. Sometimes a lot of tweaks......

I'm totally cool with this BTW and it really describes how I play. I really (think I) want a crunchy RAW game, but I've yet to find a system that has everything I want, but I (pretty much just now) have come to the conclusion I'm never going to find it unless I publish my own variant....which I'm NEVER going to do (ability, motivation, funds, ROI....take your pick)...and that's OK.

Taking my current home-game I'm in as a player for example. There are a few things I'd like to see rules-wise in the game, but it totally occurs to me that it really doesn't fucking matter. For example: I'm running a Magic User and think it'd be great to use my old HackMaster rules to figure out the details on my spellbook. Number of pages, size, etc. I don't need my GM to add that to the RAW to make me happy as I can easily just do that myself and say I'm lugging around this massive tome and I have my backup spellbook with my henchman. Also, by not having this huge ruleset available to essentially restrict us in how we do things he can introduce new rules....that could be good or can suck balls. Either way there is an extra level/layer of fun because of this unknown quantity.

I'm kind of looking forward to GMing again in the future. Oh I'll be running a RAW game, but it definitely won't be single writer/publisher ruleset. No, it'll probably be Old School Essentials as a base with a generous helping of New Big Dragon Games Unlimited stuff, a lot of d30 tables, and whatever cool shit my players bring me (that we agree on!). Yes, you Magic User will have that big-assed clunky spellbook, but how that gets figured out will not be a RAW situation.

As a bit of an aside, and more like extended/recommended reading, if you have access to Gary Gygax's Master of the Game, Chapter 6 would be a good read. Just saying.

What do you Think About "Crunch" in a Game?

I don't think this is going to be a character or player story, but it's not like I write up an outline for these things and shoot them by an editor or anything. The closest I do is go back and fix grammatical and spelling errors I notice after-the-fact.

This last week I was "home" on vacation and trying to explain RPGs to someone who had no clue what an RPG was, but loved reading fantasy novels, to include a bunch of TSR D&D novels. Of course I answered with a high-level pass and then dialed-in on specifics based on follow-up questions.

The conversation moved on to different RPGs and basically why, which is a whole lot to think about. In so many ways I'd say there are three big reasons why we have different game systems: money, ideas, and preferences.

Money is easy. People like money. It lets us buy stuff and do stuff. If you own the game and sell it to others you make money. If you don't own something but can make/sell something similar....

As far as ideas go, yeah...they're like assholes...everybody has one and everyone else's stinks. I'm sure plenty of games exist because somebody either didn't like the way one system did something and that somebody had what they thought was a better idea to solve the "problem", and the fix could make money. Money is good....

The third reason, kind of related to "ideas" is just the fact that folks like to play a certain type of game and if enough people like their game a certain way somebody is going to put forth their ideas for a game system that runs a game that certain way and that somebody can now possibly make money selling that game.

I personally like a bit of a crunchy game, which is why I loved HackMaster 4th Edition. I personally think that game only came about because the KenzerCo D-Team had some ideas they wanted to put into print, basically publishing their home-game rules. They liked a crunchy game like I did.

The thing is, and really where my rambling so far is leading up to is, "How much crunch is too much?" Clearly one person's crunch is another's fluff.

One thing I like about a crunchy game is that you can usually throttle-back things, removing some crunchy bits, and the game will still work. For example....you don't like weapon to-hit adjustments based on armor class/types (something I really don't care for)....just remove it. The adjustments work both ways and removing them doesn't do a whole lot for combat.

As a player I enjoy encumbrance and having to figure out what to keep and what to take. Trying to get those 1,000 silver pieces out of the dungeon when you're already at capacity is.....well, it's a challenge. Spending your hard-earned coin on upgrading your spell books so you aren't risking your main book in the dungeon....good times. Deciding which magic items I can take along on an adventure because there is an experience level-based magic item cap.....(that was a thing) loved it.

Now this was as a player.........I didn't care for it nearly as much as a GM. I trusted my players in my home game, but running a table at a convention.....especially a higher-level game? Fuuuuuuuuuuck that could suck. I saw plenty of what I'm 110% certain was straight-up cheating. I remember one player who always had 95%+ of all possible hit points at higher level. "Oh, your 5th level Mage has 48 1st level spells memorized? I call bullshit." Thankfully this kind of crap was really only seen, at least by me, at the highest level.....and in my experience the players that cheat the most in this regard are generally not the best players overall.

Still, a game's a game and even when I'm not playing in a crunchy game it doesn't mean I can't add a little on my own end. I can still try to spend money on extra spell books and keep track of my encumbrance even if the GM doesn't care too much.........

Again, I'll ask the question, "How much crunch is too much?"....but I'll add, "What do you do to add, or (someone else might want to know...) remove crunch from your game?"

Free Has More Value When It Is Desired and Asked For...

In the summer of 2012, Swords & Wizardry Complete was given away for free to over 17,000 supporters of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter. Think of that number for a second. Pretty huge, right? Sure, but it's a passive number. None of those 17k asked for the ruleset, so how many actually downloaded it, let alone read it or used it?

We have no idea really.

I do have some numbers from the Free Release of Swords & Wizardry Complete PDF yesterday. 116 PDF copies emailed and a bakers dozen waiting to be sent when i get home later this afternoon. Oh, and an unknown number that have downloaded from my DropBox link.

All in a bit more than a day. Just here at the Tavern. Others are spreading the love too.

These copies will be read and probably used at some point. These required interest and minimal effort to obtain, but effort none the less. Folks wanted their copies of S&W Complete and I can't blame them - it's my OSR ruleset of choice.

Now is the time for the Frogs to get the books into the hobby shops and on Amazon. The interest is there.

"A Copper for a Wish Sire!" or "What My Party Finally Wished For"

Some of you may remember my post from last week, where I mentioned that my party found a genie in a bottle and were granted a single wish in  return for releasing him. The group asked to end the session at that point, because they wanted to phrase their wish properly because they were afraid I (as the DM) might "fuck with them.

Perish the thought ;)

In any case, there was a strong push to send the Dung Monster after the Rat King - which would have been strong for the storyline, but weak for the player characters' actual benefit.

I really started to feel like I should read all of those online "user agreements" that go on for 78 pages of lawyer speak instead of just clicking "I Accept"...

They made their decision. They wanted every member of the party to see twice as well as a Dark Elf in the dark while keeping their "normal" vision. Or was it, they wanted to have the vision of a Dark Elf at the same distance as their normal vision while maintaining their normal vision. Something like that.

They got their dark vison. The genie took his bottle and flew away. I do have an idea for a nice twist down the line that would really push the campaign and the players to some new heights, but it may never come up - and may never need to depending on the course of the players' actions.

And they didn't get screwed. Dozens of blog readers can no sigh in relief ;)

Does Ruleset Impact Expected Group Size?

As I think about group size for RPG sessions (and working on the assumption of one PC per player) the following question comes up for me:

Does the ruleset impact on the group size?

I ask this, because most D&D styled gaming is based on covering the four main classes grouping: fighter, cleric, magic user and thief. Therefore, you need four players (absent multi-classing) to cover the spread.

Crypts & Things is one of the few OSR games that I can think of that does away with the spread of "core four". Fighting classes, an universal caster (mixing magic user and cleric) and a thief. But the thief isn't "needed". He's better at thieving than the other clases, but all can attempt the skills and all get better with them. In Crypts & Things, you can cover the spread with two PCs.

RQ, Legend, Basic Roleplaying, Openquest - you don't have classes, you have skills that define the character. With rules like this (and Savage Worlds and the like) you can create characters that cover more of the spread, if you will. They might not be specialized, but they should be competent.

I'm by no means saying you can't play D&D or a class based system with less than four players / PCs (or whatever the number may be). I ran a game AD&D 2e game for a year with just three players, and a Space Master game for nearly just as long with just two. What I am saying is that certain rulesets default to different group sizes by their very nature. They have a minimum number that fits their "sweet zone".

How hard do you find it if you fall below that number (no cleric or no thief in the party, etc)?

Working on Game Writing Stuff Tonight - Thankfully My Assistant is Sleeping

I'm trying to use my time away from home to do some writing I wasn't able to put too much time into this week, what with the Hell Week I had at work that carried past working hours.

Ashley, my usual assistant, decided to join us on our vacation this time. well, she really didn't have much of a choice, as she has a vet appointment at 11am in the morning. I figure I'll have to start looking for her around 10am in her usual hiding spots. In the meantime, she's sleeping on her designated towel / blanket.

I've gotten a peek at the artwork of the artist that will be illustrating much of the project I'm working on - I am f'n psyched!