Mad Brew Labs

The Mad Menagerie is a regular column that I am starting with this entry: The Trystgeist.  The Mad Menagerie will be a bi weekly (at least) occurance that will feature totally original monsters, like the Trystgeist, or creatures adapted from folklore, mythology, legend, and movies.

Each entry will give a physical description, a small stat block, powers, combat tactics and lore.  They will be presented in a slightly modified 4e format, but I think they could be adapted to any system.  That being said, I’m not really a fan of 4e, but I think the monster stats are pretty slick and easy to use.

Trystgeist

Trystgeists are the spirits of the unfaithful that have died at the hands of their betrayed lovers.  They are ethereal in nature, and only manifest when they exact vengeance upon adulterers.  When these tormented spirits do manifest they become corporeal and appear as one of the adulterers’ spouse.  The adulterers’ surprise soon turns to terror as the trystgeist’s eyes turn black and begin weeping dark, acidic tears that melts the flesh of it’s stolen appearance, as well as its victims.

Medium Shadow Humanoid [Undead, Touched by Evil]
Level: 10
Initiative: +10
Perception: +10, darkvision
Hit Points: 100
AC: 20, Fort: 25, Ref: 18, Will: 25
Speed: 5
Skills: Intimidate +15
Str 16, Dex 10, Con -, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 20

Burning Betrayal (ranged, standard, recharge 4,5,6) [acid, necrotic]
Close burst 5; +15 vs. Reflex; 2d8 +5 damage.

Eyes Only For Me (melee, standard, at-will)
+13 vs. AC; 1d4+3 damage; target is blinded for 2 rounds.

Claw (melee, standard, at-will)
+13 vs. AC; 1d8+3 damage.

Tactics

Trystgeists will begin by moving in close to its victims and shaking its head inhumanly fast, spraying its acidic tears all around it.  It will then attempt to blind an opponent and take advantage of its victim’s weakened defenses and unleash its claws.  It will spray its victims with acid at every opportunity.  Trystgeists will often intimidate victims so they cower in fear.

Lore

DC 15: Trystgeists often take on the appearance of its victim’s spouse.
DC 20: Trystgeists were once adulterers that were slain by their betrayed lovers.
DC 25: Trystgeists cannot be permanently destroyed unless you find its wedding band and destroy it with it’s own acid.

Listening to: Type O Negative – Bloody Kisses – Blood & Fire

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During this process of developing Echelon, I have taken each part of the very familiar 3.5 d20 system and asked a few questions:

• Does this make the game fun?
• Is it effective at fullfilling its purpose?
• Can it be improved?
• Should it be removed?

To answer these questions I first reflect upon my personal experiences as both a player and a dungeon master. Did I recall the element adding depth, creativity, or flavor?  Was it fun to use the element, or was it more of an obstacle? What was its purpose, and did it do a good job at what it was intended to do?  For instance, if it was an obstacle, was it necessary to include because it introduced balance?  Even if it was fun and successfully fulfilling its purpose, can it be made better?  Should it be removed entirely?

I then catalog those answers and ask the same questions to my gaming group, keeping mind each person’s propensity to resist change. I then hit the web, looking for other people’s opinions, observations, and solutions.

If you have read my article on Design, then this ENTIRE process actually resides in the first step of STAIR: State the problem.  I research the problem so I can fully understand it.  How can you state the problem unless you know what exactly it is?

It was during this phase of design that I came across John Kirk’s RPG Design Patterns PDF at the site for his game, Legendary Quest.  It is a 260+ page document that examines design patterns common to some of the most successful role playing games out there.  After I finish digesting the book, I think I will use it to help define Echelon.

I also found a nice little list of RPG Design blogs, forums, and books at PPD RPG Design.  Hopefully this will help other aspiring game designers find the information they need to tackle the rough art of game design.

Listening to: The Dead See – Through the Veil – Dead Mans’s Throne

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This is a follow up to Chatty DM’s 5 part series entitled “So you wanna write an RPG blog?“  In part 5, “Then What?,” Chatty asks the community to post some additions to his very informative series because he plans on compiling the series, and additions, into an e-book.

I took some HCI (human computer interaction) courses while attending college, and recieved some solid, if dry, information on design.  In HCI they refer to useability as how well the site is designed.  They don’t care about visual impact and fancy graphics.  The bottom line is no matter how good your site looks, if users can’t navigate it and find what they need, it is a failure.

You often come across complicated words like heuristics, which is just fancy talk for trial and error or exploratory problem solving.  You study how your target audience bumbles or glides through your site.  Basically, you give them a few random and specific tasks to accomplish at your site, record their progress (time to execute, facial expression, success or failure, etc.).  If your testers become frustrated, then there is some poor design happening.

I did some searching and found a site that had solid information about usability principles.  They echo everything I remember from the HCI courses, but I’ll boil it down for you:

10 Principles (strive for these)

• Assume all users are NOT technically savvy (don’t make ‘em think too much)
• Do NOT make them wait (filling out forms, page loads, extensive clicking)
• Guide users where you want them (direct their attention to what is most important)
• Be clear (make sure they know what that button does, be objective)
• Effective writing (make it short & concise, scannable, and in plain language)
• Less is more (keep the layout simple and clean)
• Be consistant (maintain a similarly structured sute)
• Convention is our friend (user expect websites to function similarly)
• Test it (do a useability test as mentioned earlier
• Innovate after you have master the principles (you have to know the rules to break them)

10 Pitfalls (avoid these like the plague)

• intro splash screens (I don’t care about your sweet flash animation, why force users to go through an unneccessary layer?)
• pop-ups (besides, these days most browsers kill all of the easy to imp pop-ups)
• hidden or underemphasized log in links (especially if its requiered for content, why another page anyways?)
• horizontal scrolling and page dragging (wtf! I can’t use my scroll button!)
• visual noise (is the clipart, ads, gifs, all neccessary?)
• dead ends and invisible links
• blocked content (wtf, why is this ad/image hiding the stuff I want to read?)
• dynamic menus & drop donws (all the sliding around is a pain the ass, besides your hiding topics)
• blinking images (trying to give me a seizure, eh?)
• poor color choice (some colors just don’t work, try this effective color scheme app)

Other Tips

• Every page should be accessible from every page (might be hard with hundreds of posts, but try to keep the depth of your site within two or three clicks, tags and categories help with this)
• The site I referenced mentioned not opening links in new windows… but I have to half disagree.  Don’t have any internal links open new windows unless absolutely necessary. But you might consider having external links open in a new window, because you want to keep them on YOUR site.

Remember, if you are going to break the rules of design, make sure you know you are breaking the rules and why.  There are exceptions to every rule, just like in D&D.

Below is an excerpt of how Echelon will handle races. While plenty of playtesting remains on making sure the races are balanced throughout the tiers, this is pretty much how they should work. The decision hasn’t been made on whether all the attributes happen at once, or spread out through XPRs. The idea to enable players to select a number of attributes at tiers or XPRs is on the design table as well.

Race and Languages

All characters know how to speak Common. An aasimar, dragonborn, dwarf, eladrin, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, or tiefling also speaks a racial language, as appropriate. A character who has an Intelligence bonus at 1st level speaks other languages as well, one extra language per point of Intelligence bonus as a starting character. Power related languages: characters that purchase ranks in certain Powers can choose a few languages as bonus languages even if they’re not on the lists found in the race descriptions. These power related languages are as follows:

Divine: Abyssal, Celestial, and Infernal.
Sorcery: The language related to chosen bloodline.
Wizarding: Draconic.
Wyld: Sylvan

Favored Powers

Races gravitate towards Powers that come naturally to them. Dwarves are excellent smiths and crafters, so naturally they have an affinity for Artifice. Halflings have developed the knack to blend in with their surroundings for protection, so they have an inclination for the Covert arts. A race can purchase favored Powers at a reduced cost. A new rank for a favored Power costs its rank less in Experience Points.

Small Characters

A Small character gets a +1 size bonus to Armor Class, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, and a +4 size bonus on Hide checks. A Small character’s carrying capacity is three-quarters of that of a Medium character. A Small character generally moves about two-thirds as fast as a Medium character. A Small character must use smaller weapons than a Medium character.

Dwarves

Listening to: Crowbar – Odd Fellows Rest - Planars Collide

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Here is an excerpt from EGS about how ability score ranks work:

The Echelon Gaming System inherits the six prime abilities from the 3.5 d20 SRD. These abilities are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Expansions to EGS may bring additional abilities to the game, but for now we stick the basics.

Each Ability, after changes made because of race, has a rank ranging from –5 to +∞ (infinity). Table: Ability Ranks shows the modifier for each score. Each Ability partially describes your character and affects some of his or her Actions.

The rank is the number you apply to the die roll when your character tries to do something related to that Ability. You also use the rank with some numbers that aren’t die rolls. A positive rank is called a bonus, and a negative rank is called a penalty.

The ability that governs Powers depends on the individual entry: Intelligence can be used for specific styles of Wizarding; Wisdom for divine inspired gifts; or Charisma for certain sorceries. A high rank in an Ability is the prerequisite of the most impressive Powers.

Strength measures your character’s muscle and physical power. This ability is especially important for Close Combat and Might Powers because it helps characters utilizing those powers reach their fullest potential. Strength also limits the amount of equipment your character can carry.

• Melee attack rolls.
• Damage rolls when using a melee weapon or a thrown weapon (including a sling). (Exceptions: Off-hand attacks receive only one-half the character’s Strength rank, while two-handed attacks receive one and a half times the Strength rank. A Strength penalty, but not a bonus, applies to attacks made with a bow that is not a composite bow.)
• Athletics and Intimidate checks. These are the Skills that have Strength as their key Ability.
• Strength checks (for breaking down doors and the like).
• Fortitude Saving Throws. The higher of your Strength or Constitution ranks are applied to resisting poison and similar threats.

Listening to: Scar Symmetry – Pitch Black Progress – The Illusionist

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The Echelon Gaming System, or EGS, is a rank based d20 rules system that I have just began creating. EGS is the reason I even deigned to begin this web log. I read through the D&D core books immediately after Wizards of the Coast put them on the shelves. I was very disappointed.

I had been at the big 4dventure announcement party at GenCon ’07 when they revealed their plans to bring out a new edition. I had listened to the designers speak about how they were going to improve things: streamline combat, make races meaningful, balance classes, etc.

Honestly, I had mixed feelings. I wanted my beloved game to improve, but I had just sunk five hundred dollars in 3rd edition books, and they were talking that because of radical design changes, most of the old stuff would not be compatible. This left a knot in my stomach.

So I had to psyche myself up for the release, promising myself that the new stuff will be so good I’d give away all my 3rd edition books. Then they were released and I was pissed. Wizards had improved much of the game. I loved the consolidated skills, the tiers, and combat did seem faster paced. But they had clearly missed the mark on classes and only half delivered on their promises for meaningful races. The classes were… I don’t know how to say it, too balanced. None of them seemed to excel beyond the others in their niche. I felt like no matter my choice, I would have about the same options.

That disappointment inspired me to begin creating my own version of d20. It had begun as a fusion of what was good about 3rd and 4th edition D&D, but now I believe it has become something different, perhaps even better. Echelon does not have your typical classes, or typical levels. Players are awarded Experience each session, and can spend that experience to purchase ranks in Powers, in much the same way as White Wolf’s Storytelling dot system. There are vestiges of levels which are calculated by the total experience that has been awarded, but levels don’t drive the character. I have boiled away classes, leaving Powers (vestiges of class abilities and spells) and something called Archetypes. Races actually scale with the power of the characters, so which race you choose matters beyond character creation.

I have ranted and raved more than enough for one post, but you can look forward to sneak peaks at Echelon game mechanics and a setting I have planned for it in the future.

Listening to: Fear Factory – Obsolete – Edgecrusher

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