A Game for Noobs

I just saw a post by Xaosseed about the ongoing GM shortage crisis in RPGs, and immediately thought that this shortage has now been going on for probably 50 years.

My view has been for quite some time that the biggest barrier to entry for learning how to run an RPG is the fact that you first need to have mastered the majority of the rules before you can start giving it your first try. And I think most people who are looking at the prospect of running a game themselves are having Dungeons & Dragons before their eyes. The game with the three big tomes that I think come out as about 1000 pages in total. One of the games that doesn’t really have a game structure or any procedures to follow. D&D is an awful game to first try learning gamemastering with.

I think one thing that the RPG world could really use would be a simple system that is specifically designed to be easy to run for new GMs who have never run a an RPG before, and maybe even never played an RPG before. Which also would be a game that is easy to learn for players. And it should be specifically marketed as such.

The first priority would be for it to be a system that has relatively few rules and mechanics that GMs and players would have to know. It should be a short rulebook, simply on the virtue of not looking daunting to people who feel they have no clue what they are signing up for. But also, we would want to minimize situations where the new learning GMs have to interrupt the play to look up the rules for how something works. What we would want to teach is not how to manage mechanics, but how to conduct play. Which is the skills that we would want them to learn and that they could transfer to whatever game of choice they want to switch to later.

The game should have a very clear adventure structure and procedures for play. Instead of a game where players can play anything and do anything they can image, limit it to a clearly defined scope in which the overall goals are clear to both players and GMs. Provide templates for how adventures can be prepared and set up that GMs can fill in with their own content.

Also the game would have to be designed to work best for fairly short campaigns. Assume that a campaign might run for three or four adventures and that will be it. That might be enough for a lot of people completely new to RPGs to feel like they have a basic hang of how to play and run an RPG, which then will make it much less daunting to start a new campaign with a much bigger and more complex game. And again, it should be presented as such. It does not have to be a cool game that experienced players need to feel excited about to play it. If it is clear from the start that the goal of playing the game is not to be start of a great new campaign, but to help a new GM get some practice at the basics of running the game over the course of just a month or so, I think a lot of longtime players would be totally up for it. Even if that noob game is not what they actually want to play as their own game of choice.

As a consequence, the game would not need to have much replay value. If you’ve seen anything the game has to offer after four adventures, that would be fine. It would be perfectly okay to get bored with it very quickly.

I don’t have any clue how to make such a game. But I think it could be really great to have something like that. It wouldn’t even have to compete with D&D. It could simply be very successful as the thing you play to prepare for playing D&D.

Speeding up play by Delaying

In the 23 years that I’ve been playing RPGs, I played more Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition than anything else combined. And then Pathfinder might be on spot two. And perhaps the most annoying issue I had with the system the entire time was how much combat can drag out. By going from one initiative count to the next, the game has a build-in Feedback Loop of Inattention.

Player 1 takes a while deciding on the action for the current turn. Player 3 knows it will still be quite a while until 1 and 2 have made their turns, and there will be monsters acting inbetween as well. By the time it’s Player 3’s turn, the tactical situation will have changed so much that it’s pointless to decide what action to take yet. So Player 3 get’s bored, stops paying attention, gets distracted. And suddenly it’s Player 3’s turn, and the surprised Player 3 needs a minute or two to take in the current situation in the fight, and then a bit more to consider all the possible actions that the PC could take.

Player 4 knows this will happen. So player 4 gets bored, stops paying attention, …

And this is why a single round of combat can take 15 to 20 minutes. Not to resolve the actions. Most of it is surprised players trying to figure out what has changed since their last turn and considering all the actions they could take on their turn, while it is their turn.

One way games can deal with this is by having a group initiative system. All the PCs act on the same turn, in whatever order they are ready to announce their action. All the players can think simultaneously about the action they are taking right now, and those who need less time to think don’t have to wait for those who take longer. And when it is the monsters’ turn, the players know that the new situation that is taking shape is the one they will actually have to react to on their turn. Unfortunately, the d20 game engine has lots of mechanics build on the assumption of an initiative order, and switching to group initiative isn’t quite seamlessly. Andnif you want to play the game online, when you can’t see where everyone is looking right now and can’t gesture to indicate things, which makes talking over each other a bigger issue, having an initiative order really does have some positive sides.

I think a lot of GMs have entertained the thought of giving players a time limit to take their turns, but it seems fairly obvious that this probably would be a bad idea that only adds pressure and tension and won’t make the game more fun for anyone in it. But it just occured to me that the d20 system already includes a mechanic for players taking their turn at a later point in the round.

DELAY

By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act. When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat. When your new, lower initiative count comes up later in the same round, you can act normally. You can specify this new initiative result or just wait until some time later in the round and act then, thus fixing your new initiative count at that point.

Delaying is useful if you need to see what your friends or opponents are going to do before deciding what to do yourself.

When there’s nothing really useful you could do with your action on your turn, you can just wait for some more things changing in the fight that hopefully will create opportunities to do something efficient and interesting. But there is no reason why you can’t delay for any out of game reasons when you’re not quite ready for your turn yet and not make the next player wait unneccesarily. And you can easily make this a rule: When it’s your turn, and you don’t have a plan yet what to do, let the next player or the GM skip ahead in line.

If you have questions for the GM before committing to the action, that’s fine. If you still need to figure out how to move or where to best aim your spell, that’s fine. You don’t need to be able to execute your full turn instantly the moment your number is up. But you should have a plan what you want to do when it is your turn. If the PC’s or enemy’s turn right before yours changes the situation significantly and your plan is now obsolete, you can have a minute to adjust. Maybe choose a different target for your spell, or fall back to making a regular melee attack against the enemy next to you. But when you’re not ready to make a choice yet, let the next player go ahead. You probably just move down one or two positions in the initiative sequence. It’s no big deal.

But I think the potential payoff in reducing slack could be huge, if this is applied consistently by the GM. Not only can you fit more combat encounters within a given amount of play time, it also makes the encounters a lot more fun for everyone when you don’t have to sit around for ages watching a person looking at a map, a character sheet, or spell descriptions.

Shadows of Kaendor

I decided that for Lore 24, I will be going with my Kaendor setting again. While I’ve been working with it for years and even ran a few short campaigns in it, the vast majority of that campaign setting exist only as very short mental notes in my head. Barely anything is actually spelled out about its current incarnation, and the parts that do exist are mostly rather vague and remaining at the stage of an idea outline. Lore 24 seems to be the perfect opportunity to turn those ideas and impressions in my mind into actual, concrete setting material.

While my current vision of Kaendor has a surface appearance that is deliberately a fairly generic elfgame Fantasyland, it also has some pretty major divergences. Whose gradual discovery by the PCs as they leave the familiar grounds of civilization is meant to be the central theme and core concept of the campaign setting. I feel that many of the things I want to write down for Lore 24 won’t be able to be really appreciated without any context for the world that they are meant to exist in. And so I want to use this post to provide a general, top level overview of the world, covering the main parameter that are already fairly set in stone.

Since I got a lot of ideas for a new campaign set in Kandor from several D&D 3rd edition books, it seems the most sensible approach to me to simply plan this out as a 3rd edition campaign. A large number of things I want to have in this world already exist in game terms for this system, and it is a game that I am very familiar with and feel very confident with for creating new creature abilities, spells, and unique mechanics.

Shadows of Kaendor is written as a setting for a D&D 3rd edition campaign covering 1st to 10th level, that also is home to a few NPCs up to 12th level. It uses the following books for character creation and advancement options, and for optional rules and mechanics:

  • Player’s Handbook
  • Expanded Psionics Handbook
  • Manual of the Planes
  • Monster Manual
  • Monsters of Faerun
  • Lords of Madness

Other influences and inspirations are taken from the AD&D adventure The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, and from Bloodborne, Thief, and Hollow Knight, which should become apparent further below.

The continent of Kaendor is populated by the following peoples, using the creature stats in the brackets (PC options in bold):

  • Snow People (high elf)
  • Fog People (wood elf)
  • Forest People (high elf)
  • Mountain People (goliath)
  • Coast People (gray elf)
  • Sea People (aquatic elf)
  • Plains People (half-elf)
  • Chitines
  • Gnolls
  • Goblins
  • Grimlocks
  • Locathah (amphibious)
  • Ogers
  • Quaggoths
  • Wind People (avariel)

Player characters and NPCs can be of the following classes:

  • Barbarian
  • Cleric
  • Cloistered Cleric
  • Druid
  • Fighter
  • Psion (psionic)
  • Ranger
  • Rogue
  • Wilder (psionic)
  • Wizard

There will be no prestige classes in the campaign.

Unlike most D&D settings, the world consists of only a small number of planes:

  • Material Plane.
  • Plane of Faerie, the realm of fey and elementals.
  • Plane of Shadow. (Also covers all the functions of the Ethereal Plane.)
  • Unknown Planes beyond the Shadow, the realms of aberrations.

Kaendor is a large coastal region that ranges from Mediterranean climate in the south to sub-arctic in the north. Its civilization is fairly young and accordingly only very sparsely populated. The society and technology is roughly oriented towards the very early Middle Ages. at the end of the Migrtation Period in the 6th and 7th century. Weapons and armor are dominated by one handed swords and axes, spears, bows, chainmail shirts, simple helmets, and round wooden shields. Architecture is very Romanesque in style. In many ways, society has much more resemblance with the images of Celtic and Viking culture than the large kingdoms of the High Middle Ages, though there are a number of fairly powerful and sophisticated coastal city states.

Most larger towns have a low level adept as their priest or shaman, with clerics mostly found in the great temples of the major cities. Wizards are not exactly common, but in most places the locals will be able to give directions to at least one wizard within two or three days’ walk that they have heard of. The vast majority of NPCs are 1st to 6th level, with those of higher level invariably being people of some fame beyond their immediate community.

Shadows of Kaendor does not use sorcerers (or bards). Instead the role of these spellcasters is being filled by Wilders. These are rare people with a special gift that allows them to peer through the surface of the world and gaze at the true nature of reality, enabling them to master doing, seeing, and knowing certain things that should be impossible. To most people these powers seem like magic, but the truth is far more complex and far reaching than that. Psions are scholars who have learned of these occult truth, and through study and meditation have gained access and far greater understanding of these powers that come to wilders naturally. While wilders, and also psions, have been around for a very long time, most people who encounter their powers are mistaken them for magic spells, including even many wizards.

Instead of the much more common sorcerers and demons from a hellish realm of fire that take the role of the supernatural forces of evil, this aspect of Kaendor is occupied by eldritch aberrations that have long been forgotten in the eternal darkness beyond the borders of this world. Exploring these aspects of the setting will obviously lead into the dark and creepy, but Shadows of Kaendor is not meant to turn into a gory horror campaign of bleak despair. It’s still meant to be a world where adventuring heroes can drive back the strange terrors they face off against and emerge from the darkness victories.

Though safety is not guaranteed.

Follow Spriggan’s Den on Mastodon

I just installed ActivityPub on this site, which now makes it possible to follow it through Mastodon.

The account is @Yora, which you put into the search bar on Mastodon and then just follow it like any other Mastodon account. That account will then automatically post a link to any new post that goes up on this site.

Might be useful for people who are interested in my posts here but maybe not necessarily so much in my endless blabbering on Mastodon. ;)