Phobian Nights

As we continue to develop the Beta RPG materials, I've been toying with ideas for a campaign that the development team have kind of injected into my imagination.

Phobian Nights is a sub-setting for our Serene Dawn science-fantasy imaginings. Set under the surface of Mars' most notorious moon, the theme is one of urban despair, dark intrigue and gumshoe investigation.

Inspired by Scott and Jon's initial character ideas for playing a game on the Martian moon, the sub-setting has begun to morph in my mind into something slightly more sinister than I perhaps initially imagined.

Phobos Station

Phobos is a Special Economic Zone within the Chinese State. It has a status similar to that of Hong Kong in recent Earth history.

Phobos is, in the greater organisation of the Sol system, the most important way-station. It is said, with some truth, that everybody passes through Phobos on their way through or out of the Sol system. As a consequence there are Corporate offices, significant orbital and port facilities, and all the attendant commercial support infrastructure you might expect.

A Moon Divided

Phobos features two types of colonial structures: Starsides and Underdeeps.

Starside structures are either domes (rare) or towers (usually) which face the stars; in other words, these are surface structures with extensive solar-collective glascrete panels which allow citizens to see the stars or Mars, depending on which side of Phobos the structure faces.

Underdeep structures are the more traditional extra-terrestrial dwellings which are constructed underground. This is simpler and allows colonists to take refuge within the easier-to-heat and maintain subterranean caverns. Underdeeps tend to feature massive caverns, filled with highrise and other close-proximity housing, connected by wide tunnelled "boulevards".

Chinese Angst

What really got me interested, however, were the almost throw-away ideas that the players came up with over the course of a video chat some weeks ago. It was all about the crime.

Crime on Phobos is dominated by the Chinese organised crime syndicates, usually referred to as the Triads.

The dominant crime syndicate is the Sun Yee On Triad ("New Righteousness and Harmony"). 

Adding to this, the guys suggested a couple of characters who act as private investigators. They were into the idea that they might know some Triad members, even have to fend off their pressure, but that they would nonetheless pick up the odd-jobs that arise from a corrupt and thriving port-settlement.

For me, the feel has steadily become darker and darker until I realised that this is exactly right. It seems to me that the inhabitants of this "brave new colony" would be... less than excited about the reality. 

Grey, grimy and grim. Phobos as the waystation to the stars... and the ghetto of the lost.

I don't know whether the guys will mind but, in truth, I kinda fancy a gumshoe-meets-futurepunk setting.

Game on!

Experiences on Experience

XP: the means by which most RPGs confer improvements upon the characters, earned through their achievements in play. Experience Points (XP) are given at regular intervals to reward the players for taking part in the game. We're all, I think, familiar with the idea.

The question has always been, "What's the best way to go about awarding XP?"

The answer lies in what you want to achieve. If you want to encourage any given behaviour then that is what you reward. Thus, if you give XP for killing monsters and finding treasure you'll focus the players on those two activities.

There is no right or wrong way to reward players in your game. There are simply more or less effective ways to encourage the behaviours that you want to see. For example, seeking to encourage more "roleplay", i.e. acting in role, instead of the more common descriptive style of play, I've introduced suggestions for XP multipliers. Taken straight from "Gamemastery", these bonuses have had a dramatic effect on the behaviours of the players and the quality of the game.

Experience from Fantasy

My current Fantasy-genre game is being currently played using the default rules of Castles & Crusades. The guys are enjoying themselves, although there have been rumblings for one or two tweaks, such as with the combat rules. 

From my perspective, however, the real challenge has been calibrating the XP system. C&C uses a very slow progression rate and encourages the GM to add in delays between levelling up processes too: one week of training (expensive) per level gained, e.g. going to Level 3... well that's 3 weeks training, dude.

With staggered level-up points for each different class, low-value awards for combat, and low-encouragement to give other awards... well, I found myself unwittingly starving my players of XP. Following the default rules was making them jittery because they wanted to get to Level 2 and 3 quickly. Remembering Wick's Law that you should "run the game the player's want to play", I knew that they needed a boost.

Step One was to add in the following XP multipliers to encourage role-playing over roll-playing:

Step Two has been to adjust the amount of XP per creature overcome. My players want an action-game where monster kills are valuable, in the Old School tradition, so I will give it to them. I've decided to make the monster-kill XP a per-hero total instead of being divided between them. Thus, when my 5 heroes kill 10 Goblins, worth around 100XP they get 100 each, not 20 each. 

Step Three has been to add in larger bonuses for completing non-fighting goals. These are largely improvised but a rough scale exists in my head: 

• 50-100XP for a small personal goal or small achievement, such as thinking to record something important or prepare something useful. In the last session, one player got 50XP for thinking of making 2 torches from some wood and rotten rags off a looted creature; another got 100XP for recording the details of runes on a doorway.
• 100-250XP for completing a short-term personal goal, such as found on the player's Roleplaying Sheet, or a story goal in the current adventure.
• 250XP+ for longer-term personal goal or a major story goal, such as something that would have taken multiple adventures to achieve.

I also took the expedience of giving everyone a 300XP boost at the end of the first adventure to allow them, after four sessions, to level-up. Oh, and I have dumped the training for this event.

Musings for Beta

Beta RPG is the system I'm developing for my own gaming pleasure. Right now it's very embryonic but it does have the basics in place.

One thing Beta does lack, however, is an XP system. I've not finalised anything yet but I am leaning towards a couple of things based on the experiences of giving XP to my group.

Firstly, they like big numbers. Increments of "1000XP = a reward" sounds nice and feel good. Perhaps each 1000XP total will unlock an upgrade, allowing for some chunky XP awards depending on the genre of play.

That's a good second point too: different genres and styles of play will warrant different XP awards. Fantasy gaming will probably reward creature kills where modern gaming may not... unless it's a monster-hunt game. Thus XP calibration advice to GMs needs to outline how different awards will affect play.

Thirdly, the roleplaying multipliers will probably become a default element of the XP system, encouraging good quality play.

Lastly, the system should draw fair-sized rewards from the Roleplaying (RP) Sheet, which needs to be a part of the character creation process... perhaps similar to the bonuses I mentioned above.

And finally...

The process of XP awards needs to be flexible. It needs to reward the behaviours you want in your game.

I still want to go back and check out the Rolemaster XP system again. Years ago I used the system outlined in the GM book from RMFRP and found it to be really useful. There are all-manner of useful ideas for XP bonuses in there, despite my memory failing me right now. I need to be able to drop in some new rewards ideas if they prove useful.

Do you want them to investigate? Then give XP for each clue found and a big reward for solving the mystery. Do you want them to stop killing like psychos? Then don't reward monster kills with XP.

That said... remember: "You have to run the game the players want to play".

Game on!

Beta Fantasy

Having some spare time, I've taken the opportunity to try and progress the development of my own RPG system, Beta.

As I mentioned in my last post, this is a long-overdue project and it's nice to be finally working on it in earnest.

This week has seen several small steps in the right direction:

• Beta RPG has it's own wiki space: betarpg.wikispaces.com
• The special Beta Dice have been defined
• Basic rules for taking actions have been drafted
• Combat rules have had a stab at being written
• A Character Record sheet has been designed

All of these elements mean that I'm almost ready to inflict the system on my alpha-team of players. Although anyone can access the wiki and view our progress, I'm hoping to initially set up a small game with a couple of players (probably using Roll20.net). The aim will be to see if any of this nonsense actually works.

Until then... well, let's take a look...

Beta Dice

For years, I've been wrestling with how to use Dice Pools to quickly assess the success of an action without giving myself a serious headache. I've tried with d12, d8 and d6. Each time, the problem was that no one die roll gives enough of a range to emulate the effects desired.

In truth, the breakthrough came when I realised that I could combine the concepts behind the luscious polyhedral dice mechanics of the Cortex System with the symbol-dice created for the latest Star Wars system.

Beta RPG is played using a selection of special Beta Dice. These are polyhedral dice bearing two types of symbol: wins and fails.

When making a test the player will assemble a Dice Pool to roll. This is a collection of different dice types and colours based upon the abilities of the hero. Once assembled, the dice are rolled; fails are subtracted from wins, and the final result is announced to the GM.

Find out more here: betarpg.wikispaces.com/Beta+Dice

Character Record v1

Wanting to start designing a character I realised that I needed something to record my decisions on. A couple of hours of design have resulted in the creation of the first sheet, designed to handle Attributes, Knacks, Ineptitudes and Knowledges. I'll need to expand it... but first things first, as they say.

Curious people can grab the sheet here: betarpg.wikispaces.com/Downloads

Fantasy Time

Once that lot was out of the way I decided to begin prepping for some playtesting. As a starting point for playtesting Beta RPG it makes sense to begin with a relatively simple setting.

Mykovnia is my own fantasy world. It was born some 28 or so years ago, when I was a young aspiring gamer. It was a place of dark fantasy and night terrors. 

Mykovnia is a gritty fantasy, suitable for swords-and-sorcery style play. Despite recent attempts, the world has never been accurately modelled with an RPG system because things never seemed to feel quite... right. Now is the time.

Having recently started to model a couple of characters in the setting using the RuneQuest 6th Edition rules, I decided to look at converting one of them over. Enter Darryn. You can read about his genesis in my review article for RQ6 at The Iron Tavern. 

Darryn

Darryn is a tribal hunter from a group of Humans living just south of a bitter arctic tundra. He is a somewhat dour and serious fellow, trained in the arts of the Wolf Hunt - a form of ritual - and marked as being under the gaze of the Moon Queen.

Using the draft Character Creation rules I converted him over to Beta in about 5 minutes. He still needs an Edge and a Flaw, but then I need to design some rules for those too. 

Here's what I came up with so far:

All in all, I'm really excited to be rolling hot with the system. I'm sure that my ego will crash mightily the minute that anyone reading decides to point out my glaring errors, but in the meantime it feels good to be finally writing something fresh.

Ego aside, though, don't be hesitant to comment. If you spot a glaring error then it's better to bruise my fragile ego than to leave it there... glaring... staring, like the proverbial Beholder.

What's next? Well... giving Darryn an Edge and a Flaw for starters. Then it's time to create Shanna, the shaman's apprentice. And you know what I'll need to write to make her playable, right?

Game on!

Going Beta

As mentioned back in January, the time has come for me to (finally) pull together my own RPG. This has, in fact, been a live project since January... but has faced its own challenges and delays. 

Today I can finally reveal that development of "Beta" has truly begun in earnest. Oh, and I'd better mention that Beta is a working title. 

Beta?

Beta is named for the fact that it arises out of the charred ashes of Alpha.

Alpha was developed a few years ago as the evolution of several previous attempts to design an RPG system that fits my own style of play. One of the key features of Alpha was that it operated a two-tier system of characterisation: a roleplaying level and a skirmish level. 

The former level was the familiar RPG approach... but the skirmish level allowed players to run quick engagements or short scenarios utilising miniatures and terrain on the tabletop. This suited the Dark Reich setting, an fantastic WWII alternative world, because it opened up the same game to be played in a quick wargaming style too.

I'm not sure why Alpha stalled and failed. In the end, I think, it was just too much pressure to develop a game system plus a unique setting on my own.

Beta is already a superior development because I'm not alone: working with some very old friends, I'm able to get the benefits that arise from collaboration and feedback. Things are in the opening stages of a first draft... but the mutual support of three other gamers is a very great aid indeed.

What's the Point?

I've been pingling around with a lot of ideas which link back to Beta. I really want to evolve a game system that is quintessentially about how I'd like to roleplay.

Right now the Beta project has some serious parameters:

• it has to be relatively rules light, even a bit 'old school' in simplicity
• it has to be able to support my meta-setting, which is a genre blend
• character development is going to be fluid and a constant flow
• it needs to be beginner friendly, easy to grasp
• it needs to be GM friendly, with low prep complications

I need to swallow the pill: this is a new product; it needs to bring something new to roleplaying. 

Finally, Beta has to be something which the players around me can buy in to: no players, no point.

What's Next?

First step is to finish writing the draft and then share that with the core team. From this I hope to publish a complete "beginner's game" version set in one of the many worlds of my dreaming. 

Initially I am tempted to present the first part of my meta-setting through the medium of the fantasy-apocalyptic. More on that another time.

In the end, this is a project that is going to take time. It'll also need to discover some friends. To facilitate feedback we'll open a wiki space and invite interested parties to read, play and comment. If you're interested in trying this system out then I'd like to hear from you: pop a comment on below.

Until next time... well, I'd better go and write another section of the rules, eh?

Game on!