Rules Lawyering: Rethinking the rules from Force and Destiny’s Morality system.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda

The morality system of Force and Destiny, mechanically, is fine – it fills a purpose. You track what the character does throughout the course of a game session and then check a list of activities that create “conflict,” then you roll a d10 and subtract your conflict from the die result – if the number is positive your character gains morality – negative – that’s how much morality you lose on a scale of 1 to 100. Close to 100 you become a paragon of the light side of the force – fall too low and you fall to the dark side. The system is a bit random and a bit shallow – but it works.

My problem with the Force and Destiny morality system is that you generate conflict by being evil. (See, Force and Destiny, p. 322 “Using Morality”). Good and evil are too subjective and personal to serve as the measure for a concept that universally crosses all extant cultures and known species in the Star Wars universe – apply concepts of property ownership and the moral rectitude of stealing from the wealthy (an actual example from the conflict table) is a terrible fit for determining whether a character remains a servant of the light side of the force or falls to the darkness.

So I’m going to re-write the rules.  I have two main goals here: (1) to emphasize a focus on emotion leading to the dark side; and, (2) to remove some of the randomness by replacing the d10 roll at the end of the night with a skill check that relies on a classic jedi theme – discipline.

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Preparation: Building Ogre Werewolves

“I am a victim of your carnivorous lunar activities.”

Gerald Bringsley, An American Werewolf in London

As I mentioned in my first Preparation article, I design my own campaign world and like to throw my players into it with very light direction.  That means I need lots of potential villains.  I create my villains by making up lots of NPCs and giving them odd quirks and – in the beginning of the game – a brief tie into one of the PCs.  The ones that are fun to play and survive get to become villains.  In my current campaign the party returned to the home town of one player character, and I decided to drop a character based on Gaston from Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast.  Why Gaston?  Because it is a complete character I can drop in, see if the players bite, and either toss away or incorporate into future plotting if the NPC is fun at the table.  I named him Gregor.

Gregor was the local bully growing up.  His father was wealthy.  Gregor was handsome and inherited his father’s wealth.  Naturally he rose to a position in leadership – becoming the mayor of a small rural town with – to quote my notes – “typical superstition tropes re: outsiders.”

Gregor thus had a personality and a little dominion to terrorize.  I needed a twist on the character to make him credible villain material, rather than just a low-level thug.  So I made him a werewolf.

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First Review – Keeping it Simple with D&D Basic

dndbasicD&D Basic Rules (5e)

In August of 2011 Wizards of the Coast announced a new Dungeons and Dragons product in the pipeline – what they called “D&D Next” – a terrible name that drove those of us who like consistent versioning a bit crazy.  Thankfully the name was just a place-holder for the game that was released in 2014 – Dungeons and Dragons 5e (D&D).   5e D&D strips out much of the complexity of prior version – cutting back to a system that depends heavily on a few simple rules and putting a Dungeon Master at the table to make more complicated adjudications on the fly.  That simplification is in full display in the free version of the game rules (available at the link above) the D&D Basic Rules.  Go download them, then come back.

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Preparation – Where do we Begin:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Setting up a new game in a new system can be a bit bewildering.  Faced with learning new rules and dealing with the logistics of managing a group is stressful.  So – when it comes time to start the new game, its easy to make preparing for the campaign slip.  Many role-playing games include a module in the back to “quick-start” your party on their way.  I’m not a big fan.  Before you start running the game, you need a plan.  You need to prepare.

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Rules Lawyering – The Action Economy in the d20 SRD:

In a normal round, you can perform a standard action and a move action, or you can perform a full-round action. You can also perform one or more free actions. You can always take a move action in place of a standard action.

d20 SRD “Action Types”

The “Action Economy” is the system that limits what each playIer can accomplish in one turn.  In the d20 SRD the rule cited above compactly summarizes the action economy in the d20 system (i.e. D&D 3.5).  Each turn a character can take either (1) a full-round action, or (2) both a standard action and a move action.  In addition each player can take “free actions.”  The action economy is not the choices you are presented with during your turn, rather it is the number of choices the game allows you to make each turn.

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Hello world – The First Rule:

Everyone has to start somewhere. 

So – the internet needed another blog.  I am quick to provide.  The purpose of this website will be to discuss the process of running and playing tabletop games – board, card and role-playing varieties.

I anticipate that there will be three major categories of stories here to start with: (1) game reviews – newer games, books or expansions for existing games I know well enough to comment on intelligently; (2) articles on my process of preparing to run and play games – focused on running D&D 5e, but also preparing to run a party games or anything else that I think will make an enjoyable read; (3) Rules Lawyering – breaking down specific rules and mechanics from the games I play to review the rule in detail, its purpose, its effect, why I think the rule is good or bad and how I might adapt it to another game or system.

My goal is to write three updates a week – starting Monday, March 23, 2015. Over the weekend I’m going to work on some art for the header and sidebar to fill out the page and get it ready for viewing.  Color scheme needs work.  Feedback welcome.

Thanks for reading this far.