Planned Systems vs. DIY Systems

Some pen-and-paper games lay out everything for you and make your choices for your character as you level. You get a level, and the system says you get X and Y powers, ability scores, and hits. These are planned systems, and some good examples of them are:

• d20, Pathfinder, and D&D
• Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord
• Fantasy Age and Dragon Age
• Most class-based systems
• Most MMOs

Some pen-and-paper games are DIY (do it yourself) games, and often these give you a number of "character development points" to use anyway you would like to improve your character. Some examples of this type of game include:

• Savage Worlds
• Legend and Runequest
• GURPS and Champions
• Mongoose's Traveller
• Star Frontiers and many of the TSR Boxed Games
• Most classless systems

And some fall in the middle:

• Fantasy Flight's Star Wars System

Planned systems are great for newcomers, because it is a lot easier to say "you get this and that" when you level instead of spending time sorting through the rules and the book asking the question "is this a good choice" over and over again. Believe us, we have been there, and you practically have to teach every new player the complete set of rules when they first level up with a DIY system. Otherwise, how would they know what is good?

Planned games protect new players from making bad choices, and balance the game based on prebuilt and predictable "endgame" builds.

We prefer DIY systems, because we like making our own choices when we progress characters, and we are more experienced players who know what we want when we build characters. Some planned systems have elements of choice (skill points and multiclassing), but a true DIY system foregoes classes and balances the game around skills and task resolution. Personally, when I level a character, I don't like feeling limited to the choices the game makes for me, especially if that wasn't the direction my character was going in during the last adventure.

If my warlock spent most of the last session socializing and roleplaying, why should he advance in "warlock power" at the end of the night? Shouldn't something reflect his learned ability in socializing and people skills due to this experience?

With a planned system, it is difficult to reflect those experiences and often you end up a better warlock and just as bad as a talker as you started. Warlocks aren't talkers, are they? That's a bard! So do I have to take a bard level now? Great, hand me a lute and paint it black.

With a DIY system, I put some skill points in a social skill reflecting what I did that night, and I am done. How did I get those XPs? Shouldn't those reflect my experiences? My warlock powers don't increase because I didn't use them, but who cares? If this campaign is all about talking, I am all setup for the next game with a little better oratory skills under my belt for next time, and I am happy. If next time we have a swashbuckling adventure I may pick up a sword skill or two.

Does it matter I am not progressing along a game designer's pre-planned class advancement track? Something the company spends countless hours balancing and tweaking to get "one" advancement experience perfect? No, it doesn't. My "advancement track" is the adventures I go on, and if I end up more of a glib, sword swinging practitioner of dark magic than a pure 100% power-level don-nothing-else factory-stamped-out warlock I don't care. My guy is my guy, and the adventures he went on made up the skills and powers he collected along the way.

DIY systems focus on organic advancement and balance the game on skill rolls and task difficulty.

DIY systems don't really have predicable "endgame" character builds, you just become very good at doing the things you do the most. You may end up the world's best talker, but if that is what you enjoy having your character do at the table, that is a good thing since your character advancement reflects what you are doing when you play.

Planned systems also tend to have these "pre-balanced" endgames, where the fighter will always have X attacks at Y to-hit, and be able to do Z damage a turn. Since the game designer "planned" this out, relative character power between classes is easy to calculate, and the "end game" monsters are easier to balance, Well, they should be, but a lot of planned systems typically don't take a lot of factors and exploits into consideration at the higher end (conditions, initiative, and turn denial powers) and things fall out of balance easily.

This is why a lot of competitive multiplayer online games are (or end up being) planned systems. You saw this in World of Warcraft's evolution, a lot of DIY systems were dropped to put characters in predictable, damage-and-healing-output-known envelopes. PVP and PVE balance in these games equals challenge and fun - at the cost of letting you level up your character how you choose to play.

D&D 4 was like this for us, at the high end the game fell apart for us because of the amount of stuns and other powers that rendered foes unable to act during a turn, and also our characters felt like they were getting competitively weaker versus the monsters they faced. The end-game tactics broke down into: go first, deny the enemy his turn, load it up with conditions, and beat on it with "whatever power you have" until it succumbs. The game wanted to be battle chess (which it was for us at low levels), but the high-end game did not work - at least for us.

With a DIY system, the endgame can be calculated if you do a little math, but the end-result is typically a flatter power level. The numbers usually don't get way out of balance, as the system is usually balanced around task resolution. Better skills can lead to a higher DPS and damage output in a DIY system, since you are hitting more and you may have access to special combat moves and abilities you purchased with your points. The Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight does a good job with talents and making those unlock higher levels of combat power, so there can be a calculated "end game build" with a DIY system - it just takes a little more design and forethought.

What character advancement system you like is of course, up to you. There are times when "I don't want to think" and I appreciate the simplicity of a planned system. I still like Fantasy AGE a lot, and I feel it is a great, stepped and balanced design that does a better job at planned advancement than most d20 based games. It is a more modern design with a hybrid "choice plus planned advancement" that I like, and it is a fun and simple model and great for new players. One problem with this model is that if the game designer doesn't think of a role, it is not viable - such as Dragon Age vs. Fantasy Age and the rogue archer issue.

We still like DIY advancement systems for our games, since it fits our play style better. We run wide and diverse games, and they don't always fit into the box of a planned class box that easily. For us, what happens at the table that night is how the characters advance, and if the players want to go sword swinging and combat one night, they can reward themselves with those skills at the end of the night and get a little better. If all we do is roleplay and socialize with NPCs, that is what is rewarded at the end of the night. It fits how we play and gives us a better sense of satisfaction when players figure out rewards, and it also reflects how we play and what happens around our table a little better than a planned system could ever account for.

The Level System

This one started over coffee. DarkgarX mentioned to me that once levels were put into the game, the dynamic of the game changes from story to advancement. The feeling goes from "what am I doing in the game world" to "how can I get points?"

Now, admittedly, this is a pretty negative view of level-based games, but it is an interesting "advancement dynamic" that I am sure is present in all games. Everyone wants to do well, and everyone wants to get levels or skill points in a non-level based system to get rewarded at the end of the night and advance their characters. So this pressure is present in any game system with an advancement system present.

But do levels change things?

Levels, the Elephant in the Room

I always found it funny that levels are the one thing you can't talk about in-game in-character, yet in D&D they control everything, from character power to spells to monster hit dice. My Pathfinder world design, Realms of Proteus, tries to do away with that and allows in-game characters to speak freely of their level and stats, so there is a fun bit of power and meta gaming going on there, but for the most part we use euphemisms, "seasons" or some other sort of relative explanation of power and strength.

But do levels change things? Is the primary focus on hit-points and levels a factor in making the game more mathematical and cut-throat?

In a pure story-based game, you have this outward focus on how your character fits into the current story and overall game world. Your stats can be increased, and the focus of improvement is to allow your character to better be able to influence the story. A higher persuasion skill lets you persuade more NPCs, and thus your influence over that story grows. You can think of story based games as a fight to control the ever-shifting narrative between the players and the referee-controlled NPCs.

Levels. Hit dice. Tactical combat. Damage per turn. Whiff rate. Condition spells. Attacks of opportunity. Advantage and disadvantage. Here we go with traditional D&D style level based games, and a whole host of hard mathematical statistics comes into play. Not only do you have to be good at controlling the narrative, you have to be able to know how this hard math works, and master the combat rules. Levels make this easier, but also complicate things as you go up.

Levels vs. Narrative

Do levels fight the narrative push and pull? They certainly distract from it a bit, because all of a sudden you are not purely worried about narrative influence, to do good and control the narrative, you need to master the combat system too. You need levels to get better at this system, because roleplaying matters little in raising combat power. You need XP to get better, and you need to defeatefoes and solve problems.

Note how D&D type games lump problem solving and combat in the same pile of XP. If you solve problems with roleplaying and get XP, you get better at controlling the narrative (roleplaying skills), but you also get better in combat. You could have a 20th level character who just got roleplaying XP in their career and never touched a weapon, yet this person would be a better fighter than 99% of the people on the planet. You could have the inverse, a combat-only barbarian who never spoke a word being a diplomatic master negotiator at the narrative-influencing social skills just because of their level.

I think it is this connection between the ability for a high-level character to influence the narrative and the "let's have combat for XP" part of the game that troubles me. In a purely story-driven narrative game without levels, all you are doing with advancement is ticking up the skills you want. If you just want to be a talker, all you buy are social skills. If you just want to be a fighter, you work on fighting skills. Levels remove that granularity and ability to specialize, now yes, there are more social style classes in the D&D style games, like bard or thief, but those classes typically force you into a skill-monkey role and take away your ability to excel at combat.

D&D's classes make those choices for you.

You want to fight? Be a fighter! You want to be a fighter who excels at narrative control and social situations? You are out of luck, roll a rogue or a bard. Yes, as a fighter you can put skill points and feats towards social abilities, but typically (Pathfinder is a good example), the more skill-point heavy and social-focused classes are going to have an easier time of buying these feats and skills.

In D&D, King Arthur is King Arthur because he can kill very well, not because he has the skills and social power over the kingdom's narrative that a king should have. There's a disconnect there, and a simplification that I feel makes pure-story based games focused on the narrative a better choice for pure roleplayers than D&D style games.

Levels vs. Storytelling

I have had pure roleplayers at my table who played D&D 3-5 because that's what our group played. I always felt bad for them because they could care less about this mess of combat rules and gaining levels, and they just wanted to have fun. We did a good job accommodating them, but the game we played (D&D 4) required an attention to builds and rules that I felt turned them off to the whole game. We had some that loved the battle chess aspect, and we still like this part of the game, but the combat and level rules felt like an artificial limitation put over the game for players who were more interested in narrative control than "kill for treasure and XP."

If your players are more concerned with mathematical concerns and tactical battles, D&D works better, and I will go as far to say that D&D 4 works the best for players who want a Warhammer style figure tactical combat experience. D&D 5 tries to bring the story back to the table, yet it still has the baggage of a tactical game based on resource management, and a level system that connects narrative control and combat ability into one lump sum of XP. D&D style systems also pre-choose your character's lifetime ability to perform narrative control and combat contributions from game #1 with your choice of class.

Yes, you can switch careers and multiclass in mid-stream, but King Arthur is not a bard nor a rogue.

Answers?

I don't feel there is a good answer for this in the modern D&D style games. Again, we are hit with the abstraction of the class and combat systems, and this limits our choices. Of course fighters are the ones with the swords that never think their way out of a situation. The game assumes "fighters fight" and gimps their skills and gives them the best damage output and choices in swinging swords. I would love to see a D&D system "off the rails" that let people be people, reward skills used, and got rid of the abstract class and level system entirely.

Yes, Legend, Runequest, and other games do this, and they do it well.

There is a choice here of how much control you feel you should have (as a player) over your control over what happens at the table. If I choose to be a social character, I don't want my choices limited to, "well, pick a social class and suck at combat for as long as you have that character." If for a couple sessions I want to improve combat skills, let me improve combat skills. If for some others, I want to be the master of parlay, let me do that and improve my social prowess.

This is not about being a "fan" of a game, I collect them all and love reading them, so count me in as a fan for them all, as my shelves will attest. What this is about is taking a look inside yourself and asking, "am I getting rewarded for the things I want to do at the table?" Does a game force you into a role that later on you may regret or limit your contributions? Yes, a good referee can adjust things and give chances for everyone to have fun, but if your game takes a turn for the political, can your combat-focused character adapt?

It is again about understanding what each game does best, and finding games that fit your view of gaming and how your contributions are rewarded. We have moved beyond the "network effect" where every game has to be a modern version of D&D, and we are moving into an era where games are designed around a almost niche "way it plays" and the reward and contribution systems are designed to fit that game. You see this in videogaming with indie gaming. The big-box games are always there like the Call of Duties and D&D games, but a huge market is developing for custom and unique experiences that are off the level system tracks and as diverse as the players in our hobby.

Playtest Report: Fantasy Age

Fantasy Age is an interesting game. It is sort of a spiritual successor to True 20, minus the d20 and many of the fiddly d20-ish based rules. We sat down and playtested the game the other night, and these are our first impressions.

3d6 Fantasy is Fun!

It has been a while since we used a 3d6 system for fantasy (since SBRPG 1.0), and it was cool. I loved the break from a d20, and getting a bell-curve back made modifiers meaningful again. There is a big difference between a +1 and a +3 with 3d6 versus 1d20, and it felt good.

v1.0 Skills

Why are separate "search" and "sight" skills needed? Where is the survival skill? We ran into a bunch of problems with skills, and players started attempting actions the skill system was unclear about or did not have the skills to cover.

Also, the regularity with with stunt rolls came up forced us to the stunt tables with a pretty regular frequency, and players started dreading rolls with stunts because nobody wanted to reference the book. We adopted a system where if you rolled doubles "something good happened as determined by the referee" and we ignored the stunt die's magnitude. It was a patch and ignored one of the game's key mechanics, but it sped up play and kept players from searching the tables and trying to invent something cool happening after the fact.

Three Main Classes

We didn't mind having three main classes that could specialize into different areas. It felt like a good balance or fighter, mage, and rogue with mages being able to fill in for a dedicated priest class with a healing specialization. I don't mind this sort of structure in a world where this is the norm, and it worked for us.

We wanted some sort of official world (other than Dragon Age) that supported this three class structure. It is different enough from Dragon Age to support a unique world, though making one wasn't a part of our playtest (nor did we want to check out the worldbook mentioned in the rulebook).

Four Spells per School?

While I like magic to be meaningful and not take over the game, only having three mastery levels and four spells per school felt really thin. Mages get two schools (start with four) and they can get new schools and spells as they level, but four spells under fire and the other various masteries felt like mages couldn't really do too much with spells and magic. We want more spells, deeper schools, and more stuff for mages to do.

It hurts, because this is one of the big things we felt would hurt the long-term interest in the game for us. A game like Pathfinder gives you a reason to stick around and play with spells and magic until you just don't want to read anymore. This is admittedly a more simple game, but we felt the lack of the high end magic options and selection would keep us interested at the lower levels and not the higher ones. yes, the classes have build options and choices at every level ,but there is something to be said for a great spell selection as well.

Action!

The game worked well in play, although 3d6 per combatant initiative dragged down the start of combat. There is something to be said for one-die-per-combatant initiative, because before you know it, with just 10 people in the battle, you are rolling 30d6 just to figure out who goes first.

Stunting dragged combat down, but other than that, the system worked. We enjoyed some of the options that classes gave at level one, but we didn't get a chance to level up before the night ended, so we need to keep testing to get a feel for levels and powers as you advance.

We liked the simple combats, but we felt the gravitic and realistic pull of Legend hovering over us. The games are enough alike. Once you experience Legend in its brutal and visceral glory, it is hard to want to play a simple game with stunts like this and not compare the two. This is more lighthearted, fast and easy adventure more aimed at a audience looking for a simple and quick game. We also thought of Savage Worlds when we played, and how that game has the same sort of adventure and simple system feel.

It is faster and easier to learn than D&D 5 or Pathfinder however, and it does get the job done for fantasy roleplaying.

What Would Hurt This?

For us, what would hurt this becoming a go-to game for us is the lack of character options, spells, and magic items. It is a simple-enough system, but the game feels like a really basic fantasy game that doesn't have a really great depth of options for supporting long term play. As a pick-up-and-play game, it is great and good for groups new to roleplaying and fantasy gaming. It does share some of the 'shallow class options' problems that D&D 5 has, but this is a lot more straightforward that D&D 5, so it feels like a better fit for new gamers or those looking to simplify.

This was a game I wanted to like and had higher hopes for, especially since it will be used for the Blue Rose reboot coming next year. I have a slight bit of remorse, but I am hoping to houserule that away and then convince others the changes are needed. With roleplaying, anything can be fixed, the work comes when you try to convince others that these things need fixing. Some games are more difficult than others to houserule, since there is a lot of 'by the book' play and fandom out there in tabletop gaming. Stunting would be one I house-rule, as we shall see.

Stunted Post-Roll Stunting

I like Legend's take on post roll stunting, but Fantasy Age's implementation leaves something to be desired. Let's begin by describing post-roll stunting.

With post-roll stunting, after you roll if you roll good enough, you get to perform a special stunt based on the roll's result. This is something like do extra damage, push an opponent, stun them, or do some other cool extra special effect.

In Fantasy Age, stunting is done through rolling doubles on any of the dice, and the magnitude is determined by the random result of the "stunt die." You don't really announce your cool stunt before you roll, you announce an attack, roll, and then if the dice come up doubles, you then describe your stunt.

With Legend, it works like this, at least for us. With Legend you start with a base percentage to-hit. You describe your stunt to the referee before you roll, and the referee modifies your chance to-hit. You roll the dice, and your opponent may make a defensive roll. The difference in success level of the roll (success vs. success, success vs. failure, crits vs. failure) determines the power of the stunt. Now, if you are being really cool and swing across the pirate ship on a rope to deliver a kick to the Pirate King, the referee will likely reward you with a +10 or +20% chance to-hit, which will raise the chance to stunt and likely the level of stunting success. If you just succeed normally, no stunt happens, but you still connect and do some damage. Otherwise, it is obvious what happens, and the Pirate King goes flying.

In short, what you do before you roll matters. Players push it and try crazy things to get roleplaying bonuses. Those bonuses matter and increase the chance for something cool to happen.

What you put in increases the chances for cool stuff to happen.

Fantasy Age takes the English out of the stunt attempt, and does not really allow a player to pre-declare a stunt. Sure, you could give the rope-swinging player a +3 to-hit in Fantasy Age, but that does not affect the chance for the stunt to happen, nor does it affect the magnitude. When it happens is random, and what happens is point-bought off a Chinese menu of effects, further slowing play down. With Legend, there is still a list of effects to choose from, but they are simple and what you want to do is usually one or two of the picks from the list. It is a simpler system, and it does not force you to the charts every time you stunt.

In short, roleplaying bonuses do not contribute to post-roll stunting. Stunting happens at random. You are not encouraged to do cool stuff before the roll (only to-hits), and the cool stuff happens at random.

What you put in only increases your success chance, and not the cool things.

The Sample Adventure

We didn't enjoy the sample adventure as much as we would have liked. It was a Hunger Games style sort of 'young adults on an isle of mystery' sort of thing, and it made some balance and motivational missteps that we struggled with. There didn't seem to be a great motivation other than 'sit out the night' and when the fun started, the fight was with a magic creature that couldn't be hit by normal weapons. Guess what most starting characters start with? You got it. There was a stunt (costing 3 stunt points) that allowed you to 'hit' this incorporeal shadow creature, but it took a lore roll (thank you, smart players) to figure out. I don't think an average group would have had an easy time with this, so it came off poorly for us.

There was no real motivation to get out and explore the island, so the NPCs went off like lemmings to explore while the PCs built camp for the night. Trouble happened, they handled it, and a ghost appeared with part two of the mission - kill five other spirits. Five is a lot, especially without magic weapons, but a quick temporary enchant by the ghost solved that in sort of a 'make things easy' way. It wasn't rewarding or really cool, so we have a group now with depleted resources and health going down to take out five other ghosts they really are going to have problems with. Three felt like a good number and would have been a great challenge without wearing out its welcome, but we are now stuck with taking out five ghosts by sun-up or it is the end of the world.

The sample adventure also had a lot of fluff text describing things that we would have never encountered, and lots of little irrelevant detail on the valley that we found a bit on the fluff side. Yes, this sort of detail is good to know if you are planning a campaign here, but the 'walled valley' wasn't interesting enough for us to want to, so we would have rather had more adventure and a little less background trivia.

We also wanted a more classic style of adventure, with some rescue the princess, swing from the chandelier, and smash the orcs stuff going on. You know, a basic game needs a good basic adventure with some meat-and-potatoes fun to it. We also compared this to the Star Wars Beginner Sets' adventures, and would have loved for a tutorial to have been written into the encounters.

Character Sheets Needed

We didn't find the printable character sheets all that useful, and we wanted dedicated places for all the different aspects to a character. This kinda got in the way as we designed characters, and we wanted a sample filled-out character sheet in the book to crib from on what goes where.

Immediately we wanted to make our own character sheets.

Other Bits

There are enough monsters to have fun with, and the equipment selection is good and fits the needs of characters. I wanted more in the way of magic and magic items, and we also wanted some great survival rules. A couple more level-up options would have been cool as well.

There are no paladin options, but you can buy an expansion PDF with these and other builds. My feeling? Make it all fit withing the three class system, and put those options in a basic fantasy style game at the start. There was a chance here to break from the traditional Dragon Age style of game, and it did not feel they went far enough to support some of the non-Dragon Age standards, such as paladins, druids, bards, warlocks, and others. These classes would have complicated the basic three classes in options and rules, but I feel they would have provided a great break from Dragon Age's feeling and catered more to the MMO and D&D crowds.

More to Come, I Hope

Fantasy Age is a fun game and we like it, it just has some v1.0 feeling issues and a lack of options to make this a go-to system for us. I am hoping we get to finish the adventure, perhaps I will level up the characters pretty quickly to keep things going and players coming back. The game needs a worldbook and an expansion to provide some better options, and the stunting needs to be rethought to provide more of an incentive to say what you are going to try first, and then roll. Stunting after the roll feels like an afterthought, and it plays like one too.

I want the players to be pushing me for bonuses, trying silly stunts, and taking chances and rolling the dice to see what happens after the dice are thrown. Getting a stunt when you didn't even want it feels very strange and backwards to us, and that forced to stop play and sift through charts asking, "Well, what can he or she do?"

I like the system though, it is 3d6 and simple. It gets play started quickly. It creates interesting characters. It levels up nicely. It is straightforward and focuses on action and story. It is a strong system, but we feel it has a couple issues that a second version needs to work out. Hopefully by the time Blue Rose rolls around, some of the depth and other sticky issues will be worked on and the game shines as much as it deserves to.

A great simple system, it is just a little sticky and underdeveloped in some areas. I have high hopes for this one, but I want to see more. I also want to see an open license so some of the rough spots could be filled in by the community and others. But overall, a great beer-and-pretzels RPG wthat is simple enough to grasp the basic concepts for quickly, and get you adventuring within 10 minutes of prep. Not bad, and a fun one I look forward to seeing more games from.

Free and Open Means Community

Being a creator, it is difficult to be creative in games which do not have open licenses for third-party content. This was a problem I had with 4th Edition D&D, and it is currently a problem with 5th Edition D&D (though OGL was spoke of by the team, to be fair).

If I build something, naturally I want to share it, for profit or not. I remember TSR AD&D and 2E with the silliness third party publishers (and even individuals) had to go through to make compatible content, and that is a time that is 15 years ago and thankfully over with, for the most part.

And then by some miracle we got the OGL and SRD, and it was mostly a good thing (save for electronic and game publishing). It was great, and the Open Gaming license today survives and thrives with many game, a lot having nothing to do with d20 or D&D. It was a gift that kept giving, and it continues to give today.

I seriously think 5th Edition could have been put out with full OGL and SRD support, just like 3rd Edition and they would have seen the same or even greater success. D&D is what it is, there's no taking that away, and being open and compatible from the start would have just won over many and led the industry again.

I like Legend, and I love the thought at being able to use that system to build an entirely new game from - that is cool. I like Pathfinder and the OGL/SRD, and I can share my ideas and even sell them if people become fans and want to support the idea.

I like the OGL/SRD retro-clones, those are exciting and cool as well.

I love all the games with open licensing, like Traveller and others - these are great developments and gifts to the gaming world.

I want to be someone who does more than buys and plays a game, I want games that I can share my creativity with the world. I'm finding myself drawn to those and playing those more than I do my collection of "play only" games. When you buy an open-license game, you are becoming a part of a community of creators and players - and not just players. I find more and more the community matters, and fostering a large and vibrant creative community is where I like to spend my gaming time.

Pass the Book?

We have both the Legend RPG and the $1 Legend PDF available over at RPGNow. Which one do we use more? I can't say we have even opened the softcover book yet.

The PDF? On my tablet and phone, and each chapter is printed out and stabled together in handy booklets. We could even have more than one copy of the character creation chapter printed out so more than one player can reference it when building characters.

You don't know how nice it is to be able to hand someone the skills chapter, someone else the character creation chapter, and keep the combat and adventuring chapters open to pages and ready for use. It's like someone has revolutionized our gaming experience, and I just can't force myself to go back to the hardcover "single user" soft or hardcover book way of doing things again.

And if the character creation chapter ever gets worn out, ripped, and stained I do not care at all, as I can always print out another copy. That isn't so easy with a $50 hardcover. I also have these on a secure and private little place in cloud storage so I can access them anywhere I go. My D&D 5 books? On my shelf, at home. With a PDF, if I have Internet access and optionally a printer I can play.

I like collecting things, and I like collecting books. I like the feel of them, and I like reading them. As I collect more, it gets harder to justify new ones. And for playing with them? I collect, so I always worry about them getting damaged - and many are. But PDFs? PDFs don't get damaged during play. I can collect a lot more PDFs than I can books. And PDFs are way more useful during play. So much so I find it hard to play games that aren't on PDF.

Now there is a limitation to all this. 1,000+ page games need not apply for my PDF good feelings and excitement, as those are way too huge to print out and own in a usable form with just the PDF. I like short, tight, simple games where more of the rules are in a core 64-128 page form, and easily printable and dividable into sections. I feel PDFs for larger games are only good for reference material or online reading, as printing out the spells of even basic Pathfinder would take reams of paper and be a nightmare to use at the table. Even though I have many Pathfinder PDFs, they are not as useful as PDFs of shorter and simpler games.

So there is a sweet spot for PDF games. Short enough to print out everything and organized enough that dividing the book up makes sense and allows players to pass chapters around as needed. The future isn't the traditional coffee-table RPG book collection for our groups, it is taking the form of a smaller, lighter, and easier to use and play with set of electronic documents that can be used how and in the forms we want to use.

Simplifying

I am in a process of simplifying the number of games I play, and the amount of books I want to play with. Going back in the box are games we never play, and on our shelves will be only the basics.

I mean "just the books you need to play" and nothing more.

Pathfinder is now just the main book and the Bestiary 1, and possibly the Gamemastery Guide. D&D 4 is just the first three books. D&D 5 is just the first three as well. D&D 3.5 is that nice foil-covered collector's set.

Legend is up on the shelf because we like the game, but my PDF printouts are seeing more use than the main book so go figure. Our World of Darkness collection is up there too in its madness and glory, along with Exalted.

The rest of the books? Away from the core books and in another room, but on a shelf in case we need them. I don't want them out, I don't want them creating a wall of "play me" and intimidating us with their weight and presence.

Games have gotten way to fat nowadays, super-sized and written primarily for the collector's market. Who plays these things anyways? Even with the basic three books, many of the big-name fantasy games are pushing 1,000 pages of rules and content, and you wonder where that simple game went, the one we started this hobby with.

Game designers love to hear themselves talk, I guess.

But seriously, simplification is a good thing. Without a ton of books weighing you down, you are free to improvise and use your imagination. That's the point of this hobby, to make stuff up and have fun, no matter what game you play.

I like to collect, but I would never play with my collection - even just a single game. I like simple games, ones where we make up what happens next, and we don't have to navigate down a path of rules, treasure, or options to find something 'legal' and 'by the rules' to add to the night's festivities.

This is why Legend is so interesting for us right now. It is sort of a Traveller take on fantasy, and there isn't much in there. We are free to make most of the stuff up, and we are having a blast. With an active imagination, it is a great little game, and open for many possibilities. I don't want to sort through a thousand pages of monsters, spells, and magic items just to provide a sea of meaningless options to a game we have an idea for and want to keep it focused.

It is pretty hard to focus a D&D game on a single topic, say pirates, because there is so much stuff in the game that says "not pirates" to us. When the Drow crawl out of a cave, wizards start using teleport to skip ahead to the next port, and someone pulls out a flying carpet the players who want the focused pirates-on-the-seven-seas-experience are sitting there saying, "well...yar, I guess." Yes you can focus the game, but then you get into a game of "yes or no" on 95% of the content in the books.

So simplify.

Put away books you bought only to collect.

Focus your fun on the things that you enjoy.

You may find yourself a little happier and actually playing those games on your shelf.

Legend: Play Test Report #2

I love the random tables in this game. It harkens back to an age where roleplaying games were sort of trippy, "what happens next" sort of shared storytelling activities. We were playing around withe the excellent Pirates of Legend supplement and had a unique and entertaining ship journey full of strange encounters with other boats, storms at sea, meetings with rowboats filled with cheap wine, and fun little "the tables did what?" moments that gave us a great time.

Who cares that it didn't make much sense? It was fun.

The book actually tells you to ignore the charts if they ruined your game or didn't make much sense. This gave me the opportunity (like a great game master) to ignore the advice the book gives you and just run with it. If it didn't make sense, all the better. Our game world is now  full of strange little encounters on the open sea, meetings with ships that could possibly be pirates, and other nationalities sailing about and a sense of "what could happen next?" when the players take a trip by ship to anywhere. It was quirky and silly and my players loved it.

The game-mastering section for this game is short and almost inconsequential. This game really needs a better game master guide. It is so short I wonder why it was even put in, I feel this is one of those "if you can't do it correctly, don't do it" type of things.  The game is unique in that it should focus on community, family, and social bonds (and in some way for us it does), but the short section at the end of the book isn't long or detailed enough to drive that point home and show us how it should be played.

We are having more fun with Legend as a "Traveller random chart fantasy adventure" type of game honestly. Contrast this with most adventure modules written for D&D 5 or Pathfinder. They are heavily story-based and expect you to 'play along' with the adventure writer's vision. You get into issues like player motivation, interest in finishing it, and railroading with strict story-based adventures.

With the game run by random event charts, the world feels like a sandbox. My players are motivated enough to find their own way through the world, and they are already taking sides, aligning themselves with factions, making allies and enemies, and planning for the future. With the lack of a story, my players are creating one themselves. Yes, I have great players, but this also highlights that giving players a little freedom lets them do the things that interest them.

If they want to go off and be pirates, go ahead. If they want to go off and hunt pirates, that's fine by me too. Get in good graces with the island governors on the British, Spanish, French, or other sides? You go guys, run with it. I don't have a story to run on you, and you are free to explore this strange and wonderful world as far as your sails will take you.

Legend: Play Test Report #1

We had some fun with the Legend system over the weekend, and I wanted to share our experiences.

The combat system is fun to play and run, it has this 'medieval armor simulation' thing going on, and it also allows for way more player involvement than your standard D&D or Pathfinder combat. It does feel like combat is very old-school with hit locations and sectional hit points, but we were amazed at the constant choices the game gave you when it came to offensive and defensive special moves.

Players had choice in how they wanted a blow to land, or what special way they wanted to put an enemy at a disadvantage. Enemies had this choice as well, which makes the game very deadly and tactical. It all depends on skill and being able to get a roll good enough to start pushing the combat the way you wanted it to go, with the possibility out there of a lucky hit sending your entire plan into the garbage bin.

My players preferred it instantly to D&D and Pathfinder's combat system, and had a lot more fun with it the first couple fights.

I can see this system not surviving players used to D&D on the first night, it is shocking to see your "average Joe" go down in one hit. It is also very satisfying to dispatch an goblin with a bonk to the head with a club, knocking the monster out. It is a system that takes time to learn and get good at, and there is a point where you know how it works but not how to be great in it that could lead you down the path of frustration.

As a simulation-ist combat system, it is a blast and incredibly fun to play and learn. It also is an eye-opener for players used to the "hit it and forget it" style of D&D, where atomic rolls happen and have little lasting impact other than taking the enemy's hit points down by a couple points.

And then we hit a small snag.

We had an issue where a player reported he felt he needed armor to survive, and felt the game forced him down that path. This was a tough one to deal with, because of the simulation-ist nature of the game, of course you need armor. It was true then in combat, and it is true today. But it didn't fit his character concept of an Assassin's Creed style character to start dolling up in plate armor. But this character got taken down in a single blow because he wasn't wearing armor. But isn't that realistic? But is that fun? But that's how this game works, and to be honest, D&D forces you to wear the best armor as well. But I don't like feeling forced to wear plate armor for a game benefit. But soldiers need armor and helmets! But I feel something is wrong, and I am being forced into this. But your character is an average low-level guy. But it still feels wrong.

You can see where this went.

Stealthy lightly-armored assassins are possible in this game, but I got the feeling this type of character only opens up at higher levels of play. You are not going to start out a ninja in this game, and you will be lucky to survive your first encounter with rats. If you are fighting anything intelligent with weapons and smarts, be prepared for a 50-50 fight if you are matched in numbers. This is very much a "medieval weapon simulator" at low levels, and you need to don the ye olde armored vest and helm in order to survive. It feels a lot like Warhammer Fantasy in that regards.

Part of it feels like a collision between not knowing the combat options well enough to be able to survive, and having a lower-level character in play who frankly can't survive being hit with a wet rat on a stick. This is one of those common points when learning a roleplaying game where you understand the dicing and game systems, but not much about how the rules can help you survive. It is that 'deadly phase' where you do all sorts of stupid stuff later on you would laugh at (if you are still playing the game and didn't get discouraged), and this takes real effort to get over and achieve that golden chalice of 'system mastery'.

This is also the time where players flee back to other games and go with what they know and feels right. It is the danger of unfamiliarity, and wanting to play a game that gives that immediate gratification and supports notions of character concepts as seen in video games, TV, and movies. If a game supports the notion of the Assassin's Creed character better and easier (at low level) than this game does, then that game is a better game. Right?

There's a danger in fantasy that caters to fantasy, where the fantasy is so divorced from reality that some player's notion of what's real becomes the fantasy.

For a game that is more focused on delivering a semi-realistic experience such as Legend, it is a problem. Expectations are all out of whack, and players come into the game expecting what they see in video games and in the movies to be the 'game reality'. This applies to in-game choices, such as an expectation of all armor choices to be of equal value, even 'no armor' versus plate. Video games give us this option and put clear benefits behind wearing no armor, such as increased movement, dodge rates, and a package of other benefits making the 'no armor' choice equally attractive when compared to 'full armor'. If it is this way in Call of Duty then it should work the same way in tabletop games, right?

But you get on a real-life IRL battlefield a thousand years ago or today, and the notion of 'no armor' being a equal and valid choice to adequate protection starts to seem pretty silly. Yes, some soldiers are lighter armored than others on every battlefield, but the ones up on the front lines (in every age) typically wore good stuff. To be fair, Legend has some benefits for the 'no armor' choice, but still, armor is generally a good thing to have, and this comes from real life medieval warfare simulation and history.

But it is a fantasy game!

But this game is supposed to be realistic.

But games are supposed to be fun! Realism does not equal fun.

I like realistic combat simulators, in both RPGs and computer games. There is a tactical challenge you are trying to overcome, an impossible world you are trying to survive in, and a set of behaviors you are bleeding through in order to beat the system and come out on top. I am reminded of classic games like X-Com, Jagged Alliance, and others that gave you those tough and deadly choices to make, and many hard lessons to learn. Easier games may give you that 'feels good' easy-mode story and action focused experience with the same weapons and scenarios, but this doesn't 'feel right' to me.

I like story-based and action-based games for lighthearted fun and movie-like entertainment as well. But I like hard-core tactical realism also.

It is a problem I don't feel we are going to get past with this game. I hope we do, because I like the system a lot. I just see other games being easier for players to get their 'expected fantasy experience' from, and Legend becoming an interesting experiment.

Maybe it's me as a referee, maybe I am playing this too hard-core. Maybe I should be fudging dice rolls, or handing out tons of hero points to spend for cinematic action. A hero point can take the place of a helmet in this game, so maybe players should have that many to throw around.

And so it goes. I think the real issue here is my expectations as a referee versus my player's expectations as fantasy gamers.

Review: Legend (Mongoose)

Are you looking for a 100% OGL percentile fantasy system? Are you looking for one where the PDF only costs $1? Do you like the percentile system in games like Runequest or Call of Cthulhu?

Then Legend is worth your time.

It is a remarkable little gem of a game that gives you the best of a Runequest II style rule-set in an OGL package. You can write your own game using these rules if you would like, or come out with a game based on them. The books are digest-sized, which instantly gives them a Traveller sort of feel to me, and the rules are not all that complicated at all.

This sort of OGL effort is what will make our games last forever, and will plant the seeds for generations to come so that they may enjoy the games we did. Like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, Mutant Future, and many others, these games will keep delivering enjoyment forever and will also be opportunities for others to share the creations of their dreams and visions. In an age where companies lock things up and where sharing is rare, having a commitment to OGL at launch is highly laudable and worthy of praise. Mongoose is doing the right thing here.

So what do you get?

You get a basic set of rules covering character creation, combat, spells, and skills all in a tight little package that puts many of today's bloated encyclopedia games to shame. Role-playing does not need to be complicated, and we have a concise set of core rules here that proves it can be done. What do we lose? Options, such as page after page of spell lists and volumes of magic items. I am sure someone in the community has made these by now, and if they haven't, I am free to do this myself and sell them to the community or share them for free. I don't need approval, I just add an OGL on my work and it is legit and ready to distribute.

How soon we forget about the OGL and how cool it was.

I know there is a setting-neutral Runquest 6th Edition out there and I have yet to check that out, but that one is 450+ pages and this one is the smaller of the two. In my feeling, if you are going to go a couple of hundred pages with the Runequest name, I want some world and setting info along with the generic game. Plus I am taking a break from the huge book collection hobby for a while past D&D 5 and Pathfinder's latest releases.

Is it worth playing over D&D 5 or Pathfinder? You will be running straight into that "new game" smell with D&D 5, and Pathfinder is entrenched with its players with a huge buy-in and support. If you have players that like trying new things out, and want a more realistic and gritty combat system with hit locations and fun wounding rules, this is a good place to start. I liked the combat rules here, and they feel realistic without abstract concepts like hit points and armor class. They aren't that difficult either. They may be a little roll and counter happy, but the rolls and calculations are straightforward and on the character sheet.

Legend does gritty fantasy really well. If you are looking for a Game of Thrones style feel where someone can get their lightly-armored leg stuck with a spear and hobble around while making a heroic stand against multiple foes, I feel you will get much better results with Legend than you will either of the D&D style games out there today.

There's no level or class either, and character grow naturally into their roles. This is a plus, as you can be a sword-swinging whoosit for a while, discover an ancient order of sorcerers, and join to start learning magic and become a castit for a while without losing your sword-swinging whoosit abilities. You don't have to suffer with multi-classing or worrying that taking a couple levels of wizard will screw up your final character build. You learn as you go, and your character grows in a natural and organic-feeling way. I like character progression in this game very much.

Legend also does a way better job at tying your character to a background, society, and even family within your game world than other games. This is critical for games where family and faction relations matter. These are instant adventure hooks, and there are plenty of fun rules in this book for cults, factions, and other groups that can either aid or harm the characters (or even join, if you choose). I prefer Legend's more world, occupation, faction, and family based method of story seeding than I do D&D 5's random trait table based method by far.

Monsters are an add-on book, as are some other subject you may want to check out. I kind of like not having an official set of monsters to trow around, or an official set of magic items. In my Legend worlds, players won't know what to expect. The monsters book does have some great "Chaos creature" tables and a list of monster traits that will be useful should you roll your own, so I recommend at least getting that book as well if you are playing more traditional fantasy.

There are add-on books for equipment and pirates (ship combat), and two available for different magic systems. To be fair, once you start buying, the price does go up for all of them, but the basic book is playable enough. Since most every book is OGL the information should be available somewhere in reference format. This reminds me a lot of the way the original Traveller was written, a basic set with everything, and add-on books going into more depth should you want (or need) the material.

Legend also scales well. With a little work, you could use these rules for modern or sci-fi settings without too much work (maybe add a couple skills and pieces of gear). Creating a new game from these rules would not be hard, and guess what? There's a door open to publishing it.

This game is also mostly cross compatible with other Runequest II, BRP, Call of Cthulhu, and any other system developed for a similar system. This is much like the D&D 3.5 OGL, and it is nice to see many games flourishing under a separate but equal banner and similar rule set.

The question to ask yourself is this: can your group play without D&D 5 or Pathfinder? In my experience, it is hard to get a group interested in something that isn't new or popular, so knowing your players and getting them to try something new will be important. Both of the big fantasy games have the advantage of those 'instant familiarity' tropes common to fantasy gaming, and thus are more accessible. If you want to look deeper and have background and character matter more than the same-old class-level-loot combo, then other games are worthy of your attention, including Legend.