Oman'Hakat - The First World - Introduction

 In 2019 I devised a new campaign setting that was initially focused on the region of Osinre, a sort of analog for Egypt and north Africa during the late bronze age. I used it for a couple D&D 5E games, but the campaign rapidly evolved into the setting I used for my first Pathfinder 2E and I have stuck with using PF 2E for it ever since. Here at last I'm going to post details on this world I devised so it can rest along with the other campaign settings I have archived on the blog over the years.

OMAN’HAKAT – The First World

Part I An Introduction and Overview 

Themes

   Oman’Hakat is a setting which focuses on a world steeped in old-world, archaic traditions and mysticism. Although there is evidence of past civilizations, most of the memory of these older empires is lost to myth and folklore. Oman’Hakat is dominated by three major lands: The river kingdoms of Osinre, the island kingdoms of Caelde, and the northeastern Empire of Harkuum. South of Osinre is a wild and untamed wilderness split between the grassy wilderlands of Adantos and the vast southern jungle kingdoms of Omsetar. The people of all these lands collectively refer to the world at large as Oman’Hakat, derived from a common word shared between the lost empires of old to mean “The First World.”

The Ancients

Thuln and the Giants of Caelde

   Caelde is nestled on an island northwest of the Osinre mainland. The people of Caelde believe they descend from a fabled northern empire which sank beneath the waves during the last war of the dead gods, called Thuln. The people settled on the isle of Caelde and have dwelt here for over a thousand years now. Caelde is dotted with a mixture of ancient ruins believed to have been built by ancient giants, men who stood 8 feet tall and left behind wordless relics of an enigmatic past, and younger ruins of the wood elves of the Caelwood (who call themselves the Cael) which suggest a greater elven civilization at one time. The wood elves claim they arrived on the island two thousand years ago, and the ruins of the giants were old even then.

Kadt of Osnire

   In Osinre, the people of this land believe they are descended from the fallen empire of Kadt which was once nestled in the vast region now called the Kal’Osinre Desert. Kadt erected vast and impressive ancient monuments and left behind impressive cities of architectural design impossible by modern understanding, suggesting they were powerful sorcerers, but it is believed these humans, possibly the first men, were all slain in the Deluge created by the War of the Dead Gods. The ruins have been dormant for at least three thousand years, which is the time most scholars believe the War of the Dead Gods took place.

Lost Khesht, the Black Lands and the Edge of the World in Harkuum

   In Harkuum, a large inland empire stretching to the east where it meets the Bowl of the World Mountains, this ancient land shows dotted remnants of pre-deluge empires of old, all likely drowned by the Dead Gods in their lost war. In most of the civilized territories of the Empire these ruins are normally attributed to the lost empire of Khesht, a quasi-mythical era of history after which the Emperor himself aspires to reforge a modern empire.

   Along the edge of the Bowl of the World Mountains are immense statues erected to the Titans, believed to either be the victors in the War of the Dead Gods, or the monsters created to win that war, now returned to slumber. Amidst all of this lies an immense stretch of desert comprised of black sand called the Black Lands which reaches right up to the mountains of the world’s edge. Here lie the tribes of the minotaurs which protect the land and stand in remembrance of the Titans, both worshipping and fearing them. The lost ruins of this region are sometimes called the Belinrai, though that is a modern Harkuumish word which means “the lost” and likely not from the language of Khesht.

Western Kres-Ma-Tek

   While the ancients of Khesht seemed to expand across the entire continent in their ancient times, and may in fact have been several empires or kingdoms united as one culture, some time after their fall around three thousand years ago there was a second empire, though situated only along the coastlands of the western provinces called Kres-Ma-Tek. This empire lasted a little under fifteen hundred years before falling apart around 1,800 years ago. The reasons are unknown to most, but some believe they fell to predatory chaos cults, insinuating their way in to the weave of thought and corrupting the people of Kres-Ma-Tek from within. The ruins of this old empire are most prominent in Sardonte and Akeros but extend as far as the coast of Charasca to the south.

Maheruun and Mythic Kamura

   Somewhere to the far west, beyond the continent of Osinre and the island kingdoms of Caelde is a semi-legendary land called Maheruun. This land is believed to be a place where the last of the ancients of Khesht may have traveled to seek refuge, though whether they survived the ordeal is unknown. Stories in ancient tomes of the era speak of a time of exodus when entire kingdoms took up roots and traveled west to escape the wars that would destroy the old gods. For long ages this land has been defined as Maheruun, somewhere beyond the realm where there be monsters.

   Beyond even Maheruun is Kamura, a legendary land spoken of in only the most ancient of explorer’s tales about a place at the edge of the western world, a vast an uninhabitable coast at the end of the world where an island kingdom forever staves off the encroaching monsters which seep in from Khashar, the Outer Darkness.

Pathfinder 2E - On Risk and Mortality in Games (vs. D&D 5th and Cypher System)

 Brief thoughts here....I've looked at the playtest material released for One D&D so far. It doesn't look too bad, although the whole "monsters don't crit" is a deal breaker for me. It feels like a way to offset level 1-2 player deaths but in the process create a bigger problem for challenges later on. I could be wrong, but the D&D math after level 4-5 favors the players pretty consistently, so losing crits removes a fun element for the DM and reduces the threatening value of monsters overall. On the other hand, like many games, D&D is less about "survival of your PC" these days and more about just telling stories and having some occasional conflict for fun, but I think the notion of player character mortality is something that runs counter to the general direction of the game and its audience these days.

I was doing a session zero with the game group on Saturday for Cypher System, another game which essentially is not about character mortality as a serious risk. You can die in Cypher but it takes a mutual level of determination by the GM and utter ineptitude by the player; you have to really, really want the PC dead and the player has to really burn through their resources astoundingly fast to get to the point where death is inevitable. I think its happened or almost happened only twice in the time I've run Cypher System.

That got me back to thinking about Pathfinder 2E. This system, although I have had my ups and downs with it (and have many issues with its approach to skills and overly structured probabilities), is undeniably not like the other two I mentioned: character mortality is possible at any point in a PC's career, and the idea that level-appropriate encounters are laden with mortal risk is part of the game by design. Pathfinder 2E also leans in to letting players make bad choices if they want with their actions during combat, pushing success past the point of likelihood and risking greater failure as a result. As a consequence of this, the one campaign I ran from level 1 to 20 in PF2E demonstrated that the system had managed to find a decent balance at high level which felt consistent with lower levels; the odds of failure remained even late in the game, an intriguing notion. 

By contrast, with D&D 5E there comes a point where the game can prove challenging, sometimes in unexpected ways, such as how gangs of lower CR monsters are usually more effective that a single CR-equivalent or higher monster which can go down quickly if its not a boss with legendary actions. D&D 5E has been pretty consistent in this regard; you can get a sense of challenge out of a session but the potential for real risk is generally not on the cards unless the DM goes out of their way to try for it. 

Likewise, with Cypher System, you don't really build scenarios in Cypher with the idea of player mortality in combat being a likely thing;* you aim for complications, events, encounters and discovery for sure, but it is best (in my experience) to treat Cypher Characters like the protagonists in a book; they have a certain amount of plot immunity for the most part, and it takes a real monumental cluster of unfortunate events to take them out.

But Pathfinder 2E does not have this problem....and while it does have a slightly different issue (that in which especially low level and especially high level encounters relative to the group are too trivial or too lethal to even consider), it does manage to handle that sweet spot of keeping the group on its toes quite nicely....which is something I like, on occasion.

 Which is all a long winded way of saying I need to look at it more closely again. PF2E, much like PF1E, might end up being the bastion for those who find themselves once more dissatisfied with the current or impending edition of the Big Dog. 

One other item of note....the revision to character races in the proposed One D&D playtest shines a light on how the Pathfinder 2E ancestries, while more elaborate in their design requirements, already accomplish a range of flexibility that D&D 5E appears to be trying to mirror. They are obviously toying a bit with some sacred cows such as proscribed ability modifiers, but if you go back far enough D&D in its roots didn't have ability modifiers to begin with, so whatever. But picking an ancestry in PF2E gives you feats and interesting stuff, as well as choices, that don't stop with level 1....its just a better approach to the concept overall.

Post-Script - all said though, a conversation with one of my players does hammer home the big problem with even considering Pathfinder 2E over, say, D&D 5E: the fact that I am not the only one who does not find the player side of the experience fun or rewarding. That, alone, kind of negates any positives I as GM might see with the system; what's the point of a smooth GM-side experience if the player-side of the system doesn't offer an enjoyable of fulfilling experience? 

*Cypher players may take a long time to figure this out, though; it's easy to invoke a sense of risk and mortality, particularly in tiers 1-3, surprisingly, probably because the way a player has to think about running their character in terms of their "risk pools" invokes that sense more easily; but numerically they definitely have the advantage...most of the time. The GM at least has a ton of flexibility in design, so its always possible in Cypher to just design something which cruelly knocks them down to near death if you really want to and the rules fully support it; much harder to do that in D&D 5E, and PF2E can do it but requires a bit of structure and effort to do so. 

Random Musings of the Day - On OSE, Pathfinder, Basic Fantasy and D&D 3.5

 Short post, but still part of the last few months' ongoing theme of "mulling over what games I want to play."

First off....sticking to VTT and Roll20 in particular means that anything I do will need to comport to the medium of transmission, which in this case of course is Roll20. I have Foundry but it looks a bit too much for the level of time/energy I have to invest; a friend of mine who also grabbed it wants to collaborate on figuring it out, so who knows, though....we may crack that nut sooner or later.

I like OSE because its restrained, mechanically, to the style of old school progression I am comfortable with, but also doesn't limit itself to the boundaries of old school options. Unlike B/X D&D or AD&D ca. 1978 you can play other things in OSE like drow, knights, duergar, svirfneblin and much, much more with additional supplements. The rules for OSE are comfortable with this and know that there is a large group of OSR fans like myself for which the conceptual space of OSR does not mean that players must lack choice; I burned out on the sacred quartet of dwarf, human, elf, halfling as the only allowable species for players a long time ago, and I was never on board with "class as race" so the hybrid "do both B/X and AD&D" approach of OSE is really cool, and lets everyone have their preferences.

That was a long paragraph to basically say that I looked in to the latest edition of Basic Fantasy and while the system looks nice and tight, it lacks the variety that OSE supports right out of its core books....Basic Fantasy is, peer its name, exactly what it intends to be. I am not looking for that, unfortunately; I want a system with more robust variety. I know my players well....they would be bored and dissatisfied with BF in short order (as would I). So OSE still reigns as king for me right now, an old-school system which supports a more modern range of options for characters. 

Despite toying with the idea of OSE I haven't really engaged with it, though. Instead I ended up once more thinking about how the level of complexity (both in character options and tactical combat) that I find most satisfying is still best supported by either sticking with Pathfinder 2E (which is the game my group is most invested in on Saturday), or D&D 3.5 (which is the game I find myself most deeply interested in, having realized it is evoking the most nostalgia for me right now). 

So....still pondering, but I do know that my next planned fantasy game (outside of the ongoing D&D 5E game) will be further down the road. I want to let it lie "fallow" for a while so that my interest and desire to run new campaigns can come to fruition better.....and give me some time for a little while to properly explore other games and genres (Traveller, Cypher, Call of Cthulhu, etc.).

D'uh Moments in GMing

 D'uh or D'oh? Depends on how much you like Homer Simpson, I guess....anyway I had one of these when, while researching forums and re-reading manuals in depth on Pathfinder 2E to try and settle my questions on "why does this feel like I am not doing it right?" at times, I suddenly stumbled across the little section of the Bestiary that talks about elite and weakened monsters.

Sometimes the hang-up I have is with situations like Saturday, where the group stumbled into a den of nosferatu, but the group is only level 7. That is not an ideal situation, as the nosferatu thralls are level 8 and the weakest nosferatu stat out at level 10. One nosferatu could tank the group with a few good rolls, easily.

But: while my story/game setting call for Nosferatu there, I could have (had I remembered it) applied the weakened template to that particular nosferatu which would have made a nontrivial difference in the combat experience. Reducing the AC by 2 and hP by 20 for example would have meant a larger number of actual hits on the target with damage toward 0 HP happening faster, given the actual fight was already tough due to vampiric fast healing. The group's archer was the only guy with a useful wooden weapon since they did not at all come prepared for a vampire!

An entire reddit forum I ran in to basically boiled down to two camps: people who (like me) tend to think of the stat blocks on monsters as the "defining stats" and tend not to change them, and people who were, like, "just scale them up or down as needed." And all I could think was, "huh, yeah, why wasn't I thinking like this." I suspect its because in the process of simplifying the stat blocks it moved PF2E design further from the old 3rd edition approach which provided copious mechanical approaches to scaling (all of which were tedious). Also, because I am getting old.....yeesh.....

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought! Now to work out some good rule of thumb on judiciously applying the weakened template to desired high CL encounters, and also using the elite upscaling template on lower level foes I'd like to give more life to.

The VTT vs. Real TT Conundrum - How VTT changes the game experience

 After posting about Pathfinder 2E and the various issues I have with the system, further thought led me down some paths with regard to how the virtual gaming environment impacts the experience, vs. how a game may feel different in an online environment. 

One example of how the virtual environment removes some elements possible at the game table. This is based on my experiences with Roll20 and Astral, but in essence if you play a VTT environment in which you are defaulting to the rules of the medium, then it means your die rolls are all up front. I imagine it might be possible, for example, for a GM to hide their die rolls from players but I actually am not certain how to do that. 

The reason I mention this is that, quite simply, if the GM at a game table with a screen in front of him notices that the die rolls are leading the players toward a glorious TPK over what was supposed to be a minor encounter, he can start fudging the dice if necessary. You might say, "but that's part of the fun of by-the-book/by-the-dice gaming" and you might not be wrong, but just having the freedom to make that determination is useful at the game table. If the GM starts fudging in the VTT it is much more apparent to to the players, which damages the experience. 

At a VTT you can run a game without a map or minis and maybe at best sketch some details out on graph paper. In a VTT the compulsion, possibly even the necessity of detailed maps and tokens is strong, chiefly because the medium of transmission on the VTT favors such graphics, and because the slight disconnect of being a disembodied voice talking to other disembodied voices requires that you put something graphically up to ground people, keep them on track. This leads to a cumbersome level of additional duties for the GM, especially if you're not good at designing your own maps. I can draw all sorts of good mediocre to average maps, but they will never look as good as a map designed from an app or program. But if I only have an hour to prep for a 5+ hour session, I haven't got any time at all to make a custom map in a program, and my best bet is scouring google searches. This leads to limiting maps...you design scenarios to accommodate what graphics you can find rather than what you need or imagine in your design. 

This problem does sort of exist at tabletop level, too: running Pathfinder with lots of official Paizo products means you may pick and choose from dozens of maps. But! You can also throw out and draw a generic map with markers and the players are universally forgiving that it's not amazing. Attempting to draw the same map in a clear space in Roll20 is, I can certify, a real pain in the ass.

If you do love making maps and using minis then I can see the appeal of VTT, though. It's generally faster for setup and actual play; the backend of prep for a game is where the time crunch is off-loaded. Most of Roll20, while providing lots of tools for stuff such as dynamic lighting and so forth, are not easy to use (okay for me, YMMV) and it feels like the focus is really on encouraging gamers to buy preset modules with all the features already built in to the scenario. The first scenario I ran in Roll20 that was prebuilt was for Mothership (The Haunting of Ypsilon-14) and it was actually incredibly convenient. So convenient that when it comes to my Saturday game in Pathfinder I have been debating moving the homebrew plot to a point where I can just start using premade content for them instead.

I've posted before about the main problem with VTT vs. Real TT: physicality. You can get around this a bit by using actual video, but I have to say, as someone for whom work has turned into a living hell of endless Zoom, Goto and Webex meetings that cameras SUCK. Adding them in to my entertainment experience is not a great option, though it does probably help normalize the feeling I experience of "disembodied voices" from which I can't escape. I wonder at times if the unnerving quality of this experience is unique to me or others feel the same weird sense of disassociation when listening to too many people talking to them on headphones?

Being at a real gaming table of course solves the problem immediately. You can see people, which means all the non-auditory communications elements of live interaction return (even if you are wearing masks!) and therefore alleviates a huge amount of what I call the "communications gap" of VTT. You can tell when someone is joking, someone is mad, and someone is confused. Maybe Facebooks' Metaverse will solve some of this, but I doubt it. Maybe I'm just old now, and despite my love of tech I am too old fashioned when it comes to how human interaction should feel.

Part of this rambling post started with me thinking, "Maybe I should run Pathfinder 2E at the game table again, as it may feel like a better experience when run live and in person." This started because my FLGS let me know that some new Paizo items I ordered had arrived, including maps and the hero point cards, none of which have any utility at all in VTT (though VTT shops will no doubt sell virtual editions of each). A month or so back I completed my monster card collection for PF2E with the Bestiary 3 card box. I'd love to be using this stuff at the game table again. 

Playing Pathfinder 2E at the live table might not fix the rules issues I've talked about....but it may make the experience more organic and fun. As for PF2E, I am actually thinking about some house rules to fix those issues. More on that soon!

Hitting the Wall with Pathfinder 2E - what I think needs to be done to fix this game

After my latest Saturday night game of Pathfinder 2E I have decided I am probably done with the system for a while. It's not done with me, unfortunately....the players are enjoying the game and I need to get it to some sort of satisfactory close, but I have finally after two+ years run enough PF2E to realize what elements of its design are causing problems for me. It boils down like this:

1. The roll over/under 10 mechanic is one of those "sounds great on paper" concepts that just doesn't work so well in reality for PF2E It is a key reason people accuse the game of being swingy, but they would be wrong; it's actually quite predictable and the problem boils down to risk/reward factors. Players with three action points may push it against tougher opponents and fail miserably. Indeed, the math is balanced out so that fights get noticeably harder against tougher opponents much more quickly, which increases the odds that players may err in making too many iterative attacks and put themselves in a bad spot. Worse yet, they might err in making too few against easier opponents, too. If your players seem too savvy on calculating their attacks its probably because they have a Bestiary open somewhere. 

Back in the day I used to impose a variety of penalties on fumbles and a myriad bonuses on crits. The official Pathfinder 2E fumble and crit decks were a help. Today, its such a common occurance that we default to double damage on the crit and flat-footedness on the fumble because they are just so damn common....they are not special anymore. Since the +10/-10 mechanic is so deeply entrenched in PF2E design, this is unavoidable and not easy to back out. For me, the desire to return to a system where crits and fumbles are less common and more special when they happen is an aesthetic choice as well as a design preference.

2. The "add level" mechanic is a terrible idea. If I had any say, I'd advise Paizo to re-release the entire game around that section in the new Gamemastery Guide that talks about the option of stripping the level mechanic entirely (edit: by this I mean adding +1 to everything each time you level up, not the actual process of leveling up). The reasons are simple: first is that it is an illusion of improvement, and in reality all that's happening is as the players level up the GM quietly behind the emerald curtains is bumping the DCs to level appropriateness. The math in PF2E is so tight that this is ultimately necessary, with the rules as presented. Static DCs get wonky really fast in PF2E. But if you strip out the level mechanic all sorts of problems go away, including:

--monster CRs are suddenly less restrictive and both higher level and lower level foes can be more useful and pragmatic in encounters (PF2E in this "no level" model literally starts to feel like D&D 3.5 again);

--math remains simpler; not a big deal, the math in PF2E is for the most part not complex but I've lost a couple players over the math as it stands, so take that in to consideration;

--proficiency bonuses will suddenly be far more relevant and stand out.

The Gamemastery Guide actually has an optional rule section on backing levels out. It reads to some extent like this was actually something they thought about doing during the playtest design, but then for some reason decided not to. Maybe they thought it would make them harder to distinguish from D&D 5E, or the illusion of advancement offered by level-adds would be superior to just trusting players to be okay with more intermittent proficiency increases.

Now, I could take the optional rules from the Gamemastery Guide and apply them, and I may yet do this, but it is with the burden of having to then either pre-convert all the material to the level-less mechanic, or convert on the fly. It would be a lot of work to make this happen in something like Roll20, but the net result would be, I think, a dramatically better game experience.

3. The Skill System and Skill Feats Need to be Refined/Broadened and Cut Respectively. PF2E did not take this lesson from anywhere else, unfortunately, and the skill system still feels like a design directed by a specific style of play. I am very, very tired of Society being a catch-all for so many skills, and the high level of specificity in the skill mechanics and feats of PF2E create unintended mine traps for niche protection, and a lot of juggling of information on what does and does not work for what purpose that is often counter-intuitive to just making a call. When running PF2E in contrast with either D&D 5E or D&D 3.5 (or hell, PF1E too) it is painfully clear that the rigorous attempt to control skills in PF2E was both a failed effort and one directed by a design team which perceived a problem that was not really a problem at all for so many players to begin with. Bottom line: skill systems for any D&D iteration in today's game environment need to encourage creativity, allow for intuitive rule calls, and be flexible enough to meet story needs. PF2E on the surface acts like a game that wants this, too, but its actual system discourages intuitive utilization.

My fix would be to rewrite the skills to re-include some missing options that will allow for more customization (example: cultural knowledge and linguistics not all rolled up in Society, perception and insight/sense motive become their own skills again, and lore is better and more broadly defined; the rigorous limitations imposed by the current system on what one can do are done away with, as are all skill feats entirely). This would be a start. An optional simpler non-skill based mechanic should exist for those who want fewer skills, too.

4. Fix or clean up the process on identifying magic items and detecting magic. It's a mess, and could benefit from a high level of consolidation. A single section that walks a player and GM through the process coherently from start to finish is much needed. Better yet, provide a basic and advanced version of the process, one for groups that do not want to worry about this and one for those who do.

5. Clean up and organize the crafting rules, and make them more specialized. Clean up the various spots where magic item creation and rune rules are by consolidating it all into one location. No more hunting and pecking to get the whole picture. As with #4 above, include an optional simplified version of the process and an "official" more detailed version to suit different group styles.

6. Let players have more fun. As the game has expanded I think Paizo has gotten this message, and my players pick a lot of stuff from other books which provide more useful abilities than in the core, so I think they are well aware that this was a problem with the initial design. My group regularly describes PF2E as a "game designed by GMs to put uppity players in their place" and they are not wrong. Many class designs seem severely hampered, or have specific synergies hidden behind lots of trap choices which wouldn't be trap choices if the GM side of the equation (monsters, and level limited loot) weren't so highly balanced as to make any poor player playing sub-optimally easy fodder. My current campaign is the very definition of suboptimal....a witch, an alchemist, a swashbuckler and a rogue who collectively somehow manage to survive as long as I give them copious useful damage and protection based allies. Because of the level-based system and the high level of difficulty scaling in monster design it means that my only real safe bet is to throw CR-0 to CR-3 stuff at them as often as possible, and even the rare CR+2 or +3 encounter is probably just a terrible idea (this Saturday had one, which I regretted putting in the game immediately; The group is level 7 and fought a single CR+3 monster, and it was a nightmarish slog in which I added an equivalent CR monster on their side just to help them out). 

Anyway, when players have abilities that make them feel useful or impressive, they like it. But all too often it seems like PF2E fails to offer this olive branch to them. 

Anyway....debating how to approach my group on a change. I know they are having fun with the campaign, but its pretty clear to me this is despite the rules we chose and not because of it. I am likely to switch to D&D 5E again, with lots of gritty rules turned on, or suggest we try something simpler and more relaxing like OSE or OpenQuest3. We shall see.

 

Mulling over future game plans

 Brief post! Just a fun one as I muse on future plans.

Right now I am running D&D 3.5 live every other week, a campaign focused heavily on hexploration (without hexes, I only have grid paper), dungeon crawls, liberal adaptation of old Necromancer Games modules and a setting ripped right from 500 AD (but with, you know, more D&D in it). Then every other week I have an ongoing live Call of Cthulhu game, which I expect to last 2-4 sessions, but who knows, maybe it will go longer. Saturday I am running Pathfinder 2nd Edition on Roll20. I have been warming back up to it, albeit with the caveat that Pathfinder 2E will never quite feel as liberating to design for as D&D 3.5, but we all agree that we have fun playing it (it plays very well), and there is a lot of group investment in the campaign.

Meanwhile, semi weekly I am running Mothership RPG on Roll20, and it is quite fun....but also the kind of game where I can see how it may be best handled in periodic doses. It's extremely focused in its content, so every game feels like a dense dose of B-movie sci fi horror maxed out. This is good....but I could see overdoing it after 10 sessions or so. But hell yeah it is good! Just maybe best to broaden the focus to mix in a periodic palette cleanser.

For my new campaign ideas going in to winter and 2022, I have given some thought to what I most enjoy and wish to focus on. As one gets older, it becomes inevitable that you start to grow familiar with your preferences and find less and less trouble leaning hard into them. As such, I realize that I have some very specific interests, and those interests are remaining tighter and more consistent, which I really appreciate; I feel like maybe at last I am shedding my days as a "chasing the shiny" behind. Slowly.

So the first and biggest thought I have is: More D&D 3.5. It's a very robust system, and essentially complete since no one publishes for it anymore (if you exclude Pathfinder 1st edition stuff, which is technically compatible). I realize now I have enough D&D 3rd to last me to my dying days, easily. The stuff that annoys me about 3.5 is easy enough to ignore or modify, whereas the stuff that bugs me about D&D 5E requires a more fundamental rebuild, so I think its just easier to stick to 3.5 and be done with it. These are words I would never have thought I'd have typed 13 years ago. 

The second big thought is: more Cypher System. Monte Cook Games has the new Planebreaker Kickstarter out, and I decided to back it with the intent of getting the Cypher System version. I learned a lot earlier this year running my Realms of Chirak campaign in Cypher System, and one of those lessons I learned is to fit the setting with the system better....Chirak was born of an ancient and unholy mixture of Runequest and D&D back in the day, and is best if it stays in that wheelhouse, My next Chirak campaign will be in Pathfinder 2E or D&D 3.5, instead. Cypher, instead, deserves all the creativity and newness I can pour in to it, and I really want to explore my post-apocalyptic space opera campaign ideas for the next campaign.

If you follow this blog (and I know blogs are very out of style these days!) then you know I go back and forth on a few issues with Cypher System and Pathfinder 2E. In considering what I will do next with these systems, I think it boils down to this:

Cypher System: I want to look carefully at the way encounters/challenges are framed in Cypher, and how to make that work without defaulting to the more conventional RPG tropes set by D&D. Especially as Cypher character get to around Rank 4, when they become ominously powerful against conventional threats. 

Pathfinder 2E: On this one, the issue I have in mind is: can Pathfinder 2E run in a "loose hexcrawl" structure similar to the open-ended campaign I am running for D&D 3.5? Could I adapt 3rd edition style modules to Pathfinder 2E and not find balance issues that unnecessarily put PCs at risk of death? The Gamemastery Guide talks about hexcrawling as an option, but I am curious as to how it would really work and feel in play. I am not 100% sure my gaming group is good for this style of game, at least with Pathfinder, as I have some rules lawyers who can very quickly do the mental math to ascertain whether an encounter is disproportionately unbalanced either for or against the group, and that sort of balancing issue is core to encounter design in Pathfinder. I haven't reconciled this, but I do feel it is worth investigating....time will tell. D&D 3.5 is much looser and can handle this fluidity a lot better. I, for example, could have a mixed level group in D&D 3.5 without much difficulty at all, but in Pathfinder 2E it is very clear that PCs should never be more than 1 level apart, and ideally all the same level.

Anyway.....thoughts!

More thoughts on running D&D 3.5, D&D 5th and Pathfinder 2E at the same time

 So for several months now I've been running three different games: a more or less weekly Saturday Pathfinder 2E game, and a rotating weeknight session that jumps between D&D 3.5 and D&D 5E. In Pathfinder the group has hit 5th level, so still relatively low powered. D&D 3.5 deliberately started at level 1 and has crept up to level 4ish for most of the group now. D&D 5E rolled in at level 3 and is hitting level 5. 

In each case I worked out a fairly detailed scenario/plotline to keep things focused. In Pathfinder the group is a gang of young acolytes in a local assassin's guild with strong political, patriotic ties to protecting the city itself. They face a crisis as the heir to the throne is killed, then resurrected under extremely suspicious circumstances, even as their senior leadership are taken out of action, leaving them alone to figure things out.

In the D&D 3.5 game I started with a level 1-3 zone in which I worked out a main dungeon of interest and several minor side quests. I then built it around leading in to a specific Necromancer Games module from the good old 3.5 days of Necromancer, which shall remain nameless in case any of my players are reading. The key conceit of this campaign is it is extremely sandboxy and open-ended; I don't care where the PCs go, as long as they do something of interest....I have most angles covered unless they suddenly decided to journey two hundred miles away in a random direction.

In the D&D 5E game I an running it in a different section of the same world the D&D 3.5 game is taking place, and it starts with a group of ragtag mostly monstrous heroes who work for a local investigator of an orc-dominated city; they are essentially given tough jobs that require protecting the interests of the city against the neighboring human kingdom which often mistrusts the orc-run area. The group is currently wrapping the latest investigation, into the attack and kidnap of a priestess who channels the will of a popular goddess, and it is exposing a deeper mystery of other groups who seem interested in sowing conflict between the orcs and humans. I started this campaign as a 3.5 venture for the first scenario, but then moved to 5E for the next storyline as I wanted to do exactly what this article is about: contrasting 3.5 D&D against its successors, 5E and PF2E.

Here's what I've learned now after several months of gaming:

Pathfinder 2E Remains Fun but it's Balance is Too Much 

Pathfinder 2E's rigidly designed skill system is annoying. Seriously, I wish it was a broader set of skills, and not so tightly woven into the structured pathology of Pathfinder's overly balanced advancement, balanced to the point of eerie predictability. In fact, after running a level 1-20 and some smaller campaigns in PF2E, I have decided that, in contrast with the editions it is meant to replace or compete with, that it's highly structured style just isn't as flexible or fun as prior editions have been. PF2E, on occasion, has been compared to D&D 4E, and I can understand why: it's design was handled with too much emphasis on a specific play experience, and not enough feedback clearly entered during design and playtest to allow for Paizo's team to realize that there are other styles of play which their new game would not support so well (such as at my table, where I am sick and tired of calling on Society checks or generic crafting checks or Nature, Survival, etc. etc. for myriad other skills that the PCs should actually have as separate skills).

 Do I still enjoy running it? Yes, particularly in Roll20, which makes it easy. But it is painfully clear that in contrast with 3rd edition and 5th edition D&D that Pathfinder 2E feels a bit more like a "sandbox playground where everything has been padded to prevent the players from escaping its confines." Moreover, my players describe PF2E as "A GM's game, for GMs who don't like uppity players." They like elements of it....such as how ancestries work, but they also sense that a lot of PF2E's design went in to removing the potential for players to design truly interest characters and unexpected synergies. 

As a GM I have come to realize that combat encounters of even 1 CR more than the players can be a pain in the ass and risk unexpected deaths and TPK, it simply doesn't have the range that you can get out of D&D's editions for encounter design due to its hard focus on tight balance. I have ranted about this in prior blog posts, of course, but to give you an idea: I mostly design encounters around a CR 1-2 less than the PCs. Anything more than that is too trivial, and anything except a rare CR+1 will be too deadly with remarkable consistency. 

D&D 3.5 Is Funner Now That It's No Longer The Only Game Around

Put simply: D&D 3.5's key flaws evaporate once people are playing it for fun and enjoyment and you no longer have a large player base and online presence talking about min/max game design and turning everything into an arms race. My group is having fun in a way that very much reminds me of the early fun days from 2001 to 2006. Sometime after that I feel the game hit a level of notoriety and the obsession with optimal builds began to infect everyone who played it. Now? It's just a fund game and I am enjoying a sandbox campaign with a group that is barely optimized for fighting paper bags, let alone serious stuff. I run it as a DM aimed at providing for a good time, and I don't worry too much about balance at all, a welcome reprieve from PF2E on the other game night.

One thing I realize with 3.5: I prefer the old skill system. It was flexible, a little unpredictable, and had more stuff in it that feels natural to call out for in the course of play. I am sure a great many people much prefer "perception" as a skill (or not at all in the OSR crowd) but I love the fact that Spot, Listen and Search are three different things and can reflect that one PC might be a keen eyed observer but have a hearing problem, while another PC might have bad eagle vision but can search methodically with great efficiency. Good stuff.

I don't anticipate running D&D 3.5 past level 12 or so, but who knows. 

D&D 5E Feels Better to Run with 3.5 Fresh in Mind

D&D 5E is good, and running it back to back with 3.5 makes me appreciate it more. Most interestingly, sometimes I find myself using 5E as a reference point for adjudicating some moments in 3.5, to keep tings simple. Other times I find myself tempted to house rule in a few items from 3.5 to 5E, but I try to restrain myself as much as possible. Like with 3.5, I suspect that as D&D 5E goes on I may grow a bit tired of its core simplicity and lack of dynamic elements in stuff like saves and damage; but I did decide with this campaign to run it using gritty resting rules and that is going a surprisingly long way toward my feeling like the players are "tough guys in a tough world" rather than the standard 5E trope of fantasy superheroes. Still...they've only just hit their good levels, so we'll see how things go in the coming months.

Also, I don't hate the D&D 5E skill system, at all. In fact, while I still like 3.5's granularity on skills,  will take the 5E skill system over PF2E's skill system any day.

After the group completes their current storyline, I am considering integrating a module, possibly Rise of the Drow, which I just snagged. We shall see.

Some Conclusions (so far)

So....it's fun running three iterations of basically the same game, and seeing how my expectations and experience in one lend to observations and changes in the other two. The real takeaway I have gotten from this experience so far has been one about how I structure and focus on campaigns. Specifically: I am not as interested in the "big story" campaigns as I once was, and the D&D 3.5 game where I basically made a sandbox for them to do whatever (including regions of different levels they can wander in to regardless of their own level) has actually been the most fun. But my structured investigation stories in the 5E game have also been a lot of fun because I took some time to lay out interesting paths of discovery and skill challenges related to the investigations. It's "pseudo-rails" in that the PCs could, like, stop investigating and go elsewhere, thus ending the module, but they had motivation and interest to proceed so it worked. 

Meanwhile, the very structured big picture storyline which admittedly makes the PCs more integrated to the world and setting proved perhaps a bit too much in terms of scope and design. I realize now that I came up with a great idea, but then sort of left it as a "and so that happened," type event, without a lot to go after the main event. Luckily I proceeded to dive in to some of the smaller angles and pieces, fleshing out the game to feel more like a sandbox, but I concede it's hard to just do sandbox in PF2E because a good sandbox should allow for the PCs to get into more trouble than they can handle on occasion, and in PF2E that can quickly turn into a lethal TPK. So....we'll continue for a while on this one, but afterwards I need to think hard on whether I plan to continue with PF2E or not, because it almost....but not quite....manages to frame the sort of adventures I like to run, but just not as well as either D&D 5E or D&D 3.5, which both do it so much better.

Final conclusion.....turns out too much balance in design is not necessarily a good idea! Who knew?

Also, and this is extremely important to stress: the D&D 5E and 3.5 edition games both have a huge edge over Poor Pathfinder 2E, in that they are live games I am running in person. PF2E is online, and while the online tools make for an easier time of it, I know my lack of time to sink into enhancing the graphic elements of the experience factor against the game to some degree, as does the predilection for the overall experience to be a generally less satisfying experience than the sort where normal humans are able to see each other live and not share a single audio channel. So, I must concede that PF2E in a live environment might still be a better overall experience than I am giving it credit for. Poor Pathfinder though....I think I got about 10 levels in to the original campaign when it had to migrate to online due to the pandemic, and its more or less lingered there ever since. May need to change that soon.

The Growing Obsession with all Things DCC

 While I've been running some odd menagerie of Pathfinder 2E, an occasional Starfinder game, lots of Cypher System, and recently 3.5 D&D back in the mix....on my own time I've really, really really gotten in to collecting and reading up on Dungeon Crawl Classics and its spin-offs. Like, more than normal, or is even healthy. I've been ordering most of the stuff from Goodman Games, chiefly because they are awfully inexpensive, have free shipping after $100 and include PDFs with almost everything.

Although there is much adieu about the whole Appendix N phenomenon and how it may contribute to the focus and feel of DCC and its brethren, the truth is I'd label it something more like, a "pre mid-eighties fantasy/sci-fi/horror" vibe. I say pre-mid-eighties because I dived in to the genres wholeheartedly around 1980 and never looked back, and by 1986 or so in high school had read so much vintage and (for the time) contemporary fantastic fiction that I was noticing lots of trends, from the "every fantasy epic must be Tolkien" trend on down to the rather prodigious level of insanity that was billed as horror for the time, and somehow marketed on the shelves at grocery stores (to be read by little old ladies who thought my fantasy novels were inducing Satanism, of course, even as they read stuff that made Rosemary's Baby look fairly tame).

The point of this though is that DCC really does evoke the wild west feel of fantasy and scifi (and horror) for that period in time. The seventies in particular brought with it an explosion of new authors who had grown up on classic content and pulps as a natural course, and it was entirely possible in that era to write interesting fiction that was nonconformist yet readily picked up and marketed by major publishers. Today, you have to wade through endless self-published novels on Amazon's createspace to try and discern what is a self-absorbed vanity project and what might constitute good fiction. But back then? It was all potentially unique and fun, even when it was garbage (sometimes especially if it was garbage!) 

So Dungeon Crawl Classics really does capture this vibe, and I love it. So does Mutant Crawl Classics, and other spin offs like Star Crawl as well. Under a Broken Moon (the Umerica post-apoc DCC books) are sort of amazing, like weird works of art, managing to evoke the sort of post-apocalyptic adventure we all actually thought we were having in Gamma World back in the day, even as Mutant Crawl Classics portrays the more super-science elements of GW that the game actually formulated around.

All of this, of course, is in addition to the excellent reprint and expansion of Metamorphosis Alpha, which while retaining its original game mechanics from the first edition is still utterly playable and also a great resource for MCC if you are so inclined to use it as such. 

My obsession with this has me thinking hard about how to wrap at least one current campaign up so I can move forward....but it's a tough call. My weekly Cypher System game is suitably weird and interesting with lots of interesting plot and depth so it may wrap sooner than later if only because its so enmeshed in moving the story forward. I just migrated my Pathfinder 2E game to an adapted D&D 1st edition module which I converted over (more on that soon), and the old school retro vibe is working quite well for what I need that game to do right now. The 3.5 D&D game is proving that nostalgia only requires about 15-20 years for it to kick in, and is also scratching an particular itch. So I don't know when the DCC/MCC/CuaBM/MA itch will get scratched, but hopefully soon!

Encounter Design and Level Consideration in Pathfinder 2E Hexploration

I had been reading and responding to a post at Enworld on hexploration when I realized it would be fun info to also post here:

I run hexloration campaigns in PF2E per GMG rules pretty consistently, but what I do with the encounter tables is create slightly more elaborate ones that are based on party level. So a chart for CL 0-2, CL 3-4, CL 5-6, CL 7-8, CL 9-10 etc. Then, when I check which chart to roll on for the encounter I roll a positive D4, a negative D4, add the first and subtract the second to the currently average party level, and then use the indicated chart. If the encounter is for some reason meant to be easier or more difficult just substitute a smaller or larger die as appropriate. Example: an easier random result would be challenge level -1D6+1D4 added to APL (average result would be APL-1). Tougher encounter? -1D4+1D6 generates APL+1 on average. Then, just work out a range of encounters but modify the # of foes by the actual expected toughness.

That said....the GMG advises an occasional deadly or impossible encounter in the mix for hexploration, but my suggestion is to broadcast in some means how lethal the encounter is (whether it's the PCs seeing a higher level beast cleave a cow or deer in two in one hit, a bloodied paladin telling them to flee, or even just an easy DC intuition roll on Perception or Nature telling them this is a certain death situation.) My players have a habit of sticking around and fighting until they suddenly realize they bit off more than they can chew, so putting some tells in to your encounter which give them fair warning is a noble thing to do as the GM. Likewise, the GM in PF2E needs to be nice and include at least as many easy encounters for the group to tread on.....such design flies in the face of conventional hexploration wisdom I suppose, but you are the one designing the charts so you have control over this stuff, and I advise just baking it in, providing for a nice fair range of difficulty from trivial to deadly.

Here's a sample chart, designed for a region that a group of level 1-5 can explore with some mix of risk and adventure, skewed slighty toward the easier end:

Wilderness Encounters:

Determine Chart Level by rolling +1D4-1D6+APL (range from APL-3 to APL +5)

CL 1 or Less: 1D8

1- orc brutes (2D4)

2- kobold warriors (1D8)

3- giant centipedes (1D6)

4 - eagles (1D3-1)

5- Badgers (1D6)

6- Cave Scorpions (1D8)

7- Giant Solifugid (1D4)

8- Sylph Sneak (1D2) plus Dust Mephits (1D3)

CL 2-3: 1D6

1- orc brutes (2D4) plus orc warrior (1D2)

2- lizardfolk scout (1D2), lizardfolk defender (1D4)

3- wargs (1D4), orc brutes (1D6)

4- skeletal champion (1), skeletal guard (2D4)

5- Black Bear (1)

6- Shocker Lizards (1D3)

CL 4-5: 1D6

1- giant scorpions (1D4)

2- tiefling adept (1), orc warriors (1D4), orc brutes (1D6)

3- Green Hag (1), wererats (1D4)

4- Green Hag coven (3)

5 - Redcaps (2)

6-  Trolls (1D3)

CL 6-7: 1D4

1 - living landslide (1D2+1)

2- Ettins (1D2)

3- Hydra (1)

4- Medusa (1) plus animated statues (1D3)

CL 8: 1D3

1- Desert Drake (1D2)

2- Stone Giants (1)

3- Young Green Dragon (1)

Written as it, this gives a spread on chance of encounters like this:

Party APL 1: will have a chance to roll from CL1 or less chart (from APL-3 to APL+0) to CL 4 (APL +3). An APL+3 encounter might be deadly (two Redcaps of CL 5 against a party of level 1s is just cruel).

Party APL 2: Can encounter anything from CL 1 to CL 5 on the charts, with an average chart roll being on the CL 2.

Party APL 3: Can encounter from CL 1-6, with an average roll being CL 3. APL 4 can encounter CR 1-7, etc.

The list caps out at CL8+, but the GM can of course start adding new charts if desired. The net result of these charts is you have the potential for trivial (non threatening) encounters mixed with a risk of a really deadly, even impossible encounter. That same encounter, once escaped, can later be something the group tackles at a higher level. 

You might wonder how I arrived at the # appearing....pure GM intuition, take them with as much salt grains as needed.

Anyway...random thoughts!

Death Bat's Top Five RPG Products of 2020

 In this painfully irritating year we all had at least one form of entertainment that sustained our minds despite the convergence of the maelstrom that was 2020: gaming. And amongst gaming even tabletop gaming managed to survive, thanks to online virtual tabletop experiences! As such, since it is once again closing on the end of the year I thought I'd take a moment to highlight the best stuff I managed to snag and enjoy this year. The list this year almost suffers from too much good stuff to pick from, as a lot of really fine books for tabletop gaming came out this year:

#5: Pathfinder 2E Advanced Player's Guide

This tome contained much-needed additions to ancestry and class as well as three new classes and a ton of support material that provided a signficant bridge between the end-state of PF1E and the current state of PF2E. It's not that the core book was missing anything; rather, it's that 2E has that long haul to get to the same "useful content" state that 1E had already achieved. That said, the new material in the new APG was a great addition to the game. 

#4: Cypher System's The Stars Are Fire

The second expansion for Cypher System from the "Your Best Game Ever" Kickstarter was an amazing book, a comprehensive resource for running a range of SF genre games in the Cypher System. The approach taken breaks down genre necessities, tropes and expectations and handily outlines how to handle all of this in Cypher terms. 

#3: Traveller: Behind the Claw

The only thing better than a general purpose scifi toolkit is a dedicated campaign book focusing on prominent border sectors of Imperium Space: Deneb and the Spinward Marches, in the Traveller universe. This book is really referee-friendly, and provides an excellent resource for sandbox gaming in a region rife with potential conflict. Also, maybe it's just me, but this book was surprisingly fun to read and not as dry as some other Imperium setting books have been in the past.

#2: Arcana of the Ancients (5E)

This tome, along with it's two sister volumes Beneath the Monolith and Beasts of Flesh an Steel, comprise three volumes on introducing the high-science fantasy of Numenera to D&D 5E. The three books can collectively serve as direct campaign resources or the toolkits for a GM to do their own thing with the concept. The material meshes well while bringing distinctly Numenera/Cypher concepts to 5E, and if you've been intrigued at the world of Numenera but couldn't convince your players to try out the Cypher System then this resource is a sneaky way to get them in to it. Alternatively, it's a lush resource of additional building blocks for making decidedly non-Tolkienesque fantasy in 5E, too.

#1: Call of Cthulhu 7E: Malleus Monstrorum Volumes I and II

I've been using the PDFs to supplement Cthulhu for months now, but the print editions finally arrived in time for my Xmas present, so lucky me! This two volume set provides a fantastic full-color reinvention of the original 6th edition version of the same, but now with just more, more and even more Mythos goodness. An invaluable resource for Call of Cthulhu 7E keepers and a worthy set for any Mythos collector.

Honorable Mention #1: Alien RPG

Technically Alien RPG came out last year, but I acquired it at the beginning of this year (iirc) and it also released a Starter Set and a boxed campaign (Destroyer of Worlds) that only enhanced how good this game was at representing its source material. As a long time fan of the series (both through better and worse; the Alien franchise has had its fair share of stinkers) it is impressive to see how the Free League team tackled a reconciliation on the many and varied alternate and contradictory takes on alien Canon (and non canon), and managed to produce a game that feels like it might manage to surprise and entertain. 

Honorable Mention #2: Cypher System's Godforsaken

The only reason I felt like I couldn't include this is I haven't finished reading it yet, but it is already clear that Godforsaken does a fine job of escalating Cypher System into the realm of a full fantasy game, no doubt just in time for the upcoming revamp of Ptolus next year. I'll be using it soon for an actual Realms of Chirak campaign, too, as well as revamping my Ensaria campaign, which is a Cypher world I have run some campaigns in themed around the idea of a fantasy realm that is in fact a lost colony world.

Overall though, this was a pretty amazing year for new RPG books, despite the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn. Hopefully next year will be better for game developers and publishers alike, as well as gamers everywhere. 

Fun at Every Level - A Pipe Dream or Design Reality?

A recent comment on an older Starfinder post got me to thinking: the comment was that essentially the problem with higher level D&D 5E is the inverse of lower level Starfinder, that a high level D&D game  and a low level Starfinder game are painful in comparable ways. There is more than a little truth to it. With D&D 5E there's a good chance you've experienced some measure of fatigue with what happens when the game system, built around exploding hit points, gets to a certain point in play at higher level.* The problem with 5E is not particularly new to that edition; it actually plays much better at high level than 3rd edition versions before it, in fact. The problem is "new' to 5E in the sense that it fixed some underlying issues with prior editions (math complexity, juggling stackables, and too many iterative attacks and modifiers) with a new problem (simpler rules, but the hit point bloat just sucks). 

Starfinder has an entirely different issue: at low level it lets you play what essentially amount to pathetic miscreants. You can barely do anything, and you can afford gear that is one step up from a Laser Tag game. You don't get truly interesting class abilities until about level 4, and you don't start affording scifi weaponry that feels like something not handed to the short bus until around level 6-7. By the time you're level 10 you start to feel like a real adventurer. Starfinder is a victim of its own balancing act, carried too far. I'm running it right now, and my goal is to award heaps of XP tro make the first 4 levels just fly by.

I think Paizo realized this was a problem, too. Pathfinder 2E manages to succinctly balance out the merit of low level gaming against higher levels in ways neither of the other two systems are all that good at. Low level PF2E characters feel squishy, but they have bite. High level PF2E characters are interesting and complex, but fights somehow only last a little bit longer than low level battles do. It's a good design balance, and I love how smooth it is. 

Now, to contrast there are other games out there which handle this very differently, suggesting that the high level/low level problems of some games are more characteristic of D20 systems than they are of, say, Cypher System or Savage Worlds. Those games have their own issues, of course....but sometimes they also have their own built in fixes, too. For example, Cypher System deliberately makes a lot of tasks at lower level trivial and automatic as characters advance in power, but high level play in Cypher is functionally identical to low level play, just with a greater need for sacrifice from the resource mechanic which drives all actions. Meanwhile, Savage Worlds runs on very flat baseline stats, and all the edges and perks a character gains over time are designed mainly to make it easier to hit the target numbers than anything else; the number stay the same. 

Although I think, for purposes of D20, that Pathfinder 2E hits the mark very closely for me, I bet there are still better ways to design a D20-based system which manage to retain the rules simplicity of 5E with the tactical granularity of Starfinder or Pathfinder. These designs might even retain consistent feelings of fun and engagement at all levels of play. If you know of any systems out there that seem to do a better job of accomplishing this than the current era of D20 systems I'd be interested in hearing about them.

 

*This issue with high level 5E is more evident to first time gamers than those who survived 3rd edition D&D, as we all remember the gruesome high level gaming days that 5E "fixed" for our purposes at least!

Hah had a typo in the title. Pire. Shoulda been Pyre! Would be even more odd than Pipe.

The Secret to Success with Roll20's RNG

 It's become something of a joke that Roll20's random number generator for dice doesn't seem to like the players much. The reality is that it's...well....probably averaging out where it realistically should, and the GM occasionally does see a bad streak of rolls too, but of course GMs get to roll a lot more dice over time so those bad luck streaks often die out soon enough.

In games that are player facing like Cypher System, you might think this would lead to better averages over time (or as many hills as valleys at least), but this doesn't always seem to work out. Some of my players are about fed up with Roll20, which can seem to give them alarmingly consistent failure streaks. 

I have a theory about this, born of my own player experience in a related VTT, Astral. It goes like this:

Some players are cautious, and tend to build "average characters" who can do a lot of stuff reasonably well, but not much stuff very, very well. I'm often one of those....if you've ever built a Call of Cthulhu character, for example, who rarely had more than 50% in a skill, but also ended up with a lot of below 50% skills as a result, you might be one of these.

Other players suffer from a different problem: they don't really learn the game they are playing, or they miss the key elements of the system that help them out. These players might often try to do things and fail but miss opportunities to improve their odds of success or overlook strategies that could help them out. Some simply try to do things they probably shouldn't, or misunderstand their characters' abilities.

In VTT environments there's an entire other possible category: setting up your die scripts and forgetting modifiers of relevance. It's less common, as other players with better familiarity may catch your error, but it could happen.

A final category are: players who don't get the quirks of their GM. This one's pretty basic, but if you as a player know your GM frequently calls for history, society or perception tests then maybe you shoudl focus on those skills. This is a bit metagamist, but it's a valid strategy if your personal goal is "succeed at die roll tests more often."

Anyway, the result of these examples is players who fail more often than not at die rolls and are often quite flustered about it. I have at least one player who I feel is a combination of two or more of these situations, as he tends to learn the rules through play but overlooks the strategic elements of, as an example, how the die pool risk/reward mechanic of Cypher System plays out. If you play Cypher System like any other old RPG you are essentially doomed to failure. Conversely, when we play Pathfinder 2nd Edition I feel that most players (even the ones who are a bit shaky on the mechanics) tend to succeed about as often as you expect due to the fact that Pathfinder's probabilities and math are shockingly on target. If everyone is failing miserably in a Pathfinder 2E game on Roll20 it may say more about the GM than it does about the system or Roll20's RNG!

So what's a strategy for success? Well, here's some advice, and it may apply beyond VTT with virtual dice, too:

If you want to succeed, and your system allows it, try to find those 3-4 things you really want to be able to succeed in and max them out as best you can. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu and you want to spot hidden as often as possible then jam points in to it. You will sacrifice broad versatility but gain greater average success in those things you are good at. And it should go without saying: when you play the game, try to do things that are relevant to those skills!

Understand the game you are playing. Make sure you appreciate the probabilities so that when you are in combat or a tense encounter with die rolls that you think about your odds of success before you take on a task. Understand that if you make a Level 4 Speed Defense roll in Cypher without buying it down that the odds of failure are 55% but if you just spent some Speed you could reduce that failure rate to 40% or less. And when the dice still go against you....it's okay. You tried. The game is, ultimately, a game and not a wish fulfillment engine; we have video games for that.

As GM, make sure you are mindful of realistic encounters for your players' level of expertise and understanding. If your players seem to be struggling with understanding the mechanics (and the odds) then try to tailor the experience a bit as a teaching lesson. Coaching players with some learning encounters can be a wise move. Remember! You don't have a GM screen and you can't fudge dice in a VTT environment (well, not easily, as far as I know). As such, you need to respect the mechanics more, and the arbitrariness of the dice more.

  

Evaluating Pathfinder 2nd Edition after One Year - Balance and Threat Ranges In Play

 It is a sound argument that a game reviewer should have played the game he is reviewing first, and it is rare for a reviewer to have played extensively, but after one year with Pathfinder 2nd Edition I can safely say that any review I offer will be based on approximately 350 to 400 hours of actual play time, in a campaign which ran from levels 1-19 (with 20 imminent) over a 50+ story arc. In the course of play I think the following are fair observations on how balance and the unique crit/fumble range in PF2E works. 

I feel like there's a subtle, hidden learning curve with Pathfinder 2nd that will make for a refined experience with the next major campaign arc. As you can probably guess, if I am planning a second campaign arc then I must like it. So here goes....my observations of Pathfinder 2nd Edition after a year of weekly play between a campaign that ran from 1-20 (with 20 about to hit), and three shorter side campaigns on Wednesday running from levels 1-5, 5-9 and a fresh level 1 campaign that is still underway (just as soon as our Wednesday group exausts our Call of Cthulhu side trek).

Extremely Balanced

PF2E is an extremely balanced game. More so than any modern iteration of D20 over the last 20 years of design, PF2E has achieved something no other system has really pulled off. High level play in D&D 5E felt better than in its predecessors but could still be a slog (chiefly due to hit point bloat). PF2E manages to make high level play feel very similar (and at a similar pace) to lower level play. I simply have not worried about our level 19 game getting stuck in a multi-hour long combat like I used to in the pre PF2E days; that can only happen when you throw a signficant and deadly high level threat at the group, and even then if you design within the encounter parameters you still shouldn't see long combats that often.

The upside is this means the GM has a high level of control and understanding of how an encounter will play out. This is a strength for sure, but also a weakness; savvy players will get comfortable with encounter range expectations, and if you break those expectations it can be jarring to them. Likewise, the ranges are so tightly defined that as GM if you are throwing anything in to an encounter that is more than CR -4 out of range then you might as well just roleplay the encounter: "Okay group, seventy challenge 1 orcs attack you level 10 group, tell me how you wipe the floor with them," is a perfectly valid way to resolve that encounter in PF2E*. Conversely, if you as GM throw something more then CR +4 at them then you should do so with full warning that they might as well flee for the hills.

Some of the reason for this tight range of balance is due to the next design element....

The Crit Range Mechanic Changes Everything

In PF2E, you have a +10/-10 range of success that profoundly impacts play. If you run a couple random sessions of Pathfinder 2E without really understanding the mechanic it can feel extremely swingy at first, but in fact the opposite is actually happening: the math is extremely precise and predictable in PF2E, and it creates a unique set of what I are assumed intended consequences in the encounter design and combat experience.

When you get 10 better than your target to hit then you land a critical hit. When you roll 10 under you fumble. Saving throws often default to what is called a "Basic Save" which in most cases means spell and hazard/trap effects also define what happens when you fail or succeed by 10 or more with greater effect. In many ways its simply a codification of a mechanic which had style elements back to classic 3rd edition D20 mechanics, but now extrapolated to a near universal rule in PF2E. 

One you get used to the notion, the result means that you can figure with a high degree of accuracy the odds of success and failure leading to dramatic success or dramatic failure against threats in the game. When a group that is fighting a gang of foes that are challenge rating -4, for example, they are not just four levels better in terms of skill, but four levels higher in their degree of achieving a critical success. Likewise, if you are placed against a foe which is challenge +4 (four levels better than you), then you are actually equally more likely to achieve critical failure by four degrees. This is why I feel that the balanced encounter range of -4 to +4 degrees is a bit deceptive; it's accurate, but much of the risk (or ease) of the combat is attributed to the margin by which you achieve a critical success or failure. 

For example: as a player, you may realize that if you have a +10 to hit (a reasonable chance for a level 3 fighter with 16 Strength and expert training in his weapon), and your foe is AC 23, then you will on average need to roll a 13 or better to hit the enemy. You can only crit against that foe on a natural 20 since you can't roll 10 higher than the target number (AC). But if your foe is AC 15, that means you will only need to roll a 5 or better to hit, and that means you will also crit anytime you roll 15 or higher. So against an AC 23 foe you crit on a 20 only (5% chance), but on an AC 15 foe you crit on a 15-20 (30% range).

In PF2E an example of an AC 15 monster is a giant rat (challenge -1, meaning it's a weak foe against level 1 PCs, or worth level-2 for XP). By contrast a challenge 4 monster (werebear) could have AC 23. So....if you do the math, our hypothetical level 3 fighter would find the werebear to be CR+1 vs. a group of 4 level 3 characters, and the giant rat would be CR-4 against the same four adventurers. That werebear would be a dire threat one-on-one, and it would take a small army of giant rats to make an impact against the group (though they could still nickel-and-dime a solitary PC to death).

To further emphasize how critical this threat range is, the werebear has a +13 to attack while the giant rat  has a +7 to it's attack. The well-armored 3rd level fighter might have full plate, giving him an AC of 21 (base 10, with +6 for the armor, and +5 for training). So our rat will hit this guy on a 13 or better, and only crit on a natural 20. Our werebear will hit him on a 7 or better, and will crit on an 18-20 (15% chance). 

Those +/-10 ranges make a huge difference as the challenge level gets further from the level baseline. Furthermore, in PF2E if you roll a natural 1 you fumble anyway, and crit on a natural 20, unless you happen to have been unable to otherwise hit without rolling a crit....in which case the crit converts to a normal attack! This is logical, but it means that, to use another example, a group of typical level 3 characters like in the above example, when facing a challenge 7 opponent (so level+4, the max difficulty advised in the game) may be in dire straights. A typical challenge 7 foe is the Ogre Boss, who has an AC 25 and +19 to hit. Against our puny level 3 fighter he will hit on a 2 or better, and will dish out a critical on a 12 or better on the die (45% chance)! He normally hits for 1D10+11 piercing but against a level 3 foe almost half the time will deal 2D10+22. 

At level 7 that same fighter will find the ogre boss a tough but fair fight.....but at level 3 that ogre boss will clean his clock. 

Anyway, the crit/fumble range has a profound impact on how you must consider challenges in PF2E. It really does mean that you must take the rules seriously. In consideration, though, the rules scale experience with difficulty. That Ogre Boss is worth 40 XP to a group of level 7 foes, but is worth 160 XP to the group of level 3 adventurers. Under the encounter design guidelines, that means that 4 ogre bosses are an extreme encounter for a group of level 7 PCs, and 2 werebears are a severe encounter for a group of level 3 PCs. One werebear should be a sufficient "low" threat for 4 level 3 PCs however, as would one ogre boss for the level 7 group. In theory up to 4 giant rats would be a trivial threat, and by XP budget alone 16 rats could pose a extreme threat but in reality they really don't. Likewise, the giant rats would be worth exatly zero XP to the level seven group and are best described as a descriptive one off, such as "You killed a bunch of giant rats," rather than waste time killing them. The rats pose zero threat....they can't even crit against the level 7 group, and will barely have a chance for a normal hit.

One consequence of all this is that leveling up impacts the game's pace more. If you want, for example, kobolds, goblins and giant rats to be a meaningful threat for a while then don't let your PCs level quickly....they will outstrip those foes by level 4-5 and consequently a 20-session arc in the giant rat warrens will quickly become a merciless slaughter as the PCs earn the exterminator achievement!

*Using swarm rules to simulate an orc horde as a threat for high level PCs would be a way to do this, as well....

Roll20 - Four Sessions In

Just an update, but we're four sessions in to Roll20 and it continues to get easier and easier to use. Saturday night's game was a piece of cake....I figured out how to get the fog of war working as intended, stumbled only on trying to use one of their prepackaged token assets (I placed it on the map and it then wouldn't let me use it like a marker for a PC), and am pretty sure the issues I experienced that were so confusing before had to do with layering. If I can sit down a bit and mess with it just a bit more I'll probably figure that out, too.

Some comments so far:

Images online make good tokens for figures: practically no reason to buy token packs, just find appropriate images off the internet and use them instead. Turns out almost any Pathfinder monster has had its image placed online, so this becomes a trivial process. Also, given that it appears there is no VTT resource for importing such images (as from pawns or figure flats officially from Paizo, for example) then there really is no better resource available.

You can snapshot and import PDF maps: Whether you have the official PDFs of Paizo maps or any other resource, a snapshot moved to Paint and saved as a JPEG scales just fine for Roll20. Roll20 seems to think it has a way of exporting from a PDF but it doesn't seem to work when I try it, not sure why.

Dice Rolling Still Cumbersome: for me it is, anyway. Especially in a game like Pathfinder where it's possible to have damage rolls look like "3D6+2D10+14, X2 for crit" which can get a little wackadoodles. Any solutions are welcome, but for now I'm just practicing with "getting good" at pixel-bitching the advanced die roller.

Beyond that, the real downside to Roll20 right now is that with time it could become so convenient and smooth to use that it might be cumbersome and awkward for us all to return to the regular gaming table...if we ever do.....



Anyway! For the Wednesday game (which could remain at someone's house but we're also doing Roll20 anyway)I'm suggesting we try Starfinder or Cypher System with Roll20 next. Stay tuned!

The Roll20 Experience - Exploring Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)

Tonight (well, last night Saturday) we tried out Roll20. This was a bit of an abrupt shift for a table mostly of long time gamers --only some of whom have tried online virtual tabletop gaming before, and fewer still who did it enough to feel good or comfortable about it.

Still, I'll say this much: I was able to figure out Roll20 and run a game with it with minimal hassle, which is not a bad endorsement. For those of you who are like me and my group (in need of gaming but also keen on engaging in self-isolation to avoid playing the coronavirus lottery), here are my experiences and observations:

First, we carried on with Pathfinder 2nd edition, our sole game of choice on Saturday nights since August. The group has just hit level 13 and the story had a sufficiently new break that it was a good spot to transition to the new medium. Of course starting a game with an entirely new format of play at level 13 led to some interesting complications; for one, the Roll20 rules let you load a Pathfinder 2.0 character sheet but it requires a lot of input by the players; unlike the default SRD content tied to the D&D 5E options, there's no walk through on PC creation (and for an example of how cool and easy that can be go look at the Pathbuilder 2E app). Still, everyone gave it a valiant effort, though some were still inputting spells by midnight (we started playing at 6, and the actual game at 7 after it became clear spells would talk a while.) Though much time was spent putting the PC sheets in place, it was pretty much unnecessary; you could easily play with paper character sheets and just input modifiers for rolls as you go.

Since I had about one day's lead time in the decision to use Roll20 I had enough time to figure out that I didn't really know what to do to fully take advantage of it. I went ahead and subscribed, which gave me access to some maps and free tokens. I downloaded free maps I could find, then grabbed this pack of 120 map tiles on drivethrurpg which seemed like a good deal; I got one map constructed for detailed play, and used some generic overland maps for wilderness encounters. Then, after getting a test session in Friday to figure out the functions and features I was able to grab some images which could be used for illustration.

My big conundrum with moving to Roll20 is that it's a format for gaming which naturally seems to lend to maps/minis, which left me wondering how to reconcile my "theater of the mind" approach against the VTT's key focus. The game's main features center on providing graphics and dropping virtual tokens on to them. Surprisingly this VTT does not provide some mechanism for literal virtual 3D minis (in which you could actually buy graphic suites to lay out 3D maps and use 3D images and icons); that would be rather cool, though probably a bit of work to set up.

Rather than try the Theater of the Mind approach I went ahead and just made sure to try the map/tokens approach, and after a lengthy portion of role play we got to a fight with some shuln (challenge rating 12 giant angry molerat monsters with adamantine claws in Pathfinder). Finding a mini to work turned out to be trivial, as it let me search for online sources and import the actual shuln image which I could then place on the virtual tabletop. Kinda cool. Indeed, the core elements of the VTT were clearly intended to help out - easy bubbles to plug some numbers such as hit points in to, an initiative tracker, and each of the players seemed to figure out the optimal way to roll and declare ability uses.

The actual process of combat was clean enough, but I found the advanced die roller slightly clumsy in actual use, and everything felt just a bit slower and more painful; I probably would have done better to keep my trusty old note pad for combat tracking and simply called it over audio and the experience would have gone smoothly enough.

Only one player had issues; he had tried to use the Roll20 app, which it turns out is more of a support app and did not have audio or mike use on his phone. He did not have a PC and ended up having to sit out on the game. I'm going to look at some ways to fix this, but for the night's session at least it was a wash for him.

Other oddities I noticed: the free suite of tokens and tools was enough for anyone who doesn't mind sorting through, but a bit of a pain to search on the fly. I am not 100% sure (yet) if there's a way to refine the tokens and other bits to make it easier to find the provided tools. However, while trying to use the search feature I found it much more impressive simply because I could quickly grab a graphic and apply it, which was much more useful in the long run.

It took me a while on Friday to figure out the whole map drop-down and player banner deal, but once I did it made the rest of the VTT make more sense. If you use Roll20, just remember that: you need to put the player banner on the thing you want them to see.

I created some image sets intended entirely for illustration; for most all of the role-play elements I simply provided occasional graphics I liked for their suitability to show locations and characters. But in each case, the images snapped to the grid and shrank to one square, whether it was a single image or a whole map. I haven't figured out how to stop this (yet).

In the end, I had the following take-aways:

It will fill a needed Role: Roll20 will work for what my group needs to survive a couple months* of social isolation; we are not going to be suffering too badly thanks to this tool (and for my friend without a good laptop I have an idea to refurbish an old one he can use).

I need to use it the way I do at a Real Table for combat: The compulsion to take full advantage of the VTT elements with maps and virtual minis is hard to resist, and I am not sure that really helps with my style of game that much; I have been running Pathfinder 2E religiously by what I call the "Page 494 rule," which is essentially just two paragraphs but it is all you will ever need in terms of Theater of the Mind gameplay guidelines for PF 2E.

I Think I'd Enjoy it More with Cypher System: my group has been obsessed with Pathfinder 2E since it came out, but prior to that I'd been running Cypher System for about two years with great obsession. I still want to make Cypher System a main game, but can't fault them for enjoying PF 2E, which is a great iteration of the D20 system. That said...I think the vastly simpler mechanical elements of Cypher System would make it easier to run a game on Roll20 with a focus on using illustrations and maps purely as visual aids, and taking advantage of card decks (of which quite a few are available, though not the Cypher System creature deck for some weird reason).

Good for other, simpler systems, too: I think 13th Age, Traveller, Tiny D6 (which has support in Roll20!) and others could translate well to this medium. I actually am certain I would really enjoy using this for some Swords & Wizardry or Forbidden Lands, for example. White Star, too. Really, this would work for any game system that doesn't require a bunch of math or nitty-gritty mechanical pieces. Not having to roll too many dice with the clunky die roller would also help.

Are there specific reasons not to go with Roll20? Well....first, you need a decent laptop or desktop PC with audio and a mike. If you don't have that, you can use it for chat-based play with the VTT elements, but that can be less interesting than actually seeing and talking to your cohorts.

Second, while I haven't checked out all the other systems yet, Roll20 is subscription-based so you won't own it, precisely. You can play a free version but that is pretty darn basic. If you like owning a product D20pro and Fantasy Grounds can do that.

Third, and this depends heavily on your need for resources, all the licensed content is capital-E Expensive. You're basically paying full retail for resources that let you access rules info in the game, but so far as I can tell these purchases only work with Roll20. That means if you decide to commit to this VTT, you're in it for the long haul. If you're like me and your gaming investment has been 95% for the real table, it can be a pain to even imagine spending a bunch of cash a second time to get virtual versions of the "real deal."

Luckily you really don't need it; with the books at hand and what that basic Roll20 suite (I did subscribe for a month to the deluxe set) you've got all you need and probably more than you will want to run decent games remotely. I think we'll stick with this VTT for now, though I really want to check out Astral next.



*If this goes longer than two months then we will have much bigger problems to worry about.