KORE rpg

Another great one has gone to the greater mystery before us.
A visionary has passed once more from these earthly bonds to go throw dice with the Father.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20090409

Dave Arneson

October 1, 1947 - April 7, 2009

Dave Arneson, co-creator of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, passed away on Tuesday evening, April 7th, after waging one final battle against cancer.

In 1969, when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax first met at GenCon, both were dedicated tabletop wargamers, refighting historical battles with painted miniature armies and fleets. Their first collaboration (along with Mike Carr) was a set of rules for sailing-ship battles called Don’t Give Up the Ship!

By the early 1970s, Dave’s far-ranging interests led him to a unique concept in wargaming — a wargame where each model represented just one hero instead of many soldiers in an army. That idea in itself wasn’t new; “skirmish-style” games had been around for years. What was new were the ideas that the same heroes could be played in a series of games, learning and becoming more powerful with each battle; that their battles could be part of larger adventures set in the types of fantastic worlds popular in sword-&-sorcery fiction; and, most importantly, that playing just one hero at a time was more exciting than controlling a whole army if that hero had a personality. In other words … roleplaying.

Dave could have used any set of rules to wage his early roleplaying campaigns, which were set in his world of Blackmoor. For a time at least, he settled on Chainmail, written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. It was a fortunate choice, because it brought him back into collaboration with Gary. They swapped ideas and articles, notes and charts, until eventually, the manuscript took on the shape that would become Dungeons & Dragons as published in 1974. Elements of Dave’s earliest campaign — the very first roleplaying campaign — were published a year later in the Blackmoor supplement to D&D. Blackmoor contained yet another innovation — the first published D&D adventure, Temple of the Frog.

In later years, Dave published other RPGs (Adventures in Fantasy), started his own game-publishing company (Adventure Games) and computer game company (4D Interactive Systems, Inc.), taught classes in game design, and lectured on educational roleplaying. Whether you’re a lifelong D&D player or a newcomer to RPGs, a traditional paper-and-pencil gamer or an online roleplayer, we all owe a great debt of thanks to Dave Arneson and his groundbreaking Blackmoor game.

With his passing, and the passing of the Original Dungeon Master Gary Gygax in May 2008, the world of fantasy gaming seems a bit less personal, suddenly a bit too commercial to me. Soldier on we will, but only to the glory available to us by dint of the path these two great men blazed for us. For we truely stand upon the shoulders of giants.

God’s speed Dave, go find your seat at the table prepared for you. Learn now, as Gary has surely before you, if God truely does throw dice with the Universe.

April 1, 2008, Renton WA—Scott Rouse, Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons, recently announced the D&D Name Change Promotion in support of June’s release of 4th Edition.

“To any player willing to legally change their name to “&”, we’re offering a $50 credit toward purchase of any of the three 4th Edition core rulebooks,” Scott said. “Pronunciation of the symbol is up to you, whether you’ll prefer to go by ‘Ampersand’, ‘And’, or even ‘Amp’. That choice is yours. What we’re looking for is commitment to the game—and to reward that commitment, we’re making purchase of the three core rulebooks that much easier.”

Those interested would need to contact their appropriate legal institutions, as regulations vary by country. That said, “We are looking at this as an international promotion,” Scott added. “We think it’s a very cool way to celebrate the release of the game, and publicly let your freak flag fly.” Legal documents proving name change would need to be submitted in PDF format to dndinsider@wizards.com by June 6th, 2008.

In the spirit of this promotion, Scott Rouse announced he’s already begun the procedure to legally change his own name to “The Rouse”.

Full details here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20080401a

The title pretty much sums up a little something I tried to do in the March Convergence supers game we played with the KORE rules. The basic premise is this: When the players all start to get that glazed, clueless look and start shrugging their shoulders, throw some bad guys at them and reintegrate them into the game.

In point of fact, I did this a number of times during the game; most notably at the very beginning. 

The game started with the characters heading to the Museum of Antiquities to investigate a robbery of sorts and getting sidetracked by a bank heist. Instant involvement, just add dice and foes. - KO

And it worked rather effectively. Any time the players started to loose their way, I simply tossed in some baddies and let the heroes trounce some nefarious foes. Once the dust and rubble was cleared, new avenues of investigation seemed to bubble up from the adrenaline.

I think the tactic would work well in quite a few genres. So the next time your investigators / superheroes / gumshoes / super spys / etc. get that glazed ham look in their eyes and begin to fidgit at the table, just toss some thugs their way and let them roll the dice. You’ll be amazed at the results.

There is a famous quote in software engineering or perhaps engineering in general, the gist of it being “the design is complete when nothing can be removed”.    The point is elegance from simplicity and purity.  No diversions from the focus of the effort.  I cannot find the original source tonight but it matters little.

For the record, apparently it is Antoine de Saint Exupéry who is credited as saying, “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ” -KO

Deviation from the core of a system exposes the writer’s passion.  I feel the wanton need to deviate into topics that are not centric to a rule system.  Yet they are interesting to me and relevant to the genre. Looking through many rule systems, I see that many others have wandered down the same path.

When is it appropriate to sanction these departures?   How far do you allow them to progress?   If the deviation leads to an entry that hooks a novice, is it is truly bad?  Puirty provides elegance and the capability of those capable to expand it into many frontiers.

But… Recall that first system you held in your hands.   Likely, it was rules heavy and relayed something about nearly everything on how to play the game.   Just as likely, you tossed aside nearly everything ephemeral to the core of the system because it was impssible to remember or manage.  Still, fun was had by everyone in that first session.

I love light rule systems these days but I’ve had years to progress to that point.   I can tweak it to fit my needs in a matter of minutes and the experienced group I get a rare chance to play with can do the same.   The running of the system might hook someone but if they pick up the “book” is it enough to hook them?

– Ramblings of Mark -

In the days before time, at the dawn of the RPG era, generating a system that was balanced and fair throughout the rule system must have been a challenge.   Certainly, many tests were available including statistical analysis and play testing.   Even so, it must have been a challenge and an extremely difficult task.  Obviously, no testing can be completely thorough.  Given the number of  new editions, modifications, and shifts that have occurred in the last 30 plus years of RPG rule sets I think that’s a given.

So I decided to run a few tests on the KORE system just for the fun of it.   Being, the computer geek I am, I decided automated testing would be more fun and revealing than simple pen on paper tests.   I selected an American West genre.   That genre is light and simplistic.   No fancy armor setup for defense and the weaponry is covered by the recent updated rule set I received.

On the test framework side, I went with the key rules for HP, Damage, etc. I did not use skills and I only coded the action portion of initiative.   From my perspective, I found the Discover derivative ability the most appropriate for firearm based attacks — Dexterity to prepare the weapon for the shot, Wisdom to encapsulate the effects of wind, sun and other elements, and Presence to accommodate for “buck fever”.  Defensively, I selected the default Dodge derivative attribute.  I waffled a bit but concluded that Dodge was a good choice if a person was firing from a place of choice including sun angle, etc.

The base calculation for attack for a successful hit was:

Discover + D10 > Dodge + D10

Obviously, this doesn’t include modifiers since no situational aspects are present.   For Damage, I took the stock approach mentioned in the rules. Base damage of 1 or 2 + Pdb of the attack.  I ran simulations with both 1 and 2 but in the end the base damage had no impact on the results overall. No defensive gear modifiers were used since nothing is available in the genre I am considering.

Balance Test

To start with, I wanted to see if balance was present and death was prevalent.    To accomplish this, I invented test case #1:   Randomly generate 1 character, copy him to the second character, and run them in combat until death.   Basically, fight yourself and expect the win vs. loss ratio to be about 50%.  I ran several million iterations of this ramping the random attribute allocation from 15 to 50.   As expected, no matter the point allocation, the combat was evenly distributed with both sides winning right at the 50% mark.  Average number of combat rounds ramped up from around 2 to just less than 5.   Not unexpected given the better abilities.   As these test progressed, I decided that I need to keep additional statistics so I enhanced the code to keep track of more information.

Attribute Distribution Testing

This test was designed to explore which attribute values lead to better success in combat.   The results were not surprising based on the earlier Statistical Statistic Analysis.   To accomplish this,  I randomly generated two characters utilizing base attribute points of 15 + D20 additional points.   I then ran this test for approximately 200 million combats in blocks of one hundred thousand between randomization of the attribute totals.   Additionally, the attributes of both the winner and the loser were recorded.  Finally, I calculated the average statistics for both sides overall.

Average Stats:

        Str    Dex    Con    Int    Wis    Pre
Winner: 5.064, 5.582, 5.189, 5.029, 5.023, 5.023
Loser : 5.002, 4.484, 4.877, 5.038, 5.043, 5.043

Dexterity was the obvious winner statistic as expected since it is utilized in the majority of derived attributes my test case uses.  Constitution also showed a slight favoring but less so than Dexterity.  Combat averaged 2.796 rounds with a maximum of 54 rounds at the extreme.

Enhanced Attribute Distribution Test

This test was a variation of the above but characters were randomly generated every combat instead of run in blocks.   The resultant average attribute distribution was close to the same over 100 million iterations.

        Str,   Dex,   Con,   Int,   Wis,   Pre
Winner: 5.033, 5.546, 5.157, 4.996, 4.991, 4.990
Loser : 4.966, 4.454, 4.843, 5.004, 5.009, 5.010

Once again, Dexterity proved the dominant attribute followed by Constitution.   Overall, the other attributes did not appear to have any major impact on the outcome of the combat cycles.  Combat duration averaged 2.785 rounds with a maximum of 49.

Combat Duration Testing

After running the attribution distribution tests, I was curious about the distribution of combat duration so I enhanced by recording capability and re-ran the enhanced tests.  The attribute distribution was nearly identical as was the average duration and maximum round count.

        Str,   Dex,   Con,   Int,   Wis,   Pre
Winner: 5.034, 5.546, 5.157, 4.996, 4.990, 4.991
Loser : 4.966, 4.453, 4.843, 5.004, 5.009, 5.009
Average Number of Rounds = 2.785.  Max Rounds = 49

The distribution of combat durations turned out as follows :

Rounds, Combat Count, Percentile
  1,      13779231,    13.779%
  2,      39192062,    39.192%
  3,      24024360,    24.024%
  4,      11947541,    11.948%
  5,       5661025,     5.661%
  6,       2693823,     2.694%
  7,       1306519,     1.307%
  8,        652217,     0.652%
  9,        334539,     0.335%
 10,        177469,     0.177%

Individual combats were quick and simple.   Exactly what I wanted to see from the Kore system to keep dice rolling to minimum even when it is necessary.  Just under 80% of combats will require four rounds are less.

Hero Testing

The last test I’ve run to date was to evaluate how the heroes of the game (PCs) would fare against the mortals over the world (general NPCs or Commoners).  To accomplish this, I started each combat cycle with a base attribute points of 20 + D15().   I then added an additional D10 worth of attribute points to the hero and deducted D10 points from the commoner giving a potential spread of 20 attribute points.  Finally, I pushed this through 100 million iterations.

The attribute distribtion was:

        Str,   Dex,   Con,   Int,   Wis,   Pre
Winner: 5.240, 5.451, 5.284, 5.198, 5.192, 5.191
Loser : 3.759, 3.548, 3.716, 3.802, 3.806, 3.808
Average Number of Rounds = 2.097.  Max Rounds = 52

Combat duration distribution was:
  1,   39416322,    39.416%
  2,   32914624,    32.915%
  3,   15747047,    15.747%
  4,    6760992,     6.761%
  5,    2862182,     2.862%
  6,    1244516,     1.245%
  7,     551037,     0.551%
  8,     253844,     0.254%
  9,     121660,     0.122%
 10,      60518,     0.061%

Again, the system provided the desired result - Hero’s winning and winning quickly over the general people.

My compliments to Kevin for getting the system to this state and establishing balance.   Also, my thanks for being interested in these results and asking me to guest publish on his blog.

While not exactly what I anticipated, and a bit surprising to boot, the March get-together was a fantastic success in my book. Four games were played, of which I ran 2, we traded some secrets to theme and pacing, everyone seemed to have a good time, we covered the gambit of genres, and we all talked about doing it again next year.

Game #1 consisted of an old-school Boot Hill game run by Mark in which we were aboard a Kansas train that got robbed. Awesome fun combined with deadly Boot Hill mechanics. I’ll scan in and post my character “Three Finger Jim” soon.

Game #2 was the suspenseful and deadly, “You’re All Going to Die” run by me. Characters were assigned by random selection of Pinochle cards. The players took on the roles of B-movie victims in a no-win situation. I can’t say enough how much fun it was to run this scenario. So much so that I’m going to do this again next year… I mean who can’t come up with a slasher setting to put high school students into?

Game #3 was a 3rd Edition D&D game run by Luke. Let me tell you, we were seriously outmatched. And yet it was still a blast to try to pit our collective wits against his dragons and that dracolich… that’s right, dracolich. Luke always did have a nack for bringing out the big guns. And these guns were beyond compare.

Game #4 was a KORE quick and dirty mash-up Superhero game. Lots of fun until the end when I couldn’t find any way of ending the thing nicely after being outwitted by the 3 players. Someone inform me how to make a good ending of a summoning that has the summoner sent into low Earth orbit, the sacrifice snatched away and sent to the hospital, and the summoning locale buried under a metric ton of steel and iron… The best parts of the game were in using a technique of throwing a fight at the players every time they got stumped.

All in all a great success. I learned a lot and am looking forward to next year’s Convergence.

So I had this idea of how to quickly assign generic teenager roles to players by using a Pinochle deck. Basically have the players each draw a single card from the deck with results determined as follows:

Spades - Fighters and physical peeps
9 - Freshman squad member
10 - Sophmore squad member
J - Junior squad member
Q - Senior Head Cheerleader
K - Senior Squad Quarterback
A - Perform any Physical feat once perfectly

Diamonds - Money peeps
9 - Freshman
10 - Sophmore
J - Junior
Q - Miss Money
K - Mr. Perfect
A - Perform any item/cash related feat once perfectly

Clubs - Partiers
9 - Freshman
10 - Sophmore
J - Junior
Q - Queen of Raves
K - Party Animal
A - Perform any stamina related feat once perfectly

Hearts - Influence peeps
9 - Freshman
10 - Sophmore
J - Junior
Q - Senior Class Homecoming Queen
K - Senior Class President
A - Perform any influence feat perfectly once

Note that if a player draws an Ace, that player draws again while still keeping an “Ace up his/her sleeve” to perform a single action from that suit perfectly. Also note that the frosh, soph, and junior roles are left open-ended for the player to define.

Well, that’s my idea.

In light of my desire to try this: You’re all going to die.

I’ve decided that for the March trip, I’ll be bringing each player a small flashlight. When we play “those meddling kids” I’ll turn off the lights and require that everyone play by flashlight. If your character dies, you must turn off your light.

Has anyone done anything like this? Does anyone have any advice? It’s kind of Survivor-esque, which (thought a cheesy show) is the “pick ‘em off one by one” feel I want to capture. I’m hoping to tone the game very Call of Cthulhu-esque without making the spiral to madness and oblivion so pervasive.

You’re going to die… and you know it. So make it the best death possible and you’ll be rewarded…

The players begin by making characters to investigate how a group of “meddling” teenagers got access to some top secret facility and let out some horrors from the depths. Don’t let them finish the characters, just get the baselines set.

Then have the players put those character aside and select a character from a group of pre-generated “meddlers.”

The trick is this: The players know that these new characters have to either die or go permanently insane/incapaciated in the initial scenes. The better the player integrates the meddler into the scene and the more spectacular the death/end result of the character, the more points they get to finish their first character.

Basically it’s a nod to letting the players experience the life of a B-movie ”Don’t go downstairs!” role. Let the players explore something Call of Cthulu-esque without the need for the grim horror of constant pre-ordained bleakness.

This is going to be a bit jumbled I’m sure, so bear with me as I try to codify the setting…

With a heavy nod to Lovecraft and keeping in mind that the strangeness of our world is a nod to things from beyond the veil we basically add:

• Beginning with
  http://www.rpg.net/columns/wushuskidoo/wushuskidoo8.phtml
• Mix in a little Aliens and Resident Evil a la:
  http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=391379&page=1

and mix thoroughly.

Froth until you have a situation wherein mankind has found a means of traversing into an alternate dimension where the entire space is one big underwater region. As far as can be ascertained, while there’s a “floor” like a seabed, there is no “surface” to the “water.”

The “water” is filled with complex nanofauna that are psychically charged. They allow desire and imagination to be “realized” with tangable results. Yep boys and girls, magic is possible if you can make the nanofauna work to your benefit. Of course this is a total hack job of the mediclorians from Star Wars, but oh well, we’ll just go with it.

It’s here that those strange pseudo-scientific and mythological things dealing with water merge with our own collective consciousness and are reality. It’s here that Atlantis resides. Here the lost items from the Bermuda Triangle have found their final rest. It’s here that the Deep Ones/Fish-men/Creatures from the Black Lagoon live. Here the Greys from space really come from - they’re reptillian humanoid invaders. Creatures from our collective subconscious lurk here - evil and ancient. It’s here that we’re off our footing at the top of the ecosphere.

And the inhabitants are hostile - extreemly hostile to humans. And they’ve got the edge on us. They’ve got magic beyond our ken, and technology that surpasses our own. You see, some have the edge too well.

The humanoid alien entities that exist in the region are:

• The Deep Ones. They’re the fish-men of old. They’re evil and ancient. They’re the “humans” of the world. And they’ve mastered the manipulation of the nanofauna. While not the apex predators of every region, they’re the generalists of the dimension. They worship a hideous female queen entity who can cause madness with a gaze and her massive male consort Dagon. They can perform great feats with a thought, but they’ve got limited tech. And they’re in a struggle against the newcomers of the realm - the Greys.
• The Greys are a reptillian race from another dimension. They are technologically advanced consumers and conquerers. Their tech is greater than our own, far enough to seem implausable at first glance, but experts can nearly grasp how a jump from “our knowledge” to “their understanding” is feasable - almost but not quite; like nearly seeing the solution to a problem, but it fading away when you try to implement it. Somehow they found their way to this world and have been in a constant struggle against the Deep Ones. This cold war is in a state of stalemate since the tech of the Greys is equally matched with the magic of the Deep Ones. Neither side understands the tool of the other, and so the stalemate is complete.
  During the test of a new weapon, the Greys have discovered that they are capable of creating rifts into our world. The first of these tests was the Tunguska Event. What followed was a series of events:

1. The Tunguska Event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
2. The Cando Event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cando_event
3. The Eastern Mediterranean event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Mediterranean_Event
4. The Vitim Event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitim_event
   
   Leading to their direct incursion at Roswell. Fortunately for us, the Greys assumed that our world was covered with water too. And as a result the ship they sent (and all subsequent ships) crashed immediately. But it’s only a matter of time before they realize their mistakes or get lucky and send a weapon test into a major metropolitan center.

• The Squidheads  - they eat your brains and steal your thoughts. They’re humanoid/cephalopoids with a taste for brains. The real danger of a squidhead is that when it eats your brains, it gains all your memories - forever. Think little Cthulhu brain eater.

Of course there are more dangerous, apex predators in the region too. Things like the Abeloth; slug-like octopi, who have similar abilites to the squidheads; their mucus shuts down humanoid brains and creates a hive-like collective with the Abeloth as the center. All knowledge and memories are shared so long as the link remains. But unlike the squidheads, once the link is severed, those memories disappear from the collective. Or the spider-like crab things that scavenge the depths looking for a tender morsel to entrap and consume.

That’s enough riffing for now, more to come.