Der PigDog's PigBlog

I played Melee with Vivit yesterday and have some thoughts on charop. Box art of the most recent edition of Melee Why melee? A history of the game Melee is an early game by Steve Jackson, published by Metagaming in 1977. (I'm playing the 2019 3rd edition, published by Steve Jackson Games.) He intended it to work as a standalone combat board game, or to function as a drop-in replacement for D&D combat. It is the first combat ruleset to work on a small timescale, to bring the regimented action ordering from wargaming into roleplaying, and to require actual combat tactics. (D&D on the other hand focuses on operational matters.) It also introduced the conceit of point-buy character creation. Moreover, Jackson kept developing the game, making a sequel, Wizard , the next year, and a full-fledged RPG, The Fantasy Trip , in 1980. Later that year Jackson left Metagaming and founded Steve Jackson Games. He couldn't afford the rights to The Fantasy Trip. Thus in 1985 he publishe...

If you're playing in a dungeon where every door is stuck, you only need to roll for Open Door once per door. (Bonus dice on the roll for everybody helping to open the door -- two people can try to open a normal door, three people can try to open a really big one.) If the roll hits, well, they've opened the door, and you don't need to roll again. If the roll misses, say "Anybody in the next room has heard you try to open the door; you have no chance of surprising them. Are you still going to go through?" Then they'll go through the door, or not. There's no point rolling again and again if the only consequence for failure is "It didn't open this time, try again?". It only takes 10 seconds to try and open a door. That's nothing in comparison to a 10 minute dungeon turn.  If you spend a whole minute trying to open the door, you've got a 90% chance of success, but do we really want to spend table time rolling 6 times and checking for a hit...

This post gives new magic rules inspired by Ars Magica. It's written for my own fantasy heartbreaker, but it should be compatible with most or all OSR games. Try using this in place of your Magic-User's normal magic rules, or add these as variant casting and spell-learning rules for a different casting class. These rules offer supreme flexibility and extensibility for a sort of magic grounded in magical traditions. I provide links to the traditions at the bottom of the post. These rules also model spell research, including the creation of brand new spells, better than any I have seen in any OSR game. What a spell is A spell is a combination of a noun and verb, spoken out loud, plus some gestures and effort. Your specific magical tradition is going to give you the specific list of nouns and verbs that can combine to form a spell. The same noun-verb combination can be used to cast a bunch of different spells; the noun and the verb just give the basic family of effects. For instan...

In this post, I give a unified procedure for resolving tasks in games. This procedure has a low handling time, but it is extensible and flexible enough to model tasks at many different scales of abstraction. It has been extensively play-tested, by myself and others, used without much difficulty in over 200 sessions. Basic procedure Use the following procedure to model a simple, isolated task, with a binary outcome. Define the task. Assign the task a base difficulty as a score TN/D . " D " is the die size you're going to use (for instance, 6, 10, 20), and " TN " is the target number; you want to roll TN or lower on the die. Also assign the task a period, the time required to complete it. Adjust for situational factors. Count up situational advantages and disadvantages. Cancel one advantage for one disadvantage until only one type remains or neither applies. Assign bonus dice for remaining advantages and penalty dice for remaining disadvantages, 1 die each. Ro...

I've been using a slightly modified version of Eero's combat structure for about a year, and my brand-new attack procedure for about a week, and I like both. Why? What's so good about them? What's so good about any combat procedure whatsoever? I'll start by narrowing the field a bit. I'm only interested in combat procedures for a war game that's roughly compatible with classic D&D modules. The procedures need to scale from ordinary humanity to pulp action heroes. (Conceivably it could go higher than that, but I've never played a game that is that high level, so I don't really care.) The procedures need to take as inputs the kinds of things we find in a D&D dungeon key and monster write-up: number, defenses, level, special abilities, place in the dungeon ecosystem. It doesn't have to use all those things, but it can't ask for any information outside of those things. Ok, that's it for hard requirements. Now let's list the thin...

This is mostly a summary of the Coup procedure, so credit where it's due there. I've added the bit about different action speeds as it's come up in games a fair deal. Maneuvering Combat is divided into 1 minute maneuver phases. Declare what you are doing at the start of the phase. Everybody declares at once, no particular order. Actions in the maneuver phase are immediate, fast, or normal. Every action in a speed category takes place simultaneously. Fully resolve all actions in one speed category before you move on to the next. Conceivably, your action could take some sort of penalty if you are disrupted by an action from an earlier category. Immediate actions: shooting an arrow, throwing a spear, tossing a rock, readying a spear, giving a brief command, charging into melee (maybe? this is separate from the ordinary walking-speed "closing into melee" and requires a martial arts technique to get a whole group to do it at once) Fast actions: closing into melee Norma...

First official playtest of my fantasy heartbreaker, tentatively named Coup Étrange. I ran the game for Patrick and Tschesae, playing a magician and a commoner respectively. Before they made their characters, I gave them the prompts: As the huge red sun gutters in the sky, fabulous, trivial men scheme and cavort in the monuments of dead civilizations Magic is misunderstood and forgotten technology Patrick's character, Marigold, before the start of play Tschesae's character, Karl, after the end of session I had prepared for a third player, Adam, but his internet went out so he couldn't attend. My session prep consisted of a relationship map, a list of forces for two groups of gangsters, and the layout of an extremely barebones dungeon, actually just a house with some treasure, a trap, and clues. Most of this wound up being unimportant for the scenario. The relationship map was composed almost entirely out of characters from the three players' contacts, with two additions,...

  Chainmail offers two different "turn sequences". It's doing something really difficult, trying to boil down a very dynamic and chaotic event -- a battle --into a linear process. It's worth seeing what it tries, and how it does it. I should say that I've never played Chainmail; this is just how I think things should work after puzzling through the text. The first system is the "MOVE/COUNTER MOVE SYSTEM". It's the one I'll be looking at today. I quote: Both opponents roll a die, the side with the higher score has the choice of electing to move first (Move) or last (Counter-move). The side that has first move moves its figures and makes any split-moves and missile fire, taking any pass-through fire possible at the same time. The side that has last move now moves its figures and makes any split-moves and missile fire, taking any pass-through fire possible at the same time.  Artillery fire is taken. Missile fire is taken. Melees are resolved...