d12 Supers -- Design Goals & Philosophy

So, I wanted to talk about the design goals that went into the new Runebearer d12 Supers game. (I so need a better name for this thing.) This post will go into how the game works, and what influences the decisions I made.

If you haven't done so already, here is the link to the new game. Enjoy.

First and foremost, Runebearer, and its super hero variant, have always been tactical minis games at their core. d12 Supers is no different. Crunchy, tactical combat that feels super heroic is the main goal of the design. Most everything else, from the way skills are handled, to the design of the powers, works towards this goal. I love role playing and narrative, but I think most of that gets handled by the players at the table. What needs to work and feel right is the battle system.

With that in mind, another big goal is that characters are mechanically different in battle. A character that relies on a fire blast is going to be mechanically different than one that relies on an ice blast, or a mental attack. Characters should have situations they excel in, and others where they meet enemies with abilities they find difficult to deal with.

Another goal would be as simple as possible, but no simpler. I think the previous game was fun, but really clunky. Without sacrificing the above two goals, I would like to reduce the complexity of the game and the bookkeeping required to run it.

Ideally, the game has tons of character building options, and all of them are good some of the time, but none of them are good all of the time. I once played a Champions game where every character had a 20 DEX and a multipower. When it comes to building your character I want lots of variation and lots of choices, and all of those choices should have times when they are awesome and other times where they are negated.

I hope that means that the game is designed for people that like to optimize character builds, but it is ultimately hard to min-max. I have embraced the video-gamey notion of "character builds" and I have lots of min-maxers in my gaming circles. I want making characters to be a fun exercise, and enjoyable to those folks, but I want to avoid obvious solutions. I want choices, and ultimately trade-offs to any build. I want my gamers to email me telling me they spent all week creating and tweaking characters. I want people to say, "If I hadn't used Charisma as my dump stat, I might have won that battle."

So... I want a game with tons of character builds, crunchy tactical super heroic combat, and be pretty simple overall. What does that game look like? I think next post, we should make a character and find out!

(The New) d12 Supers

So, over 20 years ago, I wrote a fantasy game called Runebearer which became my game of choice for years. For me and my group, it was a great game for the grim and gritty fantasy that we often played. For super heroic adventure, we stuck to Champions. Even though I had grown to have some serious issues with Champions over the years, I couldn't see replacing it. In my mind, supers games just had too many power combinations and fiddly bits to try to create something. I had adapted Runebearer to western, sci-fi, and pulp settings, but I would never write a supers game.

Until I did... I adapted Runebearer to a super hero setting. But man, it was clunky. There were tons of stats and skills and talents and modifiers and special cases. It was fun (I personally enjoy fiddly games, so take that with a grain of salt), but it was a mess.

I am in the process of rewriting Runebearer to streamline it and cut out unneeded complexity, and along with that, came the task of reimagining the super hero game. It is a ton of work, but I am at a playable state, and wanted to get it "out there". It's not 100% finished, and certainly isn't perfect, but it is getting there.

Here is the link to the docs, please enjoy them.

Playing (and Scheming) Above the Table

Last post I talked about Wolverine vs. Cyclops, which is shorthand for playing your character for yourself, or playing for the others at the table. Almost always, I want players to be playing for the rest of the table. I want people to think before they take action, "Is this going to be entertaining for everyone at the table, or just me?"

At first glance, this might seem like it precludes selfish and scheming characters. It depends. If your goal was to create a character to get one over on your fellow players, then yeah, I don't think I want that character in the group.

However, if you want to play the bad guy who redeems himself, the scoundrel with a heart of gold, or the villain who is reluctantly forced to roll with the heroes, I think there is lots of room to operate. You just need to keep in mind, "Is this going to be entertaining to everyone at the table?"

One way I have thought to enforce this is, as the GM, to stop accepting secret notes and directions from the players. If they want to perform an action, they have to state it at the table, out loud, in front of everyone. This means that every player is in on the plot, even if their characters would be opposed to it.

I think this avoids a couple things. First, it cuts off the most egregious examples of selfish play. If something is really offensive, or will tear the party asunder, someone can step in before the action is taken and voice their concern. If one player's thief is planning to steal from the group, another player can step in and state, "That's not OK, and if we find out, we are leaving you on the side of the road."

Second, it avoids one of the pitfalls of PvP play, which is opposed skill rolls. If your thief is going to palm some coins, one of the other players may ask to make a spot check. If your schemer is lying to the group, someone might think to ask for a sense motive check. Of course, the GM will have to adjudicate whether or not anyone will be able to make the opposed skill check. What you don't want is to allow an action in secret, and then another player finds out, and feels cheated because he could have made a skill roll to detect the subterfuge.

You do open the door to some huge metagaming (which you still get as soon as the first secret note is passed). Remember though, what we are shooting for is enforcing the rule that any intra-group plots and schemes are entertaining. Scheming above the table eliminates much of the risk that one character's secret plans derail the entire campaign. Scheming above the table means that all the players are in on the plot -- they agree to allow that plot into the story. When everyone is OK with a character's shenanigans, I think metagaming becomes less of a problem.

Wolverine vs. Cyclops (or Why Your Games Keep Imploding)

When I visit my local game store, the discussion often turns to unhappy gamers, unhappy GMs, and to games that have recently imploded. Such-and-such is unhappy with their game, and is looking to drop it. More often than not, these discussions are laden with anecdotes about one or more players behaving badly, min-maxing to the point where the GM is miserable, hogging the spotlight, or maybe even actively working against the team's goals.

The problem here is a simple one -- Everyone wants to be Wolverine; No one wants to be Cyclops!

At the gaming table, it seems that everyone wants to be the mysterious loner, who wins the battle single-handed, and quips about killing, and loneliness, before walking off into the sunset, alone, to contemplate his tortured psyche... something, something, alone.

Everyone wants to out-cool everyone else, and no one wants to be left as the steady, solid, team player. Who makes the plan, and sticks with it, even though he isn't the main focus, to beat the bad guys with the help of his team, with which he has a quick beer, before heading home to bed, with his wife... who is way out of his league... and secretly pines for the loner bad boy.

Unless the accountant is also a bad-ass

So yeah... everyone wants to be Wolverine and no one wants to be Cyclops. I understand. We game to be wizards, space rebels, and superheroes. No one is playing an accountant, pounding away at his 9-to-5 desk job. We game to imagine being cool, and so it is only natural that people gravitate toward the cool archetype of the mysterious, tortured, bad-ass, loner -- Wolverine!

Unfortunately, the Wolverine archetype, when played poorly, is also sort of a disaster on a team. When he meets his prospective teammates, he won't step out of the shadows, and will only give vague, mysterious answers to their questions... bonus points if the answers are passive-aggressive. In battle, he is trying to out cool everyone, avoiding moves that help the team, and going for things that will prove just how much better he is than everyone else. Bonus points here if he is min-maxed so as to be better than everyone else. When adventuring, he is the guy who wants to scout ahead alone, maybe take out a guard or two (or even the big boss), or steal the macguffin all by himself. Bonus points if he withholds information or steals from the party because, "That's what my character would do."

Thanks to: http://clipart-library.com

So no, we don't want Wolverine at our table. What we want is a table full of Cyclopes. We want players who are actively trying to make the game better -- for everyone.

Gaming groups work when the players realize that their main goal is to play their characters such that they entertain each other, and the GM. Not to be cool. Not to stay true to character. Not even to beat the scenario and become rich and powerful. You can indeed do all those things, but the main goal is to entertain the other players at the table. That means everyone gets to be cool. Everyone gets their moment. Everyone gets their opportunity to contribute to a battle, and indeed, when you pick your moves, you pick the ones that bring the team closer to victory, even if your individual kill count suffers.

None of this means you can't play a bad-ass, or heck, even a misanthropic jackass. It just means that whatever your character concept, make it work in the context of the game, and the party. You can always think of one reason why your angry loner would work with the group, and if you can't, ask the other players for ideas, or ask the GM to give you a reason.

If your character idea is going to cause conflict, run it by your GM and fellow players. Your character might be working against his party, but you, as a player, should not be working against the other players at your table. If your idea isn't going to be fun -- for everyone -- don't even roll him up.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying, "Don't be a selfish player," so I'll be moving along now.

Dice and Superheroes (or why elegant and powerful systems sometimes suck)

There was a point in my gaming life when I knew that I would only ever play one system -- and that system was HERO System. It all started with Champions which caught my gaming group's imagination with its amazingly detailed hero creation, and dynamic, super heroic feeling combats. With Champions, you could create any hero you could think of, and have him wading through villains, knocking them through walls, and causing all sorts of mayhem.

And, though HERO always got knocked for being complex, it was pretty damn elegant for what it was trying to do -- which was to mechanically simulate the range of powers you see in the comics, while keeping everything balanced so that characters could interact in tactical combat.

The beauty of HERO is that it takes all those wonky super powers, breaks them down, and then categorizes their effects. You have a fire blast? Well that is just an Energy Blast effect. You fire webs out of your wrists? That is an Entangle effect. All these effects come together, along with Advantages and Limitations, to make your unique powers. It really is a pretty cool concept... and yeah, character creation is somewhat of an accounting exercise, but the end result is worth it.

So, with this powerful tool in my gaming group's toolbox, we would never need another superhero game again.

Or would we?

Well no. Not for a dozen or so years, in any case. I ran the heck out of HERO/Champions. All through high school, college, and a good portion of my adult GMing life, I ran some version of HERO System. It served me very well, for a very long time. It was a great game (and still is).

But, after such a long run, you get to know a system, maybe a little too well. The warts start to show, and after so many years, the warts become a focus. Champions is an elegant and powerful supers system, but that ability to do everything, with as few mechanics as it does, comes with a price. Mainly that, though you can make any character with any power in HERO, mechanically, a lot of those characters and powers end up being 90% the same.

Without going into the details of how HERO works, let's take a simple example of a Fire Blast, and an Ice Blast. Both of these powers may have been built with the effect of Energy Blast. Each might be made unique by attaching some limitations to it -- so for instance, the fire blast could be weaker in the rain, while the ice blast cannot be used in 100 degree heat. These limitations make the powers cheaper to buy, and are up to the player to purchase. (Which you often do, because cheaper!) However, in many cases, beyond a few limitations, these powers behave identically on the battlefield.

On one hand, this is great. I only need a single set of rules to handle fire, ice, lightning blasts, etc. This is a strength, not a weakness. But on the other hand, once I am through making a few of these blasters, and I start to look closely at them, I see that many of them have similar powers, and play pretty much the same. Beyond a few minor differences, often relying on GM fiat ("The temperature today... um 97 degrees... woo hoo ice attacks all around!!"), my fire blaster, with his Fire Blast, Flaming Shroud Armor, and Fire Burst Flash Attack, plays pretty close to my ice blaster, with an Ice Blast, Ice Block Armor, and Blizzard Flash Attack.

Some of this is lack of imagination, certainly... can't we build an Ice Blast that say does damage AND freezes your opponent so that they can't move?

You can, and HERO gives you tools to do this. For instance, you could have a power that incorporated an Energy Blast, and a Drain effect -- or Energy Blast and Entangle. And that would sort of work. The issue there becomes one of campaign limits on powers -- to add the secondary effect of the Entangle, you would have to reduce the effect of the Blast. Often, you are left with a crappy version of each -- a Blast that damages no one, and an Entangle that holds no one. You should have just bought two separate powers and each would have been more effective.

So besides dissing my estranged ex-game, what is my point? My point is that sometimes, you can create a system that is elegant, but by making the mechanics of the game cleaner, you have reduced variation. You may be able to simulate more powers, with fewer rules, but in play, those "unique" powers end up feeling very much alike.

Elegance vs. Variations -- In the case of Champions, abstracting all of the blast powers into a single effect, means that you have to work harder to make those blasts different. At their base, they are mechanically the same. On the other extreme, you might have a game where every power is listed separately, and has different mechanics. Your fire and ice blasts are entirely unique powers... but now, what about the guy who uses lightning, or fires concentrated bubbles of time at his opponent? You have just created a game with 900 powers, and probably an unbalanced mess.

All of this is a lead up to me saying I have written a superhero game, based on the core Runebearer concepts. In the coming days, I will be posting here to discuss it... and to explain my unbalanced mess.