Friday, September the 13th

The Daily Report

Yesterday took some odd turns. When I pushed back the posting, I hadn't considered that Thursday, being my last day at my parents' house, was also the day I would be making sure everything was cleaned up, putting things back in order, etc.

Between that and the logistics of actually leaving yesterday turning out to be a bit inconvenient, I've stayed one more night. Today I don't have anything that needs to be done but getting ready to leave.

Yesterday took some odd turns but also some good ones. As usually proves to be the case when I don't like how a chapter is going and I can't bring it to a satisfying conclusion, the key is to throw it out and start again. The chapter 180 that went up yesterday was written entirely yesterday. It might have been better if I'd spent more time on that version, but it's far better than the version I spent three days on.

One reason the chapter went so much better yesterday than it did on Wednesday has to do with pills and my mental state, but I think another has to do with giving mental space over to it rather than trying to make the story better by sitting down and trying to pound out words. Too many times where I'm writing and posting on the same day makes me forget that.

The State of the Me

Doing okay. Slept really shallowly because I'd already cleaned and folded the blankets I would have used for weight and I didn't feel like doing that again. The rest of the day is going to be characterized by a lot of similar compromises, so I don't have to wash a bunch of dishes or truck a lot of trash out with me when I leave.

Plans For Today

Between erasing signs of my presence and trying not to create new ones, I'm probably going to be working on A Wilder World. The Basic Player's Guide (that is, the rulebook) is very close to a share-able state, containing the rules for magical attacks and attacks for effect for the first time.

AWW: Battle Balance

It seems like the conventional wisdom in RPG design these days is that the ideal balance for combat should be a statistical dead heat. I understand the thinking there... this is the definition of a fair fight. In theory--and in practice, when the game offers players varied tactics and the GM isn't simply trying to squash them by using a likely equal or greater level of system mastery--this makes a battle something that players can win or lose on their own actions. More often, though, it leads to one of two things: swingy, overly random battles or long-drawn out slogs.

That's why AWW specifically avoids aiming for this situation. Fight scenes are classified on a scale of four difficulties, with "evenly matched" being a fifth option listed separately with a reminder that it should be the least common situation.

Steamroller battles are ones that are the heroes' battles to lose. They are designed for the heroes to win. The risks in a steamroller battle are that if you are sloppy, unlucky, or cocky, you might get injured before you win, or that the battle occupies you long enough for someone to slip away. Steamroller battles often occur as part of a "hero spot" near the beginning of an adventure. When you arrive in a new town and find the henchmen of the villain harassing the local villagers and you send them running with their tails between their legs, that's a steamroller battle.

Normal battles are ones that favor the heroes, but are challenging enough that the risk of injury is real and the danger of running on autopilot is high. This is the "normal" difficulty level because the usual outcome of a fight is that the heroes win.

Challenge battles are ones that are slanted against the heroes in some fashion. Often this involves specific advantages that the other side has or specific hazards that afflict the heroes... not just a statistical discrepancy between the sides, but something that can be taken away mid-battle to re-tilt the playing field. Challenge battles usually require more teamwork and/or more use of special tactics than normal battles.

Stomp battles are battles designed to stomp the heroes into the ground. They might still win, but they aren't likely to all be standing at the end of the fight. (Remember, though, defeat doesn't equal death.) Stomp battles require heroes to pull out all the stops to win.

Part of the design is that players will always know what type of battle they're in. "Fake outs" are allowed (the battle starts out a steamroller and then suddenly becomes a challenge), but the shift should be made explicit and this should be a rare trick, employed for dramatic effect rather than to simply mess with people.

Any level of battle can be potentially skipped or circumvented, depending on the story. A single Influence Check or Defeat Check might take the wind out of all the potential antagonists for a steamroller battle. A stomp battle that's not the final battle might be designed with circumventing it as the primary goal and actually fighting it being plan b. Finding a way to downgrade a stomp battle into a challenge can also form the basis for the quest portion of an denture; fighting a powerful fire demon might be a stomp battle, but if you can stab it with the Heart of Ice then it loses several key abilities and becomes a mere challenge.

No level of battle is meant to be a completely foregone conclusion. Part of adventure planning is to define win and loss consequences for each fight. "Boss battles" are always challenge or stomp battles, but the last battle in an adventure isn't always the hardest one... getting past the villain's giant pet monster might be a stomp battle, while the villain only presents a challenge.

Usually the consequences of losing the final battle is effectively failing the adventure, but sometimes it only means that the villain escapes. For instance, if the goal is to disrupt a dangerous ritual, just showing up might accomplish that, or it might be something you can do in the course of the fight (destroy needed components, delay it past a crucial point, et cetera).

AWW: Basic Player's Guide, Beta Draft

Okay. This is in need of a "consistency pass" to make sure it's... well... consistent, because of the way it was written over the course of several months and some things were revised as others were still unwritten.

I don't have the time or attention to do that during the run-up to the move, but in the interest of keeping things moving towards an actual eventual playtest, I'm throwing it out there anyway.

The complete BPG will include more background stuff and more examples and guidance, but the rules sections of this are more or less complete. Assuming nothing is missing that I intended to put in, then everything that should be necessary for other people to participate in a game (except character creation) should be present here. There's also an example world background section that is more complete than anything I've posted, though it only concerns itself with a small corner of a world, by design.

Here's the link.

This thing is bigger than a NaNo legal novel at this point, so I'm not expecting a ton of immediate feedback here. But if you're interested in playing the game and in particular if you're interested in being in the first rounds of playtesting, I'd suggest you start reading it. If you find anything that just absolutely makes no sense, seems contradictory, or seems to be referencing something that's not there, please let me know.