[Atomic Robo] On Modes

Wow, I really thought I'd posted once in October! I've had a hack I've wanted to blog about for the past six weeks or more.

Anyway, something more pressing has come up. Jonathan Hobbs asked on Twitter for more guidance regarding the creation and implementation of modes in homebrew Fate games. Specifically, he had these questions:

How do I identify the key areas of competency to represent? 

Well, for ARRPG it was pretty easy, to be honest -- I knew Action and Science had to be in there, because of Action Scientists. Neither of those really covered talking, which is another thing characters in the comic do, seeing as how most of them are human and all. Thus, Banter. And then I had some other standard Fate Core skills left over, like Burglary, Deception, and Stealth -- again, all things humans need to be able to do -- which suggested the need for a fourth mode: Intrigue.

This is a bigger issue than just this, though. You're really asking "What is my game about?" If it weren't a game about scientists, there wouldn't have been a Science mode. 

What is the impact of a larger or smaller number of modes? 

Something Fred Hicks and I realized in the early days of Robo's development was that with four standard modes, you're really deciding "Which one of these isn't important to me?" Which is great for fast character creation, because your range of choices is very manageable. "She's not good with people" translates easily to not having the Banter mode.

So I think four's the practical minimum, or you don't have any real choice at chargen. Too many and you're replacing one problem ("Which skills should I pick from this big list of skills?") with another ("Which modes should I pick from this big list of modes?"). It also depends on how many skills you're working with. If your list is, say, 12 skills long, the more modes you have the less relevant and distinctive they'll be.

How do I determine how many skills should be in these modes, and what is the impact of modes generally having a large number of skills (5-8) vs a small number (3-4)? 

I'm going to make a few ARRPG assumptions: PCs have 30 points to spend on this stuff, skills cost points depending on how many applications they have, and the cost of a mode is the total of its skills' costs.

So assuming all that's in play, the number of skills in a mode is going to be practically limited by their cost. Generally speaking, I think you want to keep the cost of a mode below 10 points. Three 9-point modes still gives you 3 points left over to customize a little bit. Certainly I think it's useful to keep the costs of all of your standard modes at around the same value, so you can pick any given three and not worry about going over your budget.

Three of Robo's four standard modes are 9 points each, and the fourth, Science, is weird -- like, literally weird, not game-term weird. That's intentional. It's totally coincidental that each of those three 9-point modes happens to have six skills.

If you're not working with points and all that jazz, and are just eyeballing them, like the rules for modes in the Fate System Toolkit do, then -- well, actually, just seek out the FST if you haven't already, because it already has advice along these lines in it. 

How do I determine if I should want a skill to be in many modes or few modes? 

I say start with as few skills in each mode as you think it needs, and then fill in from there. If it only needs three, and you can't think of another that absolutely has to be in there, then keep it at three. If it has more than six or seven, ask yourself if the theme of the mode is too broad.

For example, I'm pretty sure the Action mode started with Athletics, Combat, and Physique as its core skills. Those are the things I expect a one-dimensional "action hero" to be able to do. Rambo, Indiana Jones, and Brienne of Tarth are different kinds of people, but I think we can agree they all at least have these three skills rated above Mediocre. Then I was like, wait, Robo's a pilot -- where does that fit in if his three modes are Action, Science, and Robot? Certainly it's not an inherent part of Science or Robot, and operating a vehicle seems pretty action-heroic, so Action acquired Vehicles. I think Notice came next, because only Intrigue had it at the time (before Science got it too) and it didn't make sense that anyone who isn't good at sneaking around is equally ungood at spotting someone sneaking around. Last came Provoke, because being intimidating seems like an action-hero thing, too. (Another skill that Robo definitely has that doesn't seem to have a place in either Science or Robot.) As it happens, these six skills came to 9 points, as did the six for Banter and Intrigue.

Basically, if you can rationalize that everyone with this mode should also have these skills, then that's what skills the mode should have. Can every robot crack wise? Like, does the typical Dalek bother with strong words or witty repartee or really care about people in a social way at all? The answer is obviously EXTERMINATE. So Robot shouldn't contain Provoke, Rapport, or Empathy, even though it isn't unreasonable that a robot could have those skills -- they're just not a product of that robot's robotic nature. But every robot is probably designed in a way that makes at least Athletics, Notice, and Physique relevant to its operation, so those are good candidates for core Robot skills. (I believe I gave the Robot mode in ARRPG Will as well, for two main reasons: to reflect the computer brain it likely has, and also that because I don't like my robots to be easily intimidated.)

What approaches for mode creation work well, and how should I be attempting to draft these up and piece them together?This... is tough. I mean, I've only used the one approach to doing this, really. Even the one in the FST is more or less the above method (so-called) without the mathematical rigor. I dunno, anyone else have any thoughts on different ways to approach modes?

[Zombies] Zombies!

I thought up some mechanics for zombies a while ago -- almost two years ago, according to Google Docs -- so I figured I'd post about it on account of it almost being Halloween and all. I'm talking about aim-for-the-head, brain-eating shamblers here, so don't try to apply these to, I dunno, voodoo zombies or 28 Days Later zombies or whatever.

So first of all, zombies don't have the same skills PCs do. Instead, their skills represent body parts: Claws (attack, create advantage), Legs (overcome, create advantage), Teeth (attack), Body (defend), and Head (defend).

The typical zombie might rank them like this:
Fantastic (+6) Head*
Great (+4) Body
Good (+3) Teeth
Fair (+2) Claws
Average (+1) Legs
*I'm fully aware of how dirty this sounds and regret nothing.

When you attack a zombie, you choose how it defends -- Body or Head.

A successful attack on the Body deals a consequence. Zombies don't have stress tracks, but they do have two mild consequences (or Arms consequences) and one moderate consequence (or Legs consequence). When a zombie's taken two Arms consequences, it loses its Claws skill. When it's taken a Legs consequence, it loses its Legs skill. But a consequence is the best you can do when you attack the Body. Well, you can get a boost if you tie or succeed with style, but the point is, even if the zombie's taken all three consequences, even if it's lost its arms and legs, it's still alive.

So, my God, how do you stop it? A successful attack on the Head takes the zombie out. (I'd fluff a tie against the Head as blowing its jaw off or something, thus the boost, but leaving the brain intact. Related: I'd also severely limit, or even eliminate, Weapon ratings, because all it takes is one shift on a headshot to take out a zombie. Like, shotguns and katanas are Weapon:1, but almost everything else is Weapon:0, and I don't mean Wolverine.)

Putting those two things together, obviously no one's going to attack a zombie's Body if it already has three consequences (or even two or probably one), but that's how these things usually work, isn't it? And mechanically, there's no reason to go for the Body once it's taken a consequence, because you can invoke it for free to cancel out the Head's higher skill rating.

It might seem odd for zombies to have a Great (+4) skill for defense, but it's not that they're so great at dodging or anything. On the contrary, they're easy to hit. They're just not necessarily easy to damage in a substantial way. So that's how I'd color that in play. Most failed attacks against their Body are actually going to be "narrative hits," in that I'd describe them as on-target but mostly harmless.

Next time: BRAAAIIINNNSSS...!

[Fate Core] It's Skill Pyramids All the Way Down

WIZARD!

I had a thought over on RPG.net today on sub-pyramids of skills, so I figured I'd expand on it here.

Then I had further thought on the same thing, and suddenly it was skill pyramids all the way down. But we'll get to that soon enough.

First, let's say you have a skill that's important enough to your game that you really want to drill down into what it can do. Piloting, fencing, and magic are the first things that spring to mind for me. I'll go with magic, because the first two will entail a lot more thought and crunchiness. So we have a skill called Magic. It's about magic stuff.

Come up with a number of distinct things -- around 10 -- that the skill can do. "Distinct things" will vary depending on personal preference, game world, and campaign. For magic, I'd go with schools, and for the sake of convenience and my familiarity with the subject, let's say they're the nine schools of 2nd edition AD&D: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Evocation, etc. (They used these in 3.X too, right? Anyway. That's neither here nor there.) I'm calling these specialties for now.

You also have these specialties in a pyramid, with an apex equal to your Magic skill. So if you have Fair (+2) Magic, your Magic pyramid might look like this:

Fair (+2): Evocation 

Average (+1): Invocation, Transmutation

Three slots in your pyramid, three schools of magic.

If you have Great (+4) Magic, you have skill in all schools of magic -- a wizard's wizard, who puts the study of the magical arts above all else. That might look like this:

Great (+4): Evocation

Good (+3): Invocation, Transmutation 

Fair (+2): Enchantment, Divination, Abjuration

Average (+1): Conjuration, Necromancy, Illusion

When you cast a spell, you don't roll your Magic skill -- you roll your specialty skill. So if you're casting a fireball, you'd roll your Great (+4) Evocation. If you're casting phantasmal killer, you'd roll your Average (+1) Illusion. Etc. Probably the only time you'd roll Magic is to know stuff in general about magic.

What do these specialties do? Give 'em some Fate Core actions, as appropriate. No need to define them more than that. Evocation overcomes by blowing stuff up, creates advantages by blowing stuff up, and attacks by blowing stuff up.

This is the part that goes rather completely crazy, in my opinion. Once you have this secondary pyramid, you make a tertiary pyramid for each of these schools of magic. What's in these skill pyramids? Not skills -- spells. Since this is already so AD&D-heavy anyway, open up your PHB and take your spells right from there.

So for Evocation, this wizard's wizard above would have 10 Evocation spells, rated from +1 to +4. For Divination, they'd have three spells. And so on.

Yeah! You're right! That is a lot of spells to keep track of. An ungainly number. It's ridiculous! See, I told you it was crazy. It's more a thought exercise than anything else.

There are a couple more reasonable approaches to this. One is to make the schools individual skills (instead of specialties), and then make spells the specialties. E.g., you have Good (+3) Evocation, which means you can have a Good (+3) Fireball, Fair (+2) Burning Hands and Melf's Acid Arrow, etc.

Another way is to ditch the whole "school" thing and instead go with types of magic, like Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Death or something. Each of those is a skill, and spells are specialties -- but probably not cribbed from AD&D. I'd make them player-defined, then build the spells as custom skills in the style of Atomic Robo. Maybe you have n points to spend on making those spells, where n is determined by your skill rating.

(BTW, if you're an ARRPG playtester and any of the above reminds you of modes, it's sheer coincidence.)

This has nothing to do with skill sub-pyramids, but: Another way to go would be to have spells as stunts, possibly as stunts you could swap out via some sort of spellbook mechanism. So whether have you have schools of magic as skills or specialties, you can roll Evocation, Abjuration, and Divination all day long to do whatever it is you do with those schools (according to their actions), but then you might also have stunts that stretch those boundaries a bit. For example:

Fireball: When attacking with Evocation, spend a fate point to affect everyone in the targeted zone.

Shield: +2 to Abjuration when defending against physical attacks.

Discern Location: Spend a fate point and specify one creature you've seen or object you've touched. You know the location of that creature or object unerringly and in exacting detail, even if it's on another continent, planet, or plane of existence.

 Anyway. Back to Robo.

[Atomic Robo] Minor Repairs

Good news, everyone! Turns out the aftershocks from Fate Core Rules-Quake '12 weren't as severe for ARRPG as I'd originally feared. I mean... they were still pretty serious. We lost a whole thing. But it looks like everything's working out pretty well, skill-wise. It's probably even an improvement, actually.

Let me elaborate on that, because you're probably all, "Hey, could you be less specific about the thing in question?" But, like, in a sarcastic way.

So I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before (at least once) that, in ARRPG, there are these things called modes. You can think of modes as thematic bundles of skills that reflect broad areas of competence. Action is a mode. Science is a mode. Modes make on-the-fly character creation easy, because they don't require you to make a decision for every single skill your character has.

Prior to yesterday, there were a total of five standard modes (among them, Action and Science). Now there are but four. When you make a character, you pick (and rate) three modes. With only four standard modes to pick from, however, what you're also doing (as Fred has pointed out) is deciding which of the modes just isn't important for your character.

Why was this done? A number of reasons -- so many, in fact, that when I wrote them all out I was surprised by how compelling they all were en masse. But the most practical reason is the math.

There are two ways to make a character in ARRPG. One involves making choices. The other involves some simple math. Neither method is better than the other, but the choice-making one is simpler in practice than the math-doing one (an important difference when making a character during play). The thing that makes that no-math one work, though, is the math going on behind the scenes. Thanks to a certain change in the Fate Core rules, that math wasn't working out anymore, which had the potential to be a pretty serious issue.

What with one thing and another, the way to fix this issue was to cut one of the modes. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that two modes have been merged, but... not that much more accurate, to be honest. Regardless, in the process each of the remaining modes has been made a little more distinct, which is a good thing. (Except Science. Science has experienced no change whatsoever. Science don't care.)

If you're wondering how four themed skill-bundles can possibly reflect everything that, say, Atomic Robo does, or Dr. Dinosaur purports to do, the answer is simple: They don't! Those four modes are just the standard modes, but there are other modes -- weird modes -- that you can make yourself.

I'm not going to get into all that now, though. I have a literal ton of work to do. (Not literally.)

[Greyhawk] Attributes as Stunts, Skills, & Aspects

One of the interesting design decisions about Fate is the idea that practically everything is a skill. I happen to really like the concept that “Strength is a skill” and so forth.

However in AD&D, you have the concept of attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Charisma) as being established at character creation and then generally not changing too much through a character’s progression through levels.

When translating attributes into skills for Fate this also means the player now has the ability to increase a character’s attributes (as skills) throughout that character’s class progression.

Some attributes are pretty easy translations into Fate skills while others might require some additional consideration.

AD&D Attributes and SotC Skills

So most attributes translate pretty easily into existing skills in Spirit of the Century...

• STRength = Might Skill
• INTelligence = <None>
• DEXterity = Athletics Skill
• CONstitution = Toughness Skill
• WISdom = <None>
• CHArisma = Rapport Skill (probably)

...so we’re left with what to do about Intelligence and Wisdom attributes?

You could always just discard Intelligence and Wisdom attributes, but there's plenty of things in the AD&D gameworld that do depend on high intelligence and wisdom.

There’s always the idea that you could “just create new skills” to be 1:1 parallels. However, from a roleplaying perspective I happen to like with the idea that those skills DON’T exist as such. Additionally in Fate, I think there's some interesting things in place around the “meta” of things like intelligence and wisdom that I didn't want to mess with. So what to do?

Perhaps asking the question in a more “actionable” way... what are some other options for Fate about characters and rules that deal with very HIGH or very LOW intelligence or wisdom?

Attributes that Have No Fate Skill

I've started from an assumption where the middle range of an attribute typically has little if any effect on modifying the game. So then we'd just need to worry about the lower and upper range of character potential.

Translating LOW Attributes

Fate makes this pretty easy, by having more overtly negative Aspects to represent a character with low attributes.

So, low intelligence might be replaced with an aspect of something like:

• “...Whaaaaat?”
• “Tetched in the Haid”
• “See, it’s on account of this plate in my skull...”

Translating HIGH Attributes

When translating the effect of higher attributes, I think you need to consider what the higher attribute grants the character within the gameworld.

In the case of the Intelligence attribute, one feature requiring high intelligence is that it allows the character to access the higher levels of Magic-User spells (7th through 9th level, specifically).

So, it would be possible to create Stunts like “Exceptional Intelligence” and “Epic Intelligence” for the Wizard class that act as an additional requirement to access higher spell levels. Gametesting would help determine if those stunts would be progressive (one replaces the other), or if one requires another (eg., the stunt to access 9th level spells requires having the stunts to access 8th and 7th level spells).

Gameworld Impact of Translations

With those ideas as a test, then consider the gameworld’s assumptions that are placed on that attribute.

For example, AD&D has Race / Class Restrictions for "Low Intelligence" (9 or less). Working with the idea that a negative aspect about a character’s intelligence could represent low intellect, you could implement that the following races or classes CANNOT have a negative intelligence aspect:

• Paladins
• Rangers
• Assassins
• Wizards
• Elves
• Gnomes
• Halflings
• Half-Elves
• Illusionist

Depending upon how you translate the impact of acquiring a negative intelligence aspect, it might be appropriate to say that the player cannot advance in a class until the aspect is cleared (similar to a curse), or perhaps cannot actively access a race or class’ stunts until the aspect is cleared.

If you follow the Intelligence table in AD&D by rote, then you might also have the following requirements upon a character that reflect having higher intelligence:

• Illusionist class require stunt "Exceptional Intelligence".
• 7th level spells require stunt "Fantastic Intelligence"
• 8th level spells require stunt "Epic Intelligence"
• 9th level spells require stunt "Legendary Intelligence"

Additionally on the other end of the Intelligence stat spectrum, if you were following Race / Class Restrictions “as is” for high intelligence, you would also need this restriction:

• Half-orc characters can only get as high as Intelligence stunt "Fantastic Intelligence"

Attributes that Have Skills

Depending upon how particular you want to get, even those skills have direct parallels might need some review. My previous translation method of looking for a metric that can be compared could apply here.

So for example, when comparing the AD&D attribute “Strength” to SotC’s skill “Might”, you could compare the following passage from the DMG, p.15:

Exceptional Strength: Assume further that a strength of 18 indicates that the creature can lift weight equal to its own body weight, or 180 pounds, whichever is the greater, above its head.

A human with an 18 strength and an additional percentile dice roll is able to lift 1 additional pound for every percentage point up to and including 50%, 4 pounds for every percentage point from 51% to 90%, and 8 pounds for each percentage point from 91 % to 00%.

...against SotC’s “Lifting Things” (p. 258)...

Characters have a default amount of weight they can lift and still do something with that weight (like moving slowly, or trying to place it carefully), shown on this page in pounds. If purely lifting without moving – like, say, a heavy portcullis so others can scurry through – they can roughly double that capacity.

...and then decide those descriptions are close enough to equate to roughly the same measure of strength and from this you could find some common metrics. Comparing the numbers, you would end up with the following:

Max overhead lift (STR Attribute)	SotC Weight Capacity (Might Skill)
9 = 90 lbs
10 = 100 lbs	Poor (-1) = 100 lbs
15 = 150 lbs	Mediocre (+0) = 150 lbs
18 = 180 lbs
18/20 = 200 lbs	Average (+1) = 200 lbs
18/50 = 230 lbs
18/60 = 270 lbs	Fair (+2) = 250 lbs
18/70 = 310 lbs	Good (+3) = 300 lbs
18/80 = 350 lbs	Great (+4) = 350 lbs
18/90 = 390 lbs	Superb (+5) = 400 lbs
	Fantastic (+6) = 450 lbs
18/00 = 470 lbs
	Epic (+7) = 500 lbs

It appears that the functional difference between an average attribute of 9-12 and the human maximum attribute of 18 is not terribly significant in terms of the Fate scale--it’s the difference between Poor (-1) and Average (+1). This means that generally speaking, there probably isn’t enough granularity within the range of "average human" to "human maximum" in the gameworld to really allow more than just a few stunts (2 or 3) in order to simulate the bonuses associated with high attributes.

[Fantasy] Another Magic Idea

Sometimes -- on a pretty regular basis, even -- a post will appear on RPG.net to the effect of "I'm interested in FATE, but is there a good, simple, easy magic system for it?" I'm not sure why FATE in particular seems to attract this kind of inquiry so often. Occasionally, someone will ask something similar about Savage Worlds, but rarely does it come up with regards to most other generic systems.

Sure as the changing of the seasons, one such thread popped up a couple days ago, prompting myself and others to chime in with the usual round of responses. Specifically, the poster, disturbingly named irate fetus, was looking for "preferably something along the lines of DnD levels/spells per day." Fair enough.

Many responded to the call, including me, because I'm a sucker for that (and because it was pretty easy to plug Guy's Spirit of Greyhawk stuff on this very blog, which goes after AD&D-style "levels/spells per day" as a point of design). Building on something TheUnshaven suggested, and with helpful advice from TheMouse, I came up with something that also incorporated some of my own long-neglected, half-formed ideas. I think it's worth exploring here on the blog.

Suppose there is a magic-oriented skill called, I dunno, Magic. What you can do with this skill is determined by a magic-related aspect you have, like "Druid" or "Fire Mage" or something.

Give yourself a second skill pyramid that peaks at your Magic skill rating. So if you have Good (+3) Magic, your pyramid's apex is Good (+3). This is your spell pyramid. It has one Good (+3) slot, two Fair (+2) slots, and three Average (+1) slots. So far, they're all blank.

Every time you cast a spell, you claim one of the spell pyramid's slots, and use its rating as a bonus to your roll, just as if it were a skill. When you're out of blank slots, you're out of spells to cast for the day.

You know a number of spells equal to your Magic skill rating. Again, if it's Good (+3), you know three spells. Write 'em down. They only have to be names, and you only have to have a general idea about what they do -- don't sweat the details. So if your magic aspect is "Fire Mage," for example, your spells might be Fireball, Wall of Fire, and Flaming Bolt.

When you cast a spell, pick one of your spells and say what it's doing. It can Attack, Defend, Maneuver, Assess, or Block -- the standard FATE stuff. Whatever it is, it has to make sense within the confines of your general idea of what the spell does. You'll have a hard time Assessing with Fireball, for example, but an easy time Blocking with Wall of Fire. However, if you want to Attack with Wall of Fire, go ahead. It makes sense, after all, seeing as how it's on fire. You just won't be able to Block with it as well.

(Could you work in two effects, like Attacking and Blocking? Probably, if you spend a Fate Point. That seems reasonable. Still has to make sense, though.)

If you manage to get more than one magic aspect, like "Pyromancy" and "Divination," you get to write down another batch of spells befitting the new aspect, which means more types of things to do with your spell pyramid. How do you get magic aspects? Maybe with a stunt. That also seems reasonable.

You might prefer to have multiple magic-related skills instead, like a Pyromancy skill and a Divination skill, with attached aspects. This is perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of. In that case, the spell pyramid's apex is equal to the highest magic skill you have, but the rating of the spell pyramid slot for a given spell can't exceed its related skill rating. So if you have Good (+3) Pyromancy and Average (+1) Divination, you can use any slot for Pyromancy, but only the Average (+1) slots for Divination.

There is still the question of how these spell slots work, in terms of their ratings. Is that the only bonus you add to your roll, or do you add it and your Magic (or Pyromancy or etc.) skill? The latter seems a little unbalanced, although if you have a different skill for each sphere of magic, it also seems kinda necessary. Otherwise, those skills are just taking up real estate in your skill pyramid, and that's no fun. With a singular Magic skill, though, that skill could be used as a sort of magical Academics -- knowing about magic, as opposed to applying it. I suppose the same could be done with more specialized skills, but you probably wouldn't get as much use out of them.

The last piece of the puzzle is how to clear those spell slots so they can be reused. There needs to be a way. Obviously, sleeping for the night should do it, especially if we're kinda trying to emulate D&D, but I also want you to be able to clear them on the fly, in the heat of the moment. My initial ideas for that bordered on punitive -- that's our me! -- but TheMouse quickly set me straight by mixing together two of them.

The more mathematically sound way seems to be that you can clear up a spell slot with a rank equal to or less than the number of shifts your sacrificed Consequences are worth, +2 for each fate point expenditure. So if you do a Minor (2) and a single fate point, you can clear out a spell slot worth up to +4.

That sounds pretty good.

So that's the gist of it. If I have a more concrete application for it at some point, I'll do more with it, but for now it's something for you to fold, spindle, or mutilate, as you will. Comments welcome, of course.

[Greyhawk] The Unified Theory of Magic (Part 3) - Clerical Magic

Clerical Magic Effects Overview

A continuing concern while working through the SoG Magic system was how clerics fit into the mechanic. While the source material treats clerical prayers and magic-user spells as being practically identical with respect to mechanics, the underlying principles by which magic-users and clerics generate magical effects are very different.

The source material states that clerics don’t actually harness magical forces. Clerics pray to their deity (singular/plural/whatever) with the desire for a particular prayer’s magical effect to occur. The deity’s power structure (for lack of a better term) then determines whether or not the cleric’s prayer will be fulfilled or not and then entities within the cleric’s faith system actually generate the magical effects on behalf of the cleric.

So to apply another metaphor (a prior post mentioned Wizardry and Sorcery were like sailing), clerical magic could be considered like “calling in an airstrike”.

To flesh out the metaphor, a cleric’s Faith (the Resolve skill, see below) is the communicator upon which an airstrike is called. Remember that classic line from the character Rene Belloq in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?

“It's a transmitter, a radio for speaking to God!”

..and we all remember what happens when you try to use that particular radio without Faith…

But anyway, the cleric’s specific prayer / spell would be the effect requested and the “casting” is the act of calling in the airstrike.

When calling in that accurate airstrike, the cleric would need to provide fairly specific information given the “right way” to the correct party “on the other end of the line”, so the prayer (spell) has some pretty specific requirements. This also assumes that the cleric is also “the right person to call in the desired effect”.

Despite these distinctions, to keep terminology consistent, SoG still considers magical effects generated by a cleric’s prayer as “spells” and the cleric as being the caster.

Skill “Resolve (Faith trapping)”

The basic skill of the cleric to cast spells is the cleric’s Resolve skill expressed with the trapping of “Faith”.

The cleric’s Resolve skill represents the maximum spell difficulty the cleric can cast. A Resolve skill of +3 means that only spells of +3 difficulty (3rd level) and below can be completed.

What About the Magic Stunt?

Because the cleric is not actually generating the magical effect, there is no requirement for a cleric to have the Magic stunt. There are upsides and downsides to this:

• Clerics have no concerns about magical recoil.
• The reliance on their deity’s power structure to generate magical effects does tend to mean that things like the cleric’s Faith, and Aspects that affect that faith (in both the positive and the negative) become especially important to the cleric’s ability to create miracles.
• There is no currently no opportunity for the cleric to modify any spells or otherwise generate effects on the fly without some story-related mechanism being involved. A cleric’s spell must be followed “rote” or it just doesn’t work.
• SIDE NOTE: While the above is SoG’s current general position, I have wondered about the situation where a clerical spell requiring a cleric’s holy symbol as a component of that spell--should the GM consider that the spell is not possible without the symbol, or just less effective (with chances of possible failure)?
• Not allowing the spell places it closer to source material canon (I think), but further distances clerical spell use from magical spell use in SoG. Specifically in that a Wizard can modify the spell requirements and then deal with the potential for things like spell failure, magical recoil and a generally less effective result.
• On the other hand, allowing the spell but making it harder (less effective) means that you have to deal with idea that a clerical spell could fail (due to 4dF and increased difficulty) but wouldn’t result in magical recoil, which taken in combination with no requirement for the Magic stunt might present balance issues.

There is no restriction against a Cleric character possessing the Magic stunt, but there would be no benefit with respect to the clerical spells that are cast. That cleric COULD however generate magical effects by themselves the same as any other sorcerous effort (see prior post for more). In fact certain faiths might actually promote their clerics being magic-users or even Wizards in their own right (Boccob seems like a good possibility) to say nothing of the whole split-class/multi-class situation. However any sort of sorcery or wizardry done by clerics would follow normal magic use rules.

Mechanics of Clerical Casting

The actual game mechanics of a cleric’s casting are similar to Wizardry:

• The cleric commits a Fate point (doesn’t spend it) that will be returned at the end of the current scene.
• Player rolls 2dF+2 and applies the result to the cleric’s Resolve skill and applies it against the desired spell’s difficulty. Remember that the spell must be less than or equal to the cleric’s Resolve skill.
• Aspects are compelled or tagged as normal.
• If the cleric succeeds in the casting, any positive shifts count towards the effectiveness of the spell.
  • Side Note: Positive shifts generated with respect to the cleric’s player doing the dice rolling might be questioned, since the cleric is not generating the actual magical effect. The source material allows for the variability and sets the expectation so it is being left in SoG. This “bonus” could be explained within the game by considering that appropriate Aspects being tagged could have resulted in the deity granting extra spell power, variability in the entity actually casting the spell on behalf of the cleric, etc.

Aspects and Clerical Spells

Compelling or tagging an aspect when praying for a magical effect would reflect the situation where the deity’s power structure might grant a more (or less) effective result based upon the Aspect.

Example of Negative Aspects for Clerics

A cleric with the aspect of something like “A Shadow of Doubt”, or “Lawful Questionable” might be compelled to deal with a –2 effect due to possible impacts to alignment or faith.

Example of Positive Aspects for Clerics

Aspects of “Smite the Wicked!” or “A Friend in Deed” could easily be tagged to increase a spell’s effectiveness.

Casting Failure & Clerics

Because Clerics don’t actually harness the magical forces of the spell, there is generally no magical recoil associated with a casting failure by clerics.

Like Wizardry, if for some reason the cleric fails a spell casting, then the general rule is nothing happens other than the loss of the spell.

While it’s possible that some sort of faith-related recoil might be possible in certain situations…

• A cleric of one faith profaning another faith’s holy areas/symbols/etc.
• A Lawful Good cleric trying to cast “Cause Wounds” instead of “Cure Wounds” a little TOO often.

…I think that would reflect more of a “smiting” attitude, as opposed to an actual prayer / spell going wrong. Any stress taken due to something like this would have to be considered carefully by the cleric, as negative Aspects that might arise from matters of faith could get pretty nasty.

Druids and Clerical Spellcasting

With respect to Druids, at this point SoG maintains the source material’s assumption that they are a sub-class of clerics and generate magical effects in a similar manner, but their faith is not so much a deity but rather in “Nature”. Additionally the source material provides them with a different spell list than other clerics.

More playtesting will be needed to determine if that needs to be more closely considered.

What’s In the Pipeline

Okay, that’s quite a lot of information this week. Unless things take a different turn, the next series of posts will be something along the lines of:

• The on-the-fly “Magic Economy”
• Translating existing spell lists
• The Fate system and Magical Topics (Sorcerous Covens, anyone?)
• Crafting Magic Items

If anyone’s got a preference as to which gets posted next, I’d be curious to hear.

[Greyhawk] The Unified Theory of Magic (Part 2)

Continuing on from the prior posting…

Generating a Magical Effect

A magical effect may be generated by someone or something either “on the fly” or via a predefined spell (formula, recipe, etc).

On the Fly Magic Effects

On the Fly magical effects occur when the sorceror states the intention to generate a desired magical effect. The player and the GM then determine the difficulty of the spell by costing out the magical effect using a “magic economy” by defining the benefits (increase difficulty) and costs (decrease difficulty).

The caster compares the skill level used with the Magic stunt against the effect’s difficulty, spends a Fate point and then rolls 4dF as per normal.

• If successful, the effect is generated as desired by the caster. Positive shifts count towards a greater effect as per normal.
• If the caster fails the difficulty, then the magical effect does not occur as desired and bad things happen (see “Casting Failure” below).

Side Note: This is a significant departure from the source material in that there were only predefined spells and that the caster never failed to successfully cast the spell. However that same spell could fail to fully or partially affect the target (due to saving throws). Also a predefined spell’s casting could generally be interrupted with little if any negative impact to the caster (beyond the loss of the spell).

A conceit of SoG is that casting failure and negative effects were always present in the game world but as long as a Wizard followed a pre-defined spell that was within the proscribed limits of his Wizardry skill level, there were sufficient fail-safes built into the spells to prevent any sort of negative impact to the caster or those around them and there was no failure to cast the spell.

Spells might fail to have the desired effect on targets, but that was due to some property of the target, not because the spell “failed”.

Even if the spell was interrupted during the casting there was no generally negative impact (past the loss of the spell).

Another design assumption was that if casting failure was possible but never mentioned, then it must be pretty bad… (mwa-ha-ha)

Predefined Spells

This is the situation where someone uses the Wizardry skill to cast a pre-defined spell, following the spell’s recipe (adhering to the restrictions) in order to generate the magical effect.

The Wizard then commits a Fate point (doesn’t spend it), rolls 2dF+2 (not 4dF) and determines if there were any positive shifts.

The 2dF+2 roll produces a result between 0 and +4, so unless there is some outside factor (aspects, some sort of attempted interruption) increasing the spell difficulty, there would be no chance for spell failure (consistent with the source material).

The benefits of the Fate point commit and the 2dF+2 are only in force so long as the following occurs:

• The difficulty of the spell is LESS THAN OR EQUAL to the caster’s Wizardry skill.
• The caster can fulfill all the requirements of the spell (components, etc.).

If these cannot be met, than the caster may still attempt the pre-defined spell, but must now actually spend a Fate point, and roll 4dF instead, risking a casting failure.

Question: Why be a Wizard?

In reading this material without looking at the actual spell table, it might appear that Wizards are so restricted with the magical effects they can generate why would anyone be a Wizard when they can do Sorcery?

It is true that in SoG the magical effects of pre-defined spells are less flexible than the option to generate magic on the fly, however pre-defined spells typically have effects that are quite often more powerful than what could be generated on the fly.

I consider that this exists in the game world due to the heavily researched and optimized nature of pre-defined spells that have been around for decades if not centuries.

Example: Compare a magical effect that makes a continual light. In the source material, the predefined spell that generates a permanent magical light is a 2nd level spell for Magic-Users, so it’s only a +2 difficulty for Wizards in SoG.

Using the SoG magic economy to create such an effect on the fly would require a duration that maxes out the Fate Time Ladder (“A Lifetime”) and would require an additional 12 shifts (+12 difficulty!) when attempted by a Sorceror.

My plan is to translate pre-defined spells into SoG pretty closely to how the source material originally listed them. So if a spell says says “Duration: Permanent” at 2nd level… then it’s permanent!

So even though the variety of effects a Wizard might be capable of generating would be much less flexible than Sorcerors, a Wizard who kept his wits about him and was smart about the use of Declarations and Aspects could be EXTREMELY powerful within the “less flexible” nature of pre-defined spells. Consider also: a screwdriver is “only” a screwdriver but how many ways can you use a screwdriver?

On top of all that, Sorcery has the added negative of casting failures!

Additionally, there’s nothing saying that a Wizard can’t indulge in sorcery anyway if desired or the situation was dire enough. The Wizard would just apply his Wizardry skill against the adjusted spell difficulty, expend a Fate point and roll 4dF and hope for no failure.

NOTE FOR FUTURE:
A Wizard modifying an existing spell (eg., deciding not to speak on a spell that has a verbal component) takes the existing predefined difficulty and increases it (in this case +1), loses a Fate point and rolls 4dF and risks potential recoil.

A Sorceror attempting the same effect on the fly would still have to cost out the magical effect which could end up still being more difficult than the Wizard trying to modify a tried-and-true formula that did the same thing.

This is another distinction between Wizardry and Sorcery that might need reconsidering, but given the following…

• A Soceror can leverage an apex skill (for example, Craft/Performance skill for Bards) for both his chosen path in life AND generating Magic effects with no more “cost” than the use of a Stunt slot.

…it doesn't seem overly generous at this point to give a Wizard the benefit of indulging in modifications to existing formulas without having to consider the difficulty in the same way as "on the fly" magical effects.

Casting Failures

If the casting results in a failure then no effect generated--at least not under the control of the caster. But there is a magical recoil to contend with!

The magical power that was harnessed or focused in the attempt to create the effect has to go "somewhere". So the base magical recoil would be the effect’s original difficulty, increased by the number of shifts by which the caster failed the roll.

Example: If a Sorceror attempts a +4 spell difficulty and fails by +1, a Superb (+5) magical recoil is generated.

Example 2: If a Sorceror’s apprentice (I couldn’t resist) with a +1 Skill attempted to cast a magical effect of +5 difficulty and then rolled –4 on the dice, then he would end up with a (+5 – 1 +4 = +8) magical recoil! This would also tend to indicate why you would keep a close eye on apprentices… Or why sorcerors tend to live alone…

Dealing with Magical Recoil

I like the roleplaying potential inherent in allowing the caster to determine if the recoil impacts only them or if they reflect some or all of it out into the world.

With respect to the impact upon a Sorceror’s alignment, projecting magical recoil into the world represents something of a chaotic, or evil, or selfish act. The caster electing to take the stress of magical recoil represents more of a lawful, or good or selfless act.

In SoG, magical recoil of any kind is assigned to the stress track of the GM's choosing and is usually based upon the nature of the casting or the desired effect, or what sorts (if any) Aspects were leveraged during the casting.

Which also brings up an interesting thought…

While a compel could occur during a casting to make a casting difficulty higher, could it be used after the failure to make it worse? I think I like the possibilities…

Example: A Sorceror generated a +2 recoil that was projected out into the world, and the GM decided to have it be expressed as physical stress (heat) on a party member wearing metal armor that had some Aspect attached to it--could you compel a +2 increase on that party member for a total of +4 physical stress? (*evil laugh*)

Wizardry and Casting Failure

Under normal circumstances a Wizard cannot fail to cast a spell equal or less than his difficulty, though it is possible to increase the difficulty of a casting via Aspects being compelled, or some party attempting to interrupt the Wizard.

If the Wizard is considered to be “casting a spell” and is successfully interrupted (i.e., fails the difficulty), there is no magical recoil and no negative impact, beyond the loss of the memorized spell (or the loss of the scroll being read).

SoG's assumption is that Wizard spells’ are considered to have integrated various fail-safes so that if a spell was interrupted, the focused energy would be safely dispersed.

Side Note: It is possible to consider that it’s not the spell that has the fail-safes within it, but rather that the Wizard possesses the skill and knowledge of how to safely disperse the energies.

Problem with this assumption is that you might need to state that non-wizards using scrolls could experience casting failure, which was not in the source material.

NEXT: Clerical Magic and the Tragic Case of Rene Belloq…

[Greyhawk] The Unified Theory of Magic (Part 1)

So yeah, it's been a while (okay a long while) since there was a Spirit of Greyhawk (SoG) posting. In the meantime, I had been doing a lot of thinking about High Fantasy Magic and have managed to re-work things into a more coherent single system of Magic that still retained a lot of the things I liked from the previous iterations.

Magic Overview

How Magic Exists in Spirit of Greyhawk

Magic exists as a "force of nature", like magnetism or wind. But while people may understand the principles of Magic, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are able to generate magical effects. Conversely, someone may have the ability to generate magical effects but have no knowledge of the underlying principles that they are using.

Generating magical effects in SoG could be compared to being able to make a sailboat go where you want it go. You need a sailboat and you need wind. You also need a degree of knowledge to be able to use the sailboat to harness the wind to get where you want to do.

Depending upon where you’d want to go (or how big a sailboat you use), you need different degrees of knowledge: consider the difference in knowledge and type of ship needed to sail across the ocean versus sailing across a lake.

Why Care “How” Magic Works Within the Game World

Besides being an interesting thought exercise, I believe that you need to provide players an internally consistent framework for understanding something about what they are doing. Without that framework, I think you make Magic less “useable” or less fun especially with respect to harnessing Aspects. Similar to dealing with combat: a player who has actual knowledge of fighting can be much more effective in his use of Aspects (or have a more rewarding play experience) than someone using the same character who has no first-hand knowledge of combat.

SoG elaborates somewhat on the source materials’ implication that magical effects are not made “just” by casting the spells as listed in the source material. So the SoG implementation makes a clear distinction between actually casting spells and generating magical effects.

The distinction is this:

• Casting spells is but one way of generating magical effects.
• Magical effects can be generated by other means than just casting spells.

Requirements for Generating Magical Effects

Elaborating on the sailing metaphor above, this means that in order to generate magical effects (not necessarily casting spells), there must exist all of the following:

• Magic must exist as a force within the game world that is harnessed in order to generate magical effects (the “Wind”)
• Having the Magic stunt to harness the world’s Magical forces (the “sailboat”)
• A Skill tied to the Magic stunt (the knowledge of how to use and steer the ship)

Required: Stunt “Magic”

Within a High Fantasy environment (or this one at least), anyone with the Magic stunt can create magical effects.

Like many other stunts, Magic is tied to a skill. The caster can determine what skill is used to generate magical effects. That connection is typically established when the stunt is acquired and the connection is generally permanent unless circumstances within the game call for a possible change. The particular skill that is tied to the Magic stunt would then play a big part in the “trappings” of the magic effects.

Here’s some examples:

• Bards generating magic effects might have Magic tied to their Craft/Performance skill.
• Rangers generating magical effects might have Magic tied to their Survival skill.
• Monks generating magic effects might have Magic tied to their Discipline skill.

Aspects are tagged or compelled as normal in the course of generating magical effects.

Like other powerful stunts, every invocation of the Magic stunt requires the allocation of a Fate Point. I use the term “allocation” because SoG contains an important distinction between casting spells and generating a magical effect on the fly:

• Generating an “on the fly” magical effect requires the expenditure of a Fate point. The point is expended and the caster doesn’t get this Fate point back.
• Casting a predefined spell requires only the commitment of a Fate point. The distinction here is that the caster gets the Fate point back at the end of the scene (similar to stress). More on this distinction later.

Optional: Skill “Wizardry”

This skill represents the study, research and understanding of the underlying principles of Magic. Attaching the Magic stunt to the Wizardry Skill is what establishes someone as a Wizard and allows them to use (cast) predefined spells. Using any other skill with the Magic stunt constitutes Sorcery.

Think of Wizards as “ivory tower scientists” of magic, whereas Sorcerors are typically closer to garage tinkerers. This is not to say Sorcerors are not effective, but they can be just as dangerous to themselves and their allies as well as their enemies. Often the term “sorcery” can have a negative connotation, at least among Wizards.

Someone could elect to learn the Wizardry skill without having the stunt, but would not be able to actually cast spells or otherwise generate magical effects. This would be more like a Magic researcher, rather than a Wizard.

While this distinction between wizardry and sorcery was not laid out in the source material, I like it for a number of reasons:

• Enables players who want to leverage the more flexible nature of Fate mechanic with respect to magic, but still leave the “predefined” nature of source material intact.
• Distinguishes Wizards from other types of people that generate magic effects (more on this later).
• The source material appears (to me at least) to contain assumptions that the use of actual spells within the world was a relatively rare currency but yet almost every class of character at varying levels of achievement could either cast spells or generate magical effects (to say nothing of the frequency of crafted magical items appearing within the game).
  This seemed a nice way to reconcile that assumption and leave intact a player’s assumptions for what their characters would be able to achieve.

It is possible that someone could elect to learn the Wizardry Skill without the stunt, but would not be able to cast spells or generate magical effects. This would be more like a Magic researcher instead of a Wizard.

NEXT: How to generate magical effects and the heartbreak of magical failure.

[Kerberos] Skill Trapping Diagram

(Crossposted from ArcDream.com.)

Making skills from scratch using individual trappings as building-blocks was central to Strange FATE from the beginning, and, by extension, The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition). The process by which those trappings would be put together, though, went through some pretty significant changes.

From the top, I took my cues from Spirit of the Century and Dresden Files. Specifically, I liked the niche protection inherent in the separation of certain skills. Fists and Might, for example. The fact that they're not the same skill (as they essentially are in many other games) implicitly asks the question "Do you want to be Fighty Guy or Strong Guy?"

Sure, Fighty Guy and Strong Guy are probably going to have a lot in common just out of sheer logic. But this isn't about logic -- or rather, it isn't about "physical" logic. It's about narrative logic. In terms of narrative, it's more interesting to have one guy who's great at fighting and another guy who's great at being strong.

Initially, this mean that in Strange FATE, some trappings just couldn't go together in the same skill. You couldn't have one skill that measured both your physical strength (Physical Force) and your facility with punching guys in the face (Strike). Physical Force and Strike were Prohibited trappings! Oil and water! The very idea of pairing them made kittens cry.

As early as the first character-building playtest I oversaw, when Morgan Ellis tried to make a perfectly viable and cool character (one, incidentally, who both of us used in our GenCon scenarios), it became clear that this Prohibited trappings nonsense was just that: nonsense. It was getting in the way of a plausible character instead of facilitating it. Morgan literally shook his fist in frustration, Monarch-style.

So I weakened the Prohibited thing so that instead of it being impossible to pair them, it just made doing so prohibitively expensive. But I didn't much like that, either.

Soon enough, I dropped that bit altogether. Instead, nearly every trapping had a list, some quite long, of Restricted trappings that doubled the trapping's cost if they shared the same skill. This persisted throughout the end of playtesting. I wasn't happy with it for a number of reasons -- the math, the multiple charts, the small print, the page-flipping -- but I couldn't think of a better way to mix trappings while maintaining a sense that some were more compatible than others.

A month or two afterward, I'm embarrassed to say, I was watching the Science Channel one night. Whatever the show was about (not robots or punkin-chunkin', apparently), part of it involved a big diagram of a molecule. You know the kind: black and white and red circles connected by lines in a sort-of linear pattern. For whatever reason, something clicked, and I said aloud "That's how trappings and skills should work." A diagram of trappings connected by lines, with trappings grouped in terms of how much they have in common! The greater the distance between two trappings, the more expensive it is!

Then I realized I'd seen this before in the form of the Quade Diagram from Robin Laws' excellent Mutant City Blues. But this wasn't discouraging -- on the contrary. It was proof that the thing I wanted to do would work. MCB does something a bit different (and very, very cool) with its diagram of super powers, but the basic idea was close enough that I knew I was on the right track.

It's pretty simple, really. Start with a trapping you want the skill to have. If it has a thin solid border, it costs one point; if it has a thick dashed border, it costs two points. Then follow the pathways from that trapping to another one you want for the same skill. Thin solid pathways cost one point, thick dashed pathways cost two, and thick solid pathways are free. You can skip trappings (and not pay for them) but not pathways.

Here's an example:

Leap and Move are pretty closely related -- if you can do one, odds are good you can do the other. It's no guarantee, though; if you want to be the Incredible Frogman, your ability to jump will probably be unrelated to your ability to walk. Move and Dodge are another story, though. If you can walk or run, you can walk or run out of the way; the thick-lined connection between is an indicator of that. However, Dodge is a valuable combat-related trapping, because it lets you use the skill to defend against all kinds of physical combat, assuming you aren't tied down or something. Thus, it costs two points to buy for a skill. 

(Yes, the cost is the same to buy both Leap and Move as it is to buy both Move and Dodge, but Dodge has the two-point border because you might not come to Dodge from Move, nor go from Dodge to Move. One's ability to avoid any attack of which one is aware can be flavored a million different ways in a supers game.)

The diagram solved every problem I had with the way I'd been doing skills. It's graphic and intuitive, plus everything fits on one page. The less page-flipping during chargen, the better.

[Greyhawk] Weapon Proficiencies

Spirit of Greyhawk has characters define themselves according to a Class, consistent with the source material. A character's "level" is then determined as the skill level of what the character has selected as his apex skill--the skill at the top of the pyramid.

The source material places an importance upon the selection of what weapons the character is considered "proficient". Early on, I hadn't intended to bring Weapon Proficiencies over into SoG, but I've realized that by keeping them, it avoids a few problems / concerns:

Weapon Proficiencies are one way to address the concern of how do you keep EVERYONE from wanting to take Melee or Missile as their Apex Skill, to increase chances of survival at low levels.

By allowing Weapon Proficiency at the character's Class Inception, a +1 in combat skill rolls is granted, when using only that weapon.

This would then remove a certain amount of temptation to take Melee / Missile as the Apex skill. Especially for clerics/druids! Also, it gives fighter sub-classes the opportunity to take something else as their Apex Skill (notably, a Ranger could now take Survival as his Apex skill).

Additionally, Weapon Proficiencies also tend to address the question, "Why would anyone choose to be a 'pure' Fighter?" Now, we have a currency with which express a Fighter's ability to use a wide variety of weapons in an effective manner.

Implementing Weapon Proficiencies
I currently consider that a Weapon Proficiency is a Stunt--because it offers a broad +1 benefit (combat) for a weapon you probably already have.

By considering it a Stunt, a player could also elect to expend one of their open Stunt slots on a Weapon Proficiency.

While Weapon Proficiencies stack with skills and aspects, I am uncertain as to whether allow a character to take multiple proficiencies of the same weapon:

• This is in conflict with the source material.
• But if a character really wants to become a true specialist in one weapon only (see below about proficiency "granularity"), and wants to spend multiple stunt slots to do it, I don't know that it's really breaking the Fate mechanic. In other words if someone wants to spend 3 Stunt slots to achieve a +3 in "just" the Dagger, I don't know that it's really wrong.
  

Weapon Proficiency Variables
When considering how many Proficiencies are "granted" (i.e., freebies just for achieving particular apex skill level), there are the following variables:

How Many At Character Creation
Translating the PHB "as is", each class would start with a distinct number of proficiencies the character has at its creation (being defined as your Apex skill at +1):

• Cleric: 2
• Druid: 2
• Fighter: 4
• Paladin: 3
• Ranger: 3
• Wizard: 1
• Thief: 2
• Assassin: 3
• Monk: 1

OPTION: It might be simpler to also do something like: non-Fighters get 1 at inception, Fighter sub-class get 2, and the "pure" Fighter class gets 3, but this tends to flatten things out a bit.


How Often Classes Earn New Proficiencies
Again, translating the PHB "as is", and with the assumption that each Skill level of the Apex skill counts as 2 levels in the source material, we can determine New Proficiencies earned by each class. These proficiencies granted do not count against Stunt slots earned due to regular advancement.

Every class gains a single extra proficiency at the following Apex Skill values:

• Cleric: (+2, +4, +6, +8)
• Druid: (+3, +5, +7, +9)
• Fighter: (+2, +3, +4, +6, +7, +9)
• Paladin: (+2, +3, +4, +6, +7, +9)
• Ranger: (+2, +3, +4, +6, +7, +9)
• Wizard: (+3, +6, +9)
• Thief: (+2, +4, +6, +8, +9)
• Assassin: (+2, +4, +6, +8, +9)
• Monk: (+2, +3, +4, +5, +6, +7, +8, +9)

Proficiency Granularity
Consistent with the source material, SoG takes a very granular (focused) definition of what a proficiency allows. In other words, there is not just a "Sword" proficiency. "Long Sword", "Short Sword", "Broad Sword", "Bastard Sword" are all separate proficiency selections.

[FATE Core] Skills, Trappings, and Stunts

Interesting post by Lenny Balsera the other day about the importance of skill trappings in FATE -- and one that aligns very nicely with the importance of trappings in FATE Kerberos, which is, let's say, encouraging. I'm confident about it, of course, but part of me is always wondering, "Yeah, but what will so-and-so think of it?" Replace "so-and-so" with any pre-existing FATE author, lather, rinse, repeat. It's more than just that, though: It's looking to those people and asking myself if what I am doing/have done with my own version of FATE is in the conceptual ballpark of what they've done with FATE. I'm not afraid to -- pompous as this will sound -- break new ground, or go exploring on my own, but I feel... more confident (?) about it if it seems like I'm extending or enhancing a portion of a map that's already been drawn rather than trying to erase and redraw it. Does that make sense?

So while while what Lenny posted is far from a one-to-one with FATE Kerberos, the emphasis on trappings -- FATE's red-headed stepchild, IMO, taken for granted compared to aspects -- is extra reassurance (on top of a successful playtest and development process) that the way FATE Kerberos puts trappings front and center is just a logical outgrowth of what's come before and not some crazy, left-field idea.

Anyway. I'm talking this to death. But the development process was, for me, dominated by a single dilemma: doing something different with FATE without alienating current FATE gamers. And Lenny's post confirms some of the thought process that went along with that "something different." So... good!

[Greyhawk] Experience & Advancement, Part the First

Much credit and respect to Rob Dohoghue's blog entry as the genesis of this post: http://rdonoghue.blogspot.com/2010/10/role-of-spending.html

So, Spirit of Greyhawk is NOT dead, but had been on something of a hiatus for two reasons:

1. The demands of the non-RPG world just became too great to allow for any progress in the back half of 2010.
2. I had hit a bad case of writer's block with The Spirit of Greyhawk campaign (which tends to drive my postings here). The campaign storyline has been building to something of a "watershed moment" and I didn't feel as though I had enough planned to make it work the way I wanted.

Anyway, New Years' Resolutions and blah-blah-blah commitment to gaming blah-blah-blah, we got the game going again last weekend and though I was no further along to solving reason #2 above, I decided to stop delaying, put on my "Big GM panties" and really run the game as a "true" Fate game: stop worrying about lack of planning and let the players really have a say in where and how the game played out.

As most of you Fate-faithful might already have guessed, I was worrying too much about lack of planning. The session was actually one of the most engaging and fast-paced of any we've ever had. Being a Fate-GM, I had a very proud moment while we were cleaning up the Buffalo Wing bones, dice and empty cups when one of the players shook his head and said, "This session would have made for an amazing story to read or watch!"

In large part I credit that sentiment to a new rule I implemented with the goal of getting the players to stop "hoarding" their Fate Points--using the expenditure of Fate Points as the basis for character advancement.


Earning Experience Points
I've implemented Rob's rule pretty much as stated in the blog entry linked above:

"You can treat Fate points as XP by keeping a bowl in the middle of the table. Every time a player spends a FP, it goes into the bowl. The GM might also randomly toss into the bowl when he wants to reward general awesomeness. At night's end, the points in the bowl are converted to XP and divided among the players. Give any extra to whoever the table considers the night's spotlight player, or just let it ride til next time."

Playtest Experience
It was as though the clouds had parted: FP hoarding (or spending them only in a reactive sense) was a thing of the past. Declarations, tagging and Aspect powerings o' plenty. In a single 5 hour session, two 5-phase PCs had racked up 11 XP for the party.

Some examples of Player-related Awesome from that Session:

• Declaring a large chandelier was hanging DIRECTLY above a wounded Villain, and the various rituals in chamber that involved the creation of a vortex (long story) had weakened the chandelier's chain, thus making it primed for use in a "Death from Above" attack.

• PC encircling a villain's neck with his "chain whip" weapon while she tried to strangle him with her bare hands (big Wagnerian woman!), then using his Athletics skill and "Parkour" aspect to run up a wall and flip over the villain, thus simultaneously breaking her stranglehold on him and breaking her neck.

• Correctly guessing/tagging another villain's "Mama's Boy" aspect to send him into a wild frenzy (cuz the PC had killed his Mother in the prior bullet point) causing him to scream in rage while attacking wildly and thereby negate any protective benefit of fighting within an obscuring mist.

• Another correct guess/tag from the party that the geothermal vents upon which the town sat meant that the occupied mansion they had just cleared MUST have an escape tunnel somewhere and used it to free the mansion's servants. "If there's gonna be an escape tunnel ANYWHERE in the city, there'll be one in the mayor's mansion!"
  

This was (for me) the first time a Spirit of Greyhawk gaming session really FELT like a Fate "High Fantasy" game, rather than a Fantasy game that just happened to use the Fate ruleset. As a GM, I really felt the power of collaborative storytelling and that my job was to provide strong characters and settings to surround the PCs, keep a few things in my back pocket just in case, then put the pieces in motion and just let it happen.

And again in large part, I believe it was due to providing the players with an explicit mechanism to empower them to actively engage in the Fate system.

So now that Experience Points are a reality--how should Advancement be handled? There are other Fate implementations out there that deal with advancement in many different ways, but considering that Spirit of Greyhawk is attempting to stay consistent with players' expectations for how the gameworld works, I found that just lifting them "as is" into SoG wasn't going to work for me.

So here's my current thinking on how SoG will handle Advancement...

Spending Experience
Creation Phases and Levels
Spirit of Greyhawk makes the general assumption that each Creation Phase (as documented in Spirit of the Century) is considered as being the equivalent of "2 levels" in the source material. In other words, a Wizard with 3 creation phases is equivalent of a 6th-level Magic-User.

In Spirit of the Century, each creation phase is basically credited with having the following benefits:

• 2 Fate Points added to character's Refresh
• 1 New Stunt
• 2 New Aspects
• Increased Number and Proficiency in Skills (discussed below)

Skill Points
If you consider each +1 in a skill as costing 1 point, the SotC 5-phase character would have the following...

1 x (+5) Skill = 5 Skill points
2 x (+4) Skills = 8 Skill points
3 x (+3) Skills = 9 Skill points
4 x (+2) Skills = 8 Skill points
5 x (+1) Skills = 5 Skill points

...for a total of 35 Skill points. At it's most basic, you could just divide the points by 5 (Creation Phases for a SotC character), make the statement that each phase would be worth 7 skill points and be done with it.

However I don't think that's really consistent with how this gameworld works and would be counter to the expectations of those players familiar with the source material.


Greyhawk Assumptions - Experience & Advancement
The following are derived from the Greyhawk source material:

• As a rule of thumb, it takes roughly 2x as much XP to get from one level to the next. In other words, it takes about 2x as much XP to get to level 3 that it took to get to level 2. Then another 2x as much XP to get level 4 that it took to get to level 3.
  NOTE: This is FAR from a constant, and at many classes' higher levels, this multiple starts to drop off.
  

• XP rewards are constant with respect to who is earning them. A level 3 player killing a particular monster gets as much experience as a level 10 player would from killing the same monster. This means that a higher level character had to either do MORE of the same things, or kill tougher monsters (and get more treasure) to increase at the same pace as their lower-level counterparts.

• If a 1st level PC were fighting a monster with a 12th level PC in the party, even though the 12th level PC might have done the lion's share of the damage to the monster and might have been solely responsible for killing the monster (with the 1st player being little more than an extra target), the basic rules state that 1st level PC gains as much XP for the kill as the 12th level player.

Phases: Skill Amount and Proficiency
Given the assumptions listed above, consider the SotC pyramid progression looking at the number of skills and at what degree of proficiency they are:

Phase 1:
1 Skill at Average (+1)

Phase 2:
1 Skill at Fair (+2)
2 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 3:
1 Skill at Good (+3)
2 Skills at Fair (+2)
3 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 4:
1 Skill at Great (+4)
2 Skills at Good (+3)
3 Skills at Fair (+2)
4 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 5:
1 Skill at Superb (+5)
2 Skills at Great (+4)
3 Skills at Good (+3)
4 Skills at Fair (+2)
5 Skills at Average (+1)

So, working from that, we could take the following progression of total skill points needed to achieve each character creation phase. (NOTE: I've expanded the pyramid out to 9th level to be consistent with the SoG Ladder, as well as to see if the progression holds up at the high end.)

Phase 1: Earn 1 Skill point total.
Phase 2: Earn 3 more Skill points for a total of 4 Skill points.
Phase 3: Earn 6 more Skill points for a total of 10 Skill points.
Phase 4: Earn 10 more Skill points for a total of 20 Skill points.
Phase 5: Earn 15 more Skill points for a total of 35 Skill points.
Phase 6: Earn 21 more Skill points for a total of 56 Skill points.
Phase 7: Earn 28 more Skill points for a total of 84 Skill points.
Phase 8: Earn 36 more Skill points for a total of 120 Skill points.
Phase 9: Earn 45 more Skill points for a total of 165 Skill points.

While this progression is not a perfect fit with the source material, I think it's close enough out of the box to not worry about having to come up with something else.


Playtest Experience
Back to the last playtest session of SoG: we have two PC's at "Phase 5", or the equivalent of 10th level. As I had stated, the party had accumulated 11 XP total in one 5 hour session. For right now, I'm going to generalize that into a convenient "1 XP per gamer per 1 hour of gaming time" guess-stimate.

This means that for characters to get from Phase 5 to Phase 6, they would need to earn another 21 skill points each. Restated in source material terms, that means for 10th level characters to get to 12th level (remember that 1 phase = 2 levels), they would each need about 21 hours of gaming time to get there. From the perspective of my current gaming availability (5 hour game session every 2-3 weeks), that sounds pretty reasonable or perhaps even stingy. But then again going from 10th to 12th level is no walk in the park!


...So, any comments? My goal here is to try to stay true to the assumptions players have when they are playing in "Greyhawk", while staying as close as possible to the Fate system as implemented by the Evil Hat folks.

Coming up next: Going further off into the weeds with more specifics for spending XP and Advancement for a Fate game in the Greyhawk gameworld.

Spirit of Greyhawk - Spells per Level & Memorization

Hello again, everyone! After a lot of side trips and delays, we now return you to my not-so-regularly scheduled discussions on translating "high-fantasy" magic from the Greyhawk source material into my "Spirit of Greyhawk" implementation of Fate.

Setting Expectations

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea before going any further (i.e., digging into more specifics), to be clear about which versions of the source material I'm using.

While other versions of AD&D could be patched together to form a “best of breed” patchwork source, I think that’s an easy way to get focused on the finger pointing at the moon, rather than moon itself.

So, the publishings of AD&D (1st Edition) documentation that I’ll be using will be the following, when I refer to the “source material”:

• Monster Manual (December 1977)
• Players Handbook (June, 1978)
• Dungeon Master Guide (August, 1978)

Game World Assumptions for Wizardry Spells per Level and Spells Memorized

So working from the expectations of the above source material, here's a summary of topics as how the world of Greyhawk works with respect to Wizards and the spells they can cast:

• There is a pre-determined progression of spells per level that can be cast in a day by a Wizard of a particular level.
• Wizards of higher skill levels can cast (per day) more spells in a particular level than a less-skilled Wizard would.
• Highly intelligent Wizards can have more spells in their spellbook than Wizards without that same degree of intellect. In other words, they have a greater selection of spells that could be available to them.
• Higher-level spells also require a higher intelligence. Without that higher intelligence (whether from natural stats or some sort of boost), Wizards cannot cast certain spells.

Taking those assumptions into Fate we end up with the following game-related topics…

• The number of Spells that can be cast in a defined period are an important limiting factor and should be translated into SoG. There should be a reduction in the number of “slots” a Wizard can have for increasingly difficult spells.
• Having a higher skill level in Wizardry allows for higher difficulty spells.
• Given that SoG does not have a skill reflecting pure intellect (a la AD&D’s Intelligence attribute), is there a way within the existing Fate framework to account for a Wizard having an additional qualification to be able to memorize more powerful spells? Is there even a need?
  

Additionally, I want whatever I do for SoG to keep reference tables to a minimum and to keep bookkeeping as simple as possible.

Wizard's Spells per Level in Spirit of Greyhawk

Start with a Traditional Fate Pyramid

My first step was thinking SoG’s “Pyramid” approach is the cleanest way to implement this, based upon the Wizard’s skill level.

So, I'm starting off by stating that the highest spell level that can be memorized by a Wizard is equivalent to his skill level and will be generally defined as 1 spell in that level can be memorized.

So, a Wizardry skill level of +5 (Superb) allows for 1 5th level spell to be memorized for use within a particular period of time (see “Memorization Period” below). Using the example above, the Spell Memorization pyramid is structured similar to SoG’s Skill Pyramid:

• 5th Level Spells: 1
• 4th Level Spells: 2
• 3rd Level Spells: 3
• 2nd Level Spells: 4
• 1st Level Spells: 5

If we compare that to "Spells Usable by Class and Level Magic-Users" (PH, p. 26), this most closely resembles a 9th level magic-user, but gives them one extra 1st and 2nd level spells. My rule of thumb for translation is that 1 skill level should generally be equivalent to 2 AD&D skill levels (in other words, SoG's Magic skill level of 5 would be equivalent to a 10th level M-U). So that seems pretty close to the source material without having to get too fiddly.

Subsequently this also means that using the current SoG ladder maximum of +9, I'm effectively capping out SoG at about 18th level. At this point, I don’t see a real benefit in trying deal with classes past that point so I'm gonna call it good.

Problem: Higher-level Wizards & lower-level spells

However there's now a balance issue in the number of lower-level spells a higher-level Wizard gets under SoG. The source material indicates that for SoG's 18th level "cap", no M-U would have more than 5 spells memorized from spell level 5 on down. Given the difference in the number of spells per day, there needs to put be a similar cap on a Wizard's spell pyramid.

Which means that instead of a Wizard at Magic Skill Level 9 having this "pure" pyramid…

• 9th Level Spells: 1
• 8th Level Spells: 2
• 7th Level Spells: 3
• 6th Level Spells: 4
• 5th Level Spells: 5
• 4th Level Spells: 6
• 3rd Level Spells: 7
• 2nd Level Spells: 8
• 1st Level Spells: 9

…it would instead look like this…

• 9th Level Spells: 1
• 8th Level Spells: 2
• 7th Level Spells: 3
• 6th Level Spells: 4
• 5th Level Spells: 5
• 4th Level Spells: 5
• 3rd Level Spells: 5
• 2nd Level Spells: 5
• 1st Level Spells: 5

…which I think turns out to give you a fairly decent parallel to the source material. There's a few exceptions, but nothing game-killing.

The REAL Rule for Wizards and Spell Memorization

So then the actual rule for a Wizard's Spells per Level would be the following:

• The highest spell level that can be memorized is equivalent to the Wizard's skill level in "Magic", with only 1 spell at that level.
• Each reduction in level gives an extra spell.
• The maximum number of spells that can be memorized per skill level is 5.

If you're an Excel fan, it would look like this:

# Memorized per Spell Level = MAX(MIN(Magic Skill Level – Spell Level + 1, 5), 0)

Memorization Period

Source material canon states that a wizard's spell slots are allocated for a particular spell "loadout" once per day. So once a particular spell is fired, the slot used is unavailable until the next day.

However given that the Fate mechanic places an emphasis on the starting and ending of scenes, I keep wondering if perhaps a Wizard's spell slots in Spirit of Greyhawk might reset by scene, instead of by day.

My current thinking is that this is too far off canon and that SoG will stick with the “per day” memorization period. Here's why:

• Allowing a greater refresh frequency removes some of a player's angst of "planning" a day's spells. I happen to find very attractive the idea that a Wizard character should always be trying to plan ahead and the inherent risks of doing that in an adventure, especially in the fluid nature of a cooperative storytelling mechanic.
• Allowing a Wizard to refresh "by scene" also removes some of the distinguishing factors between a Wizard (who is always trying to plan ahead and look for angles that will help them survive) and a Sorceror who is more of a seat-of-the-pants caster.

…Especially when you consider that it's quite possible that 3-4 scenes could occur in a day. Anyone got a different perspective?

Next Time: Intelligence & Spells, Spell Books

D.A.'s Anniversary and Fantasy Strongholds

Dave Arneson (October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009)

While you can't debate EGG's profound contribution to wargaming and role-playing, his works never really sparked a profound desire to write my own works in the way that Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor did. The first time I read Dave Arneson's descriptions of Blackmoor in the Judge's Guild book "The First Fantasy Campaign" (originally pub'd 1977) I felt a connection with the "tongue-in-cheek" humor, inside jokes and "anything goes" style of fantasy that still persists in my adventures to this day (for better or worse).

One characteristic that stood out about the Blackmoor campaign was that a basic motivation for Blackmoor PCs going on adventures was to fund their strongholds, purchase improvements for the strongholds, and help defend or expand their lands. In other words, there was a feel of "ownership" in the Blackmoor campaign that you don't much see anymore these days.

In tribute to Dave Arneson, I outline some modifications for the creation of PC strongholds as they might exist in Spirit of Greyhawk.

So as a foundational step to Strongholds, I think you have to consider the tropes of the Fantasy-gaming genre and make a quick pass at Treasure (at least in the macro) as it might be played out in a world based upon dungeon crawls and treasure hoards.

The Treasure Track

Considering that a big point of the traditional dungeon crawl was the acquisition of treasure, I propose adding a stress track for Treasure. The Resources skill still exists, but is not directly used for spending money, determining lifestyle, or purchasing / maintaining workspaces and strongholds.

• Purchases reflect stress applied against the Treasure track.
• The Resource skill represents a per-adventure benefit paid into the Treasure track (like natural healing over time).
• The acquisition of treasure reflects a one-time benefit paid into the Treasure track.

The Treasure track for any particular PC is determined as:

• Base Treasure track score = Resource Skill
• Plus any current Treasure (net increase, not gross)

Example:

• PC with Resource Skill of Fair (+2) but no treasure has a Treasure Track of 2.
• Same PC received a Good (+3) treasure so his Treasure Track is increased to 3 (not 5).
• PCs spending drops his Treasure Track to 1 by the end of the adventure.
• At the start of the next adventure, the PCs Resource skill +2, resets the PCs Treasure Track to 2.
• If the PC receives a Great (+4) treasure, then the Treasure Track is increased to 4.
• If the PC spends 1 stress worth of treasure, then the Treasure track stays at 3.

Not entirely the most accurate method, but it keeps the game moving and the fudging is on both sides of the scale so I think it evens out.

General Rule for Spending Wealth (Stress against the Treasure Track)

GM's discretion as to when to take stress to the Treasure track applies (so we don't get into paperwork to buy rope...) but essentially the cost of items (measured on the ladder) represents stress against the Treasure track. For now, roll-ups are applied normally as per any other stress track. Again, perhaps not the most accurate, but keeps the game moving.

Keeping the Randomness in Purchases

Because this is no longer a skill roll against Resources, we can shift the randomness function to instead focus on possible negotiations and modifications to the cost of something, due to the fantasy / feudal nature of the economy. This also has the benefit of making things more fun for socially oriented PCs.

Future Points of Consideration about the Treasure Track

Things to think about at some point in the future:

• Distinctions about treasure "readily available" versus net sum of wealth.
• The application of consequences against the Treasure track (like losing access to Strongholds, or losing them altogether)

Workspaces

PCs have the opportunity to purchase and own a physical location that would support them in their endeavors.

Basic Workspace Characteristics

A Workspace consists of ONE of the following at a level equal to the initial purchase quality +2:

1. Mundane Library (use with Lore)
2. Arcane Laboratory (use with either Wizardry or Sorcery)
3. Temple (use with clerical magic)
4. Alchemy Laboratory (use with Alchemy)
5. Training Area (Melee/Missile, Thievery, Monk, Assassins)
6. Armory (use with Crafting)

Example: To acquire an Armory of Fair (+1) quality, it would require a treasure amount of Good (+3).

Specializing Workspaces

Workspaces can be specialized to function in particular area instead, at a level equal to the purchase quality + 1. Examples would be:

• An Armory that specializes in creating swords
• A Library specializing in Ancient Lands
• An Arcane Lab specializing in Summoning

Improving Workspaces

Workspace improvements may be constructed with a skill difficulty equal to the quality desired +2 (or +1 for a specialized workspace).

Example: A PC with a Treasure available of +3 (Good), decides to have a workspace of a Mundane Library. The base quality of the Library is +1 (3 - 2 = +1). If the PC wants the Library to be improved and expanded to become +3, the difficulty would be (3 + 2 = 5), and so the PC would have to roll a +2 on the dice or better (5 difficulty - 3 skill level = 2). Of course, Fate Points and Aspect tagging rules would be available as per usual.

At this level, the physical area is usually represented as more of a house or something similar. Any general physical characteristics are set at Mediocre (+0).

Resource Stunts

Note that these stunts are still tied to having the Resource skill. In other words, just having treasure might give you a nice place to do your research and whatnot, going past that point and creating strongholds, keeps and citadels does require advancement to be spent on the Resource skill.

Secondary Residence

Used as per SotC RAW to allow a second Workspace in a second physical location (either pre-determined or can be specified during play as long it's on the same plane of existance). Some examples of a Secondary Residence might be:

• A noble's family maintaining a residence in another city.
• A ranger having a backup lair deep within the forest
• A thief's safehouse

The physical characteristics of a secondary residence also start at Mediocre (+0).

Stronghold

This stunt allows one of the character's properties to qualify as a Stronghold. Note that a Stronghold is used somewhat generically: a bard's stronghold might be a playhouse, whereas a Wizard's stronghold might be a tower in the Yatil mountains.

The quality of the stronghold's "default" workspace is equal to Resources skill (or Resources + 1 if the workspace's function is specialized). The base physical characteristics of a Stronghold start at Average (+1) and can be improved with the Fortifications improvement.

The stronghold also will have 1 extra improvement (see "Stronghold Improvements", below)

Keep

Prerequisite: Requires Stronghold stunt

The keep is similar to the Stronghold, but provides an additional 3 Stronghold improvements. The base physical characteristics of a Keep start at Average (+1), same as a Stronghold and can be improved with the Fortifications improvement.

Citadel

Prerequisite: Requires Keep stunt

The Citadel is considered a "Wonder of the World". It has the improvements from the prior stunts, but one 1 of them can be traded (if desired) for something unique and distinctive. This 1 unique improvement can be determined between the PC and the GM. The following are some examples:

• A world-class workspace (adds another +2 quality to one of the workspaces within the citadel and adds another +1 to speed the rate of research).
• An exotic location like: the Astral Plane or the Yatil Mountains. This also includes a means of dedicated transport for reaching it.
• A larger and more highly-trained staff (the head of the citadel is of Good quality, and attended by two Fair and three Average lieutenants).
• The citadel is movable (Baba Yaga's hut anyone?)

A citadel starts with base physical characteristics of Fair (+2) and can be improved with the Fortifications improvement(s).

Stronghold Improvements

Improvements can be selected more than once and can be stacked.

"Additional Workspace"

This improvement allows for an additional workspace to contained within the same stronghold. For example, an arch-mage could choose to have a Library and a Laboratory contained within the same stronghold.

"Add a Stronghold Aspect"

Adds an aspect to the Stronghold at the GM's discretion. Examples could be:

• Holy Ground
• More than it Seems
• Hidden Reserves
• Traps and Pitfalls
• Perfect acoustics (useful for a bard's performance or for social combat showdowns in front of a crowd)
• Situated on a Magic Ley line
  

Aspects can be purchased with treasure, but each aspect would require a treasure quality of Good (+3). Additionally, aspects purchased after a stronghold's inception would need some manner of explanation. Certain aspects are fairly easy to explain by the application of money ("Hidden Reserves" for one), others like "Situated on a Magic Ley Line" might take some thought to work out a plausible explanation.

"Fortified"

Improves the physical toughness of the Stronghold by 1 shift. I would consider that fortifications could also be considered a function of the geography of the area as well, but I wouldn't consider that this improvement places it in some exotic location (see "Citadel")

"Landed Gentry"

This is sort of a catch-all improvement that basically states that Stronghold also has associated lands as well as some sort of feudal order that goes with it. The size of the lands within the Stronghold's control are determined by this improvement. Each improvement counts as 1 shift. This is a prerequisite for other improvements that follow.

NOTE: I haven't worked out the full implications of this improvement, but I expect that this might also have an impact on the PCs status or title.

"Improved Tithing"

Prerequisite: Landed Gentry

The quality of the lands within the Stronghold's control are a function of this upgrade. While a stronghold might control "large tracts of land" (pantomiming Michael Palin's father-in-law from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"), this upgrade provides a shift in the quality of tithing that is provided by those lands.

So for a literary example of a relatively small stronghold with Improved Tithing, you might consider the Kamarg from Moorcock's Hawkmoon stories.

"Conscripted Troops"

Prerequisite: Landed Gentry

I haven't fleshed this out entirely (maybe Mike can chime in with suggestions as I'm using his Mass Combat rules), but I would look at each grade of improvement as the ability to marshal increasingly large forces for military purposes.

"Lackeys"

Note that this is slightly different from having minions/henchmen in that lackeys are tied to the location of the stronghold and the lands surrounding.

The stronghold has a small staff of competent people: two with Average skill at something (skill to be determined when defining the henchman), and a Lieutenant with a peak skill of Fair. However these henchmen are tied to the location around the Stronghold.

NOTE: I'm sure there's more to be thought through, but this is enough to start!

Maintaining Workspaces and Strongholds

This is still in the consideration phase, but I think that if a campaign is going to venture into the area of the PCs having holdings, there should be idea of having to accept Treasure stress in order to maintain these holdings. I mean if you're looking for a reason to go out adventuring, that's just far too choice to not use!

Being unable to accept the stress to the Treasure track due to maintenance costs would likely result in a per-adventure cumulative -1 "consequence" to the quality of the workspaces and then losing upgrades (one upgrade counts as -1). Fortifications crumble, unpaid troops will desert, etc.

Assessing the Maintenance Cost (or "Paying the Cost to be the Boss")

Each of the following adds or subtracts at the number shown next to the condition. Add all of the applicable together for a net Treasure stress to be assessed per adventure.

• Workspace +1
• Stronghold or Keep rating +1
• Citadel rating +2
• Conscripted troops (add a Treasure stress equal to their size/quality)
• Landed Gentry -1 per upgrade
• Improved Tithing -1 per upgrade
• Owner's Resource Skill used as a modifier to the cost. (Note that this doesn't count against his Treasure track)

Apply the net result to the Treasure track. If the net result is positive, that gets added to the Treasure track!

Example: Branson the Knight has constructed a Stronghold with the following characteristics and associated maintenance costs...

• Workspace (Armory) +1
• Stronghold +1
• Aspect "Moat" +0
• Fortification +1
• Landed Gentry -1
• Resource Skill of Mediocre +0
  

He would have a maintenance cost of +2 assessed against his treasure per adventure. So then our knight is now heavily motivated to adventure so that he could...

• Acquire sufficient upgrades to have the stronghold pay for itself (or fill his coffers)
• Acquire sufficient advancements to increase his Resource skill
• Acquire loads of treasure as a backlog to keep things in good repair

...otherwise, he starts losing stronghold improvements due to lack of maintenance.

WHEW! Okay, that's enough. Mr. Arneson: thank you for the inspiration.