The Shortest of Adventures

Reading to much ten foot pole can make me gloomy and despondent for honest industry. To combat this mood I challenged myself to write the shortest adventure I could and remain useful at the table. Even as a system agnostic module. Here is the result;

A Short Adventure

The PCs are passing through a rural village on their way to someplace else.

The locals ask for their assistance.

A lost relative of the long absent Lord has returned to the Lord's empty manor and claimed his inheritance.

This is enacted by a pair of tough henchmen who travel from hamlet to hamlet taking tribute from the scared peasantry.

If they give any more they will run out of their harvest stores.

The village is prepared to offer up wine and amorous friends, perhaps they are in need of craft services? If you cannot think of anything to entice the PCs interest you may resort to money. Just remember these poor sods are living on the edge.

Shortly the PCs get their chance to confront the two powerful mercenaries, as they are now coming to town. They have a cart and sturdy horse. They are in full plate and equipped with two handed weapons, say axe and sword. They talk a tough game, but are really poor, hungry peasants from a nearby village. They will yield quickly after taking any damage. They will plead their case, but the enraged citizens of the hamlet are angry for revenge.

After the killing the villagers pay off the PCs for their part. Then the villagers start trying on the armor. They think they can go around and start doing some extortion of their own. Everyone knows the hamlet over the bridge are a bunch of dunder-heads.

What do the PCs do?

Villagers are skilled only in farming and the like. They are mostly unarmored, but any in the impressive plate mail will have improved protection.

Things to consider:

- Where the armored men come from, and where is the stuff they have been pilfering?

- How many hamlets were victimized and how many hamlets were in on it?
- Change the cart to a truck and it is good to go for modern all the way to post-apoc!

If the sun is in their eyes, do I get a bonus?

How much is too much when listing die roll modifiers for your game? Finding out when a force occupies desired ground and how much sooner they got their then their opponent was what sent me down this tangent. It shows me again the flexibility of the USR game system. For DIY minded Keepers and players bent on creating their own worlds, USR is a good place to start. It is free you know.

I continue to playtest Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery’s Mass Combat rules. I’ve let the simple resolution mechanics be my guiding hand when wondering; “more modifiers?” More rules to account for a myriad of battle situations pop into my brain and I want to add all sorts of chrome if I get carried away. What about this? What about that? But then I look at the frame work I’m using, (U)nbelievably (S)imple (R)oleplaying. Constructing rules for mass combat encounters can and does take much from traditional war games. Consistent movement mechanics appropriate to the scale of the encounter. I organize the encounter around the constituent troops involved, I have “units” like any other war game, movement facing, etc. Terrain is accounted for. But here is the trick, for me. I’m playing a role-playing game and I don’t want to get into a detailed tactical simulation. I want a useful tool to aid both player and Crypt Keeper run an exciting mass battle, and then get back to the player specific focus of TTRPG’s.

The answer has been the games base character attributes, specifically Action. Any situation not covered in these sparse rules can be answered with a Contested Action Roll. Want to know if your cavalry beats the enemy to the narrow ford? Roll a Contested Action Roll, high roll wins. Withdraw under the cover of darkness keeping the enemy unawares? Roll a Contested Action Roll. Degrees of failure and success are useful time keepers as well. If you beat your opponent’s roll by two you got the ford two hours before they do. Or two days, depends on the scales of movement being used.
Contested Attribute rolls don’t even need to be against the same attributes. Forces climbing a steep cliff face would need to see if they can get to the top before the enemy spots them. Forcing your army over treacherous ground and you can’t have any delays. Probably should use a Non-contested Action Roll with difficulty set by the CK. But by and large competing against your enemy; Contested Action Roll.  Action vs. Wits? Why not? Subterfuge, fakery and misdirection lend themselves to a Wits vs. Wits roll, but I can see where one force is combating the weak morale of their enemy and a Wits roll vs. Ego makes sense. However you choose to assign the contested attributes, it gives you a fast resolution mechanic which includes degrees of success if you like.

The Contested Action Roll adds a great deal of excitement for maneuvers during combat. Anytime troops try to pull off a maneuver (not an attack) with the enemy close enough to engage contested action rolls are a great way to adjudicate the success or failure of the maneuver.

These rolls should not be drowned in numerous die-roll modifiers. The small scale of numbers you are dealing with makes a +1 or +2 a significant bonus. Reduce advantages between opponents until you have only a significant factor to consider against each other. The easiest to figure, and will come up many times, is a force attempting a maneuver in front of the enemy and commanders and leaders are present. A +4 Leadership Specialism going against +2 Insite Loyalty Specialism you just reduce down to +2 for better commander. The other force has no commander, get the full +4! The CK can always consider limits on total modifiers allowed at any one time. You just have to ask yourself how “swingy” do you want the battle to be. If opponents can pile up modifiers against each other the final value of the die rolls can vary widely. Capping them makes for a contest where creating advantage for your army is more difficult.

Want to be a RPG creator?

Then this blog post by Aos is worth a read. It is worth a read because a) he is doing or has done what he is talking about. b) How to prepare for the necessary and expensive use of quality art, also his use of the word an analogies of commitment ring true to me, c) the Work Flow piece is really strong. I took notice of his mention to not go back and rewrite drafts. I find I do this and I'm glad to hear a fellow creator thinks "You need to write your first draft from end to end without going back and revising. It doesn’t matter if it’s garbage. It is a natural resource. Think of your first draft as mining the ore. Subsequent drafts draw out the METAL!" 

There is a nugget of valuable information/advice throughout the short post. And buy a copy of Cosmic Tales #1, it is pretty dope.

OSR Race Rules

I took a shot at cobbling together race rules for my BFRPG Dying Earth campaign by hacking apart AH's Circus Maximus chariot game and today they were put to use. 

All four entries forgo attacks on each other and blazed down the track, speeding through the turn and burned it to the finish. Imagine that, the PCs long shot (actually one of the PCs was the long shot) came in first for the win!

At the same time this was going on the rest of the PCs were in the city getting ready to go with their heist they joined at the last minute. Split party doing major game stuff at the same time.  I've gotten at ease with running a split party over time and I think it is an exciting dynamic when it emerges out of play. Yes it is more "efficient" to have the party together to maximize some PC to Play ratio, buut there is fun to be had switching from scene to scene at cliffhanger moments. 

As far as the race rules they did an admiral job. I need to edit them for a set of rules which don't contradict themselves or make illogical play mechanics, but the concept and ease of use did come through to me. I think I'm on the right track.

And a good concept trumps all I think. This race track episode showed that yes you need rules which work, but having a straight play-balanced tactical challenge isn't necessary for a role-playing game. Good guidelines and like a race, just move it along fast. Same with the heist. Every good heist flick has the "unforeseen complications" which spring up mid-operation. Just like the race, keep the action going. PCs shouldn't have time to debate the next move. Guards are coming, goods aren't were they where supposed to be, someone arriving who should have been long gone. Change the weather, make someone go missing and not show. Pile on the complications until it turns into a flight through the city doing your best to recreate that scene from Heat but with daggers and arrows. 

The brief street scenes did give some brief moments for the PCs to catch their breath and figure out how to make all the chaos pay. I don't think I'm going to give them a breather :)