1KM1KT Free RPG Community

I've been reading through a large, soon to be free/"pay what you want", fantasy RPG with an intention to review. There were a couple of rather cool setting choices that the author made that I felt did not fit with the system. The problem is that the system and setting have to mesh. The system must feel like the setting. It is not enough for them to be "just compatible".

The author said it was OK for me to put my thoughts here so that they can be discussed but I'll keep as much of the specifics obfuscated so that the mighty power of Google and 1KM1KT don't nail his game to the wall. He doesn't see these problems as problems, so we're not exactly seeing eye to eye on this. I'll try to be fair so that we can all learn!

The author explained that the setting had grown over time but the system that had grown with it was awful. It's been playtested for a couple of years. He also said that he's not 100% sure that the setting idea was entirely his own, he just can't remember inspiration sources.

The setting (rather cool idea)
Pretty much stock fantasy except:
1. Everyone, even peasants, can do very low level magic - lighting fires, drying clothes, holding up carts to repair wheels etc.
2. Lords and nobles are kept in check because lots of peasant magic joined together is very powerful (this I like lots).
3. At the most basic level you can only do one spell a day. You don't have to pre-learn, it can be off-the-cuff but only one chance.

The system
The whole system is Attribute + Skill + D6 vs target number. Magic is no different. I'm happy with that. Spells are cast by muttering a simple incantation.

The problem
The problem comes in with peasant stats. All the stats and skills for PCs begin at 1. All peasants have 1 for all attributes and 0 for all skills. The target number for mundane stuff is 7. So a peasant has to roll a 6 to do even mundane stuff. That's a 17% chance of success. Or, 83% of the time you fail. If you failed to light the fire 83% of the time, you'd get so good at lighting it with flint and tinder, you probably wouldn't bother using magic. It's not magic for the masses if you fail most of the time.

Fixing it?
There's a bunch of ways to fix it. Including: rebalancing peasant stats; allowing people to have a pool of spell points, which grows with age (old peasants set fires after a few tries). I am sure there are loads more. The author was reticent to fix the problem because he didn't think it was really an issue and the amount of work required editing what was quite a large rulebook (100+ pages).

Playtesting, trust and player groups
My player group are pretty forgiving. If we weren't playing RPGs, we'd be down the pub. Player groups at conventions are pretty forgiving too (in my limited UK experience). People just want to have fun! Asking a GM and player group to invest lots of time in a game is a big deal, one I take very seriously. The trust the player group has in your work is touching. Whe the player group discover the massive hole, it is jarring and breaks that trust. It also looks like the game has not been tested at all, which in this case certainly wasn't it. I imagine the author's player group didn't dig deep enough because that's not why they game together.

Would my group be any different? Would yours? I think there is a limit to the valuable feedback that your player group can give because of the bond of trust and friendship that has been forged over the years.

Solving these problems is hard
It is difficult to gauge whether a design decision will matter to a third party player group. Getting an opinion from a third party will help; a playtest is much better. If I could spot it during a read through, then a bunch of level one player characters will certainly spot it when they try and light a fire to keep the wolves away one night. It's polite to listen to the feedback but you don't always have to apply it.

Think of a family though. Especially a large one. Someone could get the fire going. Especially if having more than one person trying reduced the difficulty. (This would tie into the idea that large numbers of peasants are a threat.)

The problem is that the author doesn't seem to want to change it from what you've wrote. Either he (assuming it's a he, which is unfair of me but it's late and I'm tired) cares about it or doesn't.

There's a difference between an author that's just tired of juggling the complexity of a game and someone who's just jumping in. Ideally the author would just pick a good suggestion and run with it. However, there's a point where you have to stop taking suggestions to get anything done.

There's also a difference between an author that hasn't honed a game over and over again and one that has. Some of us here (looking at you Rob!*) have exhaustively retooled games and wished we could have just produced the latest version from the start. We desire and want to jump on crowd sourcing. Feedback is addictive after a while, but not at first.

Maybe he'll fix it in the second edition.

*Yeah, me too.

You raise a fair point. We (Monkeys) tend to care much more for the games we create but that doesn't count for all authors. Rather cynically, I imagine some upload incomplete half-games to DriveThruRPG as Pay What You Want in a hope to drive some cash. Given the hits the Free RPG Blog gets, I imagine that it's seen as just another marketing channel. It's important to remember that we're not all fanatical!

My first question would be, what duress makes someone roll?

As sadly illustrated by the and Fires, panicked mobs can and will forget how to use doors properly. There is a law in the US about how exit doors in public spaces must have push-bars and open outwards, to mitigate these effects.

If I was a peasant who saw a roaring troll or a knight charging upon me for the first time - I'd have a hard time keeping my trousers clean, much less remembering incantations.

On the other hand, if this was expected at all times, it would be a bit odd.

Some of us may remember the old calculations that proved a house cat had a 60% or more chance of killing a first level magic user in a fair fight according to the figures published in AD&D. Bystanders can't do much in a superhero game, but that is because they are not superheros! Are the members of the group always peasants? This oddly low chance might not mean much to the players

Asking for a perfect simulation of reality is a bit much - what we want is a facsimile that lets us do interesting things.

In D&B a person with a shotgun and only one die in ranged does less damage than a martial artist with four die and their bare hands (ignoring armor for the moment). However, I think this is OK, since it means that skill matters and its less a search for the weapon with the most bonuses, and more what fits your character.

I have been trying to be more flexible as time goes on, but I do prefer to stick to the rules as written, so this sort of thing would annoy me and my group.

I think a lower target number might help. If it is easy mundane stuff that everyone can do it should have a value of about 3. If it is something that requires a skill the number should be higher. Failing to use magic to make fire might be ok but it seems the peasant would even fail using flint and tinder.

We can all see how to fix the problems in a second. The bigger problem is that system and setting need to be meshed tightly and THAT is quite difficult to achieve.

I would rather like to have some kind of steps or guidance to help authors mesh their system together but every time I try and write down some sort of a process, it comes off far too specific to the genre or type of system.

Can you fine monkeys think of a way of getting a system and setting to mesh?

When designing system and setting, I typically approach setting as being a simulation, but not in the traditional way.

For example, the analogy I use is the digital military simulator Arma. It has a few things, like simplified helicopter flight and crosshairs, that people typically say are "anti-simulation" (and, to be fair, there are now rules to disable both of those on a per-server basis), but I think that they actually facilitate the simulation because in reality you're not going to see a professional soldier do Rambo hip-firing or watch a trained pilot totally ignore basic precepts of flight.

In short, I go for the lightest simulation possible, looking at the desired outcome in abstract terms. Rather than worrying whether people get shot in the leg or the arm, I look to see if they're incapacitated in combat.

For settings, this means that if you have a bunch of people who can use magic, but usually won't, then I'm fine with a dismal success chance on magic because they won't think to use it either because it doesn't cross their mind or because they lack confidence to even make the attempt.

Another thing I look at is the genre of the setting. I have no qualms with the fact that Orchestra characters often do things they shouldn't be able to because it falls into a heroic scale. If peasants only get a 17% chance to succeed on a thing they should do commonly, they may just be able to attempt the magic over and over until they succeed. So, for instance, one spell per day means one successful spell per day if you're looking at mundane things, and if a failure means you'd normally lose the magic then you just hand-wave it by saying that you're using so little energy on the fire that it only exerts you if you succeed.

This is the point where game design becomes more art than science.

Maybe you want the game to be about assistant pig keepers/naive moisture farmers/relocated British children thrust into a new world. A high failure chance using the most direct approach would be applicable.(though creative solutions or using the environment should allow them to do more.) If they are superheroes in training, then the success chance even for a beginner could go above what is possible for a mere mortal.

We could shoot for a guideline about rough percentages - less than one in three tends to end up kind of frustrating, while if the chance is better than nine in ten - why bother rolling? If the percentages must remain low, suggest some other mechanic or lee-way built into the system. (Ie high-HP pools means one bad roll in combat isn't death, or lucidity points can be spend for extra dice...)

It would also help if the designer provided an introduction explaining what kind of adventures or stories they expect to take place in their game. D&D is meant to be starting weak and becoming an epic hero, while Warhammer Fantasy is about the struggle to stay alive in "medieval Call of Cthlulu" and Exalted starts with the characters as Minor deities.

Be aware of the story you want to tell, and of what you can tell. Palladium's Rifts demonstrates a system that was meant for fantasy (and would be decent at it) pushed beyond all limits to include tanks, technology, superheroes, martial arts, the kitchen sink, space combat - until it is just a mess.

Finally, keep in mind that the setting and the story are related, but not the same thing. Mechanics are in some ways, the bridge between them.

Availability of materials assistance and equipment is an oft overlooked tool for tuning the feel of the game.

Scarcity breeds the feeling that the setting is against the PCs. Abundance means that the setting is the PC's ally.

The GM is often given tools that will trip up the players when it comes to asking for help. What would it do to a game to have a group of NPCs that were guaranteed to help them?

I've written a bunch on how to use language barriers to create a foreign or alien feel to a setting. Getting this across to the GM is sometimes difficult though who tend to want to use language barriers to say "no" and make the PCs the butt of jokes.

The speed of a character's advancement alters how a PC ranks in the world. Either they're an average person, slowly getting better, or they're wunderkind destined for great things.

Is the only thing that challenges the PCs fire and steel? Mortals are often challenged by more mundane things. Are the PCs mortal or are they superhuman? HP may not be enough to show threat if the players are supposed to be human (and not superhuman). You may need some less deadly system of taking out a character.