The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 5

What was SBRPG an alternative to?

To examine the landscape, you will need to go back to 2005. While GURPS 4 was still a new system back then, we were not directly trying to create a replacement for that. What was on our minds was D&D 3.5E, and SBRPG is a direct replacement for that system.

D&D never changes; the designers always "string you along" with new options and classes, and this is true of any version of D&D they have ever released. You are blowing paycheck after paycheck on new books, more options, and better choices. The more you buy, the worse it gets, and the more unhappy you become.

Eventually, they create a new edition as a soft reset when the sales drag, and sell it all to you again. I have seen seven versions of the Ranger over three editions of Wizards' D&D from 3.0 to 5.5E, with three of them being in 5E.

In the 3.5E days, we knew there had to be universal formulas for things like character development and design, race, and power design, so we set out to create those. You did not need to recognize that endlessly buying books to have a system, such as a system with. You do not need endless "thesaurus classes", the bard, troubador, skald, minstrel, entertainer, and so on. Why?

Is a barbarian a fighter who harnesses rage power and employs a specific fighting style? Tack that on there, adjust your XP per level, and get playing. We don't need a dozen pages of fluff text and class powers for what is essentially a fighter.

You world may not even have "fighters" and you may do something else, like a duelist or pirate. Those aren't rogues. Why do we need to make those subclasses of the thief class? D&D 3.5E, to maintain their "sell you stuff" monetization strategy, constantly forces square pegs into round holes all the time.

Levels define skills. D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e never got that. Why have levels if your skills are not tied to them? Why do I need to spend points on "class skills?" If the stealth skill is a rogue class feature, then what value should a level 6 thief's stealth be rated at? Hello? McFly!

Round peg, yes, round hole.

Level 6, that's right!

It was an abysmal decision for D&D 3.0 and 3.5E to make. How many books did they print with that assumption? And Paizo carried this on to Pathfinder 1e? From D&D 3.0 being released in 2000 to the end of Pathfinder 1 in 2019, we had 20 years of this nonsense.

We liked the idea of classes defining roles and skills, but we didn't like having to constantly buy books, and that pile getting higher and higher. So we wrote a system with class design, and then power design went along with that, since that is typically another thing they hold out on to keep selling you books.

We spent 20 years buying books as well.

GURPS and Champions have power design, but they do not have classes. We liked classes since the original version of SBRPG was designed to play freeform, allowing players to have a "level 5 fighter" with a few ability scores and assume the rest from there. You can play SBRPG that way and have it work fine. You can't play GURPS or Champions by just thinking a level for anything.

SBRPG is so simple that you could play it at lunch with 3d6 and a piece of paper. Even a "level 5 power" inflicts a level 5 hazard, and most spells are easily figured out (1d6L, 2d6C, or 3d6S) per level. Sacrifice a few levels for increased range or additional hazard levels or effects. Simplified, level-based power design is a new system I want to add to the revision.

We had a version of SBRPG that used a d20. We preferred 3d6, and it was a truly universal game where you could find these dice anywhere in the world and play the system easily. Once you get a d20 involved, you need more dice for damage, and things get messy. We put 3d6 on the cover, and that is all you need.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 4

Once I get into "writing games," I don't really want to stop. SBRPG comes first. Then, I can work on other projects. I will avoid the 5E market if I write for different games; if my heart is not in it, why write for that market? I know, "that is what sells," but if my heart is not there, I am not doing it just for the money.

George and I wrote many games. We did this as a hobby. Many of them are stashed in folders and just sitting there.

Looking back, SBRPG was an incredible game. There is nothing else like it, even to this day. It reminds me of classic Traveller in a way, but with 3d6 and a much more flexible resolution system, where hazards (also known as saves) are tied into the core mechanic. It utilizes levels for characters, hazards, and a few other elements, and then transitions to a full-point-buy and design system. Most of the game involves a level plus ability score modifier versus a difficulty, roll, and go mechanic.

There is this unwritten rule in the game where all you have is a pack of five Yahtzee dice, and the whole world is open to you. We designed the game to be played with 3d6 only and used multipliers for higher rolls. Most of the game can be played "in your head," which is nice. Without powers, the game moves at a high rate of speed, and we designed it to be played live at the table.

When we used this system, we never rolled for initiative or did turn structure. Whoever said something next got to do something, and the referee was the final decider of "who goes next." Everyone just shouted what they did, the referee pointed at them, and the player rolled for it. The referee then handled a few monsters and then pointed back at the players, who shouted something else. Everything happened live; we never rolled for initiative, and the referee is smart enough to figure out fairness and pacing.

It was like a demolition derby meets a boxing match, where things happened in real time. It was a thrilling experience, and I refereed those games fairly. Everyone was happy, and no one felt left out. The game is all about energy and momentum. We only put an initiative system in the game because that is what we felt every game needed. In reality, we never did. This "no initiative rule" will likely be included in the remaster.

It is one of the best "theater of the mind" systems ever written.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 3

Why did we abandon SBRPG? The first posts in this blog should offer a clue. We went hardcore D&D 4E. It was a tough time in our lives; our careers were getting off the ground, and we had to rebuild our lives. D&D 4E gave us regular releases to buy, consume, and wait for the next one while we ran our campaign.

It felt good to "check out" and just play another game. We ran SBRPG as our home system from 2005 to 2015, and it served us well during that time. The system was super fast and very theater-of-the-mind friendly. As a referee, I could throw down a bunch of leveled enemies, assume a few ability score modifiers, pick a few designed powers from the list, give them a fighting style, and go.

Many games ran fantasy well, but SBRPG ran everything well. The challenge scaled since enemies scaled in power, you could have a "high-level area" where the monsters were more potent than what you got in a typical bestiary. Even if that jackrabbit has one hit/level, a level 10 jackrabbit is going to have a level 10 ability to dodge predators and escape hunters, along with a pretty high ability score modifier to boost that  RFX roll, along with the AP to pull off some pretty cool stunts.

And that jackrabbit could dodge rifle bullets or arrows effectively.

The entire monster and enemy system was so cool, and it had a lot of classic NES and SNES JRPG feeling to it. There were "high-level areas" in the world with "high-level threats." Even enemies above or below your power level could still be a threat. This was one of the few games where we could play a "Final Fantasy" pen-and-paper game and have the high-level foes totally outclass level-one newbies.

Of course, that rabbit was high level! All the low-level ones in the area died off.

D&D does that, too, right? Well, in D&D, all the monsters are fixed in their challenge level. In SBRPG, everything can be scaled. Level 1 rabbits could be normal, while level 8 rabbits could be "lava rabbits" with immunities to several hazard levels of fire, flame breath, and jumping at you like a rocket launcher to explode on impact. The enemies in this game, how we played it, were terrific.

And since we had class design, you never really knew what to expect with NPCs. This new NPC? A necro-paladin. Yeah. That works. The only one in the world. Whole class and power design, baby. That is the necro-paladin, who raises enemies from the dead to be a walking holy army and then sends their souls to Heaven after the crusade is finished.

We had one customer who played post-apocalyptic werewolves and vampires, with full magic and guns. That must have been a hell of a game. The best thing we did was open up the game's core to the world, allowing everyone to create whatever they could imagine. This was not d20! You were not being forced to buy books for classes, and you were not being put over a barrel by game companies.

You've just created the class you could only dream of. Holy Gunner? Sure, give them a heavy machine gun and holy powers to enchant their ammo, along with heavy armor use. Give them a force shield to activate, so they can fire past it. Done. A simple class to design. Merge that with a few cleric powers, let them bless the group's ammunition, and you are good.

One die roll could handle every to-hit for their turn.

We are done. Next?

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 2

Work begins...

Not an easy box to type, believe me. But a new beginning.

Those are my InDesign layout guides there to keep me honest and to prove work has begun. I can copy and paste from the 1.53c PDF, and that is how I am doing the work, page by page. The tables will be an absolute nightmare to rebuild, and we have a few of them in here.

It is way too early to think about licenses; the original had none and was closed-source. Post-OGL, we are in a better world, and I have a few to choose from. The best model is the one used by Kevin Crawford, who wrote the book, sold and copyrighted it, and then made the game's SRD public domain, free to use for humanity's benefit. I will think about that, but no promises. This is one of those instances where I need to consider what George would have wanted.

SBRPG was created in response to the original OGL, and we felt that the entire license was flawed and an attempt to exploit content. It turns out we were right, they tried to "steal" 20 years of OGL content and invalidate the license of every competing game and fantasy system, or force everyone to pay. We had a few words to say about the OGL in early drafts, but those were cut. We were right.

Remember, there were not that many "open systems" back in 2005 when we wrote this, and this is a unique, open, clean-room game with no prior art. SBRPG is an exceptional outlier in the gaming industry.

Looking at the PDF, I can cut this up as follows:

• Book One
• Characters, Race & Class Design, Skills & Special Moves, Powers and Power Design
• Book Two
• Tasks, Movement, Travel, Hazard, Combat, Damage, Vehicle Rules, NPCs, Game Worlds, The Referee, Referee Bonus Web Content
• Book Three
• Equipment, Vehicles,  Player Bonus Web Content

Each of these will be approximately 200 pages, which will divide the book nicely. Will it be terribly user-friendly? I have no idea. Notably, Book One will focus on characters, Book Two is the core rules, and Book Three contains all the extra content in the game. It seems user-friendly; the players can pass books one and three around, and the referee has book two. The BWC will be shifted around to the book it needs to go into.

Equipment could move into Book One, and the second book remains more rules- and referee-focused. Two books are an easier sell than three.

The game's target number is likely changing to 11, out of the One Roll BWC. I have a few ideas on streamlining the entire system. This will work for both combat and non-combat rolls. The math will be drastically reduced, and the system will be blazingly fast to play.

The ability scores are changing to: Strength, Brainpower, Reflex, Personality, and Grit (SBRPG). Grit is the new Endurance. AA is being replaced by Action Points, based on Reflex. Oh yes, this is cheesy, but creating a character sheet will be as easy as writing down the name of the game you are playing. Be thankful I am not changing the secondaries to ROCKS. Yes, this will change the entire text of the book.

A result of 10 will be a special result. Failures, rolls below 10, will also change.

It sounds like a new edition, but given the ideas we were working on in the BWC books, these improvements need to be folded into the core rules. One Roll and Character Traits will likely move into Core, and those BWCs will be depreciated. The Character Traits BWC is awesome. I just read that today, and it is still way ahead of its time.

I may rewrite everything and streamline the entire system to focus on the core rules, and then ship separate books for fantasy, modern, and science fiction.

I need to get deeper into this and see how it goes.

The SBRPG Restoration Project, Part 1

Oh, yes, let's get back to this.

Right now? I am completing InDesign tutorials and refining my desktop publishing skills. I finished all the layout and design work 20 years ago using Aldus Pagemaker, so I have the necessary layout skills. I also did the majority of the writing, proofreading (which I take full responsibility for), and art (which, admittedly, got me a job). That cover was created in 3D (in 2005) and is my work.

George was primarily responsible for designing the rules and final approval, making him the rules guru of the game. He also developed the Power Design System and most of the Fighting Styles. Nothing went into the tabletop game without George's approval, and we had a lot of long nights fighting over rules and making compromises.

As the "writer guy" on the project, I can faithfully restore the game without needing too much input from George, but he is missed and will live on in the spirit of the game.

I am torn between restoring the game as it was and revamping the 500-page behemoth of a phonebook-sized RPG and making it playable. Currently, there is a lot of "why" in the "how," which leads to a massive, heavy, and far less usable tome. But, that said, if I go that route, that is a complete rewrite.

But there is a charm to the rambling nature of the original, as close as we can get to a Gygaxian rant on gaming in a book the size of a phonebook. And the cover looks like KFC the RPG, which is a thing of beauty.

An option would be to split the entire book into three volumes of approximately 200 pages, allowing for the inclusion of all bonus web content. Keep the majority of the 1.53c game as it was, but grammar-check the entire thing, rebuild the layouts, and make the minor fixes we made due to player feedback. This is the best compromise to keep the books reasonably sized, longer-lasting in the age of POD, and more usable at a table. If I go this route, the chapter order will likely change. This will also allow me to write future volumes and expand the game, becoming something more like Palladium does with their books, which add random new elements to the game in new books.

That said, a 2.0 version would involve a drastic reorganization, with a core book focusing on the base game, and the later volumes serving as the design systems. Once I delve deeper into this project, this is how it may unfold. My dream version of this game is a B/X-complexity-level core system in the first book that can be played as-is, and then it expands with design systems in later books.

Some significant omissions need to be addressed, such as how monsters and creatures are designed and "level up" with the characters, which was implied in the base game (and how we played it), but not presented in the book. In this game, "everything is a character" and levels up. That is a level one bear, and that is a level twenty bear, with Fighting Style: Feral, that can kill a roomful of ninjas.

And it is a 3d6, roll-high class and level system. It is a unique game, and one we wanted to have in case we had a chance to make a computer RPG out of it. It started as a CRPG system and evolved into a pen-and-paper game, so it feels natural for it to return to that form.

I'm not aware of any other game that did things like we did, nor let you design as much as we did, even the character classes. We never had "multiclassing" since, if you created your character class, you made your class concept first and never needed that rules hack. It was very JRPG-like in the sense that if you were a hybrid class, you could design it to start and never need to switch to different classes.

I am also considering changing the names of the ability scores to:

• Strength
• Brains
• Reflex
• Personality
• Grit

If you look at the first letter of each, you will know the reason why. It is cheeky, but at least you can create your character sheet quickly and know what game it is for. That would require a massive amount of rewriting, but if these ability scores persist into a 2.0 version of the game, this is a change that needs to be made early.

Back to the tutorials.

SBRPG Remastered

Looking back, if I were to remaster and re-release SBRPG, I would keep the majority of the game as-is. There is an argument to "update everything" and make everything perfect, but there is also a desire to preserve the original as much as possible.

Except for the horrendous art.

And, the entire thing needs to be grammatically checked, with more precise language. The tools today are significantly better than the spell-checkers and grammar books we had back in 2005. The original was created with the old Aldus Pagemaker software, and today, Libre Office is the only software that can open those files, but it is not a perfect conversion. My best bet is to rebuild the entire book in Adobe InDesign, copying the text from the PDF, and then going chapter by chapter.

There is a Rules Update that I would incorporate to update the core mechanics based on the feedback from players. There are core fixes in here I want as well. The nine Bonus Web Content books would also be folded into the core system, along with the unfinished tenth book. There are a few areas I want to clarify, especially creatures and monster design, which need a dedicated chapter.

Now, the game is also 532 pages long! We had people buy this just because they wanted to play "an RPG the size of a phone book," and we delivered, long before Kickstarter was a thing, and the industry standardized on 500+ page books. Today? The 500-page book is being phased out, with core games either transitioning to A5 size or being condensed to 150 to 200 pages.

An A5 SBRPG Mini would be a fun project. The original design of SBRPG was as a Car Wars-sized pocket-box game. It grew to a phone book-sized manifesto of gaming. A condensed version could be A5-sized, but the whole game is more comfortable in a full-sized book.

Would I split this into a Player's Book and a GM book? Frankly, at 500+ pages, the game is already three or four books in size, and one 500-page book starts running into the limitations of print-on-demand technology. One huge book is far less playable, but it is also not ideal to flip through a library when you want to play the game. Also, a 200-page POD book will last longer since there is not as much wear and tear on the glue and spine.

I could split this into five books: Player's Guide, World Creation, Book of Powers, Book of Rules, and Book of Stuff. This is a non-standard split, too, since the core game rules would be apart from the class, race, and character creation information. The Book of Rules would cover skill rolls, combat, movement, tasks, and other essential information that needs to be a quick reference guide for the entire table to use.

The Book of Stuff would gather all the gear, vehicle, weapon, and starship information. Again, it makes sense to put the gear-related items in one book, and this also includes starting packages for gear on the first pages, to make starting play easier. The magic item and treasure bonus web content would go in here, and this is where the enchanted and power treasures would live.

I'd like to explore the concept of "magic items in modern and sci-fi settings," but with a twist: these items would be unique, powerful, and high-tech, offering bonuses without the magic feel, which can break immersion. A noted gunslinger's 0.45 Peacemaker could begin to get its own bonuses to-hit and damage as it "levels up," and the weapon itself takes on a legendary status as it is used and grows in power. Items may have levels, too, but they are far more simplified, have a smaller range, and are easier to use than characters.

Power design? Not all games use it. Put it in its own book.

World creation is also a huge deal, so it gets its own book.

There is no Referee's guide! We have shared ownership of game worlds, so we don't really need one. I could write a dedicated book for this, but that would require the most new material. I would avoid today's trite "this is how you behave in a social situation" sort of Psychology for Dummies guide that many RPGs write. We're familiar with a lot of that material, and it's also covered in other books. There are already great books on the subject, and this information changes every five years as people come up with new theories and different things become touchy subjects. A real referee's guide would focus on keeping players engaged with the world and rules, how to run enemies and create adventures, and the "ground game" stuff that referees need to drive engagement.

What else would I add? A seventh book, the Best Bestiary, because that is a massive weakness in the original system, and I am an idiot who loves to write books. Great games are defined by their monster books, and actually designing that level 14 rattlesnake that can entangle and mind control people would be a hilarious example of the insanity that happened in our games.

Also, the rules for how to design and "level up" monsters need to be written. This concept is almost identical to class design, but it requires formalization, including how creature statistics increase with the creation of a "level 5 goblin" in your game. In practice, you should be able to just say "level 5 goblin" and use that in a game, and be able to assume everything from powers, stats, gear, and skills from that one level number.

SBRPG was a lot like "reverse GURPS and D&D 3.5E meets a JRPG," which was one of the strengths of its design. You could just throw down a "level 14 wolf" and play. The thing may have a sonic howl attack that could level a two-story house, but that's just what you'd expect from a JRPG. Also, rolling ten attacks on one 3d6 dice roll and being able to hit five targets with that same roll is so darn cool. We had some mechanics that were far ahead of their time, even today.

It also never used the OGL, since we hated that thing back in 2005. There is no reason an open system can't use the licenses found in software, and Linux has been doing this for ages. Linux is free and open, but Ubuntu is a copyrighted trade name that defines a specific version of the Linux system with a set of defined features for that distribution.

This sounds like a complete rewrite, but it is and isn't. George's words need to be preserved and kept intact; he is half of this game. How things work can't change. The quirks and silly stuff need to stay in there. It will ship "broken" in many ways, and honestly, that is what a future version 3.0 will address.  Many will prefer this 2.0 version, too, but it needs to be as close to 1.0 as possible to be that.

But a part of me loves silly, broken, crazy games.

And it needs to be made available again for people to read and enjoy.

Except for the horrendous art.

SBRPG Redux?

SBRPG was so far ahead of its time. When we wrote this we sent a copy to the Library of Congress, so this book is in a place future generations can enjoy it. It is probably stashed away in some warehouse somewhere next to the Ark of the Covenant by now, but it is there. This is probably the only other copy in existence out there, since the few players I contacted said the book fell apart on them and they don't have a copy. I found four copies in a box in my garage, and that is all there is to this.

I am keeping a journal as I re-read these files and making notes of what could be improved and clarified. Would I ever release this "as is?" No way, the art sucks really that bad. A no-art version, maybe, but that will take a bit of work stripping all that out.

When we wrote this, we were looking for a system that played like we played, an almost kinetic, live-action, fast paced, mostly theater-of-the-mind, hard-hitting, action-movie simulator mixed with a JRPG. The threats got big, but you got even bigger. You could make ten attacks with a dagger with one die roll and clear a room of orcs in one turn.

It was that awesome.

We had power design, class design, and everything design. You did not need to cheat and multi-class since you just designed the class you wanted at the start of the game, and then we piled improvement points on you by the bucket-full so that you could go from cool to damn straight fantastic.

Balance?

Oh, the enemies leveled up with you. A level 14 rattlesnake could wipe the floor with you and poison everyone in the group a few times each, choke someone out with a constriction attack, and use mind control on someone else. All in one turn. With as few rolls as possible.

The d20 was a joke.

3d6 was our holy trinity. We made those dice work for a living.

This wasn't pedantic, war-game-style, "oh, my tactical combat," think about fairness, King's rules role-playing. This is like John Wick slapping the crap out of 5E and urinating on its corpse before walking out of the building and having it explode behind him.

Today's games are too concerned with being "rules for life" as written by the "privileged elite game designer class." The players who play modern games are looking for the nanny-game, a set of rules which they can use to beat others into a submissive class of servitude and obedience. Today's players buy a game they can use to use as a social stepping ladder to prove they are better than everyone else.

And today, games are a front on a larger war for ideas. They are conquered ground for ideologues. Part of me loves SBRPG since it was written in the "time before today" when we were not in a constant state of war, and stupid things are fought over as a litmus test.

And we gave this up for D&D 4E. It was a hard time in our lives, and we needed to crawl back into the "mommy's womb" of Wizards and be coddled for a few years, but we made it through. And Wizards tried to eliminate the OGL back in 4E too with the GSL, which is still a terrible license. You can't buy happiness, nor can you buy solutions to life's problems. We never made the jump to 5E since we saw how badly the ranger sucked in the 2014 books, and we knew that entire edition was going to be a disappointment.

The 2024 edition strips all the "soft role-playing" abilities out of the every class, like special ranger knowledge's that only a real DM could adjudicate, and substitutes everything for a mechanical bonus that an AI DM could use. If you are out there raging against AI art and still playing D&D, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what you are doing.

D&D 2024 is "AI D&D" and it sucks.

SBRPG was cool. It filled a time in our life from 2005-2015, the second greatest decade since the 1980s, where we needed one set of rules for that awesome, kinetic, live-action play we needed. Other games were too much "in the weeds" with maps and figures, and while SBRPG could be played that way, this was more slap-you-in-the-face awesome than all the other games we tried or played before. 

Oh, and it was written during the height of "bro-culture, extreme sports, butt rock, and monster energy" and that magical time in the world when our minds were still free and people could be honest without being looked down upon by our Internet social-score minders, the people in the cars yelling at their phones, the constant online judgment by bots and strangers, and overseas "departments of social warfare" running asymmetrical battles on our way of life by proxy and overseas tech firms pumping toxic ideas into social media every second of the day.

For us, this was the last game of that second golden age.

Gaming has been lost since then. 

SBRPG: 1.53c Source Files Located

Twenty years ago my brother George and I put out a role-playing game. This was the original SBRPG, and what this site was originally supposed to support. As the years went by, out publisher went out of business, and the game suffered more returns than sales, so we sort of gave up on it. I am guessing a small fiction publisher was not the right place to sell a game like this, so I can see why the return rate was so high.

The few that played it enjoyed it, and it endured in the hands of a very few over the years. For some, this was the last game they kept out of their collection until the 530-page softcover fell apart. For most, playing "the game the size of a phone book" was a thrilling prospect back in the days of D&D 3.5. We published this in 2005, a year after GURPS 4 was released, and about two years after the D&D 3.5E revision came out.

So the game became a footnote here and an urban legend. No PDFs ever existed of this game outside of myself and the publisher for printing. This was never made available via a PDF store, as there were none back then to sell it on. This has always been a print book, long out of print.

And SBRPG has mostly stayed quiet and abandoned for 20 years. This site has continued on as my general role-playing blog, but for the most part, the book, the rules updates, the bonus web content, and the plans for the future books have been something of an urban legend. I only had the original version 1.5 of the PDF, with none of the later fixes, or the reader feedback that we got via our old forums. 

Until today.

I found a DVD with the source files for the final 1.53c version, the PDF, the rules updates, the cover, and all the bonus content we ever made for the game today. These are old Aldus Page Maker files, but the PDF imports into Adobe InDesign just fine, with a few missing fonts I would need to find or replace. These are mostly fonts we kept around since the Corel Draw 3 CD-ROM days.

The rules updates are critical, since those came from players and actual play. The latest 1.53c version has a lot of fixes than the original proof-copy 1.5 PDF that I had. This is everything. The whole game as it existed at the end of support and the publisher going out of business.

Wow.

What a strange find.

I have no idea what I will do with all of this. 

I Wanna Hold Your Hand - NOT!

NOTE: Leave trapdoor open at night. Watch your step, lava may be present.

One thing I love about Minecraft is all the experimentation that goes on. You are free to just try things to your heart's content, come up with silly plans, and experiment. The game does not hold your hand, tell you 'this is the way to do it,' or lead you through the discovery process. Things are left open intentionally for you to try different theories and contraptions, and the game's designers purposefully build in new functionality to enhance those possibilities.

Watch out, here comes the Spider-Proof wall!

Now contrast this with a traditional pen-and-paper RPG, and especially something like Pathfinder or D&D4. It's amazing to see the shift in focus, now, these games focus on character builds, balancing everything, and telling you what to do. By the time the designers and forums get done with the new expansions and character classes, there is little room left to experiment, it really has all been done for you, any fun combo balanced and planned out, and all the options thought of already. There is probably a little fun in multi-classing, but really, any of the D&D style games typically either break or have the fun balanced out of them by the time the next edition rolls around.

Right now, the trapdoor goes to a cage where we can deal with intruders mercilessly.

In addition, the focus of pen-and-paper games often breaks down to a mindless pursuit of levels, character power, and loot. They really are nothing more than Facebook games where the whole goal is to increase your "numbers" and "get your friends to play!" Yes, there is that thing with the story and what a good gamemaster brings to the table, but that is the exception more often than not. Pen-and-paper games fall into the trap of making character power the ultimate goal, when in reality, there is nothing fun about character power than having bigger numbers, and being able to end combats quicker. In Minecraft, yes there is loot and character power, but it is capped at a point, and it is definitely not the endgame focus. How you play and what you build determine success; not, do you have diamond this and that. Those are still tools, not auto-win weapons and gear.

THEORY: Lower-level entrances should have some security!

Where is the creativity? Where is the experimentation? Where is the game that celebrates what you create, instead of the modules or books you buy? These are things other people create, and yes, they want to make money and sell you lots of stuff too, but all those modules and stories and expansions drain the life out of your creations, how could you ever write or create something better than the paid stuff? Player-created content takes a back seat to official re-tellings of The Tomb of Horrors or Pathfinder's adventure paths. At times, it feels like there is no creating anything; modern pen-and-paper games feel like they are there to just serve up the next official module release to you, and there is always another book to buy to make things more 'fun' next time. You imagination, and your shelves, sag under the weight of everything you need to buy to start having fun.

Of course I'll never need to defend against a castle siege, but it's so COOL!

Minecraft celebrates the simple, it's basic building blocks plus some rules, and it leaves the rest to you. The basics of the game haven't really changed, it's still the same simple building game with a few parts and many possibilities it started as. Big game companies, and this includes pen-and-paper as well as video game, just don't understand the 'simple is better' concept. I'm sure if a big PnP or video game company designed Minecraft, we'd have the following expansions to buy before we could start playing with others online, and having fun:

• Minecraft: Pets
• Minecraft: Seasons
• Minecraft: Ultimate Magic Power
• Minecraft: Heroes of the Netherworld
• Minecraft: Hollywood Style Stuff

...and so on until my wallet is drained and my mind hurts. Also, the official Minecraft: Adventure Pack 1 through 25+ would be the better maps to play on, nobody could really build maps that compare to the official releases, right? The game just wouldn't come with those awesome tools or random worlds that everyone loves.

I leave you with this, a dark picture of the end of the main shaft down all those stairs. Now, what lies beyond this? How would you build the stairs? Would you dig down, or off to the side and look for a cave to explore? The game's focus is on 'what will you do next?' It's not, 'Where do the game designers want me to go?' That is the difference, and frankly, it's where the vaunted benefits of pen-and-paper games fail in comparison to simple games such as Minecraft and other building-block games. When the creativity, experimentation, and fun is designed out of the game, you have little left. Simple, open, and games that let you build are infinitely better than games where you run a system until max_level and everything ends.

End of the line...? You decide.

Minecraft: SBRPG Server, Season 1 Begins

Watch your step.

George and I have been playing Minecraft recently, and you're welcome to join us, I put the server link in the sidebar. We are hosting a mess-around public server so you can play with us, come create things, and generally play around with your favorite game developers. It's Season 1 of our experiment, and we'll be highlighting things and creations as we go along, along with posting pictures for people to enjoy.

Yes, SBRPG is still in development, we have focused our ideas, and we are still working on the beta release. SBRPG will be the ultimate sandbox pen-and-paper RPG as it always has been, and you'll get a very cool package of stuff to play with soon. Just to mention, SBRPG is not Minecraft, nor are we affiliated with them in any way; nor will SBRPG2 be anything like Minecraft, though that would be funny and cool. It fascinates us because of the sandbox nature of the game where you are given basic abilities and tools, and you make your own experience. Sound familiar? Yeah, that was us back in the day with our original pen-and-paper game.

Minecraft is a great game, totally sandbox, and just a blast. It is an awesome do-what-you-want, build-what-you-want sort of experience, totally modifiable, and just really cool. If you haven't checked it out, please do, it is an insane level of addictive fun, especially with the new 1.72 patch. Below is our starting castle, hard fought, and really silly looking. Hey, when you're surviving, looks are the last thing you worry about, plus I'm in the middle of my tower design experiments. We needed food, so you can see George's garden and our little fishing pond there in the middle. The first pic has my spiraling staircase down, we built our original dirt fort on top of a hill near the spawn point, and I had to dig straight down in order to safely mine stone for the castle. George also built a silly 40-story dirt tower we had to use for navigation you'll see at the end of the post, with no way to harvest trees, we were constantly getting lost. It helped, but that's getting torn down some day, when I figure how to take it down without falling to my death.

Don't jump on George's plants.

Okay, game design time. We set our server to adventure mode and hard difficulty - one step of difficulty below the "die and you're banned for the season" hardcore mode. In adventure mode, you need the correct tool to mine the type of resource you want, or you cannot mine. Note in adventure mode, you do not start with any tools, you need to lure the explosive creepers near trees and hope that wood drops so you can build an axe. Otherwise, you run around trying to avoid dying. It is ultra hard difficulty until you get started, and on hard mode, starting out is near impossible (for us newbs lol). Note only do you need to worry about defenses, you need to play the food game pretty aggressively.

Now, we got some criticism from some Minecraft players for starting a hard difficulty game on adventure mode, without loading a pre-compiled 'adventure map' where there is a dungeon laid out and things given to you by the map-maker. There is a less challenging 'survival mode' in the game that is more free about tool use (and also intended for open starts like ours), where you can mine most things with your bare fists, making the game vastly easier. We didn't go that route for a reason, we like challenges, surviving without a chance, and getting that feeling of accomplishment for a hard earned victory. We died a lot of times building that castle, so it means something to us, more than something we didn't really care about and just built out of easily gathered materials.

Hard-adventure mode games fit our philosophy better than easy games where everything is given to you, victory is assured, and the pen-and-paper RPG acts as a babysitter for your fantasy enjoyment. This is closer to  old-school pen-and-paper difficulty, and we wish ourselves finding the game harder in some ways, and with more depth and danger. Maybe in Season 2 of our experiment, we will add some more mods, crank up the difficulty, wipe the world, and change things up. For now, the experiment begins with vanilla hard-adventure Minecraft, and please feel free to drop by and play if you would like. 

Zombies break down doors on Hard? Yeah, meet the trapdoor, creeps.

If you play, feel free to drop by our castle, or try what we did and try starting with no tools, and resisting the urge to borrow things to make life easier. What will your hard-fought castle look like? What will happen to your character on that first scary night with zombies and creepers lurking about, and there's no safe place to hide? Carve out a little place in our world using that philosophy, and then come back and see how you feel about your creation. Do you remember how hard it was? Did all those sacrifices and tough times make your castle feel more special to you? Where did you start, and what compromises did you make because of a lack of materials? Did you want to give up, steal, or cheat? It's a cool experiment, and it tells you a lot about yourself and your survival and tactical instincts.

That said, the next SBRPG will be a a difficult game, but those victories and achievements will feel good when they are won in a hard-fought battle. Yes, you can tone things down and play in easy mode if you want; but for us at least personally, we love the challenge, we love the danger and feeling of survival and adventure, and we love getting our hands dirty and challenging the impossible. And now, George's dirt tower of navigation, which you can see live on the server today, while it lasts:

Silly, but effective.

"Change comes when you want it."

A very wise friend of mine said that to me, and it is one to think about. For many people, this should be followed up by, "Why change?" If you are happy with what you have, fine, don't rock the boat, change would be bad for you. If you are unhappy, then the question of "why change?" is already answered, and you must.

The entire EQNext experience changed me. Sometimes, when you see something new and different, you want that instead of what you have. For MMOs, the same-old static worlds and terrain of EQ2 and World of Warcraft have gotten stale, and yes, I would like to see something new and different for a change. It does not mean EQNext is going to be better, and I think that is where people get defensive and confused. EQNext has to prove itself, and it deserves a fair chance. If you are happy in your current MMO, fine, don't rock the boat, and change would be bad for you. Others may be unhappy with what you are happy with, and that is fine too, I accept that, and you know, it is life. Who knows, the old games may be more comfortable for some, and even me, I don't know, but I am excited by the future and all its possibilities.

Same thing with Pathfinder, D&D4, D&D3.5, and to some extent D&D Next. All of these celebrate the past, and it is a fun, wonderful past, mind you - I enjoy all of these games. Something on the edge of my conscious says, there is something better out there, something wonderful and fantastic with new worlds never seen before. There comes a time when I don't want to live in the past, I want to explore the possibilities of new games, so I head out and try new things. I design too, game design is my hobby, and I enjoy it to no end. However, the twentieth time through Keep on the Borderlands and the Tomb of Horrors gets the same after a while, and yes, there are the Pathfinder adventure paths, but those are still in the same D&D Normal worlds where you know what to expect.

Part of me wants to head out into the unknown, and experience worlds never seen before. It's part of the original spirit behind SBRPG1.0, to cut players and groups loose with a full set of world creation tools, and let them come up with the world. This spirit is back in EQNext, where players shape the world, players create it, and the shared "live" experience is more important than the written module. It's part of why the game calls to me, and why we are recreating SBRPG in a new and exciting form. To adventure in games where magic does not work the way you are used to, you can never expect what's down that deep hole, and the dangers lurking out there you have no idea what they are capable of - that is a truly dangerous and exciting world, and ones people love playing in.

There will come a time when the pen-and-paper world wants change, something new, something cool. It's a natural cycle and renewal and rebirth. It only comes, however, to those who want it.

Wise words indeed.

SBRPG2 Testing Continues: Powers and Talents

Powers.

Powers are always the tricky part of designing any game, along with the paths these powers take. Anyone can bang out a quickie set of roleplaying rules covering combat and movement, but when it comes to talents and powers, this is where the real design work comes in. You want to provide a sense of progression with both powers and talents, a gradual sense of getting better and more competent. A number of games fail in this regard, or are so stuck to what came before they will never improve.

With D&D3 and Pathfinder, the name of the game is placing powers and unlocks on a Christmas tree called a character class - the same classes that existed way back in D&D1. The class roles are still strictly defined, that choice you made when picking a class at level 1 defines who you are for the most part until level 20. In Pathfinder, this is more pronounced, since it pays to stick with one class. With D&D3, you are supposed to weave and dodge your way up several classes until you find a prestige class you like, and stick with that. They are two different games, but your progression for the most part is predetermined. There are a limited number of options based on the first choice you make.

D&D4 was good when they introduced the second round of multi-classing, you were this interesting mix of two very distinct classes that had strange synergies and power combos. They quickly buried this cool system under a dump truck of errata and add-on books, to the point where designing a character required the online character generator, and you had a shelf full of out of date and worthless books that couldn't be used to play the game. Design-wise, you were still limited by the set of classes you picked, you could synergize in that buid, but if you decided to take your character in a new direction at level 10 you were stuck.

We are trying to take a different spin with SBRPG2. All powers and all talents are open from the start, though your starting stats will help or hurt the choices you make. You are classless, which is a huge change from SBRPG1, but then again, we have a different goal here, this is a different time in history, and we are shooting for a game that provides the ultimate expression of character design and flow as you level up. It is an organic goal, one more suited to exploring power frameworks, making choices, and developing your character as they live through various situations.

The ultimate goal is to reflect your story, your progression, and to let you make choices based on how you feel your character is learning and unlocking powers - without penalizing your progression in other areas. If your mage is fighting and chooses to improve physical toughness and combat ability, you can improve that and put your magical studies on hold for a while as you become a better survivor. If you want to improve social skills through roleplaying, that won't hold you back in other areas, and you can just focus on that exclusively for as long as you would like.

With D&D3.x and its related games, when you get a level, you have to make a choice that punishes your progression in other areas. Picking 5 levels in fighter means you lose 5 levels of progression as a mage. It affects your end-game power incredibly, and a mixed design like a 3/3/3 fighter/mage/thief really suffers in combat power - in no way is that character like a full level 9 anything, and they fall far behind in terms of usefulness to the party. With SBRPG2, we have solved that problem.

Regardless, sorting out powers and design paths takes a long time, and this is something we continue to work on. We are blocking out a system for you to design your own, but keeping things simple at first will allow more people to understand the system, so something like power and power framework design may be left for later to work on. It is a great design, one came through after five years of experimenting, designing, throwing things away,and redesigning a simple system until we had a great base.

That core 'the way things should work' is key here, it is easy to copy another system's progression, but it is unoriginal, and you inherit all of the limitations and flaws of the original. When you set out to do something new, it is always cool, but a very hard road. Finding what the system should do, what it supports, and most importantly, how the system supports the notion of a character story or epic is what we wanted to do here. The idea hit us, and it is more than a simple concept. Thigns have to be carefully worked through and thought of, in order to make the whole greater than sum of its parts.

SBRPG2 Playtesting

We are busy writing the fifth revision to the SBRPG2 rules this morning, and prepping another playtest of the rules. It is turning out to be fun to take other games and just play them through with our rules. We have played Arkham Horror, various D&D modules, Pathfinder adventure paths, and we are now gearing up for a Descent playthrough this weekend. It is fun to see the differences the rules system brings to the table, and then tweak that for the experience.

The experience is key, you want to have that go-to game, that rules system that invites you to experiment and play. It is like finally finding that phone you can't live without, or that laptop that becomes the central part of your workflow. All of a sudden it is not about making compromises anymore, there are no limits, and you can express yourself instead of fighting your tools. Roleplaying becomes expression, and the situation becomes the driving motivation, not 'I am playing X'.

It is transformational, and enlightening. Complicated rules systems choose to bind you, to limit you, and are so heavy they become the only thing you could ever know and think within. They seek to limit, not expand and explore your experience. I want a game that does everything, and like that phone or like that laptop, enables my creativity, not limits it.

This is where so many games get it wrong, they want you to celebrate Paizo's or Wizard's game design teams as the game design superstars. I want to create a game that lets you be the superstar designer, and celebrates what you create.

SBRPG2

We have merged the SBRPG2 and Project Delta games, and we are working on some sort of beta. There is a lot of work to do, so stay tuned. There is a new goal, merge the any-play and sandbox of the original SBRPG, while integrating the rules-light and simple pick-up-and-play of Delta. From our testing, it is a very unique and interesting game. Stay tuned.

The Conservation of Action

One of the big parts of SBRPG was it's Action Agility system, which cut up a player's turn into a ever-decreasing action-point (AP) countdown. I have always liked AP systems, as they create a system where the player needs to make a choice of "what's next?" ad judging if an action is worth the cost. SBRPG put parries on the AP system, requiring you to save for parries, or pre-spend parry AP if you lost initiative. As a result, everything mattered, from your speed, to the weapons you carried, to the actions you performed. Everything was a careful build and calculation to return payout for energy spent. Over a turn, the resource was AP; in the long term, hits and the cost incurred by powers were also resources to be spent.

Note the word resources here. Roleplaying games typically have strong resource management components, from survival games to dungeon games, the question becomes, "what do I give up to go a little farther?" and "what is the potential payout?" Some games reduce the resource tracking, such as D&D4, and shift it to managing your power list of encounter, daily, and at-will powers. Ironically, resource tracking in D&D4 became more onerous with all of the conditions in-play during combat, with a -2 to-hit condition for a monster linked to the applying character's turn, or being rolled off on a 50% chance per turn.

D&D4 had a system of move actions, standard actions, and free actions - which basically meant you could move once, use a power or attack, and do any number of minor "free" actions as you would like. In reality, this is like most roleplaying games, where your actions are the "one and one" pair of move/attack, and a couple other things considered freebies.

With an action point system, everything is tracked, from a punch, to reloading a clip, to aiming, and firing a pistol shot.Your actions during the turn change frequently, and the situation at-hand often dictates the action mix. For the next version of SBRPG, I would like to move away from the lowest-level of AP tracking, but still make deciding how you spend your turn's actions matter - especially from turn-to-turn. This is something the original SBRPG did not have, the concept of actions you don't take having an impact of future turns, or spending actions ahead of time to gain a future benefit.

With a cross-turn AP and resource management system, the risk of taking an action or not taking it all of a sudden has to take the entire encounter into account. You will need to judge lulls in the action, and when it is safe to take actions to rest or restore powers, then burst into action again, spending your abilities wisely until the next rest point. Similarly, you will need to take your party's resources into account, if a party member is in trouble, you need to spend resources to assist them, and cover for party members taking a breather.

This sort of action-oriented AP and resource system better reflects the movie-reality we shoot for in SBRPG, and also makes the game different from a traditional turn-by-turn RPG. Resources, risk-management, judging the encounter, and making a plan for how to survive and prevail are the goal of the action-system we are working on, and I think we have crafted a cool system that forces you to think across turns, and as a whole for the party's pool of powers, actions, and gear.

Again, the design is tailored to the end experience, and does not repeat other designs just because they worked in the past, or are familiar to players. You need to break out when you design, and think to the experience you want players to have, and then plan out how this will work, and how you get there.

Character Lifecycle

D&D4 is a unique game in that they consider the lifecycle of characters. They lay out the progression of heroes from level 1 to 30, talk about destinies, and lay out retirement options for characters. It is a fun system, of course, not all heroes make it, but it lays out a path for every hero to follow, and gives them many options for ending their heroic career.

I feel this sort of system came from some of the European boardgames that influenced D&D4's development; where the game cares about the endpoint, and sets forth a win condition that may or may never be reached. It puts a 'macro' feel on the game, and gives players a clear goal. Compare this with earlier versions of the game, where the goal was to gain power until 'maxlevel' is reached. IT feels nice to have these goals laid out for you, even if you never use them, or end up doing something totally different.

SBRPG does not have an endgame, due to its sandbox and traditional roots. The character goal in SBRPG is to complete faction goals, and those last as long as the factions and their goals remain relevant in the world's sandbox and theme. If your game's focus is the 1960's space race to the moon, and you end up colonizing the moon, there is not much room to go past that. Well, getting to Mars maybe, but that would be a theme change for the world, and require a bit of a rework for your game. The endgames in SBRPG are up to the gaming group to work out, and like a traditional RPG, up to the gaming group to work out.

Would thinking about endgames help SBRPG? Possibly, but SBRPG is so open, the endgames would be very difficult to mail down to a set group of options. A private eye in the 1920's could not become a god, and a lot of other poor fit scenarios come up when you predefine the paths. A better topic to handle would be faction-endgames, and linking the players to those. If your roleplaying game focused on a good guy secret agent organization was devoted to eliminating the bad guy group trying to conquer the world, then the endgame would revolve around finally destroying that bad guy group. The endgames for characters should begin there, and move onto obvious end points.

Conversions

One of the strange things we said in SBRPG is that conversions are expressly forbidden. This is like converting in another game's spell and monster list to SBRPG, and playing from those notes. Another conversion would be to take a long list of equipment and starships from a movie or franchise, and create a large equipment and power lists out of them. There are a couple reasons for this design decision.

Workload: Let me be frank here, but managing a huge database of spells, powers, classes, magic items, and monsters is just too huge of a task for anyone - especially when you consider voluminous works like D&D. Keeping that list up to date, balanced, and usable by players just adds to the work. As a GM, why double or even triple the work required to run a game? For movies, this is an open-ended affair, especially with sequels, and things always change (see, Star Wars).

Gameplay Mechanics: A lot of items in source material are linked to gameplay mechanics, such as D&D's iconic +1 longsword. In other games, the concept of a +1 anything may be an alien concept, they may not even use a system where +1 to-hit and damage makes any sense, or the theme of the world may be setup where a magic sword would be better served by describing what it does, such as a sword of sharpness. In other games, a +5% chance to hit and damage would not be anything special. A game's items should be linked to the theme of the game world, and a bulk conversion takes the opportunity to create unique items away.

Adventure Creation: I prefer to spend my time playing, rather than converting.  Adventures written for one system don't always convert easily to another, and the work done by the author to balance and create the original adventure is thrown away. In a time-to-fun metric, converting an entire adventure over to a new system pays out terribly, and it is much easier to play the module as designed.

Thinking in the System: I find it easier to think in D&D when playing D&D, rather than think in D&D while playing GURPS, SBRPG, or any other generic system used in a conversion project. It is a fun exercise to do the conversion, and even interesting to see a rules system interpreted a different way. In the long term, it wears down, and you are not really playing either system to its full potential. To play a game, it is always better to think in it. You get more enjoyment, and you don't have to put your brain in a game-emulation mode every time you play.

House-Rules are Easier: In all the conversion work I have done, it was always easier to live with the limitations of the source material (and house-rule the original game's short-failings), than it was to do the conversion work. If you can get agreement from the group on the custom rules and everyone is having fun, why convert to a new system?

In SBRPG, we rule out conversions - there are plenty of games better suited for conversion work; and frankly, conversions are a lot of work for a limited amount of fun, or the nostalgia of conversion. I could see a conversion for a long-out-of-print game or subject, maybe, but for everything else, playing the original game is a better proposition. With SBRPG, the focus is on rapid prototyping and creating new ideas and game worlds, totally different than conversion work, and much better suited to SBRPG's storytelling systems.

Relative Balance vs. Absolute Balance

Game balance comes in two forms: relative and absolute. Now, we are talking about balance between the player characters and their opponents, the raw combat power vs. combat power with everyone going all out. Games are notoriously hard to balance, but the method of rating opponents matters a whole lot here.

Relative balance assumes the PCs and the 'monsters' are rated on different systems, such as D&D4, Aftermath NPCs (not PCs), basic D&D monsters, and D&D3.5 (monsters only, note this qualifier). The game system rates opponents on a different set of scores than player characters, often because the complexity of rating a monster as a PC would be so high as to be prohibitively complicated. These games tend to never be balanced correctly, since there will always be a difference between what characters can get away with and the limited set of powers monsters have. Balance is achieved through play-testing different combinations of player builds and monster ratings. This usually takes a long time and many patches to close loopholes, fix monsters, and adjust power levels. These games also have a better 'play feel' - since the experience is engineered to be fun and play perfectly.

Absolute balance assumes the PCs and monsters are rated on the same system, if a player finds an exploit or power combo, it is perfectly legal for the monsters to use it too. D&D3.5 PCs, SBRPG, Traveller, most of the TSR boxed games, and any other game that lets the referee spin up monsters using the character generation rules. Balance in these games is easier, since what you are balancing is one system - characters vs. characters. A lot of sandbox style games have this balance, with everyone playing on an even keel, all designed with the same system. These games are typically more difficult to play than relative balanced games, since the monsters are playing with a full set of powers and abilities. Victory goes to the smartest and best planned parties, rather than players being assured a balanced experience.

We recently had an issue with this in George's Project Delta BYOB miniatures system, where the monsters were rated on a relative scale for simplicity, and the characters started to blow them out scenario after scenario. We are moving towards a more absolute system for monsters, and the game is playing better. We play-tested a higher-level scenario, and the problems started to show themselves. We still want some of the relative ease-of-play and balanced feel, but the relative balance bug bit us, and we've had to re-tool the whole monster system to adjust.

Class Design: Superspy Game II

Let's continue our superspy game OGL-based class design. Remember last time, we were stuck with the problem of what to do with our Technician and Investigator classes. Our Assassin (combat aligned) and Con Man (role playing aligned) classes were fine. Here are the problems with each:

Investigator: This class feels like it would be boring to play for many players, being the guy who looks for clues, cracks codes, and searches through documents. In a more action-oriented game, who would want to play a class relegated to paperwork?

Technician: At least the Investigator gets to do their paperwork during play, but the technician gets to setup gear, crack computer codes, defeat security systems, and fix vehicles. Most of these activities are one time affairs, or even worse, done off-stage, "Okay, while Mike sets up the listening gear, we get to go to the party and talk with the ambassador...." Picking this class means you get to work on the gear, while the other players get to do the fun stuff.

Again, some players may love these activities, and if you write rules well for these, they may be perfectly fine classes. But, we are working in a more simple action-oriented game like Basic D&D - but with spies. We need to focus the classes on action and adventure, and make every choice a fun one. Let's pivot the class designs as follows:

I will propose merging the two classes into a Specialist class, a master of using spy gear to obtain information. Since many missions rely on gathering info, or keeping that info from dropping into the wrong hands, the specialist becomes a key person who gets to use the cool listening devices, pick locks, breaks the codes, and notices the hidden laser alarm system. The focus goes from passive (search and fix) to active (use gear to do cool stuff), and cleans up the number of classes to three.

This is only one way to design classes for a game world, and your ideas could go along a totally different take on things. It is important to think of the "fun" for each class, and even bring in things like combat modifiers. There is a port of the DnD 3.5 rules system that attempts to do a modern rules set, and it sticks to the source material too closely. Paramedics in this system are based off of clerics, and are the second best fighters in the game. It's an odd choice, and it shows a little too much reliance on the original design, rather than starting fresh and coming up with things that work and are fun.

World Mood Thoughts

World Mood is one of those cool inventions inside SBRPG. A lot of games are written with one World Mood in mind, by default, this is how the world works. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, as once you define a mood, you can write rules and content to support that mood. For example, a horror RPG might have all sorts of squicky wounding rules, horrendous monsters, and possibly even insanity rules to liven things up. The dark nature of the 'horror' mood is reinforced through the rules and content supplied with the game.

Now, divorce mood from the game, and try to write a game around that. What we did with SBRPG's World Mood system was exactly that, and the base game was deliberately written to be mood-neutral. As a result, we don't have a lot of color-call rules and items supporting a particular feel or violence level, the rules are what they are - supporting combat, statistics, task resolution, etc. The game itself is a neutral base upon which everything else is built.

All right, we setup six specific World Mood levels, and created framework rules around that. One of the core concepts was 'the worst thing that could happen' - and this worked very well. In some lighter World Moods, the bad guys could not knowingly target an innocent; and in others, it was not easy for a PC or NPC to die. We wanted to simulate cartoon-action realities such has GI JOE, or any number of other Saturday morning action cartoons with some of these moods, just for fun. In SBRPG, it was totally okay for you to shoot up a squadron of enemy fighter jets, and have every enemy pilot parachute to safety, just like in the cartoons.

It wasn't easy, and we needed specific rules for what could happen in a fight, what happens when someone gets wounded, and even story stuff like what the worst thing a villain could do to someone? We put an upper limit on the violence too, at a sort of gothic-cool "dark" level. Dark isn't necessarily a super-slasher film level of violence, we purposely tweaked it to be more psychological and foreboding - something like, "The whole world is against me, an insidious dark force opposes my every move."

In a dark World Mood, even the reactions of strangers is tweaked by the overboding sense of dread and fear. People in small towns in a dark mooded game would never trust outsiders, even the guy at the gas station over on highway 61. In a lighter mooded game, the referee adjusts NPC reactions upwards, to inviting the new-in-town PCs over for dinner with the family. Random events, encounters, acts of god, NPCs, situations, story arcs - everything is colored by World Mood. Played right, it is incredibly immersive and fun.

World Mood in the obvious sense also is a contract between the players and referee. A lot of games let the referee run anything, and some types of players aren't comfortable with that. The whole act of role-playing implies a trust and understanding between the players and referee, and some players are not comfortable at all with character death, horror, or deep psychological stuff. In this case, World Mood is a promise among everybody, "this is what we are playing, and we won't stray into uncomfortable areas." It seems like a silly thing, but for many players, setting a World Mood they are comfortable with is reassuring, and allows them to relax and play.