Last year I wrote about about backloading complexity, specifically applied to skills. In response, Jeffro wrote an excellent post about extending that idea to magic-users; in Jeffro’s Infocom-inspired system, magic-users begin with only one spell, read magic, and must discover all other spells by finding scrolls. This is also a way of backloading complexity (because the players of magic-users do not need to know what the various spells do before the game starts or choose between them), but it is something more as well. It is diegetic in the sense that it ties the game mechanics to in-game events and situations. It is meaning first.

I think this principle can be extended even further. What if learning new skills or feats required finding a teacher or some other quest? For example, if you want to learn the mounted combat feat, perhaps you need to complete 1d4 missions with the local cavalry, and maybe you must journey to the steppe barbarians to learn mounted archery. Under such a system, feats would become a form of treasure, or at least an adventure hook.

Why not use this approach for race as well? Elves could be available as PCs once Elf-Land has been discovered. This is the way that Evan plans on handling reptoids in his Uz setting. Other nonhumans could also be accessed in this manner. In a sense, this is similar to the idea of “unlocking” options in video games. To take this to the logical extreme, what if you could play any race if you could convince one of them to first be a retainer (riffing off the traditional idea of being able to promote retainers to full PCs)? Thus, want to play a dragon? You first have to find and make friends with one. It would provide a nice incentive for parley, too. And give the referee an opportunity to show through play how a given species behaves in the particular setting.

One could even imagine having almost nothing at the beginning, and discovering everything through play (even class). Some modes of zero level play approximate this ideal, but in reality most of these systems allow players to plan things out and just make them wait for it (which is why I think many people don’t like zero level play). What I am laying out here is a stricter idea how zero level is usually played, as spells or other mechanical bits may be entirely unique to a given campaign (though the two ideas could be profitably mixed).

This structure privileges exploring game worlds over exploring mechanical options. Players might not even know what feats were available until they have experienced the game! I realize this kind of game is not for everyone (there seems to be a sizeable contingent of players that groove on character optimization, if forum post volume is anything to go on), but I think this is a mode I would enjoy both as player and as referee. Exactly where one draws the line between character creation options and diegetic options is a matter for individual groups and referees to decide upon together.

Recently, I have been sampling the d20 book Iron Heroes. This is a “variant player’s handbook” that presents new classes and rules for 3E D&D. I am indebted to noisms for originally bringing Iron Heroes to my attention. My understanding is that the original motivation behind IH was to create classes that would be competitive (in terms of power levels) with the core classes without relying on assumptions about magic items and healing magic.

The game is thus mostly built around martial classes (with the exception of the arcanist) that have interesting tactical and combat abilities. Classes include archer, armiger, berserker, executioner, harrier, hunter, man-at-arms, thief, weapon master, and arcanist. Some of these are obviously derived from standard 3E classes (e.g., man-at-arms = fighter, berserker = barbarian, thief = thief) with tweaks to make them fit the desired style.

Though this may seem, from the above description, to be similar to many recent high power, heroic games, the actual atmosphere is swords & sorcery, enforced by a lack of magical items and a highly dangerous magic system for the one class that uses magic. This is a system for Conan stories, not for teleporting elves. The art is also perfectly in tune with this vibe.

There are many great ideas here for specific mechanics, and the magic system is wonderfully evocative. It uses mana points, and each school has methods with guidelines about how to create effects, based on a character’s level of mastery. A d20 “casting roll” is required (with difficulty based on the amount of mana spent and the power of the ability) and failures can cause minor or major disasters (for example, a major disaster when animating the dead causes the newly created creature to immediately attack the creator arcanist). It is a complicated system that requires calculation for every effect, but it looks like it would be very enjoyable once learned.

Iron Heroes was written by Mike Mearls in 2005, and thus predates Fourth Edition by three years. Many of the concerns that would inform the design of 4E can be seen here in proto form, though the style of the implied game world is very different. Check the following quote (page 248):

ADVENTURES

When creating adventures, be sure to come up with interesting situations that allow the player characters to use their abilities. Try to avoid fights in plain, empty rooms.

Battles in Iron Heroes tend to last longer than in other games, since the characters have more hit points and more complex abilities. Thus, you must ensure that there is more to the fights than merely two lines of opponents standing still and smacking each other. Throw in lots of interesting terrain to encourage creative, active play.

When designing adventures, remember that you cannot offer magic items to the party as a reward. Gold and jewels also lose some of their value in terms of character power, because the PCs cannot use them to purchase magic items. The onus is on you, as DM, to come up with interesting stories, villains, and enemies. The characters need motivation other than the simple accumulation of treasure to push them ahead to adventures.

Entire books have been written about adventure design, leaving far too little space for the topic here. However, you’ll do fine if you remember one important thing: The characters should always have a good, compelling reason to do something. Whether it’s a noble desire to defeat an evil overlord, a selfish need to escape the law, or some other reason, you need to create a clear and interesting rationale to drive the action forward.

The first two paragraphs outline exactly the kind of play expected by 4E. Creative play is reacting to and using terrain elements tactically. Encounters should be designed to allow characters to show off their abilities. Fights in plain rooms are discouraged, and movement is considered the essence of dynamic combat. This is quite different than traditional D&D, but I don’t mean to highlight it pejoratively. I’ve learned some interesting things from Fourth Edition combat, and though I have come to the conclusion that as a complete system it is too cumbersome and slow, there are aspects of it that I think deserve a place in more freeform and fast-paced combat systems, particularly forced movement and support actions (e.g., things that allow fighter-types to protect other characters if they so desire).

However, there is one aspect of the above advice that I think in retrospect is downright harmful, based on the kind of game that it encourages. Specifically, the bit about characters needing motivation to push them ahead to adventures. Why should players demand “compelling” reasons to do something? Is not the point of the game to have adventures? A referee already has to spend a nontrivial amount of time and energy either familiarizing themselves with a module, writing their own material, or improvising it at the table. Why put this additional burden on the referee? Is the existence of interesting locations and scenarios really not enough?

There is nothing wrong, of course, with using character motivations (revenge, fear of the law, a common enemy, whatever), but it is this sense that the referee is required to convince the players to go after the adventure that bothers me somewhat. Why should the ref need to push the players ahead to adventure? Haven’t they indicated that they are interested in adventure by sitting down around the gaming table?

Snorri Sturluson wrote The Prose Edda, a telling of Norse mythology. He lived from 1179 – 1241. Here is an excerpt about dwarves.

Next after this, the gods enthroned themselves in their seats and held judgment, and called to mind whence the dwarves had quickened in the mould and underneath in the earth, even as do maggots in flesh. The dwarves had first received shape and life in the flesh of Ymir, and were then maggots; but by decree of the gods had become conscious with the intelligence of men, and had human shape. And nevertheless they dwell in the earth and in stones. Modsognir was the first, and Durinn the second; so it says in Voluspa.

1916 Brodeur translation, 2006 Dover edition, pages 25 and 26.

Yesterday, The Dragon’s Flagon had a post about using hit points as spell points. One of the common (though not insurmountable) problems of a system like this is that it increases the utility of healing effects, which are already potent. In addition to allowing adventurers to take more punishment, healing would also allow magic-users to cast more spells. I call this the “mana battery” problem.

When thinking about this, the following idea came to me: what if each hit point of magical healing aged a character by one day? I have PCs recover one HP per day when tracking natural healing, though hit dice are re-rolled between adventures. Thus, there would be a symmetry between magical and natural healing. At one stroke, healing magic becomes problematic while still being available, a reason is given for why healing magic is not used frivolously, and magic gains a greater sense of enchantment. I am considering implementing this even in games that don’t use HP to power magic.

Also, this morning while reading John’s answers to my 20 rules questions, I came across this:

Level-draining monsters: yes or no?

No. Monsters that would normally drain levels instead age you.

This is much better, in my opinion, than ability score damage (the 3E method), which is both not very scary (because it recovers quickly) and a hassle (because you need to recalculate several other derived statistics). Aging is irrevocable without being catastrophic in most instances. And, you have adventurers returning from raiding barrows strangely aged, which fits the atmosphere of undead. 2E (and maybe AD&D, I’m not sure) sort of did this with the restoration spell which restores drained levels at the cost of aging. I might even use level drain and aging together if I was running a game using a proper traditional rule set (as opposed to the 4E hack I’ve been playing recently).

There are some other spells that traditionally age spell casters as well. Gate, for example, ages the caster five years, as does wish. I’m sure there are more.

The downside is that you need to track an extra number per character (effective age). This was sort of true before, but it has come up so infrequently in games that I have played in as to basically not be required.