Design Review: Define your core experience

Ashen Lands is a post-apocalyptic tabletop rpg where the players play those brave enough to venture into the unforgiving remnants of the freshly ruined world. A world where every new area wants you dead, too much magic will drive you insane, and whenever you roll doubles, the world moves itself that much closer to your complete demise.

This week I reviewed fellow game designer Seamus Allen’s game Ashen Lands. A post-apocalyptic survival tabletop RPG. The game is ready for players to read and playtest but these suggestions and analysis are to help fix some of the missing information.

I will not be making comments on the combat encounter specific mechanics as it was being rewritten during my review. I looked through Character Creation, exploration specific mechanics, social specific mechanics, downtime, crafting, and spellcasting.

The first thing I want to bring attention, because I saw this in my previous design review on Shifting Tides, is the lack of a strong “What is this game about”. In both games, I feel that there is not enough emphasis on what makes these games unique. So, if you are working on a game, setting, or campaign of your own. Take another look at your pitch and what makes this game unique section. If it is a game, did you capture the mechanics you are proud of? A campaign, is there a hook in the pitch and will it sink in deep enough when someone reads it?

Along the same lines, I felt the text could better inform the theme throughout the book. Mechanics certainly inform the setting and feel of the game, but not every player gets the feeling of the system through its mechanics. So, I want to take the time to highlight some of the more interesting and defining mechanics of Ashen Lands that really reveal the setting: Scars, exploration, and spellcasting.

All characters have scars, these are the marks they got from the apocaypse or inherited from their parents. This is the first step of character creation and the most defining aspect of a character. An example would be a banished character found that they were forced out of the world during the apocalypse. They are only partly in the world and appear ghostly like as a result. Some features could be reduce carrying capacity and the ability to let some attacks pass right through you.

The exploration mechanics show us a dangerous and unforgiving world, where each zone we pass through could kill if we aren’t prepared. The game adds mechanics for travel and inflicts toll on the characters representing their exhaustion. Toll is spent to look ahead to be prepared for the dangers they may face or gather more food when they run out. The more toll you have, the lower your maximum health. Exploration and travel is an increasingly dangerous activity as you can see from the mechanics.

The Spellcasting mechanics also show a cost for power and knowledge. Each spell you know costs you 1 Sanity, and characters with low sanity find it increasingly difficult to stay in control. Minus 4 Sanity being character death effectively, each spell you learn should be considered carefully.

So now that we understand some of the themes we can move on to the takeaway points.

Ashen Lands’ rules explanations are clear and generally easy to understand, so I only had a few minor changes like standardizing language. What the book really needs is help making it easier and more enjoyable to read. Tabletop RPG books sit in a weird spot in writing in that they need to be clear and easy to understand like a well written textbook, but they also need to be entertaining and fun to read. Sometimes that entertainment is added later, with images and quotes to break up the text, but in development RPGs don’t get that luxury. We have to do it slightly differently. A simple ways to do this is with examples. You can introduce the setting to the readers before they even start playing by using examples to help explain your rules.

Therefore, looking back at the major themes from the book, we can make sure to highlight the dangers of the environment, the fact that the apocalypse left visible scars on everything, and the sanity has a cost for knowledge. Knowing what the unique aspects of our system, help us further create and paint the setting within the rules explanations.

How can you do this for your games? Or what games do you know that merge rules and setting well? Let me know below and make sure to follow me on twitter (@c22system)or join the discord(https://discord.gg/hFTqEDX) if you like this type of content.

What you need for every encounter

Today I took the time to write up a section for the Dealer section for my player handbook for my system C22 and I thought this section would help with many other GMs and designer with their encounter design. If you have any suggestions for what I missed, or how this is different in games you’ve run, let me know in the comments below.

At its heart, every encounter is a challenge, something we are unsure if they can overcome.  We are playing it out to see how and if they resolve it. For every encounter you need three things: a goal, a threat, and a stake.

  The goal is usually the simplest aspect of the encounter.  What do the characters want? It likely the giant gem sitting on the pedestal over there, or they want to go to the Duchesses’ gala. In either case, the goal is clear to you the Dealer.  Now that is where the important part of encounter design is.  The goal needs to be clear to the players.  If they were trapped in the room and the ceiling was lowering until they took the gem, the gem cannot be hidden behind a secret panel if it is the goal.  In the same case for the party, the players need to know it is happening and that they need to attend. But a goal allow is not enough, a gem on a pedestal can just easily be taken, while a party can easily be attended once you the time and place. A goal itself does not warrant an encounter, more is needed, there needs to be a threat.

The threat is what stops the players from reaching their goal. A combat encounter is the easiest way to imagine a threat. The dragon, the bear, and the group of bandits are all threats. In our pedestal example, there could be a lava rive between the character and the gem, or a giant being made entirely of ice.  These threaten the player and prevent them from reaching their goal. One pieces that make threats some of the most fun and interesting parts of encounter design is that they do not need to be immediately clear.  It is important that players know there is a threat, but what that threat is can be revealed later in an exciting surprise.  But to truly make a threat work, there needs to be something to threaten. There needs to be a stake, and while the threat can remain hidden, the players need to know what is at stake. 

  The stake is why there is a chance of failure; the reason a check is required. In most cases, the stake is the hardest part of an encounter to create, but something that will help us is that our threat and our stake our intertwined. Imagine again, our gem on a pedestal, let us say that if the gem is not replaced after it is removed then a trap is triggered, causing the door to close. There is your stake, the character’s time is at risk. You could instead have something like a boulder rolling down to crush the character as they run away with the prize, and now their life is a stake, but that is not practical in many dungeons. In the same case with the party, there needs to be something more prohibiting the players from attending, perhaps an invite list.  So now they need to get an invite.  Time can be the stake here but let us say they already have someone willing to sell them the invite for an absorbent fee, then wealth can be their stake. If they do not get an invite by other means, they will lose a large amount of wealth, or delay their goals even further by missing the party.

In both previous cases, time made a good stake, but there are plenty of others that can work when you need them.  To list a few, time, wealth, health, progress on their other goals, gear, their companions, or the potential rewards. When we go through the different encounter types, we will discuss more, how these different stakes can be applied to different encounters.

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Design Review: Technical Writing Basics

The Shifting Tides is a game where you play scavengers surviving on a strange, dangerous world. The game is currently in development by Unox Powered Games(@UnoxPoweredGame). The setting captures the weird of Numenera but feels a lot more focused, honing in on an intriguing mix of psionic entities and sentient machines.

This week I did a design review of a fellow RPG designer’s game. I reviewed the game, focusing on how the mechanics delivered on the core experience, and the clarity of many of the rules. I ignored spelling and grammar and knew that there were incomplete sections in terms of character options, items, spells, etcetera. All of my thoughts have already been provided to Unox Powered Games and I just wanted to point out the highlights here and talk about a few things that you might be able to apply when developing your games as well.

In Shifting Tides I looked at the Character creation, Combat, Statuses, Skill Checks, Crafting, progression and psionics sections. This first major comprehension issue arose when I got to the Combat section, because combat was introduced first, I did not know how the dice worked; there was no context for me to understand how to mechanically perform any of the steps described. Furthermore, when I began to read the section, I struggled with the order by which the information was introduced. Yes it makes sense in a way to start by introducing initiative, seeing as that is the first step of any combat, but pay attention to how other books write their rules, they have something before they describe initiative, the summary of what they are going to talk about in the chapter. So what I wanted to focus on here, and what I want you to be able to learn from this, is some important aspects of technical writing that will help with the flow of your document and teaching your player new rules.

Your goal is to make sure the reader understands everything you are writing, and if they do not, you will be teaching them within the next few lines. So when you start a chapter, give an overview of what you will be talking about; think of this like an outline of your major sections in this chapter. You start by being more general, and then go more specific. Using Shifting Tides as an example.

Combat in Shifting Tides is broken into rounds, but before the first round you need to determine the turn order using initiative. During a round each character has 3 Major Actions and 2 Triggered Actions.

So using the example I wrote above, we now know what we need to talk about. We need to introduce rounds, then talk about initiative, then Major actions, and finally Triggered Actions. You now have the 4 major sections of your chapter. Within each section you will apply the same process. if you have something more specific to talk about, you will give an overview of all the pieces and then talk in detail about those sections. For Major Actions for example, we could have Movement, Attacking, Using Items, and Martial Technique. Movement would have a few subsections as well. This should provide a basic overview of how to go about laying out and general flow of your chapters. If you would like to hear me talk in more detail about technical writing, specifically in RPGs, let me know and I can do a more detailed blog post.

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Getting back to the review of Shifting Tides. While the technical writing aspect was something I felt I could help with, it is not the major point where I think the designer needs to focus. This is the core experience as explained in the book.

Shifting Tides is a game focused on adventure and exploration of a forgotten and dangerous planet. Set on Galphrea, you are tasked with scavenging the Ancient’s ruins for valuable technology. Traps, dangerous enemies and riches all await you in Shifting Tides.

I feel the sentence above falls a bit flat for what the setting and world offer. The sentence above doesn’t give me indication of the psionic hive creatures you can play, or the nomadic machine tribes. It doesn’t give me indication that the resources are limited and more times that not, scraps are move valuable than credits. So my closing thoughts to the designer are as follows

I think you need to focus more on adding and defining the sections that will deliver on your core experience. Furthermore, you need to better define/convey what that core experience is. You have an interesting world here, and I think you want to continue to embrace the psionics and machine aspects going on. I would even focus your skills to better deliver on those aspects. I got Numernera vibes from the system, but a lot more focused, which is a good thing. I think you can continue to keep that focus and better refine it. Right now it feels like you have a lot of little systems but they all seem like they can all exist in a vacuum. What I think you need to focus on:

1. Define your core better, work on your “What is Shifting Tides all About” section to strengthen the core experience you plan to deliver.

2. Define the Renown earning system. Maybe provide examples of ways to earn renown.

   1. The first time you gain 500 credits you get 1 renown, second at 1000 credits

   2. Killing certain monsters harassing a settlement grant renown

   3. Write needs and wants on the character sheets. When one Is completed, cross it off and grant a renown.

   4. Delving into the deeps to scavenge grants a renown.

3. Once you determine what grants renown, write more about how each of those missions and adventures might run, challenges that might happen on how to resolve them. This should be a chapter that comes before your combat chapter and ties many of your current chapters together, skill checks, crafting, travel, etc.

4. Re-evaluate skill list to make sure it matches the new systems that tie everything together.

5. Read other books to see how they word their sections to better work on some of the explanation sections to improve the flow of your mechanical explanations.

Your game doesn’t do everything

And that is a good thing.  One of the first major hurdles I see many game designers encounter is the question What skill/abilities/traits/feats, do I need in my game? Whatever you choose to call these, at their core, these are just, what will my players be doing? How will my players be interacting with my game? 

I’ve helped a few other designers through this issue before and I’ve struggled with answering it as well. I am going share a few techniques I picked up along the way. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to guide your “skill” creation process. They help me get the correct frame of reference and narrow in one what is fun and important in the game I am creating. If you have some suggestions for what worked for you, feel free to post those below.

What is your Core experience?

Imagine the ideal adventure you want your players to have.  Are they hunting for lost artifacts? Exploring alien infested towns in the 50s? Surviving a zombie apocalypse?  Create a one shot with your system of a story you want to tell.  Using the challenges and uncertainties present in that one shot to determine what skills the players should have.

When you explain your ideal core experience, how much time do you explain each challenge?

If you spend 3 paragraphs explaining how players will be investigating a town for clues, but only two sentences to explaining that the players might experience combat, your game is not about combat.  Focus on coming up with skills and abilities that emphasize the main actions your characters will be doing.  Investigating a town for aliens? Maybe have skills relating to interviewing people, understanding alien behavior, and operating alien devices.  Create some abilities or feats, that allow players to do these more easily.

What do you want your power level to be?

Will your players be superheroes in a fantasy land like DnD? Will they be investigators facing monsters they cannot fathom like in Call of Cthulhu?  Keep in mind, this is not a question about how easy it will for the characters to die.  You can have a low power settings where character’s lives are not in danger at all.  When thinking about this question, focus on abilities and skills that reflect this power level.  For example, there might be doors and walls that prevent the characters from reaching their targets. While an ability like snapping your fingers to unlock a door, and walking through walls both functionally solve the problem, the power level of each ability is significantly different. Once you define the power level of your game, it will be much easier to create abilities for your game.

Hopefully this is a helpful way of thinking for you to continue to make progress developing your game.  If this was helpful, or you would like to hear more on this topic, or even want to hear about a different topic, post a comment below and let me know what you think.

Performance is a Designer Trap

Before I start explaining why Performance is a designer trap, I should explain what a designer trap is. To understand that, we need to understand what a design trap is. A design trap is a player choice that looks beneficial but does not provide appropriate benefit. Now for some examples.

In original wow, now known as WoW Classic, when you leveled up, you learned new ranks of spells that were stronger more powerful versions of those spells. Naturally, you would just assume to start using the stronger version of the spell, rank 2 fireball does 45 damage up from rank 1 fireball that does 30 damage. This natural thought process was wrong for casters and especially healers. Because the lower ranks cost less mana, those versions of the spell were used when mana needed to be conserved and you still wanted chances to proc passives or talents. This is a design trap because the natural thought process of a player is to just use the newer bigger spell always, when in actuality maintaining access to some lower rank spells was crucial to maintaining your mana. This design trap was fixed in the first expansion, Burning Crusade.

Another example, In modern Call of Duty, players are taught to use C4 one way. press the use C4 button to throw then, when all of your C4 is thrown and attached to a location, press the button again to detonate that C4. But another use of C4 exists that is better in almost every way. The C4 can be tossed and detonated, 1 at a time, in the air by pressing the general “use” button twice. This is another example of a design trap as one option is better, but the existence of both leads player to believe that both options have their uses. That in itself is the design trap.

So now that I have explained design traps, I can move on to a designer trap. A designer trap is a mechanic that game designers adopt or add that creates a design trap within their game. I will admit, I fell into this trap. When analyzing other systems for the skills they included in their system, I considered each skill as a method to solve a problem and checked whether I needed to be able to solve those problems. Thus, skills like Performance were added. As I refined my list, some skills were removed, and other added, but I never found something to answer the “What if a player wants to be good a playing an instrument, singing, etc”, as a result, Performance stayed.

That was the mistake. I was looking at the Performance skill through a different lens than all of my other skills. All current skills are methods to solve a problem, you want to look for more information? Awareness; you want to fiddle with something mechanical? Tinker. If a player wanted to put on a performance, what would they be trying to do? Draw attention or distract in some way, right? But I already have a skill that does exactly that, its called Misdirection. So why did Performance last so long? Its because I was looking at it like a background of a character, to accommodate Bard like characters, while all other skills were being looked at through the lens of how would a player use this to solve a problem. This was a designer trap because Performance as a skill was a design trap in my game. It was a niche skill, that would rarely get used, and every case that it could be used would almost always be covered by the Misdirection skill, so any player that took points in it would be wasting skill points, to create their own background.

Performance as a skill or ability may not be wrong for your game, but it is important to consider that just because it is contained within popular RPGs does not mean it is necessary in yours. Remember to consider what the players will be doing regularly in your game, because all skills should emphasize those actions. If Performance is only there because you want to give music playing characters a way to mechanize their backgrounds, you are creating a design trap for them to waste their advancement resources.

Final Notes: The removal of Performance did lead to a lower number of skills than I targeted, but this allowed be to fix the issue that has been nagging me for months, Intellect Potential does not have an appropriate representation of skills within my system, but I’ll talk about that solution next time with the addition of Navigation.

Reading the Character Sheet

The character sheet is a bit dense at first glance so I wanted to write you something to explain each of the parts. Page 1 contains your characters name, level, your name, the Skills, Your notes, and your Attributes.

The first section I want to describe is the attributes section. As you can see on the right, there is an image of the Diamonds Attributes, Strength and Intellect. In the box on the left, closes to the STR writing, is where you will have your character’s Strength Attribute, while the box on the right would have your character’s Intellect.

Next, the number below, are a handing tracking for the cards in your characters deck. You can circle or mark these any way you like, just remember that you will likely be upgrading your deck twice a session.

The next section I want to cover are the Skills. This sheet tracks all of your characters Skills, the core of C22 systems. Using the image below as reference, lets walk through the Skill from left to right. For the first Skill, Awareness, we have the name, then in parenthesis, its associated Attribute; In this case, its associated Attribute is Willpower. Next, are the Skill tree boxes, these two boxes will show your current rank in the skill and what benefits you gain for that rank. Skill tree are contained next to each Skill in the Player Handbook, and on this website in the default Skills Page of the SRD

Next after the skill tree boxes, are the Specific Skills, For Awareness these two skills are Listen and then Spot. Both have no points in them as you can see by the empty box by their names. Each Specific Skill can be ranked up to level 4. The box is to track that progress. Next to the Avoidance Skill, are two blank spaces, showing where new Specific Skills can be written once they are learned.\

Finally, I wanted to talk about the color of the boxes. In C22, the suit of the card for the skill check effects the success of the check. When the suit of the card matches the color of the suit of the Skill’s associated Attribute, a +1 is awarded, when it is opposite, a -1 in imposed. The colors are provided to help make this easier. If a yellow or brown box is present, you will just be without this easier aid.

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That covers the general use page, so next we move onto the Combat page. On page 2, many of the more complex information is stored. We have the character stats, both the Resist Mental and Physical Skills, The weapons, armors, and tools, maneuvers, magic, and some handy quick references. You can see a copy of this page below.

So starting with the top group, This is where your character stats are stored. You have health right in the middle with a section to the lower right to show max health. Avoidance and Armor in the Upper right, below that, Movement (default in meters). To the left, Recovery points and above that, your character’s passive Awareness.

Flanking the Stats are the Resist Mental and Resist Physical Skills. The white box in the red header is where your character’s passive Resist will be. By default this starts off at 4, but will increase as you spend points in the Specific Skills. The Specific Skills for both Resist Skills are set by default, so they are all listed with a box for their rank.

Below the Stats, we have your characters weapons. Starting from the left, the three boxes indicate the style of weapon by its Range, Weight, and Type. For example a Longbow would be L (Long), H (Heavy), P (Pierce), while a Long sword would be M (Melee), M (Medium), S (Slash).

The Line after is for the name of the weapon, then the boxes on the right are for tracking the damage and accuracy of the weapon. The first box shows the base damage of the weapon, the second is an area where you can write the accuracy benefits your character gets from weapon skills, while the third box is where you can write the damage benefit your character gains from your weapon skill combined with your weapon’s base damage for easy reference.

Once more below the weapons are where the maneuvers are shown. a character can know more than 6 maneuvers at a time, but the sheet only provides room for your character’s best 6. I suggest you read up on how to read maneuvers separately but the summary of them is that the left side of the maneuver can be used anytime, while the right side can only be used when your maneuver card meets the requirements in the middle of the maneuver.

To the right of this is are the magic skills. These four blocks include a blank space to write the element of magic you choose, and then in the center of the block are the two skill boxes to record your current skill benefits with this skill. On the left side of the Magic Skill is a space to write all of your character’s known styles and the right side are where all your character’s known mods are written.

On the far left side of the character sheet there is a box to write any effects currently on your character, these would be the effects listed under your Resist Mental and Resist Physical Skills when a monster successfully impairs your character with them. Below that is space for your armor and equipment. and then below that,and wrapping around the bottom of the sheet in the tan section is quick reference information from your skills. For example, if your character knew the Dodge Specific Skill from the Avoidance General Skill, since that is a reaction that can be used in combat, you could check off the dodge box in the reference area below so you do not need to flip over your character sheet to check during combat.

That should cover all the details of the character sheet. let me know if you want to cover anything else, or if you want me to write about a different subject or rule your want clarified or explained. And finally, thanks for reading.

Thoughts on the Current State

I have been playtesting a few times with new people, and although the system is unique it has yet to wow someone they way I want it to. My main areas of focus for this wow factor is in the combat of the system. The original goals of this system were to have fun combat where the players had meaningful options at all phases throughout the game. Right now, I do not feel that is the case.

On a turn, a player can cast a spell, draw two cards and craft their spell, or they can use their weapon and craft their attack (Weapon + maneuver) this covers the Enable creative solutions portion of the system but outside of attacking/ dealing damage the options for the player just aren’t there.

Another issue I am/was struggling with is the case of skills, the first issue arose with the other cumulative system of skills, each box you took in the general skill granted an additional bonus to all the skills. This lead to the general skill carrying the specific skills. 4 points in a general skill and you could never fail in any of the specific skills either.

The design pillars, “The deck represents the character while the skills represent the character’s experience” is a major part of this game. The skills, being as strong as they were, made it so experience could override the character and make the deck’s contents almost trivial. The new style, the top most revealed box shows the bonuses, balances the system removing emphasis in favor of deck building, which was a desired change.

The next change that I am looking at is drawing two cards at the start of each round of combat and then allowing the players to choose what they want to do. This has a few benefits: first, it allows the game to be more tactical, a player can see all their options at the start of a round, they are no longer left guessing whether they would actually be able to pull off the clutch stun or not. secondly this allows players to pivot between casting and non casting combat more fluidly due to streamlined draw process. Next, this method should speed up the overall combat time as everyone can simultaneously plan their turns. Finally, this allows for maneuvers to be expanded to include more things not related to damage, like moving less to attack more, or attacking less to move more, or even holding actions to increase the number of reactions. This finally change is critical because at this point I was finding many melee characters did not have a good gap closer.

Another change I am looking at involves a streamline of the skill process and making specific skills feel less required but more special. When a player invests in a general skill, they can choose a specific skill to learn from that general skill. Specific skills are not known unless learned first. This would increase diversity between characters, allow for specific skills to more readily unlock maneuvers and thus combat options, and make the general system easier to understand overall due to forcing the knowledge to be of the General skills rather than all of the specific skills. The skill progression would then become +1 benefit for each point taken in a specific skill grants a flat +1 when using that skill for each additional point spent on the skill. This would also allow passive benefits to be granted from specific skills in a more understandable and holistic manner.

These are just my quick thoughts, I will be looking at implementing them these coming weeks/months as I prep a long form campaign to test major portions of this system.

Design Pillar Creativity

One of the design pillars for the c22 system is enable creativity. It is often thought that creativity is a boundless unrestrained force that creates something out of nothing. In my work, I have found that creativity often works best bound in constraints. Too many constraints will stifle creativity, while the opposite, extremely open prompts leaves most people floundering without focus.

Good constraints to creativity give an inspiring focus while allowing enough room to explore. That is the sweet spot of creative constraints that I hope to encourage and provide with the mechanics in C22.

The suits of cards are a great catalyst for this; four suits of cards means you can have about 4 choices per turn. For maneuvers and standard attacks, you have 4 options, along with the 1 or 2 raised options provided from the suits. In the case of magic, right now its only two choices, one per card drawn but the effects from each element causes this number of options to grow as the character grows. At levels 2-3 a caster may only be able to slow enemies with ice, but later on they may be able to choose to knockdown or paralyze enemies, or fortify themselves.

The skills are similarly set up to encourage choices. Players are incentivised to choose a skill whose primary attribute matches the suit of the drawn card. Players may want to climb the wall due to their tremendous climbing skill, but the conditions make in unfavorable, forcing them to improvise.

This design pillar is constantly being consider as I continue development and I am continuously on the lookout for more ways to enable players to be creative. Though all and all, I believe this is the pillar that is the most utilized within the system as of this writing.

Maneuvers

In C22 systems, maneuvers attempts to solve the “I am going to walk up and hit them” game play dilemma that a lot of RPG systems have. Following a core principle of C22 systems, maneuvers add meaningful choice for melee and ranged character. This maneuver system stems from the Effects and Status that were standardized to be used throughout the C22 system.

How the players use it

When a character makes an attack and draws two cards, the player assigns one card to the weapon and the other to the maneuver. We will use the 5 of hearts and the 8 of clubs for the explanations below.

Once the cards are drawn, a player should check their available maneuvers on their character sheet and then assign the cards. The image below shows the four base maneuvers available to every character.

A maneuver is represented by two sides, with a requirement in the middle dividing them. For example, the first maneuver on the list allows a player to attack for 2 more damage, but at the cost of three accuracy. If they meet the requirement of 7 diamonds, meaning they assign a diamonds card of value 7 or higher to be the maneuver card, they can instead choose to be more accurate with their strike while still dealing 2 additional damage.

Bringing it all together

For the example situation drawn above, the player has a choice of the four base maneuvers, and then the two raised maneuvers, depending on which card is assigned to the maneuver. The player thinks a 5 is accurate for their weapon to hit the enemy, so they assign the 5 to the weapon, and then use the 8 of clubs as their maneuver card. They also know that they could use the extra avoidance this turn, so they use the raised clubs maneuver, granting them two avoidance. This represents the character taking a defensive posture and a more reserved swing in response.

Extending the system

With the effects and status system, maneuvers can use the standardized vocabulary to write interesting options for more experienced characters, providing many tactical options available to the player. Looking at a few of the maneuvers below, a character could have the option of Dulling the Senses of an enemy, making it harder for them to hit in the future, or with a raised attack, go straight for the ears, preventing them from hearing anything for a short while. Another option, the player could instead choose to strike much harder this round at a cost of accuracy next attack. This could represent the character taking a risky swing that puts them in a difficult position.

As characters level up and spend skill points, they can choose to increase the strength of these maneuvers. Examples of Rank 4 (max rank) maneuvers are shown below.

Effects and Statuses as the core

As the system grew and evolved the effects system seemed to lag behind. I liked the idea that player’s tactics would be influenced by how they wanted to impair their enemies, rather than doing damage in the most effective way. This is the same direction that Gloomhaven takes, one of the main inspirations for this system.

This post is about how I took Effects and Statuses from being a system that felt tacked on to the rest of the system, to being the core means by which players make tactical decisions in combat.

The Problem

I want players to be able to create characters that the unmovable Goliath, the nerves of steel sharpshooter, or the unshakable investigator, but the system where players gained static bonuses to resisting effects felt bad. I also wanted to reduce the number of card draws for defensive options in an attempt to speed up combat.

Physical and Mental Resist Skills

These two skills, as shown below, were given a target number, similar to how avoidance works. If an effect’s chance to hit is above the avoidance number, the status is applied to the target. 4 is the base. Then, as the characters leveled up the specialized skills, and were granted points in the general skill, their passive resistance would increase.

This left a weird position for the specific skills that made up the general Resist Physical and Resist Mental skill. Before we discuss the result of those systems, what each individual effect became needs to be understood.

Tiered Statuses

There are a lot of different effects that could befell a character or monster. Losing an eye, degrees of being on fire, a slight limp. All of these have mechanical effects that vary in severity. First I wrote all of the stats that make up a character, then wrote positive and negative status. If the effect does modify something that defines a character, it can be ignored.

This lead me to a list of 23 different things I wanted a player to resist. Which was still quite a lot to deal with and track.

The solution came in the form of grouping statuses so that there are Tiers of effectiveness. For example, Immobilized status was broken into two tiers:

Tier 1 - Crippled: The character has 1 less movement action per turn. If the character is hasted, this removes haste in addition to its effect.

Tier 2 - Immobilized: An immobilized character has no movement actions available on their turn.

In this way, a character can spend a skill point to become more resistant to Immobilized effects, covering both the crippled and Immobilized statuses. Furthermore, those effects can be intuitively amplified or dampened in combat.

Combining the Systems

When a player takes a point in one of the resist specific skills, that status has less effect on them. If an immobilized effect would be applied to a character with 1 point in the Immobilized specific skill, then that Immobilized effect would be downgraded by 1. An Immobilized would become a Crippled and a Crippled would be ignored completely. In this way the character can in a way, shrug off statuses becoming seemingly unstoppable.

Conclusion

This system still need more testing, but for now it feels at home with the rest of the mechanics. Additionally, it gives players a clear way to interact and express their character’s combat in game. The Tiered statuses, allow for a more intuitive grouping, and meaningful resistances to be built up. Instead of a binary now you are stunned cause this hit, there is the additional feeling of being able to shrug off a stun and instead just have your senses dulled for a turn. I like the way this allows characters to be expressed through the skills.

Finally, the statuses and effects defined here allow for a clear vocabulary that can be used to define the next two systems that need an update: Magic and Maneuvers.

Example Effect Tiers

Paralyze (Physical Effect)

Tier 1 - Slowed

A character or Monster moves 5 less feet, or one less hex, with every movement action. Slowed characters have 1 less Avoidance.

Tier 2 – Restrained

The character struggles to move. No attack, or movement actions can be taken. A character may spend their turn to break their restraints. Restrained characters have 3 less Avoidance. All attacks against a paralyzed target have advantage.

Tier 3 – Paralyzed

The character cannot move. No attack, movement, or social actions can be taken. The character’s avoidance is considered 1. All attacks against a paralyzed target have advantage.

Charm (Mental Effect)

Tier 1 -Charmed

The charmed character acts more favorably toward the charmer. The charmed character cannot attack the charmer. All Charisma based skills by the charmer have advantage against a charmed target

Tier 2 – Captivated

The Captivated character acts very favorably toward the charmer. The character cannot use attack actions and can only move toward the charmer. All Charisma based skills by the charmer have advantage against the captivated target.

Tier 3 - Controlled

The Controlled character’s attack, movement and social actions. The character can only move toward the charmer. All Charisma based skills by the charmer automatically succeed against the controlled target.