Wealth in DnD 4e

I am using a system more akin to Wealth in D20 Modern and Resources in Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard. it seems a little mroe appropriate to call it either Loot or Wealth. I would be concerned that Loot might be a little too punchy. I'd love your thoughts on this.

So there are four underlying principles to this system of wealth in a dungeoneering system:

1) An abstracted Wealth roll allows the players to move the story of the game in interesting directions when regarding wealth and the aquisition of items - an important part of the dungeoneering experience. Now the story can be influenced in regard to the stuff, the trappings of dungeoneering - piles of gold, magic swords, mysterious potions and dusty tomes.

2) No one is enriched by needing to plumb through volumes and volumes of various items. There are a finite number of useful and well balanced powers, feats, bonuses and rituals. having a generic wealth level allows players to play with items that are important to the story, not keep track of minutia, yet still all influence the story equally.

3) Players can focus on items they are interested in instead of random junk they are just likely to sell anyway, or gaining items inappropriate to thier roles in society in reagrds to power, wealth and status. In the fiction the PCs could have dozens of +1 swords but if they have no impact on the story at hand they are useless to the fiction. There may not be cool hat pins in the list of items but what if a cool hat pin is the character's thing. The numbers are the same but the color is different, an underlying theme in 4th Edition.

4) Simplifying the math allows for the game to move forward quickly while having a system to talk about these things in some depth. Simple means a deeper story in less time.

Okay so here's the pitch. There will be a chart (coming soon). The chart will talk about bonues and DCs.

The player constructs what they want the item to do that comes down to a general bonus level for the item.

Those bonuses will assume a roll that includes Wealth and 1/2 a character's level. Players can influence the Wealth roll through Aiding and such with certain skills (such as Diplomacy, Bluff, Thievery, etc.) A player declares that he wants to come across an item - finds it, buys it, creates it or whatever. The player and the GM establish the consequences of the action - usually in the form of a curse or social side effect of having the item (you can thank Burning Wheel for this. Why keep the item out of the PCs hands if that's what the player really wants?). The power of the curse or the side effect is based on how badly the roll is failed. This should be punitive enough that the player will get the item they want but the backlash is such that if failed on overpowered items the consequences will be equally overpowering.

So for example: The group slays an Astral Lich. Everyone gets a comsensurate bonus for slaying such a great creature. Will says that he wants to run the Lich through with his own silver sword and when he pulls the great weapon out it's transformed by the lich's own astral blade. he decideds what he wants the sword to do (adding a power, feat, etc) and comes up with a total bonus and DC based on the chart. The others help him with their own skills and Wealth levesl knowing that this is Will's big adversary and closing out an important plot thread. I tell will that I will be levying a Social Side Effect - a power that affects him when facing astral dragons and Githzerai - the lich's natural enemies. The idea is that if they see this weapon they will assume he has taken the Astral Lich's mantle. Will rolls and even with all of his own bonuses just fails. I choose a power that his enemies can use against him naturally based on how badly he rolled. In the fiction we describe the PC's coup de grace and pulling out the new and more powerful blade but I describe how Will's character is somehow changed so that his new natural enemies recognize him for what he is becoming.

This weekend I am going to try and whip up the Wealth table.

Next Up: I have an Annalise Actual Play to write up and this Sunday we'll be finishing out everyone's Prelude scenes.

[DnD 4e DMG] Darkest Inside - Actual Play

***note: This used to be about a campaign called Wizards. For those of you that had been following the Wizards campaign idea (it didn't get very far) this is the natural evolution of that idea after months and months of working and reworking some of the core concepts. You will see new stuff here and you will see ideas we started with from the beginning (such as mapping). I'd certainly be happy to hear about what you liked in regards to the Wizards game and what you think you might miss. That being said the nature of Rituals in 4th Edition allows all of the players to eventually have spellbooks and so much of thsoe sentiments are ther but everyone doesn't have to be Wizards.***

So I finally started my D&D Campaign. There are four goals for this campaign:

• Longevity


• Solid Story


• Player Authorship


• D&D Feel

Sometimes this isn't an easy task. I had to break some conventions and hold onto thers. I don't want to have to change too much so my rule changes will be few. I will be adding campaign rules that we have been working with for a year.

We started out with setting. I wanted the game to be fantastic and natural and Will and I went back to an idea we had a couple of years ago - a world built on top of the ruins of another and the PCs delving into the underbelly of this new world to find greater and greater threats. Thus making it possible to naturally explore dungeon after underground dungeon with less suspension of disbelief.

The group is Will, Ally and Connie right now. I am keeping it small and may pick up one or two people at most with the idea that they will probably rotate out.

The group came up with the idea that they are criminals thrown into the "Pit" to deal with what's been coming out and harassing the locals. These locals have largely been able to manage much of the denizens that spill into the world and basically made it a prison.

The local autocratic government has been using the Pit to get rid of dissidents and nere-do-wells with a facade of public service.

We established some facts about social relationships for several races and classes. It took a while but we decided on an asian cultural backdrop. We're looking at something akin to snowy wastelands and villages built on the sides of mountains. We're focusing a stratified social structure with a mix of Mongolian and Inuit inspiration.

• Elves here are exiles from a "secret" elven kingdom and are relegated to the slums of local urban communities. They are second class citizens at best. Rangers are a proprietary class of elves, meaning if any of the players want to be Rangers they have an elf mentor.


• Dwarves are refugees and gypsies from the Pit. Their homes were overrun buy the Denizens and this large community of Dwarves live in a shanty town in the outlying lands around the Pit's main entrance. Artificers (from Dragon magazine) are a proprietary class of Dwarves. If a PC is trained as an Artificer their mentor is a Dwarf.


• Dragonborn are the Overlords. They are part of a military, racially motivated meritocracy. They run the land with an iron fist. Warlord is a propritary class of the Dragonborn.

We are going to use a television series as the model for our game. Each season will cover 18 to 22 episodes (and probably about 5 levels). The seasons will have a story arch. We haven't figured out what will mark the end of a season yet.

The First Season is called "Redemption" and it's theme is about the characters going from being forced to face the Pit to realizing that they are needed and that this is something they have to do.

The Cast
Alya - Elf Rogue
Dak'Kon - Gothyanki Swordmage
Shu Kun - Dwarf Artificer
An Li - Half-elf Wizard
*note: We fulfilled the four roles which was more an intuitive decision instead of a deliberate one.

We asked two things of our characters:

• Why am I a criminal?


• What keeps me going?

Everything about the character's story will be influenced by these two questions. We will come up with a new question toe replace the first at the beginning of each season and the second question remains but the answer will change each season.

An Li is a criminal because she is a social ladder climber and she threatened the current order. What keeps her going is that she hopes to prove that she is greater than her failed heritage (to be established through play).

Dak'kon is a criminal because he is from the Pit itself and he was improsoned and enslaved for it. What keeps him going is his need for freedom, not just physical freedom but freeing his mind from the slavery that once bound him.

Alya is a criminal because she was born to the street, orphaned and in state care. What keep her going is the opportunity to become more than what her upbringing has offered her in hopes to mimic the heroes she has seen emerging from the Pit triumphant.

Shu Kun is a criminal because he ignores social convention for progress and has done some questionable things in the name of experimentation. What keep him going is that he knows the answer to the questions he has about the Dwarves and about being an Artificer will be found in the Dwarves former home deep underground.

We are going to have one-on-one sessions as preludes. it's just designed to get the players in the character's heads. These sessions will consist of three scenes surrounding the three pieces of equipment most important to the character.
***note: The equipment system for D&D 4e is going to be the only real casualty. We all agreed that counting gold isn't really a terribly interesting part of the game so I am developing a Wealth system to be discussed in another post.***

Every player gets a piece of armor, a weapon and one other item (may be armor, a weapon, or a bonus item that gives them +2 to a particular skill check. The players may detail the items with any color they find interesting. [ITEMS]

At the start of every session the players are going to choose three things on their character sheet that most interests them for this session. It can be a specific skill, a cool feat or power or one of the stats. The motivation for what to choose should have to do with things that the player wnts some experience playing with. it won't be the only interaction in a scene but it will be the driving force. [CHARACTERISTICS]

In the prelude the characters will have a statement to hang their scenes around. The prelude is about equipment, where it came from and how were they changed in persuing the items. [CONTEXT]

• This I stole.


• This was a reward for...


• This I won from...

At the start of a scene the player picks an item, a question answered in the prelude and how the character is going to approach it through the character elements they chose at the beginning of the session. The GM then frames a scene based on the combination of those three items {ITEM]+[CHARACTERISTIC]+[CONTEXT]

The first was a single scene with Connie's character, Alya.
Connie choose Actrobatic [9], Constitution [14], and Artful Dodger (Opportunity Attacks).
Her items are leather armor, Shuriken and a Cloak of obfuscation [+2 Stealth]

We began the first scene by combining [This was a reward from my mentor] + [Leather Armor] + [Constitution]

A young tough named Jur ropes Alya into going on a meet with him armed only with a brick and her wits. He is supposed to deliver a package to a mysterious stranger which turns out to be an elf, quite possibly not an exile. Things go bad as Jur tries and plays the elf. Alya is able to run and gather a number of youths to help her against the elf. The children chase him off however Alya gets a poisoned dart in the throat. We established that if she failed the Con test that Jur would die and one of the kids would give her his armor once she comes out of months of fever and sickness only for Jur to haunt her. If Connie succeeded then it's actually the elf that becomes Alya's mentor and he rewards her for surviving his poisonous darts. Connie needed a 15 and had +2 to the roll (Constitution 14). She rolled a 13, just making it. The elf gives her the elven made leather armor to establish himself as her mentor. he doesn't show up himself, rather through other agents.

We will have further prelude sessions soon.

Next: Wealth tests in D&D 4e.

They Even Spelled My Name Right

Here is the newest credit on an RPG. I did the mechanical write-ups for several of the characters. The more supernatural heroes and villains were mine (such as The Ghost, the Mask, the Devilfish and The Yellow Lama).

It was a pleasure to work with Ken and this was a great little project to add my name to. Hope you check out the game. There is a lot of good fodder for the pulp grist here.

[Practical Play] Conflict, Characters and Consequences - Part 1

These topics have been explored on other sites but I think that as I approach talking about my D&D 4e project more intently I will begin to have a wider audience that might have a slightly different approach to games. Here is my take on, what many of us call, Story Gaming.

I have one primary goal at the gaming table: to tell a story. That is my main objective. If I can look back and go "that was a great story" then I am the most satisfied about a game. If I go "ah, we fucked up the rules" or "hmmm, I didn't feel much of a connection to my character, this session" then I look for ways to fix that but if I can still say "wow, but it was an awfully powerful yarn we wove" then mission accomplished. Let me be clear. I am here to tell a good tale. Other aspects of this hobby only make telling a good story, for me, that much better. For many games, following the rules only make the story more gripping and push things in unexpected directions and character immersion and investment adds to the pathos developed in a story, but they are not the goal. They are tools with which the story is being told. Everything I talk about here and at the table reflects on that goal and feeds into the process of having fun.

That being said, this is a game we're playing. We're not doing free form. We're not talking about pure improv or storytelling time. We're talking about players sitting around a table and interacting with a rule set to help us manufacture a story we all participate in.

Finally please note that if there is a GM role I still refer to them as a player. I make no distinction here between players and GMs. We're all playing a game and actively bringing fun to the table. If someone isn't then I suspect they shouldn't be at the gaming table in the first place.

What are the elements of a good story? That one is a far more complex discussion and, no doubt, fills volumes of books. I will point out the three things that I think make story jump out in our hobby:

1) Conflict
2) Compelling Characters
3) Consequences

(alliteration completely accidental)

In this post we will focus on Conflict.

Shit Happens
And if it doesn't your game is dull and we're not having fun. That is a broad generalization and there are a few non-conflict oriented stories you could tell but they are few and far between. If you want your game to be exciting and you want everyone to be invested then you need conflict. Conflict means adversity and challenges to the player's goals. Note what I said right there, the player's goals. There are two points that need to be discussed about said goals:

• Only a player can know her goals and the ONLY way others around the table can act on them is through communicating said goals. Everyone else around the table cannot and should not guess at what they think another player wants. Another player says what they want and it's up to everyone around the table to deliver just that. Time spent guessing and second guessing is time wasted at the table. If one of the players created her character focusing on what velocity her machine pistol's rounds will clock while tearing through zombies and everyone else is telling tales about the challenges of interracial relationships in the elven kingdoms and how to does the group solidify peace, then that other player is going to be really disappointed and not invested until the bodies start to drop.


• Get to the conflict! Movies and music are rarely about the quiet moments. Every word, every roll, every moment you are gaming you should be devoting to conflict - either resolving it or informing it. And the moments you spend informing it should always at most be less than the moments you spend resolving it. Talking about the war and what kind of catapults we'll use, or making plans, or chatting in character may inform the conflict but after a while you need to get on with it. Watch the clock very carefully. When these moment start exceeding the moments where we actually decide if we win or lose then it's gone on too long. Don't talk about the conflict, act it out. Don't plan around the conflict, run straight for it.

That last bit deserves another mention. Too often - WAY TOO OFTEN - I see players that run from danger or conflict. They try to defend against it happening to them or limit their actions to avoid problems. A hint here, people, the game is ABOUT problems. If there are no problems and your character has won then chances are there is no story there. Players should find out what they want to fight against and constantly be dealing with those issues until they find something else that interests them to fight against.

For example: Many games have the ability for PCs to have "dependant NPCS." These are side characters that support our PCs and round our our character's relationships. Do not bring an NPC into the game that you not want to see threatened ALL THE TIME. And you need to inform the other players at the table HOW you want that NPC threatened. Is it about losing them as a contact? Is it about them betraying you? Is it about their suffering and your inability to stop it? And whatever you decide is what should happen at the table. It isn't the only thing because there are other players but part of the fun is seeing how the players' various conflicts become enmeshed in the narrative.

So how do we bring conflict to our games? Well I mentioned two already - players communicate what they want to have conflict over and players run toward conflict. Some games have the first written into the rules - Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel, Beliefs in The Burning Wheel, Aspects in Spirit of the Century, Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday, and to a lesser degree mechanics like Humanity or Morality in the Storytelling system. In other games you need to develop ways to bring those things to the forefront because I will tell you that is the most important part of this style of play. If you do not know what the other players want at the table you are limiting the amount of time your playing the game, telling the story, and instead, trying to find the fun bits.

In games that do not have an explicit mechanic that communicates conflict then you can either make it part of the first session, use other similar mechanics or come up with your own mechanics.

Communicating Conflict
Making it part of your first session is important to the process of telling good stories regardless of other methods you use. Rule One: Make your characters together. Listen carefully to what everyone else is saying about making those characters. Feed into that. Using the game Dread as an example, it uses a simple set of questions that inform us what the players want the game to be about. I start nearly all of my games out with this now. Usually six questions that say what themes and ideas the group wants to explore. If someone comes up with a character (PC or NPC) that you like then use that character to come up with your own decisions. Don't reinvent the wheel. If someone has some abusive guy in their brainstorming then use that same guy for someone in your ideas that might be abusive. If someone comes up with a name for a place use that name or refer to that name (it's the next town over from Lockhaven). The player that might be taking the GameMaster role should not only be paying VERY close attention to this process but should also be creating and brainstorming her own characters, creating them along side the other players. I GUARANTEE when you do just this simple process and pay attention to what's been developed at this point through an entire story arch, your games will be more fun.

Standing on the Shoulders of Mechanical Giants
Many of the games mentioned above have good mechanics for driving home player story needs. Use them in your games. For a while every game that did not have them got BW Beliefs. Beliefs are simple in concept and difficult in practice.

Beliefs in Brief
The beliefs is constructed with an ideology, a goal and an action. The ideology gathers the source of the belief, the goal says what the character is going to do to pursue his beliefs and the action says how far the character is willing to go to accomplish it. keep an eye on the prize! This tells everyone how each character is to be challenged. I had a character recently with a belief that said "Reinhardt is the anchor I need to my elven heritage. I will sleep with him to know what it's like to be an elven woman." This belief tells us a lot. It not only puts into question whether or not I get to sleep with Reinhardt but also questions my sexuality and possibly even my gender. One of the other players is playing a gay character and to challenge my beliefs his character approached mine and said "My sexuality is constantly in question by others. I find you attractive and that confuses me because you seem to be a woman. Sleep with me so that I may put these questions to rest, please." AS touchy feely as I play her she said "sure." Now we roll. What's at stake? The other player says "If I win I establish to myself my sexuality as a gay man because it becomes plain that you are, in fact, a man." Sure, it's in my beliefs that I want to sleep with Reinardt as a woman so it is clear that I want my womanhood to be in question.

In games with experience you can use Keys and instead of gaining XP from killing things only you could gain XP from fulfilling Keys. You might have a Key that says "I want to be king of this land. Gain 100XP when I take significant steps in trying to become king. Gain 200XP when my pursuit of the crown puts me and others in danger. Gain 500XP for challenging the current crown directly at great risk to life and limb. Gain 1000XP for denouncing the throne." In a scene a player does any of these things they get XP. 'nuff said?

Read one of the aforementioned games and rip off their story mechanic. Talk about how it went on Story Games. They will help you adjust any issues you're experiencing.

As for creating one? Use the general method of reward for whatever game your running - XP, hero points, kudos, chips, whatever. Then everyone writes down what they want to be rewarded for. For instance, in the Artesia: Adevntures in the Known World setting the tarot of the world is also the reward system. But instead of general actions that give the players Arcana Points I said "pick three arcana to align yourself with. For each Arcana come up with an explicit goal you wish to work toward. The degree you put yourself in danger and cause complications in the pursuit of your goals, the more of that Arcana you gain."

The last piece I'd like to bring to your table is how to push toward conflict. First off, don't be shy. Don't worry about your character. Worry about the game. Worry about other players at the table and what they have told you they want. Worry about whether everyone is having fun. Don't worry about your character. Everyone has more fun the more misery, damage and problems your character has to face. Only after taking some really heavy adversity does the character's triumphs really shine. Also, by running toward adversity, instead of away from it, you feel better about the outcomes even if they aren't character positive. If you're the one that says "and he loses his arm!" or "hey can that guy we see down the hill be the scary bounty hunter that's after me and he has my sister hostage?" Shit YEAH!!! Who wouldn't think that was cool? Don't plan for disasters. Don't paint your character into a safe corner. Don't play it safe. An action hero doesn't think "gee, maybe I shouldn't jump off that moving train because I could take some damage." FUCK THAT! JUMP! It only makes the chase that much more exciting. Think of ways to complicate your characters life and I assure you your games will be more exciting and the outcomes, no matter what they are, will be more satisfying.

So there you have it. The first step in developing great stories with your games is to focus on conflicts. By communicating what you want in your games your more likely to get exactly what makes this fun for you and identify where players may have incompatible ideas of what's fun. Secondly, celebrate adversity! Drive your flawed and hobbling characters toward their inevitable doom - or at least on their way to be maimed.

Let me know what you think of the topic and what your experiences following this advice. Thanks for reading and in a few days we'll talk about compelling characters more briefly.

Unpacking the Duel of Wits

What we're talking about is the Duel of Wits in the Burning Wheel game system. It remains one of the very few roleplaying mechanics that actually focuses on playing a role itself.

First of all it's a player conflict resolution mechanic. For many the simple versus test would work out just fine and to be honest BW operates just peachy without Fight! and Duel of Wits (DoW). What the DoW offers us is an opportunity to get a little more granular and take time to parse out and focus on aspect of the conflict that most interest us. How this is different than standard conflict systems is that often they are all about fighting. The Duel of Wits allows characters to interact in different ways and make the players of social characters just as important to the story as fighty PCs.

It also acts as a framework for player conflicts in a way that many players can relate to - "oh, so you're trying to convince me that your story line is cooler than mine, well fine, now convince my character or the audience." Okay so let's be clear. Player conflict resolution. Let's not get lost in what's really going on here. It took a lot to convince me of this but I had to eventually concede - the characters don't actually exist. Sure the conflict is framed in relation to the character's abilities but that is to allow the conflict to happen in context to a rich fictional backdrop. In reality the players are either disagreeing or no one has any particular direction and they all want to see what direction the story is going.

The former is best. Disagreement means people have strong opinions but are willing to let the rules channel that passion.

So there is so much to talk about here but I want to deliver this in easily digestable chunks. Here is my last point my discussion about the general purpose of the Duel of Wit's mechanic:

So now we have a social and a fighty conflict mechanics. We also have one for speedy characeters but the scope is a little more narrow than the other two. So why do they get their own means of control? Why, as a player, do I only really have those two modes of impacting the story through adversity at the table?

This was something that Burning Empires is really trying to address. In Burning Empires the conflict mechanics are big and sweeping and cover a myriad of possible outcomes. Through the Infection mechanics we can ustilize a 100 skills to make things happen and move the narrative forward. I think that once you've played Burning Wheel enough that you can start developing your own conflict mechnics that fit the tenor of your own stories. You could tell stories about two scientists combatting one another for acceptance of a scientic journal entry over the other. You could have two ballorinas dancing their toes bloody for a shot at Juliard or the MET. It all depends on what your game is about. If these people aren't social and probably wouldn't be in your little piece of fiction in your collective minds then you could develop similar mechanics like Sorcerous Dules, Firefight and other sub-systems to explore those ideas your players thing are the areas they want to explore.

For now we have, basically two conflict resolution sub-systems that really drive home story and push the game in dynamic directions.

Next up in the Burning Wheel arena we'll talk about intent, the Statement of Purpose and when NOT to enter a Duel of Wits. Also check out Mel White's Virtual Play and we hope to get some DoW's on audio.

Reality Reboot

So what's my plan?

One to two posts a week.
One Review or Playtest per month.
One Play Critically post per month discussing play techniques.
One post about Burning Wheel and/or Aretsia RPG posts per month.
One design post per month covering a discussion on one of my games.

Let me know what you're most interested in hearing or any topic suggestions.

Thanks,
- Don