Cephalon Dusp's Archives

    One problem that I believe many people notice in RPGS and work to fix, even subconsciously, is having too many choices during character creation. It sounds crazy, but it is a real problem. Anyone who has attempted to make a character in Cyberpunk, Pathfinder, or even 5th Edition D&D knows that the number of choices to be made can make it difficult to quickly make a character, even for experienced players!     5E specifically has 13 classes, a huge number of races, and even more backgrounds, nevermind the character options that unlock as characters level up like spells, subclasses, and feats! There is an enormous number of options to consider, and it can be completely overwhelming for new players.     From my experiences, OSR games generally try to shy away from this, but not nearly as much as we might like to think. Sure, everyone knows about the three main classes of Fighting-Man, Magic-User, and Cleric or Thief, but it is important to remember tha...

     I will be the first to admit that I oftentimes enjoy theorizing and philosophizing without actually testing my theories. It is common in the OSR space, that people theorize quite a lot and play maybe a bit less. While armchair thoughts can certainly be productive, they can also be blind to the problems that will crop up in the real world. So, lets take a look at combat based on my experience with testing the combat system I have proposed in my last post on the topic .      Today, I am going to focus on rolling initiative. One thing that I have seen people often talking about is making combat more chaotic and frenetic, sort of the Combat as War instead of Combat as Sport paradigm. One method people propose to do such a thing is changing initiative, such as by regularly rerolling it. I personally really like the idea, since it actually makes initiative bonuses more meaningful than when it is only rolled once. If initiative gets rerolled every round, sure...

     Recently, prompted by the Wandering DMs podcast, I have been thinking about the trade of magic in all of its forms. My own setting is still incomplete, but I also have enough detail to it that I can start thinking about how magic currently works in it. So, I will be doing a small case study on some fictional average wizard's apprentice. Background Information     There are several important pieces of information to know about my setting, but I will be quick. The single largest change I have made is transitioning off of vancian spell slots to a Magic Points (MP) system with spell costs equal to the spell's level and odds of failure depending on the caster's level. As casters gain more experience, they will even get chances to cast spells for free, though it is very unlikely for an apprentice. A caster will have MP equal to Level + Arc, and they will recover 1d3 + Arc for every week of recovery time (no creating magical items, primarily focused on meditation ...

    I'm back again! To help make up for the content I didn't make the last couple of weeks, I have decided to make this week a double post week! Hope you all enjoy.      It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has played any version of Dungeons and Dragons (or most of its spawn) that many RPGs have a large focus on combat. It makes sense, considering the game's roots of dungeon crawling and exploring the wilderness while fighting off the monsters that call it home. So lets spend some time working through design decisions to sketch out the broad strokes of a new(?) combat system. Some Quick Background     There are many, many ways to simulate combat in an RPG. Most fantasy RPGs all come up with their own way of handling it too, so there are a lot of things to pull from. For brevity, I will only pick out a few particularly notable examples.     First, in 5th Edition D&D, combat works by having every character and monster take ...

 I am alive! I have recently been doing quite a bit of playtesting with my system, but I haven't wanted to commit any of my thoughts on it to paper yet, so I haven't had too much to write about. However, I recently came across a worldbuilding idea that I think would be very interesting to see implemented. 10-8-21 Update:  After some discussions and feedback, I have clarified below the fact that in this system, everyone would be human (or whatever) and the Castes would just be named elves, dwarves, and so on. Hopefully this will make my intentions a bit clearer.  What is a Caste System?     Now, to most Western readers the idea of a caste system is very strange, so I will be doing some basic background before I get to the core idea.      Anthropologists generally classify systems of social organization into Open and Closed systems. An open system allows people to change their place in the structure, potentially moving up or down in terms of power o...

     When exploring a dungeon, one of the ever present dangers is the potential existence of traps. One interesting bit of Old School Wisdom that I have discovered is that traps normally have a 2-in-6 or 1/3 chance of going off whenever someone passes by the trigger.      I personally think that this is a very neat feature, but it raises the question of determining who gets affected by a trap. One person? Just roll a d6 and look at the numbers. But what about when you have a long line of explorers? It isn't uncommon for adventuring parties to bring along lots of help or befriended monsters, so the number of people passing by a trap might be quite large indeed. Slowing down play to roll a d6 for every creature passing the trigger is inefficient, so I started looking into alternatives.     Due to quirks of probability, while the first person in line will have a 1/3 chance of triggering a trap, the person behind them will only trigger the trap when ...

 Having tested this method out with my last post on Spell Schools, lets see how breaking down and rebuilding can work on something more central like Ability Scores. A Brief Overview     Ability Scores have been in Dungeons and Dragons since the very beginning, and have been somewhat constant throughout it. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma are the six basic stats and they have endured. But, they have been a constant source of friction as well.     Originally, Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom were all Prime Requisites, the things you needed to choose one of the three basic classes (Fighter, Magic-User, or Cleric respectively). The other three were bonus stats that affected your HP, AC, and Number of Followers. These divisions were clear and fairly straightforward, except for the fact that Ability Scores were described as being actual attributes of your character.      Even a brief thought about this will reveal...

    Today, I am about to engage in what I know is bad design, but also hopefully good design. Spell Schools are a method of categorizing spells and they have a long history in D&D. The bad design I will be committing today is that I will not be looking at why  they exist, how  they are integrated, nor what  messing with them will do. I am just going to be messing with them because the way they are now annoys me. The good design for today is that, hopefully, I will make a set of Spell Schools which make more sense. A Brief History     Now, before I really get into tearing apart spell schools and putting them back together, I will take a moment to look back through the history of D&D and their place within it. Originally, in OD&D, there weren't even spell schools, unless one considers the different spell lists of Magic-Users and Clerics different spell lists.. Holmes' Basic and BECMI also do not have spell schools while AD&D 1E finally in...

     I do have a page on useful RPG mechanics, ideas, and concepts on this blog and one of the concepts in there that of Dice Chain and Usage Dice. The central idea is this: Roll a die and if you roll at or below a specific number you drop down the chain. It gives a nice element of random chance to how many uses of something you get and makes tracking items like Arrows or Chalk very easy.     However, it can be very unclear how many uses you would expect  to get when you buy a Ud6 or Ud8 item. I have just gotten done doing some math, specifically using Markov Chains, and I believe my math holds up. Thus I have been able to produce this very handy chart: Usage Die Expected Uses Ud4 2 Ud6 5 Ud8 9 Ud10 14 Ud12 20     Now, that chart is certainly handy and can easily be recreated by noticing that each die adds 1/2 of its size to the number of expected use...

 Forewarning      I would like to make it clear that I have enjoyed playing The Strange   and the group I play with have all enjoyed it as well. We originally started playing it as an alternative to our main 5E campaign since our normal DM was feeling a bit burnt out and we ended up turning it into our main campaign for several months. As we played it, everyone had a character and whoever had anything prepared would step up to run a one-to-few shot.      It was fun and we had a great campaign which we have decided to end for now, but the entirety of this post is going to consist of me basically tearing down this game because it comes so close to being great. As I have come to expect with Monte Cook / Cypher System games, it has poor organization, low-resolution maps, and issues writing rules in a way that makes using them easy. Someday I will write up something about that, but I won't be focusing on that for today's review. Now, lets get started. ...