In The Weeds - Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Champions has 14 core characteristics, or stats. OpenD6 tends to float between six and seven (most characters have six, but characters with extranormal abilities, like psionics or magic, have an extra one). The Icon Engine (working title) more or less splits the difference with 12.

The first block of characteristics, the physical block, has stayed the same, with Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Body. The second block, the Intellectual/Social, has been cut down by one total. I kept Intelligence and Presence, got rid of Ego and Comeliness, and added Chi (as I mentioned last time).

I can see why Ego was included as its own stat, but I've never really liked the way Ego works in Champions. I figure the game will run just as well if mental abilities roll off of INT or CHI as a core stat, or even CON in some instances (seeing as how part of CON is your toughness, your ability to gut it out through physical adversity which could be argued to be as much as function of willpower as physical conditioning).

COM looks as if it was simply added as a counterpart to Presence. One of the core Champions concepts seems to have been to add granularity to just about every stat. STR and CON go together as a pair, as do DEX/SPD, INT/EGO, STUN/BODY, PD/ED. In D&D, the CHA stat served for both force of personality and physical attractiveness; in Champions, of course they split those apart into Presence and Comeliness.

The problem is, COM doesn't serve any kind of game value. It's a dump stat, and a vanity stat, which is to say, you can put points into it just to be able to say how good-looking you are, but it has no effect on the game whatsoever. It's a waste of points.

So I dumped COM and instead added Traits (which I'll explain further in another post) and Disadvantages for being extraordinarily good-looking or ugly, tall or short, skinny or obese, with actual in-game consequences. You don't have to take any of those, of course; in the absence of specific Traits or Disadvantages, the character is assumed to look as good or not as the player wishes, just not good-looking enough to accrue tangible benefits or ugly enough to encounter actual hindrances.

The Speed Chart is morphing into a Speed Clock with only 6 segments per turn. I'm hoping this will simplify the process a little to speed play, while still keeping the unique flavor of Hero Speed.

Physical Defense and Energy Defense have been combined into one simple Defense stat. If a character wants to have a particular vulnerability to one or the other, he can take that as a Disadvantage. Recovery, Endurance and Stun are just the same as before.

So the final count right now:

STR
DEX
CON
INT
PRE
CHI
SPD
DEF
REC
END
STUN
BODY

In the Weeds - At the Earth's Core

So as I said, after considering both the old-school Champions system and the OpenD6 system, I decided to go with Champions, then in the interests of making things easier for newer players to build characters, I decided to make a new system that drastically simplifies Champions-style character creation while retaining the core mechanics.

What core mechanics? Champions basically has two: you spend 5 points to purchase 1d6 of effect, and you resolve actions with a single roll on three dice that usually defaults to around 11 or less. Virtually all the game's mechanics revolve around variations on these two things.

At the same time, I'm trying to consolidate and simplify as much as I can. So as much as I have grown to like the 14 stats that make up the core of a Champions character, I cut it down to ten. Nice and round. I came up with a couple of ideas for streamlining the skills, talents and perks a little bit, as well.

But those aren't the chief source of complexity in the game design. The big problem is powers.

Champions came up with a brilliant solution to the problem of coming up with superpowers in a game, which was to buy powers as game effects. I've already talked about Villains and Vigilantes' system for rolling up random superpowers. In V&V, you could get Flame Powers, for instance, and then the listing for that power would tell you what you could do.

But look at two characters like The Human Torch and Pyro. The Human Torch literally bursts into flame, flies, shoots flame blasts and has a special Nova Blast. On the other hand, Pyro can't fly or burst into flame and needs a source of open flame that he can manipulate. V&V handled this by creating two different versions of Flame Power. But what happens if you decide to create a character more like Stephen King's Firestarter?

Champions said, "Screw what it looks like at the end. If you want the character to fly, shoot blasts, and explode, then buy Flight, Energy Blast, and say, Ranged Killing Attack Explosion with no range. Then just call it fire."

Which is a concept that takes a while to get your head around (as I'll explain further on Big Game Wednesday), but once you do, it's incredibly flexible. And a big pain in the ass, especially with some of the more complex combinations of advantages and limitations to make the power do exactly what you want it to do.

So as I was trying to figure out a way to simplify the power designs, along with making them work more the way I envision them to work in my game world, I came up with a radical solution.

Just have characters pay a flat cost for powers, instead of making them follow the 1d6 per 5 points concept. Then rather than being multipliers, advantages and limitations can simply add and subtract cost. Much easier.

But then how to account for differences in ability? What if I want one character to be really powerful in something, while another is barely adequate?

My solution? Add another stat which is basically a measure of how powerful the character is. Make powers work in conjunction with that stat, which I'm calling Chi.

But then what about a character who has one very powerful ability, while others are weak? Answer: make powers purchasable in ranks, which make a character able to use their Chi more effectively for higher-ranked powers.

I thought this would be a flawed, but reasonably simple approach to radically simplifying the character creation process. And as a bonus, since my conception of the game was to have the characters start out as normal humans with the possibility of developing some unusual abilities later, they don't even have to worry about using that system until later in the game, making initial character creation even simpler and easier.

Then, a few days after coming up with my brainstorm (but before actually putting any numbers down on paper), I was looking over the D6 Adventure rules again, and realized that their system for buying extra-sensory powers and other special abilities is basically the same system--flat rates for ranks of ability, keyed off a special stat. So I'm even less brilliant than I thought. I'm using Champions stats and dice mechanics with OpenD6 power purchase options (as well as a couple of other mechanics I adapted).

Basically it seems that, given the choice between Champions and OpenD6, I chose both.

In the Weeds - Modularity and Ripping Off Ideas

So instead of starting a new blog about game design, I'm just going to post the boring-to-probably-everyone-but-me discussions about game design under this topic, so you can skip it if you wish. It's not a new weekly feature, just a big warning sign for those not interested in the topic. This one might not be as bad a later ones, just because I'm not talking numbers yet, just some general design goals.

Progress continues along two tracks: the game rules (which I'm tentatively calling the Icon Engine until I can think of a better name) and the campaign (which is tentatively titled The Secret Masters). And though I had come to a blockage on both a couple of days ago, today I had breakthroughs on realizing which pieces I need to work on next.

And that's something new for me. I've never been an organized person, so big projects often stump me with their bigness. I start at the beginning and head for the end, but after I've gotten through the easy beginning bit, I don't know what chunk to do next. My ambition is so big and overwhelming, and every piece seems to connect to every other piece, that I panic, and my brain shuts down. I have no idea what to do first, so ultimately I just drop the whole thing.

But now I know exactly which bit of the rules system I want to design next, and roughly how I want it to look, and how it connects to the other pieces. I've already started the rules manual, which looks more like a Quick Start document than a full-blown game system, which is fine, because I'm thinking of splitting it out into modular documents. A small Quick Start guide for players with the basics of character generation and the combat system, an Advanced Guide with more detailed lists of skills and such, plus more detailed combat rules with examples and explanations, plus a Phase Two Player Guide for character development.

What's the what with that last bit? you're asking. Here's the deal. The Champions rules are detailed and logical, but they are a hugely time-consuming and complicated pain-in-the-ass when you're actually trying to design and balance a character. So I'm stripping that system down and simplifying it in a big way. But the concept of the campaign world is such that I won't even need that part of the rules for initial player character design.

So essentially, when the players first build their characters, they're using only a portion of the design rules, and the simpler portion at that. Later on, if they wish to add more complex abilities, they can, and it's a modular process that doesn't require them to rebuild their characters from the ground up.

Likewise, I've figured out which bit of the campaign world I want to work on next, and how it will relate to everything else, and in figuring that out, I felt a big click in my head that took the campaign from "cool overarching idea that I have no idea how to turn into weekly adventures" to "awesome (I hope) modular campaign design that combines player freedom with a neat overall story." And I'm designing it in a modular fashion as well, ripping off the excellent concepts that Sargon used in our Atlantis campaign (and I'm starting to think that campaign needs some sort of title--Cults of Atlantis, or Mad Gods and Englishmen, or Steam Alchemists or something).

Right at the start of the game, Sargon gave everyone background handouts covering general history and background knowledge. And later, when we'd spent more time in the city in which the game took place, he handed out city guides with maps, once he'd decided we'd been there long enough to have learned our way around, along with more detailed campaign background information. It was a nice way to simulate a learning curve, with not too much information to overwhelm us at first, but enough information later to stimulate the deeper political game that is developing.

So for campaign materials, I'm totally ripping off that concept. The world backgrounder will consist of a handout that players can study or not, along with a brief verbal recap of the information in the backgrounder before the first game session. Once the players have settled into the game environment and learned their way around, a second handout will be forthcoming detailing the town they are living in.

The campaign itself will be designed around three tracks at first: micro, midi and maxi (sounds like feminine hygiene products, doesn't it?). The micro track is an immediate personal situation the players need to resolve over the first several game sessions. The midi track is a separate storyline that concerns doings around the town the players are staying in. The maxi track is a long-term campaign track concerning big players in the game world; it obviously can't be as detailed as the others, because it can go in so many directions, depending on what the players decide to do, but the major players, their overall goals, and some plot seed ideas for each one will be included, something like what 5 ed. Champions did with their Conquerors, Killers and Crooks supplement.

The multiple track idea may sound ambitious, but splitting up the concept in this way makes it a lot easier to get a practical handle on than my original idea, which was the maxi track only, without any good micro ideas to help get the players going for the first few games.