Friday, August 15th

The Daily Report

Yesterday afternoon I was too drained to write, which means that I'm now back on schedule instead of a day ahead... and "on schedule" here means "well ahead of schedule". What I mean is that the chapter I thresh out today will be the fourth one this week. I'm still two weeks ahead, and by the end of today I will be two weeks and a day ahead.

I did end up doing some writing last night... 2,000 words of a new thing. I wrote the first half of it on my phone, and because I happened to compare when the item was created on Drive with when I changed its name (the equivalent of saving the file, since GDocs autosaves as you go even before a file is named) I was able to establish that I wrote a thousand words on my phone in just under one hour, which is pretty good given that this is my target for writing period.

One of the reasons I left Drive/Docs was poor organization. I don't know if it was the way the interface was set up or what, but I never got used to using folders within it before... it was too dissimilar to how folders worked on my desktop for it to quite gel, and so I always relied on the recent file view, and things inevitably slipped through the cracks. I started using folders specifically for the MU drafts, so I could have them all in one place and see what chapter is next for posting, and look at them as a sort of living outline, and that led to some pretty impressive gains in my planning and editing of MU.

Now that I've started A New Thing in Docs, I'm realizing that this is really the perfect method of outlining/planning for me, for longer projects. Make a folder, start creating empty chapter/segment files with a bare description of what happens in each one. It's an outline, it's a checklist, it's a set of story seeds... and it's so flexible.

The new thing is a pseudo noir story set in the MUniverse, with the minor recurring character of Mike Gregory as a private detective, having left the IBF after the conclusion of the events of volume 1. Other than obliquely mentioning those events, this story won't intersect with the main line MU story. I'll be using this story test my ability to follow through and finish a slightly longer work using the folder-level outline approach, and if that works I'll be going through and reviving some of my other attempted novellas.

I'll be sending out a newsletter this weekend with more on the Mike Gregory story.

As a sidenote: one of my goals for this month was to have a book conversion for every week. I don't think that's going to happen for this week or next week... I had forgotten how hard it is to get anything done beyond basic writing and browsing on my tiny travel netbook. I'll make an effort to make up for it in the last week of the month, but the results will probably be more modest (like short stories up in the KoBo store, maybe) than if I'd been able to take it a week at a time.

The State of the Me

Doing okay.

Plans For Today

Going to be working on the aforementioned newsletter in the morning. In the afternoon, I'll be writing a chapter, and posting today's chapter.

I will also, at some point during the day, make posts shilling my e-books, because it is the middle of the month and that's a thing I'm going to be doing.

Game Design: Ideas for an armor system.

Start by assuming a game that uses a OD&D-like scale for attributes, with 18 being the upper bound on normal human ability and 20 being pretty close to a hard limit for a human-like being.

Hit rolls in this game would be a roll of 1d20 plus the entire attribute being used for the attack (strength for melee, dexterity for ranged, if using D&D stats), with the goal being to exceed a passive defense score that is equal to 10 plus the target's dexterity.

The function of armor would be to increase the base score by a bonus, ranging from +2 to +12 (increments of 2). However, each armor would include a dexterity cap that is inversely related to its protective value. +2 armor (the lightest) would give you a dexterity cap of 18. +4 armor would give you a dexterity cap of 16. +6 armor would give you a dexterity cap of 14. And so on, until +12 armor has a dexterity cap of 8. This means that when wearing the armor, your effective dexterity for all purposes would be no higher than the cap... including defense.

Now, because this is a cap and not an outright penalty, if your dexterity is already at the cap for an armor or lower, there is no drawback to wearing it. A dexterity 10 fighter can wear whatever metal armor is at the +10 level and have no drawbacks, at least in terms of dexterity. A dexterity 18 thief in the same metal armor would be as clumsy as the fighter is. The thief's optimal choice would be the lightest (+2) armor, giving them their full dexterity of 18 and the full value of the armor.

For any character, the optimal armor would be the one that gets their passive defense exactly to 30. Heavier armor wouldn't lower their passive defense, just lower their dexterity.

So why would a character focus on armor instead of just pumping points into dexterity for cheaper defense and all the benefits that dexterity brings? Because armor has another function, which is absorbing damage. Armor subtracts damage from hits, with each level of armor absorbing damage equal to half its defense bonus. So that +10 armor the fighter is wearing subtracts 5 points of damage from every hit.

Assuming D&D-style weapon damage but not assuming D&D-style damage bonuses (because this system avoids "ability mods" in favor of using the raw attributes), this would mean that half the armors completely price out the weakest weapons, which do 1d4 damage.

So let's assume that not every hit strikes the armor in such a way as to obviate damage. Some will hit an exposed limb or sink into a joint or other weak spot. How do we determine this? We use the high-low rule. Any weapon damage die that comes up as either the highest or lowest possible result gets through. So that 1d4 dagger? It's got a 50% chance of getting through even the toughest plate armor, and will either inflict minimal damage (barely nicked the person behind the plate) or maximum damage (drove that one home).

This means that weapons with small dice like daggers, maces, and warhammers will overcome armor more often, while weapons like swords, spears, and arrows are more vulnerable to them. Weapons that use two small or medium dice instead of one big one will also have an advantage in cracking armor.

Other wrinkles to this system: feat-like armor training could add +2 to the dexterity cap for the specified type of armor. Depending on whether armor training is seen as a necessity to use armor or as a bonus, the basic cap at each level might also be shifted down 2 points. Strength would also be a factor; each armor would have a minimum strength needed to wear it effectively, with the dexterity cap being cut in half if you fail to meet it. So the dexterity 18 thief, unless they also have a strength of 18, would be far clumsier in the plate armor than the fighter.

Game Design: More on that theoretical combat system.

I realized after posting that last post that the numbers in it might seem a bit wonky, in isolation. An "optimal" defensive attribute of 30 using the system described would give a character with maximum human ability of 18 only a 45% hit rate, and characters of mean human ability would only have a 5% hit rate.

However, achieving that optimal defense requires attributes that the average person does not require (very high dexterity or very high strength), as well as such resources as money and training if they're going the armor route. The average person wouldn't have the luxury of matching their dexterity and strength perfectly with the ideal armor.

The average combatant in the world would more often have a defense of 22 to 26, with 22 being the most common (your bog standard bandit having a dexterity of 10 and leather armor). A passive defense of 22 would mean a character with similarly average attributes would have a 45% hit rate, and a character at peak human would have an 85% hit rate.

Against a typical "warrior" enemy, with a defense of 26, the hit rate would be 15% for a character with average ability and for the character with peak human, 65%... right around 2/3rds, which is commonly thought of as the threshold for fun... and 75% for the character who is actually maxed out at 20.

All it takes is an attack attribute of 12 to be in the "hit more often than miss" category against the bog standard bandit type enemy. If we assume that weapon expertise gives a +2 to hit rolls (this is not set yet), then you can have average physical attributes and still hit 55% of the time against a typical normal opponent.

The peak defense of 30 is meant to be an extreme example, a character who is all but untouchable for all but the most talented opponents... not quite untouchable, but close enough that you'll want to consider dealing with them through other means than attrition. It would be possible to have a player character at that level of defense at level 1, though doing it through armor in particular would require significant investment of your character creation resources.

Game Design: More about the whys and wherefores.

Maybe I should explain some of my thoughts behind the last two posts.

The idea is to create a system that represents a whole range of offensive and defensive abilities where any character with average or better physical stats can potentially act as a combatant, with meaningful variations in levels of effectiveness.

The dexterity vs. armor divide is meant to do what D&D 4E does of giving you multiple paths to the same basic status, but having a real difference between them, with armor also lowering damage, while restricting your mobility as represented by the lower maximum dexterity, and dexterity giving you a better dodge chance, which is a wrinkle I didn't address but gives you the potential to avoid one attack a round at a slight opportunity cost... armor is better for a character who's going to sit there and slug it out, while dexterity might be more useful for a character whose player is thinking more tactically and doing more than attacking the nearest enemy each round.

And the whole thing is meant to be more recognizably D&D-esque/familiar to D&D players than my previous system experiments, which is why it uses the D&D stats and stat ranges, including giving up on my old sticking point of separating strength and prowess into two stats.

As much as it bothers me on a fundamental level to have strength and fighting prowess inextricably linked, and manual dexterity and gross agility treated as the same quantity... in terms of adventuring character archetypes, it does make a lot of sense, and in terms of keeping things simple, having fewer attributes always works better than more.

Wow.

So, the chapter I wrote today is currently sitting around ~2500 words. I wrote it in three segments of 20 minutes each, with ten minute breaks in between. So that's 80 minutes out of my work day to do the major writing of the chapter, and an actual writing speed of 2,500 words/hour.

I am feeling accomplished. I really like I'm not just in the groove, but wearing it deeper each time I go around.

If next week my performance is the same--and it might well not be, as the situation here is going to change up a bit, but if it is--then I'll end the week three weeks ahead. If I write nothing next week, I'll end it almost two weeks ahead. If it's anywhere in between (which seems most likely), I'll return to Maryland at least two weeks ahead, the same position in which I left it... albeit with that much of a stronger understanding of the story I'm writing and how to best proceed with both the writing and the planning.

Mid-Month E-Book Bump!

Sorry for not putting this up earlier in the day, but just as a reminder to those who know and an announcement to those who don't:

I have e-books of my work (including collections of my web serials, and some original short stories and novellas) available on multiple sites in multiple formats.

My Amazon Kindle store is currently the most complete. Though it's only available in one format (Kindle), you don't have to buy any hardware to read the books. They can be read in-browser through Amazon, or using a free Kindle app that's available on nearly every platform.

My indie store powered by Selfy has almost everything that I've published for Kindle, for the same price. Even better, you get a zip that has multiple formats: PDF, HTML, EPUB (industry standard ebook format), and MOBI (Kindle compatible). You can read the HTML right in your browser, read the PDF almost anywhere, and use EPUB or MOBI for all e-reader devices/apps. Not only is this the best value, it has the most immediate benefit for me, as my "royalty" is the full price you pay minus transaction fees, and the money isn't held for months.

My Nook store is more of a work in progress compared to the other two, though I'm adding more titles later at the end of the month. Nook books are in the EPUB format.

All my books--even the Amazon ones--are offered DRM free. I fully recognize the consumer's right to make back-up copies, read their purchases on multiple devices, and make whatever alterations to the format are necessary for them to best enjoy the product.