Rogue Space Role Playing Game, by Christopher Brandon

I like the simplicity that is Christopher Brandon's mini-RPG Rogue Space. The Basic Rules are available free for download, and you can print them out in a clever little pocket-sized mini-booklet. There is a "complete" rulebook available for purchase on lulu (a bargain at $7.10), but I haven't received it yet.

Rogue Space is a rules-light RPG system that allows for a great variety of play styles, and great flexibility for running one-offs, or pick-up games. You can boil the rules down into just a couple minutes of explanation, and then every test is just 2d6+relevant attribute against a target difficulty, and then you succeed or fail. It utilizes a more abstract, modern approach to abilities; rather than having an ability score which then has a derived score to apply to the roll, all you have is your "modifier," which is probably just 0 or 1. The result is very similar to the method used in FUDGE or FATE at its core: a roll of 7 (after modifiers) is a success for an average difficulty test, and mitigating circumstances can raise or lower the difficulty by one or more degrees. Opposed tests are similar: both sides roll, the higher number wins. There are options for adding in more boiled-in modifiers for combat, but at its core that's all there is to it. Weapons deal a fixed amount of damage when an attack hits, from light (2 dmg) to extra-heavy (8 dmg). Armor reduces weapon damage by a fixed amount along similar lines.

Personally I think that this system lends itself most readily to a Star Trek style game style; landing on alien worlds, interacting with intelligent species there, occasionally having to get in a phaser fight or rapid flight back to the shuttle. Star Trek, though, in particular, is pretty loose with consistency in what phaser hits are deadly, and which are ultimately grazing blows. A great example of this is the Next Generation episode "Starship Mine" where Geordi LaForge and a Red Shirt both get hit by the same weapon in a similar location. LaForge is fine (though in pain and temporarily disabled), but the other guy is dead. This can pretty easily be explained under Rogue Space mechanics: neither character was armored, and let's say the phaser was a "medium" weapon and dealt 4 damage. If LaForge (a technician) had 4 hp, then the damage would have knocked him out, but he would not be dead (represented by negative hit points). But if the other guy only had 2 or 3 hp (not unreasonable for an NPC), that would have reduced him to below zero hp and he would have perished. Additionally, Rogue Space allows for nonlethal damage. One could also houserule in that, since the other dude was severely drunk, the alcohol would have dealt a point of "nonlethal" damage that made him more susceptible to phaser fire, and it dealt more damage than it more than usual. Most rules modifications are like this: you add one here, subtract one there.

I'm stacking lethal damage on top of nonlethal here, rather than keeping them in separate tracks. My reasoning is essentially that it makes more sense, to me, that if someone was beaten to a bloody pulp with fists and clubs they wouldn't be in great shape. It might not be deadly, but they're not going to be able to do the same things as an uninjured person. And certainly, if that pulped person were to take another hit from something more nasty, they'd probably have a much more high likelihood of going down than someone fresh. Given that initiative in combat is determined by the dice roll plus your current hp, severely injured characters are mechanically "slowed" as well, which supports this assumption about damage stacking.

One can easily get lost in details at this point; if a character is wearing light armor, for instance, and is shot by a gun and the damage is all soaked by the armor, do they still take a point of nonlethal damage from the kinetic force applied to their bodies through the armor? Are there different types of armor to protect against kinetic damage, piercing damage, burning damage, etc.? Using Star Trek as an example again (can you tell I've been watching it recently?), Star Fleet does have "riot gear" when they send in the heavies, but it seems a direct phaser blast still takes someone out, armored or not. Klingon disruptors add another level of complexity, since they seem to ignore armor completely, or at least are powerful enough to pierce through anything less protected than a tank. A disruptor is a small, handheld weapon, which means it probably only qualifies as a "light" or "medium" weapon at the most, but the damage is certainly much more severe than the average phaser setting. Shadowrun and other games have "armor piercing" values for weapons; perhaps certain kinds of energy weapons would ignore a certain number of armor points when figuring damage.

Rogue Space Basic only has three classes: Warrior, Rogue, and Technician. I don't like these names. For a science fiction game, the fantasy roles of Warrior and Rogue don't really "fit" for me; especially because Technician, given the other ones, just seems like a stand in for "Mage." I propose changing the names to Soldier and Scoundrel, for a more archetypal Star Trek or Star Wars sort of feel. Technician is fine, since it hearkens to someone who works in a more scientific or technical station on the ship. Plus, there are psionic rules available optionally as well, so you could easily build a Jedi (for a Star Wars style game) or an empath (for a Star Trek style game). I believe that some people have even developed a 40K addon for this system, which I think just goes to show exactly how flexible it is. For this reason I can't imagine even doing something like Mass Effect wouldn't be unreasonable.

One rule I would change, however, is luck. As it stands, the luck rule (which is optional) dictates that a person can re-roll one dice roll per session. This seems a bit underwhelming. I propose having either a luck "points" system, or else tracking luck and experience with the same points. In order to level, as the rules are written, your character must survive 3 adventures and then can add 1 point to any of the attributes, or to the hit point total. So in other words, one adventure is worth 1 xp, and you need 3 xp to level. Under a unified mechanic, players could "burn" one of their xp (or more) to add a point to their result. It might mean that they don't level with everyone else, but if the other option is dying, it's a small price to pay; it's representative of that character escaping from the deadly situation, but not unscathed. It would also allow the characters to burn a whole level in order to survive from a situation (equal to 3 xp) and, optionally, take a defect to represent their narrow-miss, or a "permanent injury." This makes it a bit grittier than Star Trek usually is, so I don't think many people would miss it if it wasn't there. Regardless I would want luck to play a larger role in a Star Trek (or Star Wars) style game, just because of the nature of the types of heroes in those shows.

Using the experience-burning method of figuring luck could also be applied to more than just dice rolls. Perhaps someone takes lethal damage that would kill their character. They could burn some experience to reduce the damage until they are merely unconscious. This would support a Star Trek style "main cast" character approach, where the characters can survive very unlikely situations relatively unharmed, unless they are Tasha Yar. Although... if a character is going to die, there's not much reason to not burn levels to keep them alive, since if they die those levels are lost anyway. Some sort of constraint might have to be imposed to limit runaway abuse of this system. The up side to character death is that a character can be rolled up in literally seconds, and then could easily be introduced as a new ensign, smuggler, or technical staffer to pick up the slack.

Anyway, this was only intended to be a more or less brief overview of one of the possibilities for adding on to the very smart and simple efficient rules that is Rogue Space, but I got a bit carried away. I'd love to actually run a game of this, either as a one-off or longer, to see how it works, especially how some of these proposals for add-on rules I've made in this work. I have already ordered the extended rules, and I'll have another review of the complete set once I get that in my hands.

One additional note: Apparently this PocketMod version that I am reviewing here is an older version than what is currently available now. In my version, damage is all set values. In the most recent version, they are randomized (light, instead of just 2 set damage, is 2d6, drop lowest, for instance). There is not a date on it, but it says "Copyright 2011 C.R. Brandon." Hit points are the same; random in the present version, set in the previous version. I'm honestly not sure which version I prefer.

New magical item: The Gambler's Dice

This is a unique and powerful non-artifact magic item, system-agnostic but written with 4e in mind. I was inspired to finish it considering the recent "Got Loot?" blogging festival, though this is something that has been incubating in my mind since at least last April. It is my attempt to bring a sort of Fortune Cards-like aesthetic into the game, without being overly intrusive, but also having consequences. It utilizes FUDGE dice, which are special six-sided dice which have two blank faces, two faces bearing a "-" and two faces bearing a "+". It was very influenced by the Deck of Many Things, among other things, and I'd hope that its implementation and manifestation could be relatively flexible to manage in-game. Players can come across individual dice, as with cards from the DoMT, or else the entire set, whichever would seem more appropriate within the story. The item, which is a set of four ivory dice inset with golden suns and silver moons, will appear to be just an ordinary, if valuable, set of dice for a game called Canicerre (can-i-sair). It will be common in the area of the world where the dice are found, but relatively rare elsewhere. I use a combination of locales from 4th edition (Bael Turath features in the story), but also a newly invented locale (the Alvastratian Empire), which I figure for story's sake existed in the same larger geographical area as Bael Turath, but perhaps pre-dating both it and Arkhosia. There is no reason why any or all of it could not be relocated to somewhere more familiar to Pathfinder fans, such as Varisia or Katapesh. I'm less familiar with Golarion and I write chiefly for 4e (being the fantasy RPG with which I am most familiar), so it becomes my "implicit" setting. Similarly I use Tieflings and Eladrin in the story text, but the storyteller himself is suspicious of those attributions. They could readily be renamed to something more appropriate.

The dice themselves should be presented, at first, as simple treasure. They are made of a valuable material (ivory), appear to be very well made and of high quality, and two sides are inset with gold, and two sides are inset with silver. It would be assumed that a reasonable player would see the value in these, at least as loot to sell for gold or silver back in town. Likewise, the location they are found in should be relatively unremarkable; maybe they spill out of an old boot that is carelessly knocked over while one of the PCs is looking for something else. Maybe they are simply set atop a table within a cave that had been at some point previously been occupied but currently seems abandoned. However, the true value of the dice only becomes apparent once the PCs attempt to sell them. When presented to a shopkeeper, especially if asked what they are for, the following monologue might occur. Alternately, if one of the characters is particularly well versed in local history, they may know the following already:

"It's an old Alvastratian game, it's called Canicerre; it's simple. Let me show you. There are four dice, they each have these symbols on them, right? The sun represents a positive turn of fortune, the moon a negative; yeah the Alvastratians were sun worshippers, what do you want? You put all four dice in a cup, and you shake it around. You try to get one die to pop out; a lot of pros get up to some pretty fancy shaking to make it happen and land where they want it to. The rest of the dice stay in the cup, and you quick turn it over and smack it down on the table so they're under the cup, still covered. Everybody bets on whether the overall outcome will be positive or negative, and then the cup is lifted. Positive and negative sides cancel each other out, blank sides don't have an influence one way or the other. If the outcome is neutral, everyone gets their money back. If it's moons, all the people who betted suns lose their money. If it's suns, all the people who betted moons lose their money, get it? It's split up evenly from all the losers to all the winners, so if you're betting on an unpopular outcome, you stand to win more money than if you go with everyone else on it. If everyone bets one way and the result is the other, the person rolling the dice gets it all; it's the only way they can win since they can't ordinarily take bets, and it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, oh man, it can be a lot of money. There was a saying back in the old days in Alvastratia, 'rich as a roller.'

"But these dice, these are special. You probably don't know what you have here. See, there's a legend about these dice. They say that there was a guy, a gambler, who lived in the port of Arkash. Arkash was in Bael Turath, so tradition says that he was a Tiefling. Makes sense to me, since everybody knows that Canicerre is a Tiefling game anyway... At least they're the ones who are always playing it anywhere they go. Anyway, there was a gambler, nobody knows his name any more. I guess it's not important. And this guy, he gambled on everything. It was just sort of his nature. He said that if he had something, it was his to lose. If someone else had something, it was his to win. And he was always fair. If he lost, he lost graciously and moved on, never held any grudges, never carried any superstitions or excess baggage along with it. Winning and losing, that was the only thing that mattered. He wasn't even known, so the stories go, for being particularly daring with his bets, I guess he just liked to leave everything up to fate or something. I don't know.

"But one day, as the story goes, he met a traveller. Now, a lot of people say it was an eladrin, but I don't know if that's so much that it was really an eladrin or if they just want some sort of trickster figure and eladrin fit but anyway, doesn't matter. This traveller is in town for a few days, watches the Gambler gambling on everything, finally approaches him. He pulls out these ancient, ancient looking Canicerre dice, inset with gold and silver, obviously well-worn but still in great shape, and says "I'll play you for these; they have a value far beyond anything you will ever possibly know." The Gambler, he's impressed by the dice, they're good looking, but he doesn't buy the yarn about any 'immeasurable value.' But a game's a game, so they go in to it. They drop in to a gambling house, the traveler hands a dealer there the dice. See it used to be polite if you were in a new town to at least make the gesture like you're contributing to the local economy, you know, give the dealer a chance to win, yadda yadda. Anyway, the dealer drops them in the cup, and the eladrin (or whoever) gestures to the Gambler, and says 'your call.'

"The dealer swirls the cup, pops a die out, it's the sun facing. Nevertheless, the Gambler says 'favor only shines at night.' See, there are a lot of traditions with the game; some people just say positive or negative, some people say suns and moons, this guy gussied up his calls with a little poetry, guess he did it so often he had to keep it interesting. Whatever. The eladrin (whatever) says 'suns' to give the opposite bid. You know, it's polite if you're playing one-on-one to pick opposing bids, otherwise there's a lot of stalemates going on. Also it's usually smart to pick the facing symbol anyway because the odds are a little in favor of what's already showing. The dealer nods, lifts the cup. There are two moons and a sun. Stalemate. Since they're not playing for money, the dealer sweeps up the dice and drops them in the cup. One pops out, it's a sun again. Yet again, the Gambler says 'dark as night, never bright.' The eladrin nods, and replies 'the sun will forever shine.' The dealer nods, lifts the cup. Again, it's two moons and a sun. Once again, the dealer scoops up the dice, pours them into the cup, and swirls it around. He pops a die, it shows a blank face. The eladrin says 'ah, intriguing! Why don't we raise the wager? If I win, I make one request, which you must abide by for the rest of your days. If you win, I remain here in your service, until I am discharged by your command.' The Gambler says, 'no sir, we began this game over these dice, and these dice are what I'm playing for. If you want to make other wagers, we'll resolve this one first and then we'll talk.' The eladrin nods and raises his hand to gesture that the Gambler make his bet. The Gambler says 'three moons hang alone in the sky, never to meet, never to die.'

"See this is another thing I forgot to tell you about the game. Sometimes people will make a wager based on what the exact configuration of the dice will be, and then they can win more of the pot than usual, but they weren't playing this game. I guess he was just making that bet for poetic purposes, it wouldn't have had any effect on the game one way or the other, just that he had wagered on 'moons' instead of 'suns.' The eladrin says 'three times three is a risky wager indeed!' Do you see where some people might think that this character might have been an eladrin, by the way? Who talks like that but them? Well, I suppose halflings do, but nobody wants to listen to a story about a mysterious halfling. Anyway, he says 'a three times three is a risky wager indeed!' I said that already, but there's a reason for that. You know, if you bet the same thing three times in a row, there's an old superstition that you'll always lose on your third time, but this Gambler, he wasn't swayed by any superstition, so he just says 'that's my wager, and I'm standing by it.' So the dealer lifts the cup, and sure enough, plain as anything, three moons are facing upwards. The eladrin stands up, pushes his chair back from the table, and says 'the dice are yours by your right, and they are parted from me duly. Good day, and good luck.' And he walks out. Nobody ever sees him again. Nobody sees him leave, like as soon as he walks through the door, he's gone. Course it was in Arkash and nobody sees anything in Arkash, at least not without the jingle of gold in their ears, so that's not really all that remarkable. A lot of people, they like to play up the mystery there in that part, like ooooh he was a ghost or something, but I've seen plenty of ghosts, and this doesn't sound like a ghost.

"Anyway that's just the beginning of the story. I could probably talk your ear off all day about this legend, s' popular with the kids and all (course some people add in lots of moral lessons like 'don't gamble' or more dubious ones like 'don't gamble with eladrin' or some such) but anyway, long story short is Gambler finds out that he got a lot more than what he bargained for. He'd only use these dice, you know, for special occasions. They were nice, you don't just sit out in the dusty street and roll ivory dice inlaid with gold and silver, but whatever, you know what I mean. But he came to realize that, not only did winning or losing with the dice seem to bring him bigger wins or losses, but the effect seemed to last for days. And now like I said, he was no superstitious man, but when weird things happen often enough, you start to think like something weird is going on. When he won with the dice, it was like he couldn't lose. He'd have streaks for days where everything he played, he played well. When he lost, he lost everything. Got to a point where the streaks scared 'im so much he all went up and almost quit gambling altogether. Didn't like the ramifications. Occasionally he'd try to offer the dice up as a prize, just like the eladrin did, to try to get rid of them. But he'd always win. No matter what he bet, the dice were always in his favor any time he tried to get rid of them. Started to think they were a curse, never used them. Gambling lost its flavor for him, these dice weighing down on him, never knowing whether they were actually cursed or magical or anything like that, or whether he was just getting old, and eventually he just up and disappeared, they found the dice on his table, four moons staring up at the ceiling, like he was there one minute and gone the next. Nobody ever saw him again, nobody claimed the dice as their rightful property, eventually the shopkeeper in town said he'd put 'em up for sale, use the money to pay for a gravestone (they just assumed if he wasn't coming back, he was probably dead), and that's where the story leaves off. Nobody knows what happened to the dice after they sold, but they say there's a plain gravestone standing in Arkash today, no name on it, just standing there like it's proof that someone was there. Where'd you say those turned up, again?"

The Gambler's Dice can be represented, in the real world, with a set of 4 FUDGE dice. The plus side represents the sun, the minus side represents the moon. The mechanics otherwise are exactly the same, each sun cancels each moon, and any left over beyond that denotes a winner. The large majority of games will result in a draw, and it is customary among most gamblers to either raise or withdraw their bets during these instances. Canicerre can be played in-game at any time, for gambling purposes or for a quick-and-dirty method of divination (will the immediate future be favorable or unfavorable? by what degree?). It is only with the Gambler's Dice that things get "dicey." Beyond their use as a gambling tool, they can also be used to influence fate. At any time, as a standard action, as a daily power, in or out of combat, the player in possession of the Gambler's Dice may roll the dice as long as there is a reasonable surface upon which to do so. The character does not need to be able to see the results of the dice, and the effect generated begins instantaneously. It is up to the GM to determine the effect of the outcome, but it should be in line with the overall "score" achieved by the roll. In other words, a roll that evens out to zero will probably not have any effect at all, +1 might make an attack that otherwise might have just missed hit, +2 might save the player from a status effect or an environmental mishap, +3 might drastically alter the strength of an opponent or the treasure encountered, and +4 will likely be some extremely unlikely, massive, and potentially game-changing event, like a god suddenly taking direct interest in the character and personally guiding their hand. Conversely, -1 might make the character's next action fail, or prevent them from achieving a critical hit on a natural 20, or something of the like, and so on. A -4 result will be catastrophic for the character. They may be pulled into a demiplane of suffering, they may be struck down where they stand by a freak accident, but the outcome should not only be dire for the character, but for the entire party. This result should also result in the dice being "lost" and unrecoverable by the party.

The Gambler's Dice are not an "evil" item, but they are chaotic in their function. It is unclear whether the dice were invented to be magical, or with any sort of magical purpose in mind, or whether they "developed" on their own. They do not function like an artifact; they do not possess any degree of "intelligence" and do not attempt to influence or direct their possessor's behavior. But nor are they a "good" item, for they do not always act in their holder's favor, letting instead the dice fall where they may, and then influence the world around them accordingly. Primarily any effect is negated every time the dice are re-rolled, but the dice roll has no effect one way or the other if attempted more than once in 24 hours. Otherwise, the effect will subside in 1d4 days, waning in influence over time. As a static magic item, they grant the possessor +1 Streetwise (or, for Pathfinder, Knowledge [local]) and -1 Diplomacy as long as they are somewhere in the vicinity of the person. For the purpose of this mechanic their "owner" is defined as the person who last touched them with their bare hands, although if that person should travel any appreciable distance away from the dice (such as leave town), "ownership" passes to any character who is nearest or currently in possession.

Beyond this, the significance, importance, and back story for the dice are entirely up to the Game Master, and entirely dependent upon their own campaign to let the mystery of the dice develop further (or not). Perhaps one of the PCs will decide to roll the dice when they are first found absentmindedly. If this occurs make note of the results, and have their influence (if any) be felt, but be unclear about whether it is the dice that are influencing how things have suddenly turned, or something else about where they are or what they are doing, then reveal it when they learn what the dice are.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: The Wizard

There are many things that I like about Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game (the name is not one of them). Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (henceforth DCCRPG, blech) is, to a degree, a retroclone, in that it intentionally harkens back (in book art as well as rules) to the early days of Dungeons and Dragons. But it is a particularly deadly, dangerous game, even compared to others of its relative ilk.  This being said, probably the "worst" type of character one could play in DCCRPG is the wizard, based purely on the degree by which bad things can and will happen to the character.

The game world supposes that magic is inherently an extremely dangerous, alien, and corrupting thing, so that the more often someone uses it, the more likely it is that they will be permanently changed, maimed, or worse. When a wizard PC rolls a one on a spell check, the player must first roll on the spell fumble table, which can be as innocuous as a small explosion nearby, or as bizarre as a torrential rain of iron ingots (it doesn't say that they will necessarily cause damage, but I can't imagine a situation where heavy metal suddenly begins raining down upon your head and it NOT hurting). But ADDITIONALLY, the wizard character must also face a roll on the corruption table, since when magic goes wrong, it goes very, very wrong. Corruption is, for the most part, permanent, and also very obvious.  It can be the character's ears falling off, their limbs turning into tentacles, a permanent case of weeping pustules all over the face, one's mouth being replaced by a beak, or growing a tail with a third hand at the end. One can only imagine a very old wizard to being a repugnant, shivering mound of flesh, worse than a chimera and hardly able of speech of locomotion. Furthermore, one wonders why anybody, in this world, would want to be a wizard at all. Given, there is only a 5% chance of failing, and given that many corruption effects are not that bad, over time, the probability becomes staggering. Pair this with the fact that when a wizard learns a new spell, it is possible that it will be difficult to cast, requiring the use of a d14 or a d16 rather than a d20, raising the likelihood of corruption to 6 or 7% every time a spell is cast.

In analysis of this, I can only guess that this system was put into place as an alternative to the Vancian system of older editions of D&D. Typically, in DCCRPG, if a wizard succeeds on a spell, it is not lost and can be cast again. This is a great improvement, in my eyes, over the set-and-forget one a day Vancian system. However, if the spell fails, one suffers all of the effects above, plus the loss of the ability to cast that spell anymore for the rest of the day. So even after all that, you still fail. Unless, of course, you perform some horrific act of self-mortification called "Spellburn" to regain the spell, which can even result in temporary stat loss (there is a picture of a wizard stabbing a knife through his hand) until the wound heals. All of these things, corruption, mercurial magic, spellburn, spell fumbles, are completely random. You have to roll on tables.

This is completely insane, to me. It completely takes away the roleplay aspect of the wizard, and makes it seem like the character is not in control of their own actions. Especially in regards to spellburn, it seems like it would make a lot more sense for the player to be able to choose what type of self-mortification they would like to engage in, for a similar level of effect in regaining the spell. For instance, maybe the player only wants to burn some of their hair; maybe then that the spell would be regained, but instead of a d20 you can only roll a d12. The most bizarre spellburn action is if you roll a 1 on the table: "The wizard sacrifices one pound of flesh per spell level, which he must carve from his own body with a knife that is holy to a powerful outsider." WHO CAME UP WITH THIS? One, if you cut a pound of flesh out of your own body, YOU WOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY BE MORTALLY INJURED, and even if you weren't, you'd be bleeding so badly you couldn't do anything except lay there for a while until you died or passed out. Secondly, where would this holy knife suddenly appear from? What if you rolled a one, but shucks you were fresh out of holy knives to powerful outsiders? Would you have to roll again to try to get another result? This doesn't seem to be a very well thought-out system, and honestly if I ran a DCCRPG game, I would not include this rule, period. Losing a spell on a failure is fine. You get it back the next day, you'll just have to use your crossbow until then.

Let me take a second to recompose myself here. Anyway, this is not a case of "he who summons the magic, commands the magic." This is a case of "he who summons the magic is completely screwed." Though magic comes from immensely powerful and ineffable extraplanar entities who obviously do not have much stake in humans besides as playthings, the onerous punishments for being an ordinary wizard doing ordinary wizard things seems a bit extreme; the idea is great, but I can't imagine an actual person playing a wizard in this game and having fun for long, as they become less and less able and more and more hideous, while the Fighter literally can do no wrong. If I were to run a game like this, I would be very tempted to highly modify the wizard rules in order to make the class more playable. I can't tell whether DCCRPG wants to be more deadly and serious, or more zany and goofy, since it seems to want both, and it creates a very jarring experience in the process.

Foremost, I would allow a willpower save against the corruption every time a spell is failed. Spell misfires are fine, I can deal with that, I just wish the table was more expansive. I would also allow for the possibility of the corruption effects being reversible, however at great cost or very difficultly is completely fine. An alternative to that would be from within the rules themselves: many effects from misfired spells wear off after 1d7 days, 1d7 weeks, 1d7 months, etc.; an arbitrary and random amount of time, that'd be fine.  Rather than the wizard becoming an increasingly disfigured mound of undifferentiated flesh with tentacles, beaks, claws, and wings sticking out of it like some miniature toy breed of shoggoth with bad acne, give the guy a break.

Wizards receive their magical power from extraplanar patrons; why can't they try to appease their patrons after failing a roll by accepting this... alteration, but then after a period of time they are returned to (mostly) normal. Or maybe they can remove a sign of corruption by giving something up; a spell, one point off a stat, something to the tune of the spellburn table. Or maybe they can even just temporarily lose the use of the spell that caused the corruption altogether, until they can overcome the corruption it caused. Give the player a little bit of control and a few choices, or else the forced randomness only creates a different kind of rails for the game to follow. Warriors deal more damage, more easily, with fewer penalties for failing, and look better while doing it. There is no mechanical reason in this game to be a wizard, and in fact players will probably end up feeling like they are being punished for playing one. There has to be a better way to handle a world where magic is inherently dangerous that does not involve systematically (and randomly) deconstructing a character and transforming it into something that the player wouldn't want to play anymore.

Postscript: I suppose it should be mentioned that these are the beta rules, so the wizard might be much less unplayable in the final form. I am a little disappointed that the publication date for the final rules was pushed off until February, this is one of my most anticipated new games, despite my less than generous attitude in this article. Even with these rules, I would love to run a game in which there was a wizard, maybe even two wizards, to see how the rules actually play out in practice, so all of my comments above are purely on a theoretical level having just read the rules.

Alignment and the Banality of Evil

One of the biggest problems in any game I've run that deals with "Alignment" are those roleplaying choices that the players make that technically violate their listed alignment.  It's very difficult to judge what would just let slide or when I, as the game master, should call them out on it, or at least question their judgment (are you sure your lawful good paladin would be ok with slaughtering all of these orcs in their sleep?).  But as I develop my "custom" game world, I'm going to be increasingly insistent that actions have consequences in terms of alignment.  It works both ways, too.  If a PC can slowly become neutral (or even evil), an evil NPC could also become more neutral (or even good). 

I do believe that these sorts of alignment change questions, when relevant to the PC, should be discussed with the player outside of game, and perhaps privately.  Other characters might not notice the change at first, but become slowly aware of changes in the character's personality that do not mesh with what they usually expected from them.  In the case of a divine character, I don't see why they should lose their divine powers (even in the case of one who worships a lawful good deity), but the powers become warped somehow. Or perhaps they change allegiances.  As they stray further and further from the path proscribed for them by their deity, their holy symbol darkens, tarnishes, fades, or chips, something which can be noticed by their fellow adventurers. This can be played out in game, as well.  Perhaps a crusader for Bahamut begins to feel disillusioned by being constrained to only do good, even when it might, ultimately, allow an even greater evil to flourish, and instead strays to the side of the Raven Queen as the impartial Ultimate Mediator.

Corollary to this idea of alignment change is the idea of betrayal.  I have never actually had a game where one of the PCs betrays the others, but there are some games that make it much easier (such as Call of Cthulhu).  Chief in my mind here are the Horus Heresy Warhammer 40,000 novels where the titular character, Horus, is corrupted by chaos, and it slowly becomes more and more apparent to Garviel Loken as time goes on, as he acts further out of character and quickly begins to make Loken legitimately concerned.  Certainly a PC betrayal would, in most situations, result in the PC being ejected from the party and, at best, becoming an NPC.  But is there a situation where a character could become evil in a group of good PCs and still remain mostly in line with the party goals?  I can only jokingly think of the Order of the Stick, where the other characters have to keep Belkar in line, because he is Chaotic Evil, something which they have to keep a secret from NPC paladins who might otherwise want to smite him.

An evil (but otherwise harmless) PC might create similar hijinx when dealing with an uncertain populace, and constantly having to corral that character in, given an accepting group, might create fun and funny roleplay experiences.  I will be very interested to see what Rob Schwalb does with 4e Book of Vile Darkness, because I am constantly trying to think of ways to create more situations than just "good characters kill evil badguys, everybody win."  Life is more interesting than that, so why shouldn't the game be more interesting than that?  Supposedly good people are compelled into doing evil things all the time, whether by circumstance, trickery, or plain folly.  A game which allows for the "banality of evil" would probably be more interesting, but I've just never had the opportunity to put something like that together.

Magical Schools of Thought

I have been thinking, a bit facetiously, about the disconnect between Vancian magic in older systems of Dungeons and Dragons to the more unlimited "power" based approach of magic in 4th edition.  It seems that wizards, or to generalize any class from the "arcane" power source, got a considerable leg up, especially at lower levels, with 4th edition.  Besides just shrugging and making any number of arguments about why 4th edition breaks D&D or is an MMO on paper, the disconnect between earlier edition wizards and 4th can, potentially, be put to good story use in-game.  I must admit that the inspiriation comes partially from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, specifically the wizards (wizzards?) at Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.

Chiefly, what if Vancian magic is just a theory?  Like, in the D&D universe, what if wizards traditionally were able to only cast one spell a day because that's just what they were taught?  This assumes that wizards undergo magical training at some sort of wizard school, which is well within the bounds of the theory about wizards generally.  One also can easily harken to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with Mr. Norrell being representative, by and large, of the Vancian theory.  Magic should be properly respected, especially by younger, more inexperienced, wizards, and so it is not only improper but potentially dangerous for an inexperienced wizard to go wild with Magic Missile before he truly understands the arcane energy that he is summoning together in order to coalesce it into the force commonly referred to as a Magic Missile.  Additionally, by casting it once a day a wizard can be certain that he will have assumed all of the proper concentration and focus necessary to ensure that it will land and have an effect.

4th edition, by contrast, is a much more free wheeling, damn-the-consequences theory of magical practice, and as a result of that, is less effective.  The compromise for breaking in to the arcane energies faster than with the Traditionalist school is that, quite often, magic can come off only partially formed, and fizzle out midair rather than land its target. A missed die roll in 4e represents a failure to summon together the proper arcane forces and is not so much an abject failure on the count of the wizard himself, but a consequence of trying to do too much, too fast, which is largely representative of this school of magic to begin with.

One can almost assume that earlier editions of D&D took place in an earlier, more chaotic time in the collective D&D'verse's history, and, as time went on, not only did the world change, but the ideas of the people in the world changed as well, and part and parcel to that, one can certainly expect a paradigm shift in magical theory.  The older, more cautious Vancian approach is almost entirely subsumed beneath the newer, flashier 4e system that allows for such (in the eyes of the Old Guard) unnecessary ostentatious displays as "Jim's Magic Missile."

In game terms I see absolutely no reason why a player, even in 4th edition, couldn't create an "old style" wizard who still insisted on making the tradeoff from having At-Will powers to having spells have a much more definite chance of hitting.  Whether this is practical or simply stubbornness, it doesn't ultimately mechanically matter.  Perhaps take a page from the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and have powers that are usually At-Will not be expended if they miss, but have powers branded Encounter or Daily powers continue to get the Vancian treatment.  There would almost necessarily have to be some power creep involved in the powers themselves, to counterbalance the more limited expression they'd take with this system in 4e, breaking the balance of the game.  But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.  How this would look in Epic level though, I have no idea.  Perhaps it might be worth, at level one, awarding the Vancian "Old Guard" wizard one additional feat in order to trade off for the power imbalance.

One of the things I really appreciate about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG is that it makes dabbling in the arcane arts extremely dangerous.  While DCC might go a little overboard with it, the lesson is still there.  Vancian magic shows a bit of respect for the forces that are behind what makes magic "work," which is something that completely disappears from 4e.  Magic becomes frivolous and carefree, which not only loses its flavor compared to other similar-leveled powers from other classes, but also makes it ultimately less interesting to play a wizard as opposed to another arcane class that might deal more damage, like a sorcerer.  Adding a little more danger, or uncertainty, or even flavor in this way might be the solution to the otherwise uninspiring wizard. If anyone tries this out, let me know how it works.

Adding a little Old School flavor to D&D 4e

I can't say that I honestly have much invested in the D&D "edition wars" that seem to be neverending, but I have nevertheless been observing sort of the back and forth between proponents of different systems. For instance, Pathfinder, at least to me, seems to be the system that has been fully adopted by people who didn't want to let go of 3.5, and then there are any number of "retroclones" for the previous editions of OD&D, AD&D, and even BECMI. I see nothing wrong with any of these, in and of themselves, I've even downloaded the OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord free pdfs and have been pawing through them in order to sort of see what the distinguishing features of those clones are, since it seems like even among the OD&D fans, there is dissention over what's the "best" part about that system.

But the property which I think really separates D&D 4e from ANY previous edition is the relative downplaying of magic items (and the devaluation of magic items that comes with 4's very casual dispensation of them) and the emphasis on "class powers" rather than equipment in and of itself. In other words, you've got your At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, and if you've built a decent enough character you may never even have to use a basic melee or a basic ranged. And it seems like this level of abstraction is what especially alienated a lot of OD&D fans, who were used to having to account for a lot more details, coming out of specific different kinds of weapons, rather than abstracting so much stuff like weight, length, shape, material, and attack style and just saying "1d6+Str." It doesn't matter whether it's a warhammer, a sickle, or a broadsword. Then even among the "military" or "masterwork" sort of weapons it's just a matter of another +1 or +2 bonus; weapons aren't interesting at all in 4e, they're just a nondescript vehicle through which to deliver (some) class powers.

So I've been thinking about this, especially with regard to 4e "Essentials" and the possibility of a 5e coming some time in the next couple years, and wondering why you couldn't build a weapons "subsystem" into 4e, which is already very modular and easy to modify, and create your own rules for weapons-heavy characters, emphasizing not only the particular qualities of the weapons themselves, but the proficiency with which each class handles those types of weapons. In other words, say you have a dwarven paladin with a particular proficiency in military hammers, which rather than to just simply get another +1 on attack rolls, you could unlock the "proficiency" option on a weapon, at the sacrifice of the regular At-Wills for the class, to instead use the weapon's special qualities.

So using the hammer example, you could swing the hammer in different ways in order to knock the enemy aside, daze the enemy, sweep the enemy's feet from under them, etc. in order to actually be "proficient" with using the weapon, and still get to keep class features, or have the option of turning one at-will or encounter into a "class feature" in order to still preserve some of those qualities. I haven't actually tried to stat out any specific weapons or make a build using this yet, so I'll have to see if it introduces too much imbalance. But I do think that it may be a way to introduce a more "old school" feel to the original game, and remove some of that abstraction that makes weapons by themselves sort of worthless, as well as remove the occasionally very silly and unbelievable class powers that have come out for each class. Though there would be a lot of work on behalf of the DM in order to set this up, it would be a much more satisfying, I think, exercise in the basic striker than what Essentials provides us with the fighter.

New Terrain: Witchwood

Witchwood is a magical vine of uncertain origin. It seems to be more prone to growing in climates which are mild year-round, as any place where the ground is subject to a hard freeze it is never found, and where the ambient humidity is generally over 70%. Its true method of propagation is a mystery, as it has never been observed to flower, but it has been observed that it has a profound ability to self-propagate through cuttings of the stem or root, with the most vigorous regrowth coming from the transplanted root crown. Functionally, this means that if the plant is cut off at ground level, the aerial vine can re-root just as readily as a new plant will grow from the underground roots still remaining, and if the vine is chopped up into small pieces, each piece has the potential to grow into a new, separate plant. Its aerial parts can be readily destroyed by burning, but as the roots remain untouched by fire, it will regrow.

For most of the year, it appears as just a thick mat of intertwined thin brown vines, forming what looks like a net which covers existing vegetation, as well as climbs up and over buildings and other artificial structures, choking out whatever it grows over. In fact, the vegetation it grows atop has the tendency to wither and die at a rate much faster than can usually be accounted for by simply light deprivation, which is in accordance with its most infamous observed property: its seeming tendency to draw the life energy from living things in its proximity. Its growth habit is usually that a cutting will first grow underground to establish a root system, and then send out a thin rhizome just under the surface, from which small suckers grow from which, in time, will result in a mass of anywhere between 1 and 6 vines. They spread out in all angles, growing around each other and climbing whatever obstacle is in their way, eventually growing small, simple, opposite, acuminate leaves, of a greenish-red color along the length of the new vine and then dropping after only a matter of a couple months. New vines grow from the tips of old vines, or else from any place where the vine is broken or cut, and only new growth gets leaves. Very old growth, that is, growth that is undisturbed for several years, can create very thick mats that are so tightly interwoven and layered that it creates a more or less steady surface that one can walk across without falling through. The youngest vine growth is nevertheless very brittle, and is easily snapped.

Though it prefers places of high humidity, moderate to high temperatures, and high light, it can occasionally be found growing in places with no light, as the vines can sometimes grow into or underneath something and be nourished by the other vines attached to their roots that are above ground. Over time, one can occasionally find startlingly large growths of witchwood in caves and abandoned buildings, as long as it has another source of nourishment at hand. Namely, sources of arcane energy. Therefore, in some places where there is a lot of magical activity, such as mages' towers and lichs' phylacteries, witch wood can grow very vigorously and even completely conceal the entrances or the entire structures.

Functionally, witchwood has its strongest effect on wizards and warlocks and those who use the arcane power source. Standing in a square occupied by witchwood, one suffers a -2 modifier on all rolls which use the arcane keyword. Furthermore, if someone drops to zero hit points in a square occupied by witchwood, they get a -2 modifier to their saving rolls, and others trying to help them get a -2 modifier on heal checks. Additionally, if an arcane character drops in a square containing witchwood, they take a -4 modifier on saving throws, as it is sucking away their arcane energy.

Lastly, witchwood, depending on the thickness of the mats, can be either difficult terrain or hindering terrain, tripping characters walking across it.

Cross-Contamination

I forget where already, but some time in the past week or so I remember reading on a blog where someone was using Fudge Dice in order to flavor up some random encounters in D&D. Fudge Dice, as we know, are 6-sided dice that have two blank sides, two + sides, and two - sides, and come in packs of four. I really liked that idea; it ties in to really what the FATE system is all about; that the dice don't so much determine exactly what will happen, but rather that they will slant the outcome one way or the other. In the case of Dungeons and Dragons, something that 4th edition doesn't really preserve as well is the idea of the random encounter. You're a group of adventurers, blazing the trail and rediscovering some lost or forgotten temple, or underground lair, or some ancient magical forest, or whatever, but you go from space to space, or room to room, and there is another group of often homogeneous monsters. But why? To ensure that the time and work spent exploring the area provides enough experience points to reach a certain goal at the end of the major quest? I have to admit that I myself design games around a set XP goal and then everything else pours out of trying to make a reasonable situation to place the encounters in, but another part of that is that I am dreadful at making believable skill challenges. But besides the standard gamut of dungeoneering, stealth, perception, whatever skill rolls determining whether or not the group of goblins detects you walking past, or whether you can find some way around the dragon's lair, why not use Fudge Dice to determine whether the dragon is even there at all. Why shouldn't there be a chance, like in the Hobbit, that it's simply out for the moment, terrorizing villages, devouring virgins; whatever dragons do. In other words, have something a little bit more dynamic than a d10 or d8 or d20 roll to determine what sort of situation they may find themselves in. I like the idea of having the players themselves roll the Fudge Dice; they're the adventurers after all, and then they can all see what sort of situation they are getting themselves in to. While it would make sense that the party leader, or at least the person in front or taking the "active" roll would make these sorts of checks most often, there could be other situations where someone else, perhaps in a failed assist roll, instead does so poorly that they "trigger" a roll, which in game terms could mean something along the lines of "you knocked the suit of armor down the well and it made a very, very, very loud noise for a very long time. Fool of a Took." In terms of actual rolls, at this point a - - - - would probably mean, if still using the Dragon Lair example, that the dragon feels like returning just at that moment, and that the entire party is right in the middle of an open space, and all the doors suddenly close, and they all simultaneously realize that they forgot to put on pants that morning. A + + + + would mean something more like the dragon decided that the weather was just not to its liking and it went on vacation for a couple weeks. In skill challenges, they could be implemented in a way to be an attempt to subtly alter fate, which would be determined by what sort of character they are like. For instance a Paladin or a Cleric character may make a sacrifice to their deities in the form of not being able to use a power for an encounter, temporarily losing access to their class features, or something like that; or a fighter would lose a healing surge or two. In exchange, instead of accepting that the critical roll on the skill challenge just failed and the entire party is going to be in a world of hurt, they can roll the Fudge Dice and instead see if the fates are actually in their favor. Something like a very positive roll could mean that even though they technically failed, they failed in such a way that accidentally made things still turn out right. And a really negative roll would mean that they failed even more spectacularly and the situation went from really bad to absolute worst. And either way, they'd be out whatever they chose to sacrifice for the encounter or situation that that event might have triggered. I see no reason why this also couldn't be used in combat, a la Fortune Cards-style meta play. Use an action point, roll the dice. Do you recover so quickly that you get to swipe your sword up ferociously and get bonus damage on a roll that at first failed? Or do you accidentally fall face-first into the magical brazier and become blinded by magical fire? For something that is such a crap shoot, I can't imagine that people would want to do it very often, but in a do-or-die sort of situation, it could mean the difference between a TPK and a clever escape; a sort of release valve to free players from their own potentially bad decisions. I can't wait to try it out.

Disfigurement and Dragons

Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead is one of my favorite volumes of addon material for D&D4. Not only is the premise of it delightfully hilarious (that it will teach you, among other things, the physiology of how undeath works in the D&D world, and justifications for it), but that they nevertheless manage to treat the subject matter so well (in my opinion).

I've decided to page through it again, and it's gotten me thinking about the mechanics of heroes in D&D. A lot of other, more high-stakes, RPG systems have rules regarding permanent disfigurement or mental damage from dealing with situations that are beyond the control or ken of the character, and even past editions of D&D had creatures that permanently sapped levels away from characters that they then had to earn back. D&D4 (as evidenced by the new "Fourthcore" movement) leaves a little to be desired in terms of high-stakes, high-impact encounters (in terms of theoretically-winnable-but-not-without-cost) sorts of situations.

Open Grave I think does a pretty good job at jarring me back into the notion of "oh yeah, undead are actually potentially really scary. There's something about the abstract, mechanical nature of 4e combat that ends up in making me a little jaded about the sorts of encounters that people can fly in to.

DM: You are surrounded by a ton of decrepit skeletons.
Wizard: Oh, I use Burning Hands.
DM: Ok, they're all dead now. again. For real this time.

There's something really existentially threatening and horrible about the idea of something that is dead rising to its feet again, charged with malign energy, that is trying to kill you too. And if it kills you, you may be dead forever. Or you may lose your mind and rise up again as one of them. I'm sorry, but the first time you walk into a room full of dead people that stand up at attention again when you step to the side and knock over a cup should be a really jarring situation, even among so-called "heroes."

I'll probably get in to why I love Heroic-Tier games much better than high-level games at another time, but Paragon- and Epic-Level undead provide a way to raise the stakes without necessarily getting the adventurers involved in a battle of potentially cosmic import. It's amazing how much godslaying there is in 4e; you begin to wonder why the gods bother to keep coming back.

But anyway, taking a page from Call of Cthulhu, I don't see why there shouldn't be a variant rule in place that dictates having encounters with something so cosmically wrong as undead that it is difficult to walk out of the situation in some way unscathed. These, of course, should be mainly boss-type encounters, but as a lot of RPG video games have taught us, optional mini-bosses can oftentimes be more frightening and more damaging than the main course of the game anyway. And this isn't even limited necessarily to undead, either. I see no trouble at all with having variations for aberrant creatures or demonic creatures, or other types of things that are belched up from the Abyss that have no business at all existing in the first place and should be destroyed as quickly as possible for the safety of the entire world. And they don't even have to necessarily be high level, either. Something the size of a pea could eventually feed and grow to threaten the entire cosmos.

But here's what I propose: rather than bringing back level-sapping attacks from previous editions (because leveling is so gnarly in 4e to begin with, unless you want to also hand out more experience things/create more experience-generating situations), to introduce variant enemy attacks that instead cause a permanent decrease in a core ability score. Liches are, after all, what's left over after a wizard or sorcerer transgresses the boundary of what is possible, so it would make a reasonable amount of sense that they might occasionally have the ability to grab hold of someone and literally sap the life from them, permanently causing a reduction in constitution, or strength, or something. Or some aberrant beast from some unknown plane that slips through a dimensional crack and literally destroys the minds of its victims, creating crazed half-dead animals in what were formerly commonfolk, and effecting a permanent loss in wisdom, intelligence, or charisma in a heroic character.

Depending on how nasty the DM wants to be, these effects could literally be permanent, or instead symbolize a sort of deep sickness from coming into contact with something so deeply "Wrong" as ordinary reality and the natural order struggle to again right themselves and restore balance (where in game terms the lost ability point would be regained after a level, a few levels, or at the next tier). Not only would these sort of profoundly weakening attacks encourage more tactical gameplay (like oh my god keep away from that lich, don't let it touch you), but would force contact-based players like fighters to have to potentially come up with alternate strategies, since just standing next to it and whacking on it while acting as a meat shield puts your character in even more mortal danger.

Lastly, it could be used as a sort of plot point for specific characters. Meaning, instead of the stat loss being literal, like they've been scarred or damaged physically in some way, that it was actually a blow to the psyche, and constitutes a loss of confidence, or faith, and that they therefore need to undertake some sort of personally redemptive quest, or join a religion (an introduction to multiclassing?), or accept some sort of stricture in order to get their abilities back. This last bit I got from Shadowrun, which I think despite some of its other faults, has a lot of really good mechanics in place to encourage good roleplaying. This sort of mechanic could also be used, in the D&D world, to explain why characters gain certain abilities and not others as they level up: this traumatic event at level 3 was why the character has the ability to do this daily at level 7. Adds depth to characters.

Finally at last referring to the title of the entry, it is a time-honored practice when referring to permanent stat loss to reflect the stat loss in a type of corresponding disfigurement. Why did the person suffer a point loss in Charisma? Maybe because that fire elemental burned his face with some sort of special hellfire. This is a readymade plot hook, as well. Perhaps over the course of their travels the party get wind of a mysterious sorcerer who has created a healing salve that can repair the damage from these sorts of attacks, but the path is fraught with danger and the salve itself is a king's ransom. And then there's the matter of the little rumor that the sorcerer himself may actually be a lich...

I love creating special magic items specifically for a particular adventure or campaign. Not only do I think does it make the adventure more immersive, but it also adds the level of surprise in case the players have been spending a little too much time reading the Adventurer's Vault. It is the latter reason that I also nearly exclusively create custom bosses for the climactic scene in adventures. Sometimes out of mixing together two or more enemies from the MM, or sometimes just out of whole cloth. It's especially joyous when I can successfully drop hints that misconstrue the true nature of the final enemy, so that the party is caught completely off guard. It would only add that much more depth to have an enemy that could potentially maim someone without having taken the necessarily precautions, which could even be hinted at all throughout the adventure leading up to it. Something to think about more fully, to be sure.