[Greyhawk] Weapons & Armor

So from my last post, I wrote about looking for a way to address Weapons and Armor in a High Fantasy “old school gameworld” implementation of Fate.

It’s currently looking like this cut of Spirit of Greyhawk will leverage Strange Fate’s tiering, so I felt there was a need to leave the basic 4dF dice mechanic alone.

The other reason I want to leave 4dF intact was because I wanted to have the possibility of a -4 dice roll still be a real danger. Additionally, I wanted weapon damage to have a degree of randomness also.

So given that Spirit of Greyhawk is meant to be “old school” (in case the name didn’t make it clear), this seemed an interesting opportunity to make use of the old school dice (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20).

This means that for weapons that do more damage, use dice with higher maximums. You can also use the d6 and get a 1d2 or 1d3.

So I currently am working with the following progression:
(No bonus), d2, d3, d4, d6, d8, d12, and so on…

Next, you’d need to determine how much granularity you want in weapon damage. For example, DFRPG has 4 levels of weapon damage to cover everything from a pen-knife to dynamite. The Weapons Table in the PHB reflects 9 different combinations of damage dice, so 9 levels of weapon damage before you even got into things like explosives, dragon breath and ballista. I sided more closely with the Fate-y portion of the spectrum an currently have mundane melee and missile weapons using 5 levels of damage bonuses, from a Sling Bullet (no weapon bonus) up to the Halberd and Two-Handed Sword (1d6).

Example: A Fighter with Melee +2, wielding a Two-Handed Sword (1d6), would have the following range:

4dF (dice) + 1d6 (weapon) + 2 (skill) = range of -1 (minimum) to +12 (maximum), with an average of 6.

By setting the damage modifier as it’s own die which is visually separate from the Fudge dice, I think it becomes easier to distinguish between the hit and the damage, if you decide you want to do that.

Since most old-school d6’s use numbers on the die face instead of pips, you can separate Strange Fate tiering d6s from a SoG damage d6 by having the tiering use pips and damage armor use numbers.

Armor

Armor works in a consistent fashion to weapons, with the armor die increasing the defender’s shifts specific to receiving damage. The source material has 9 ranks of mundane armor, from Unarmored at AC 10, down to Plate Mail + Shield at AC 2.

Working from a subjective assumption that the best armor could conceivably negate the most damaging weapon (more from a game balance perspective than any basis in reality), that puts the highest mundane armor die as a d6. So then that means you’d have 4 ranks of armor bonus dice (d2, d3, d4, d6) to divide among 8 ranks of armor classes that are actual armor (AC 9 to AC 2). Rather than just have a die increase every two ranks, I prefer to reserve the best armor of AC 2 as being the only one at the d6. Your mileage may vary.

Example: Given the same fighter above, but with Plate Mail (no shield, due to the two handed sword), places her at AC 3. This means that in SoG she would roll an additional d4 for her defense rolls.

Statted out with the same assumptions in the original example, you would have the following range:

4dF (dice) + 1d4 (armor) + 2 (skill) = -1 (minimum) to +10 (maximum), with an average of 5.

Enchanted Weapons & Armor

SoG’s source material references basic magic improvements as a +1, +2, and so on. Rather than add just straight shift increases (+1 stress box for a +1 enchantment is too much bonus for this gameworld), I chose to just modify the die being used for the mundane (base) Weapon / Armor enhancement.

If you consider the weapon/armor damage-die progression as a ladder (something all Fate types should be familiar with), then the bonus would represent the number of shifts up the damage ladder.

This would mean that a weapon/armor ladder could look like this:

• (...progressing on upwards...)
• d12
• d8
• d6
• d4
• d3
• d2
• (No bonus die)

Example: A dagger has a base (mundane) damage of 1d2. A dagger +1 would instead roll 1d3 (one shift up the ladder from a 1d2) for the weapon bonus. A dagger +2 would instead roll two shifts up from a 1d2, and be a 1d4.

The other reason I don’t want to get into a lot of +1 / -1 manipulations, is that I don’t want to dilute the idea that the most valuable currency in the resolution process is a character’s skill, more than the magical bonuses. Skills are what allows for straight shifts (no die roll) in the min/max range range, and I believe that’s an important distinction that should be retained.

Also, by shifting the damage dice up and down, you also leave open the possibility for more powerful enchanted weapons to grant tiering-type bonuses in addition to shifts up the weapons ladder.

[Greyhawk] A Question of Granularity…

NOTE:  This is gonna be a bit unpolished, as NaGa DeMon is eating into the other 98% of my waking moments.  (Day-job? What day-job? Family?  What family?)

In my previous article of SoG magic and spell translation, I made the following statement…

“A single hit die is a D8, so technically each stress box counts as 2 hit dice. Which also means that the average hit points from 2HD would be about 9 or 10. Which would also place the average damage per missile at 4 points (3 + 1), which would then mean 2 missiles would be needed to do enough damage to take out 1 stress box. Rather than worry about the exact number of missiles in the description, I would rather just simplify to 1 missile equal 1 stress box.”

…so 10 hit points = 1 stress box.  Which then leads to some interesting observations (at least to me it does)…

• SotC characters would translate somewhere in the range of around 50 hit points.
• In the source material, a magic weapon with a whompin’ +5 bonus counts as HALF of one stress box in SoG.
• There are only 2 mundane weapons in the entire source material’s Weapon Table that could score enough damage to equal 1 physical stress box.  This on the high-end of the dice roll spectrum, though it doesn’t include magic or strength-related bonuses.
• All the other mundane weapons then fall into one of 8 “less damaging” categories.
• I believe DFRPG has a maximum Weapons rating of 4 before you get into dropping anvils on people, which means that the most damaging hand-held weapon in the world of DFRPG could translate to the equivalent of 30 to 40 hp of damage per shot.  (So Evil Hat wasn’t kidding when they said DFRPG combat is brutal and short!)

This poses some interesting design considerations for Spirit of Greyhawk…

It’s not the size of the weapon, it’s how you use it

Dealing with mundane weapons of the world of Greyhawk’s technology, this means Skills are the source of real damage when it comes to Melee combat, not the Weapon.  This appeals to me for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which that it supports the assumption that a skilled combatant with a dagger is far more dangerous than a non-skilled combatant with a two-handed sword.

(Not that other things can’t be a crucial factor, but that’s what aspects are for)

Taking this to a logical conclusion, would it make sense to have SoG fall into line with Spirit of the Century and just NOT consider a weapon damage bonus?  This is not to say weapons would be meaningless—the tactical advantages of picking the right weapon for the right engagement are still worthwhile.  But given the level of granularity that SoG uses to translate the world of Greyhawk, it’s still pretty reasonable.

If you believe that a player’s expectations for play in SoG tends to require that weapon selection DOES need to make some sort of difference in damage, then I think that Mike’s recent posting about different colored dice and damage is a valid way to go.

Impact of Magic on Melee

Anyone who has played AD&D knows that accumulating your magic weapons and armor becomes pretty critical, pretty quickly.  Which means that in SoG, enchanted gear would still be important, the real benefit to those enchantments is not “just” in the damage (remember, the actual damage of a +5 magic bonus is only half a stress box in SoG), but rather to allow someone to actually hit certain creatures who could not otherwise be damaged by mundane (or only minimally enchanted) weapons. 

So again, it’s the TACTICAL advantage granted by the weapon, and then it comes down to a player’s skill in using it.

…and I think that’s sort of interesting.

[Anglerre] ENnie Nominations!

Forgive me for repeating myself across multiple social-media platforms, but: Legends of Anglerre is up for two ENnie Awards in the Best Game and Best Rules categories! And honorably mentioned for Product of the Year! Pretty cool. It's an honor merely to be mentioned.

Of course, our competition is, y'know, Dresden Files and Happy Birthday, Robot! and the D&D Rules Compendium and other such heavy-hitters, so that's pretty bleak if you're into "winning" things, but it's great to see so many cool games and products getting the recognition they deserve. We'll see how things shake out mere weeks from now! Excitement!

Gamex 2011 Wrap-Up: FATE Edition

(For my non-FATE Gamex experience, see Roll Some Dice.)

First, an overview: This was a good Gamex. From 2:00 on Friday through midnight on Sunday, I ran two games (three if you count the one off-the-books non-convention game I ran that just happened to occur during the weekend) and played in four (five if you count an overlong game of Descent). Every GM was great, and only two or three players were annoying, so that's a pretty good percentage. Of course, part of this is that I hardly ever play or run games for people I don't know -- I've been attending Strategicons long enough that just about everyone I end up sharing my time with in four-hour chunks is someone I've gamed with before. This is theoretically bad in the sense that I'm not meeting new people (and/or they're not meeting me), but practically good in the sense that everyone at my tables bathes regularly.

So! Saturday morning was Morgan's DFRPG game, "Showdown at Camp Kaboom." We played recent Warden-school graduates who'd just gotten their cloaks and swords, and were then [spoiler alert?] framed for an attack on the very training facility (the aforesaid Camp Kaboom) that we'd been attending for God knows how long. It should be said again that I don't really know the Dresdenverse very well, or at all -- apart from stuff I've learned playing in a handful of Dresden Files games, I've had no exposure to it -- but that doesn't stop me from enjoying Morgan's games nonetheless. I played a snooty rich-kid type with the aspect "Born with a Silver Wand in my Hand," which you're not going to beat in an aspect-coming-up-with contest, so don't even try. The early game was marked by a lot of people trying to figure out or even just understand spellcasting in DFRPG. I'll admit, it's crunchier than I'd realized. I've never played a proper wizard before, so in the interest of not slowing things down I stuck with my rotes -- a defensive tornado-type-thing and a full-on Lightning Bolt! -- and kicked a fair amount of ass.

(Morgan, if you're reading this, it's probably not news to you that you seemed a bit flustered or something. That doesn't change the fact that you're still my platonic FATE-mate.)

In the end, we were all screwed not by crafty South American Red Court vampires, but by the hotel's fire alarm, which some jackass pulled in the course of being a jackass. The entire hall's worth of conference rooms cleared out into the lobby -- all except ours, because c'mon, it's obviously not real. This happened at about 12:30, effectively robbing us of the game's perfectly timed climax. Ah well. Morgan described to us what would've happened, and we all agreed that it would've been good. You're running it at GenCon, right?

Sunday morning I finally ran the long thought-about, only-recently-realized Agents of F.A.T.E. game I've been talking about here lately. Despite a full roster of six players and two alternates signed up, we only had five players for the actual game. Fine by me, says I -- I only wanted five PCs anyway. So Lars Thorsson went unplayed. No matter.

I'll split this into what worked and what didn't.

What worked:

• The +XdF Areas of Experience. Change nothing. Predictably, this roll-and-keep dice mechanic worked fine, because I'd already used it for the swashbuckling game, so no surprise there. Denys almost engaged the table in a discussion of its mathematical rigor, but I shut him down, because let's go. 
• Player-contributed locations. Earlier, I'd planned to rip off Morgan's Spirit of the Shattered Earth and have the players come up with a bunch of details for me, including various cities the story would visit, what the badguy was up to, and so forth. In the end, I cut all of that except for the locations. Each player wrote a location down on an index card; these told us the basic geography of the story and where it would go. In our case, we had Hong Kong, Paris, Hoover Dam, Lincoln Memorial, and Volcano. Three of those were explicitly used (as in "Now we're in Paris"), while two of them were only obliquely referenced. Unfortunately, Volcano was in the latter category, but that's down to me (see below). Regardless, it gave things an appropriately globe-trotting feel, I think.  
• Cool Points. Likewise, I've used this mechanic plenty, and it worked fine here, too. No complaints. Morgan pulled out a classic 4d6 roll, spending all his Cool at once to crush the opposition, who was, indeed, duly crushed.
• The Challenge Point thing. The only thing wrong with this was that I didn't have the foresight to assign each scene a Challenge Point rating from the start. This meant that I quickly racked up four Challenge Points in the early game before the players had earned Cool, but had almost none later once they'd gotten some momentum. In future -- because I'll probably use this again somewhere -- I'll keep that in mind. Every scene has a Challenge Rating from one to four. The players totally picked up on the introduction of complications, though; as expected, this took some of the burden off me to come up with stuff on the fly, but it also lulled me into a sense of complacency, such that I was forgetting to introduce scene aspects, or even spend Fate Points for my NPCs. (Running Dungeon Patrol the night before didn't help. That thing runs itself.)
• Gadgets. They didn't get used as much as I'd expected, but that's fine. When they were used, they were used well. Nobody did anything too insane with their gadgets. The craziest thing was probably Laura turning her briefcase into a laptop with wireless access to reroute an important bank transfer without anyone noticing. This wouldn't be so crazy if the game weren't set in, like, 1965. But later seasons of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. were like ten times crazier than that before even getting out of bed in the morning, so I have no objections.
• The players getting the tone of the game. Nailed it. I mean, my Platonic Ideal of it would've been more serious, but I am physically incapable of pulling that off, so it was pretty jokey all around. Again, no objections.

What didn't work:

• My ability to communicate vital information without resorting to heavy-handed OOC exposition. Seriously, I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but at some point, after Morgan fairly begged for something concrete to hang onto, I just had to come out and say, "Look, I don't know how to smoothly couch this in the narrative, but here's what you discover is going on." They'd made plenty of investigation-type rolls and so forth, so they'd earned the details, but it irritates me that I wasn't able to deliver them in a prettier package. On the plus side, we had a lot of cool espionage-type non-combat scenes in which clues were dropped and gathered, and that was great, but it was helping them put everything together that stymied me. Hrm.
• The end. True to form, I wasn't happy with the rather anti-climactic ending I forced on them. I mean, we could've ended up in a volcano; instead, the last scene took place in the basement of a rather non-descript house in Hong Kong. Boo. I even wrote down in advance what that final scene would entail, but almost none of it was there. I incorrectly assumed things would work themselves out and we'd just get there somehow. Let me tell you about things: They often don't work themselves out.

At any rate, it's a pretty good hack, and I may run something with it again. Of course, it didn't hurt that everyone at the table was a FATE veteran, so there was no need to set anything up or explain what aspects were or any of that. We just got into it and went.

So that's another Gamex in the can. And now I take a break from all of this game planning oh no wait GenCon.

[Kerberos] GenCon Events Full!

GenCon event pre-registration opened this morning. If you, like me, have never been to GenCon before and aren't familiar with its pre-reg process, you may have missed the boat on getting into a few games you were dying to play (seriously, how did Top Secret S.I. sell out so quickly?). If this subset of games included The Kerberos Club: FATE Edition, well... yeah, they're all sold out.

But fear not! Bring your generic tickets and optimism to any of these four events:

The Pyramids of Atlantis
Thursday, 8/4, 2:00 PM
GM: Me
When unexpected violence shatters the secret peace between the British Empire and the Atlantean Nations, Her Majesty the Queen covertly sees to it that a number of Strange operatives from the Kerberos Club join Her Naval expedition to "investigate." But after two weeks of deep-sea bombardment and demands for surrender, the Atlanteans remain curiously silent. Just what are they up to down there? Hosted by FATE Edition developer Mike Olson.


The Case of Professor Phobos and his Mechanical Men
Friday, 8/5, 10:00 AM
GM: Andy Blanchard
Why is Professor Phobos, renowned scientist, physician and Kerberan, making seemingly random attacks against other members of Kerberos Club? And what evil lurks in the crypts of an old abandoned church-yard in Whitechapel? Unravel the Strange mystery as only a member of Kerberos Club can!


In For a Penny Dreadful
Saturday, 8/6, 2:00 PM
GM: Morgan Ellis
Stories of the Strange members of the Kerberos Club thrill and astound the readers who follow their tales in the lurid pages of popular penny dreadfuls. But now the even stranger truth behind the fiction is revealed as the Queen's Terriers do battle with the truly bizarre and sinister forces that would bring down the British Empire.

The Pyramids of Atlantis

Saturday, 8/6, 4:00 PM

GM: Me

(See above)

I'm very fortunate to have Andy and Morgan running FATE Kerberos as well; they're both great GMs, and anyone who gets into their games will have a great time. (Andy's also running his Lady Blackbird hack, Operation: Blackbird, and Morgan's running a couple DFRPG games, so try to squeeze into those if you can, too.)

Also of note: Someone's actually running what looks like a straight-up Spirit of the Century game! I haven't seen one of those in years.

Gateway 2010 Post-Mortem

This year's Gateway was one of those cons where I can say I was honestly happy with every game I was in, whether playing or GMing. I may have been utterly, comically incompetent in one (EX-47 the assassin droid in Josh's Star-Wars-via-Smallville game) and joined in the teeth-gnashing over the rules for another (Andy's otherwise very fun Shadow, Sword & Spell game), but it was all a good time. (I even got to play the Castle Ravenloft boardgame during the dinner break on Saturday, which was a nice surprise, thanks to the Vegas/Utah contingent.)

My FATE Supers game was no exception -- only Morgan was already familiar with how my particular supers hack worked, and the other four players didn't seem to have a ton of FATE experience, so it was a good playtest group. The opening scene, in which the team leader reviews the team's dossiers with her commander while the rest of the team tells stories about her, worked really well, and nobody ended up screwed by the aspects they received in the process. And it did what that opening-scene thing usually does: Give each player some spotlight time and the chance to make a skill roll. In terms of the narrative, it injected a little uncertainty about Ballista's ability to effectively lead, and let Ballista voice her concerns about her relatively inexperienced team in a safe environment.

Every character felt useful and effective and got to have at least one or two kick-ass moments. My only real regret is that I made the same mistake I seem to so frequently make in FATE games, and that's putting in Fair minions. I always think, "Well, these guys should be a cut above the Average minion," but I'm always, always wrong. As soon as I said "A couple dozen HYDRA -- er, CHIMERA guys swarm out of the doors and the jungle," I should've known making them Fair would mean the scene would eventually drag.

As a corollary, when I make minions too strong, I'm always too slow on rectifying the situation by either reducing their Quality right then and there, or simply answering the question "How many more are still standing?" with something less than complete honesty. I mean, if they don't know, and I want to move on already, just lowball it! As soon as the super-powered badguy of the scene went down, I should've wrapped things up more quickly.

As it was, all that time spent punching out mooks meant that the endgame was rushed, which was too bad. It went from "Ack! Horrible situation!" to "Ah, well that's that that dealt with, then" in a matter of minutes. I cut two major NPCs entirely for time, and the two they did face in that final scene just didn't get enough screen time to be especially effective or interesting. I tried to convince everyone that something big was happening through the clever use of words, but I don't think I really pulled it off. Ah well.

Anyway. My players were great, and despite the occasional what-skill-should-I-use-now? dithering things went very smoothly on their end. Plus, I'd like to think the game illustrated several key lessons of FATE:

• Don't bother citing all your aspects before you roll. Roll first, then deal with aspects. This is a no-brainer for FATE veterans, but newer players often see this list of descriptors and want to focus on those to the exclusion of all else. You're not a slave to your aspects -- not every action you take has to be justified by them in advance.
• Don't feel limited by what's on the character sheet. If you want to do something but aren't sure how to do it, tell the GM. If that GM is me and I'm not being a short-sighted idiot, we'll quickly work something out and get on with it.
• When you have three Fate Points, you have a lot of Fate Points. Spend 'em. You can't do anything with them once the game's over, so spend away.
• Simply acting in line with an aspect is not the same as compelling that aspect. A proper compel makes your bad situation even worse. Whatever action you take in accordance with the compel has to put you in a disadvantageous position. Taking an alternate approach to a scene that still deals with the conflict in that scene more or less effectively is not worth a Fate Point.
• If you spend all your Fate Points to avoid taking a point or two of stress, you are not allowed to then complain about your lack of Fate Points. You've chosen to blow your narrative-currency wad on not getting hit, which necessarily means you're going to be a slave to the dice for a bit. You don't have to win every roll. Seriously. Let it go. Take some stress or a consequence. You'll have more fun for having done so.
• Moreover, unlike many other fine RPGs, in FATE you want trouble for your character. You want things to go poorly, then take a turn for the worse. If you go around playing it safe all the time, you'll never earn the Fate Points you so desperately want and/or need. Alternate, non-mechanical reason for wanting all that to happen: Where's the fun in everything going your way?

Afterward, Morgan took all the character sheets for himself, no doubt to reverse-engineer them. Morgan, just ask! I'll send you whatever you want!

ADDENDUM: Speaking of Morgan, my platonic FATE-mate, I neglected to mention his DFRPG game! Or "games" plural, really, but I only played in one. As it happened, I'd played the same scenario at Gamex back in May, but that was the hole in my schedule I'd left for a Morgan game without knowing what he'd run in that slot, so that's what I happened to get. But I played a different character, so for me it was a totally different game. About half the table knew the Dresden-verse well, a couple more had only read one or two of the books, and then there was me, pretty much completely ignorant of it all. The only things I know about Jim Butcher's series are what I've picked up from the sessions of the game I've played. This time around, I played the succubus assassin who feeds off of lust, so I engineered a virtual orgy in the first scene, because that seemed like something I'd want to do. Fortunately, Morgan had the good taste to fade to black on that before... y'know.

At any rate, I enjoyed it a lot. It was like the eighth time he'd run that particular scenario, and I really like DFRPG's particular iteration of FATE. It's definitely going to inform my FATE Supers conversion, that's for sure.

A parting note re: DFRPG. In the absence of a definitive version of FATE that can be cited as the "default" or "standard" rules, it's interesting to me now to note how DFRPG is gradually taking the place of SotC in the public perception. Not that there's anything good or bad about that -- I just find it interesting.

It's That Gamex Time of Year

Gamex is just around the corner, and for the first time since "Spirit of the 31st Century" at OrcCon 2008 -- I think -- I'm not running a FATE game. Shock! Horror!

I am, however, running ICONS, which creator Steve Kenson (a name with which you may be familiar) has described as "FATE-inspired." I.e., it has something like aspects. Apart from aspects (and consequences), I'm not sure there's a whole lot that's intrinsic to FATE that's especially unique. Take away the aspects and it could be, I dunno, Unisystem. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

However, ICONS uses aspects in pretty specific ways. Characters have Qualities (beneficial aspects) and Challenges ("negative" aspects). That's it. By default, there are no scene aspects, campaign aspects, object/item aspects, etc. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that. They seem to work like FATE's aspects: Spend a point of Determination on a Quality to get a bonus, and earn Determination when your Challenges make trouble for you. Oh -- and instead of Fate Points, we have Determination.

Really, in a way, this may be close to the "stripped-down" FATE for which people sometimes clamor. Personally, I don't really understand that clamor at all. I feel that FATE's pretty stripped-down as it is, but I've also been neck-deep in it for a few years, so fair enough.

I'm also running Leftovers on Friday the 28th, so if you're around come check it out. Did I mention that I've started getting art from the artists? Very cool! And if you have nothing to do Sunday morning... may I suggest DragonStrike, a ridiculous TSR boardgame from 1991? Well, the VHS tape is ridiculous, but the game itself is pretty fun. It's been compared to Hero Quest and Descent. I dusted it off for Hyphen-Con and we had a great time with it, so I figured I'd give it a shot with total strangers at Gamex.

Anyway, back to FATE games. Longtime platonic FATE companion Morgan Ellis is running a boatload of Dresden Files games at Gamex, Friday night through Monday morning. It's all (or at least partially) in preparation for Origins and GenCon, where he'll be running a similarly boat-filling slate of DFRPG. I only get to play in one of them (and not even that's a sure a thing), but my schedule's pretty packed as it is.

SoG - Damage and Stress Tracks

Progress in Spirit of Greyhawk had been somewhat held up as I needed to make some decisions about some rules-related modifications before going further. I've said it before but I'm more of a GM than a game designer. So I'm not quite as eager to fiddle with the dials as perhaps many of you are. So I keep my new rules-design efforts focused on what I know won't work for SoG.

So before getting back to High Fantasy magic translations, here's a couple rules changes in SoG that might put some context into some of the magic / spells writeups to come:

Damage in Spirit of Greyhawk

Damage in Spirit of Greyhawk has been modified to reflect less-merciful assumptions about damage and dying than was used in Spirit of the Century--people can get one-shotted in SoG. This doesn't just apply to mooks either: anyone could get taken out with one hit, if that hit was big enough.

For purposes of the next parts, consider a character's Physical stress track as looking like this:

Stress -> Consequences -> Taken Out

OOOOO -> OOO -> O

Basic Stress Track Rules for SoG

Checked boxes within the Stress section still act the same way. Consequences work differently:

• In SotC, consequences follow a linear progression (you can't have a Moderate consequence before a Mild consequence is assigned). In Spirit of Greyhawk, the amount of stress determines which Consequence you get--if there was enough stress to inflict a Moderate consequence (bypassing an open Mild consequence), that's what the target suffers.
• "Taken out" still follows the same rules (see note below).
• Roll-up behavior DOES apply normally, and includes Consequences also

Examples:

• Damage of 6 stress on a clear track (as shown above) would bypass the first Stress section, and go straight to a Mild Consequence. Only that box is then checked / assigned.
  Boxes already filled would follow the rules consistent with SotC roll-up rules (see example #3 below)
• Receiving damage of 9 stress on this track would go straight to "Taken Out". Done.
• If the 5 box was already filled, and a Moderate consequence was filled and the character then received ANOTHER 5 stress hit, a "Mild" consequence would be assigned.

Extra Note on the "Taken Out" status

Without rehashing the whole writeup on this blog, there was a great writeup over here with thoughts about what "Taken Out" might mean in conflicts when there is a significant disparity in power levels of opponents. If you decide to check it out, think about potential conflicts between an adventuring party and a Dragon, or Demon Prince, or a deity's avatar--you get the idea.

It does pose some interesting thoughts for certain monster translations--watch this space. ;)

Adding a "Mental Stress Track" (see below for new edit)

Most of you know there's currently only two stress tracks in SotC RAW: Physical and Social. In the upcoming Dresden Files RPG, Evil Hat added a third stress track for Mental Stress.

I had previously resisted the addition of any other Stress tracks, because I personally felt that it was opening the door to making more-more-more tracks, which I don't have an interest in doing. Additionally I had considered the Composure stress track was easily used to track Mental damage anyway. The example I had considered was that if someone had taken Mental stress or a Mental consequence, wouldn't that likely represent a reduced ability to deal with stress in Social situations?

However I only have the blogosphere and Google to go on for this--I don't really know why the choice was made to do it that way. However given that DFRPG does have a Mental Stress track, I decided to not worry about it and just add it in.

So Spirit of Greyhawk has three stress tracks; Stunts and Skills will need to updated to reflect similar adjustments and modifications that are already available to Physical and Social Stress tracks.

Edit (3/25/10):
Rather than re-write the above four paragraphs (which would mess up the points in the comment thread), I'll note here that I've changed my mind about the SoG's inclusion of a Mental stress track--thanks to the points brought up in this post's comment thread.

SoG will not have a Mental stress track. Mental stress will be tracked as part of the Composure stress track. To echo a note from above, the other implication here is that psionic stress/damage will also negatively affect social stress situations, and I like that.

Plus this also eliminates the need for me to create makes skill/stunt clones that would make modifications to a Mental Stress track, similar to the Composure stress track.

Game Industry Stuff

My buddy Bill gave me a tidbit of industry news was too good not to go all "OMGPonies!" over.

RPG News: West End Games Sold | Echoes #16

I'll skip to (for me) the really cool part:

“Plans include...the continued development of Torg 2.0"

Oh yeah. Gimme some sugar, baby.

Historically West End Games' "games" represents for me some of the watershed moments in my gaming resume':

• Stars Wars RPG (1st edition, thank you very much)
• Ghostbusters (one of the most publicly-underrated mechanics in gaming and I believe one of the influences that lead to the FATE system we all know and love)
• Torg (How to REALLY do cross-genre role-playing and make everyone happy. Not since the D&D "blue box" had a box game ever blown my mind the way TORG 1.0 did.)

Without the above list, early Champions, and R. Talsorian's original Cyberpunk (the "2013" version), I wouldn't be the person I am today.

Ahhh, memories. I ran a 2 year TORG campaign off-and-on where the players (all in their early 20's by this time) actually played themselves as PCs and all had their "history" together (talk about a great reason why the party was together and all trusted each other!) As DM, the backstory was that "I" had died during the attacks and that's why I wasn't in the campaign.

(At least until they met a doppelganger "me" as a recurring NPC from the "Nippon Tech" realm and turned out to be not quite the same person as they remembered from their "Core Earth"!)

Good times.

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Addendum from Mike:

I talk about "industry stuff"? Well, I will today with this addendum, just to make this post FATE-relevant (although the prospect of Torg's return is worth posting about, FATE or no).

Evil Hat's struck a deal with Alliance to distribute the Dresden Files RPG. "So what?" you ask. I'll tell you what: Alliance is the leading (I believe) comic and game distributor in the country. This means you should be able to walk into your FLGS and just find the thing on the shelf along with everything else they get from Alliance (which is, like, everything). And if it's not on the shelf, they can easily get it through their usual channels. No special orders through IPR necessary.

That's kinda huge news for Evil Hat (and for us FATE fans). So is this:

In addition to the Dresden Files RPG, Alliance will also be offering Evil Hat’s backlist of products – including the award-winning Spirit of the Century RPG

Now that's pretty awesome -- maybe even more awesome. How awesome? Go look at Evil Hat's catalogue. That awesome.

So are these covers to DFRPG:

And I say all of this never having read a word of Jim Butcher.

Outdated DFRPG Sneak Peek: This Used to Be News!

Let me admit something to you: While I'm looking forward to the Dresden Files RPG, I haven't been following its development and know virtually nothing about it. I also haven't read the books or watched the short-lived TV series. Nonetheless, I'm eager to get my mitts on a new iteration of FATE from Evil Hat.

Consequently, I'm psyched to see this thing that Ryan Macklin posted today. Personally, I'm picking it apart and muttering things like "Hmm, how are these skills not redundant?" and "Ah, so that's how they did it," but I'm not going to post any of my ruminations because I know I'm way, way behind the curve on this. I'm sure that there's nothing especially surprising for anyone who's in the loop.

Still, it's cool to see it, right?