Tom Lommel's #Ironkeep Chronicles and Disorganized Play Are a Masterclass in Game Mastering.

Wednesday Nights on Saving Throw Show

I've been a fan of the team at the Saving Throw Show for quite some time. I didn't jump on the Saving Throw Show bandwagon as early as their Kickstarter, but I did become an ardent fan soon afterward. One of the key reasons I jumped on the Saving Throw Show bandwagon was that they brought on The Dungeon Bastard and Lady Vorpal, Tom Lommel and Amy Vorpahl, as two of their recurring castmembers. This appreciation has only increased over the past few months as I've been watching Tom Lommel run the #Ironkeep Chronicles on Wednesday nights. On that show, Tom has managed to do something that isn't replicated by any other online streaming role playing game show. He's managed to both replicate the home game play experience and fused that with a series of interactive tutorials on Game Mastering where the audience helps shape the campaign.

What Makes #Ironkeep Chonicles Work

While there are many great live play rpg streams on the internet, the primary thing that sets #Ironkeep Chronicles apart is that it replicates the average home play experience. Many of the professional rpg-streams feel more like you are watching a television show or listening to a radio audio drama than they feel like the game play around your tables at home. While Tom has fantastic players, which like many rpg-streams includes actors/Twitch streamers/YouTubers, the show never loses the home game feeling. One great example of this phenomenon is the character creation episode of #Ironkeep Chronicles when Tom incorporated elements of John Harper's proto-rpg The Wildlings into the character design session to facilitate character creation.

 Unlike Wil Wheaton's excellent Fantasy Age run on Tabletop, which used a very scripted adventure and where the character creation was focused on elements native to Fantasy Age, Tom did what many Game Masters do and mashed up game mechanics from multiple games right from the start. This trend of bringing in elements from outside of D&D, and not as original game design content, demonstrates to players and Game Masters how they can incorporate their large gaming libraries even when they don't get the chance to play anything other than D&D. Tom runs #Ironkeep like a home campaign and not as an IP generator. He's not trying to create new rules from scratch that will be sold by Saving Throw Show at a later date, though he probably should be, instead he is showing what busy but good GMs do. Busy but good GMs incorporate and improvise.

Speaking of improvisation, that's another part of what Tom does that mirrors the home gaming experience. Like many online shows, #Ironkeep Chronicles uses pre-published materials as its gaming foundation. In this case, the players are playing through Tales of the Yawning Portal, but due to time constraints and player tastes the actual adventure content wanders away from the written page. Take a change he made to White Plume Mountain as an example. In some ways, the classic deathtraps of the adventure don't make narrative sense. So Tom makes a significant change to the environment and turns it into a sort of amusement park prison that has Blackrazor as its key.

This is a significant change to the narrative of this classic dungeon, but it is the kind of change that one frequently sees in a home game. I've used The Veiled Society as the starting point for my D&D campaigns several times. I love the urban setting and the politics of Specularum society. It has yet to run the same way twice. Not just because the players make different decisions each time, but also because I change who the real villains are each time in response to the players' actions and preferred style of play. Are my players "democrats" who want to see the end of feudalism and see Duke Stefan as a threat to free peoples? If so, then one of the old families might be heroic. Is the Veiled Society the actual threat? These things and more change in my game and by the time I'm done, the many changes I've made are often so significant that even rerunning the adventure for the same group, the players don't notice. They only notice they are in the same setting. This is the kind of thing that happens in all of our games, and that is what Tom shows the world.

The Secret Engine Behind #Ironkeep Chronicles is Disorganized Play

As good as #Ironkeep Chronicles is, the real secret to its charm and benefit to Game Masters is Tom's supplementary show Disorganized Play. This show is filled with tips on how to prepare for role playing game sessions with minimal prep time. Tom goes over all aspect of preparation including: crafting of NPCs and combat encounters, designing battlemaps that provide interesting challenges for players, and how to use Kanban style Plot Radar charts to improve your ability to script a campaign . It's a simple method of note taking that will help keep your games on track, especially if you are like me and only play once a month. Additionally, Disorganized Play is also a place where you can interact with Tom in real time as he brainstorms the campaign and answers questions from viewers. You have to be watching the Live Stream on Twitch to get the full benefit, but I highly recommend it. It's a perfect place for experienced and novice GMs to go to learn. In fact, his episode with Vana preparing her to run her first session is a great example of how fantastic an advocate for our hobby Tom is.

Mystrael Shawk -- An Effect Based Lightning Wizard for D&D

Last week, I discussed how useful it can be to approach D&D magic from an effects based or special effect design philosophy as both a player and a DM. Using this approach allows for gamers to add a little of narrative magic without the need to have a deep understanding of the mechanical balance underlying the game system required to make new spells from whole cloth. This is an approach used by the Champions role playing game and by Pinnacle Entertainment Group's Savage Worlds rpg. The Savage Worlds rule book describes this approach in the following way:

"But just because these powers work the same from setting to setting doesn’t mean they have to look the same, have the same names (to the characters in that world), or even have the exact same effects—that’s where Trappings come in. 

For the most part, Trappings should be merely cosmetic. But sometimes it makes sense for there to be additional effects. A heat ray should have a chance of catching combustible objects on fire, for example, and an electric blast should do slightly more damage to targets in full metal armor."

Coming at magic from a special effects approach can be intimidating and you might not trust me that it can be done without creating a lot of work for players and DMs, but I'm going to attempt to show you how it does just the opposite. It allows for the creation of a lot of imaginative and narrative effects without the need for creating new mechanics. To aid in this process, I will be posting a series of D&D 5e Wizards based on Power Themes and who use effects based spells.

Image Source Anna Steinbauer

Mystrael Shawk 

Human Lightning Wizard (Soldier) 

Level 5

Str 8 (-1)   Dex 14 (+2)  Con 14 (+2)  

Int 16 (+3)  Wis 10 (+0)  Cha 12 (+1)

HP (5d6+10) 32           AC 12 or 15 (dex; Crackling Aura + dex)

Init +2      Speed 30      Proficiency Bonus +3

Attacks: Dagger +5 (1d4 piercing), Dagger (ranged) +5 1d4 piercing, Spells +6 
Senses: Investigation 16, Perception 10
Saves: Intelligence +6, Wisdom +3
Skills: Arcana +6, Athletics +2, Intimidation +4, Investigation +6, Sleight of Hand +5 
Feats: Keen Mind
Human Traits: Bonus Skill (Sleight of Hand), Bonus Feat (War Caster)
Wizard Traits: Spellcasting, Arcane Recovery, Arcane Tradition (Abjuration), Lighting Ward (13 HP)
Spell Casting Ability (Known: 3, 6, 6, 4; Slots: 4, 4, 3, 2; DC 14)

Cantrips:Lightning Ball (Acid Splash), Crackling Illumination (Light), Shocking Grasp

Spells

1 -  Arc of Lightning (Burning Hands), Crackling Aura  (Mage Armor), Electric Shield (Shield), Synaptic Shock (Sleep), Static Tickle (Tasha's Hideous Laughter), Plasma Arc (Magic Missile)
2 - Lightning Cloud (Cloud of Daggers), Immobilizing Shock (Hold Person), Electrify Weapon (Magic Weapon), Mystral's Lightning Arrow (Melf's Acid Arrow), Clinging Field (Spider Climb), Electrical Flash (Blindness/Darkness)
3 - Electrical Animation (Animate Dead), Sphere of Lightning (Fireball), Ride the Lightning (Fly), Lightning Bolt

As you can see, merely by renaming some of the spells the descriptive effect in play of certain spells is altered without changing their effects. Take Crackling Illumination as an example here. When it comes to game effects, it doesn't matter whether light is produced by illusory fire, real fire, crackling electricity, or radiant illumination. All that matters is that the spell produces the effect of light. Similarly for Mage Armor, since we aren't categorizing any kind of damage, the appearance of Mage Armor doesn't affect game play.

It isn't until we get to spells like Lightning Ball (Acid Splash) that one's "but that's a typed damage and it matters" alarm should flash a warning that there might be some mechanical differences of consequence. One could merely hand wave such concerns and point out, as Michael Shea at Sly Flourish often does that Dungeons and Dragons isn't designed to be a balanced game and that imbalance is a part of what we like. I won't do such hand waving here, though that is a perfectly "D&D" thing to do. Instead, let's take a look under the hood of Acid Splash.

Range: 60 feet
Damage: Save or Take 1d6 Acid Damage
# Creatures affected: 1 or 2 within 5 feet.

The reskinned Lightning Ball only changes one aspect of the spell, the damage type. In fact, since the spell already can damage up to 2 creatures in close proximity the spell's mechanics fit nicely with the reskin. The question here becomes, "Does the spell significantly improve if it becomes lightning based?" There are after all different creatures who are resistant/immune to different damage types and affecting a disproportionate number might affect game balance. This criticism only holds so much weight since the Elemental Adept feat allows casters to ignore type resistance (though not immunity). So...what are the differences between Acid and Lightning regarding number of creatures affected?

Creatures Resistant to Acid in Monster Manual: 17
Creatures Immune to Acid in Monster Manual: 15
Number of Creatures Vulnerable to Acid: 0

Creatures Resistant to Lightning in Monster Manual: 34
Creatures Immune to Lightning in Monster Manual: 19
Number of Creatures Vulnerable to Lightning: 0

Here we can see that by choosing a Lightning damage type, the spell has become more limited with regard to the number of creatures it can damage. Given the negligent effects of changing the damage type, we can quickly see that this won't change game balance.

Similarly, describing Sleep as an effect that results from a quick electrical burst or Spider Climb as a static field that surrounds the hands and feet of the caster does nothing other than add a narrative touch to play. The same is true for describing Animate Dead as electrical impulses arching through corpses to control their movements.

There are some damage types that are clearly better or worse than average when it comes to this kind of analysis. Very few creatures are resistant to Radiant damage and 98 monsters are immune to poison, for example, and you would have to decide whether or not to do the "it doesn't really matter" hand wave or ban those as reskinnable trappings in your games. One thing to consider for spells like Sleep is that you might have the creature's resistance apply to the hit points rolled against the spell. That significantly reduces the power of that particular spell against certain foes, but it adds the illusion of unpredictability to your magic and makes magic more magical.

My next character will be a cold themed Wizard.

Using a Special Effects Approach to Spell Casting in D&D Games

There are too many spells in Dungeons & Dragons and it reduces the sense of wonder in the game. Magic systems are one of the most difficult design challenges that face prospective game designers, players, and game masters. Magic in fiction, and in our imagination, often defies quantification. In fact, one might argue that what makes magic magical is that it is mysterious and that by quantifying it, you diminish its impact. I am sympathetic to this view, but I actually think that having the rules present purely mechanical effects and letting players add special effects is the best way to handle this problem.

The solution that D&D often uses is what Jeff Grubb calls the "Very Large Spellbook" approach in the Kobold Guide to Magic. This works by flooding the zone with so many spells that no one really knows what every spell does and thus leaves a sense of wonder as new things are discovered. The problem with this approach is that you can end up with five different spells that turn a target's bones into liquid. This isn't bad when the mechanical effects of each spell is different, but can be a problem when many of them have pretty much the same effects with minor changes in the amount of damage done. If the spells have different mechanical effects, it allows for themed mages. If it only fiddles around the edges of damage, it isn't very interesting. Jeff Grubb's discussion of how standardizing bones into liquid spells reduced the wonder of the game, while reducing the number of times spells need to be looked up in the rules because no one knows how a specific spell works.

One solution often under utilized in D&D circles is the approach used by Champions.

Whether or not you play the game, the Champions role playing game by Hero Games is one of the best role playing games ever designed and is one that every Game Master should read for advice on how to best run a game in any system. My first experience with the game was the Revised Edition, also known as the 2nd Edition, of the game, and I spent hours upon hours making characters for the system. Okay, I spent hours and hours making my version of the X-Men for the system only to have friends who were more experienced with the system tell me how I had done everything wrong, but that's beside the point.

The thing that most struck me about the game, and that still amazes me, is how the game took what is often called an effects based approach to gaming. What is typically meant by this description is that the rules don't worry about what powers and abilities look like, rather we are only concerned with their in game effects. While this is a central concept to how the character creation system works in Champions, it was an idea that took a few editions to fully articulate. The first edition of the game, published in 1981, only mentions the concept in passing in the Energy Blast power and on page 29 where it describes how to model a character who can change shape using Multipower with three slots that each represent a different special effect. The second edition expands on this idea more clearly and states on page 47, "Powers in Champions have been explained thoroughly in game terms, but the special effects have been left undefined...energy may be lightning, fire, cold, sonics, radiation...The special effects of your Power can contain minor advantages and disadvantages..." By the 3rd edition of the game, the designers have moved discussion of special effects to a position at the beginning of the Powers chapter, rather than following it. On page 20 it states, "When choosing powers in Champions always start with the effect and work back to the cause." The stress here is that the mechanics are important for the adjudication of success or failure in the game, but that what something looks like in the minds of the players during the game doesn't need to be categorized in the rules.

This special effects, or effects based, approach was relatively freeform in the first three editions of Champions and is what enabled players to simulate an infinite number of effects with only limited mechanics. For this reason, I prefer to call this earlier approach to effects based design the special effects approach. This distinguishes it from the more granular effect based approach of later editions of Champions and give primacy to only quantifying what absolutely must be represented mechanically and leaving the rest to improvisation. Later editions of Champions, beginning with 4th edition which is my favorite edition, began a process of quantifying too many effects for my tastes. Given my preference for improvisation, I prefer to avoid over quantification of phenomenon. Your mileage may vary on that account, but that will have little bearing on this discussion as it continues.

So when might a special effects approach help a D&D game?

Let me look to one of my favorite online shows to explain.

An example of a situation that could have benefited from a special effects approach occurs in Episode 8 Part 1 of Saving Throw Show's series "The Lost Brigade" when Havana Mahoney attempts to have her Druid Theronna Wolfmancer cast the spell Summon Swarm upon some creatures she and her allies were combating. This event happens at around minute 41:37 in the episode (also embedded above). The Dungeon Master, Mason McDaniel, initially encourages a special effects approach when Havana asks what the spell looks like and Mason gives a few possibilities while leaving the final depiction up to her as to whether the rats she wants to summon burrow out of the earth or are vomited from her mouth. Either one of these options is narratively interesting and visually exciting. It's a good moment of game play, but this quickly gets sidetracked as the group attempts to find the spell in the rules. This leads to a few minutes of discussion which pull both the players and the audience out of the game. Eventually, it is discovered that the spell Havana wanted to cast is a Pathfinder spell. She asks if she can use it anyway, but after some discussion this is rejected and Havana sighs and casts Call Lightning. It's the first time in my life that I think I've ever seen a Druid essentially say, "yawn...I guess I'll just use the old standby Call Lightning. YAWN again. KABLAM! DRUID TAC-NUKE! Wish I could have done something interesting."

And you know what? I agree with that assessment. I really wish that Havana had been allowed to cast her 2nd level Summon Swarm spell, but how do you do that?

The first thing that you can do is to let the player use the Pathfinder spell. For a second level spell, which was the case in the episode, this wouldn't particularly damage the game as OP-finder doesn't spiral out of D&D maths until higher levels. In this case, the player would have summoned a swarm of rats that attacked the monsters as listed in the Rat Swarm entry. This isn't a bad solution, and it would have rewarded the player for an inspired narrative choice, but it isn't a special effects based approach and the search of various wiki/books delayed game play. Notice, I am not discussing that Havana's presentation of how big the swarm would be and how much damage it does wasn't accurate to the Pathfinder rules. That was merely a product of the websearch and getting her phone trapped by wiki-spam.

The second approach, the special effects approach, is to ask what special effect the player wants and what mechanics fit the expressed mechanical limits. Havana wanted to use a 2nd Level Druid spell that summoned a swarm of rats that bites foes. So the mechanical emulation is area effect damage appropriate for second level. The first spell that jumped into my head was Spike Growth.

"But," you say, "Spike Growth is a spell that transforms the ground into spiky thorn covered terrain."

Does it? Not from a special effects/effect based approach.

From this approach, the spell covers a 20 foot radius of terrain with ___________ which makes the ground difficult to walk on and which cases a creature to take 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet they travel. This transformation is camouflaged as to not be obvious until the victims move into it and take damage.

So here are the effects:
20 foot radius
Difficult Terrain
Moving within or into causes 2d4 piercing for every 5 ft moved.
Concealed.

Havana wanted a swarm of rats to attack the foes. This pretty much does that. All you have to do is say that Theronna Wolfmancer has summoned the rats and that the creatures will soon feel those effects. Imagine the shocked looks on the creature's faces as rats rose from the earth to devour them.

That's not all this spell could represent. It could represent an area of earth where magma has been brought close to the surface, ice spikes, the thorns in the book, a miasma in the air that chokes those who move through it. None of those effects change the mechanics of the spell, which are what define the level of the spell, but each of those feels different in play due to the role playing aspect of the game. It is key to note that the damage is piercing for creatures who have those kinds of resistances.

Personally, I like the idea of Spike Growth being a near invisible miasma of toxic spores which pierce the lungs. The again, whose to say that Call Lightning couldn't just be Lightning Rats rising up from the earth to bite opponents with their Lightning powers or even just the summoning of a Pikachu?

What are some other spells that you would/could reskin for different effects?

Goobles and Goblins - A Gaming for Kids Review of an RPG Heartbreaker

Like many gamers and gaming fans, I have increasing become a consumer of streaming live play and game review channels. Among my favorite channels is the Saving Throw Show channel on Twitch. I started following the channel because I'm a fan of Tom Lommel's Dungeon Bastard series and both Lommel and Amy Vorpahl make appearances in Saving Throw Show content. Eventually, I became a Patreon backer of the channel and following this year's Extra Live 24 hour gaming marathon have become a more active participant in chats during the live streaming of events.

One of the things I like about Saving Throw Show is that it puts a spotlight on a couple of the overlooked aspects of Hollywood culture, its nerdiness and its rigorous work ethic. That's right, I've just described an industry that most people think of as filled with popular rich people who have too much spare time as an industry that is actually filled with extremely hard-working nerds. Because the real secret of Hollywood is that its engines are fueled by the work and imaginations of some very hard-working people who have a love of Dungeons & Dragons, Comic Books, and Pop Culture.  The Saving Throw Show is populated with a lot of these wonderful people and is a product of their hard work and this work includes streaming live play rpg sessions, interviews with game designers like John Wick, how to play videos, music videos, and comedy sketches. Watching content from the Saving Throw Show is a lot of fun and I imagine reflects what a lot of our gaming groups would be doing if we had the technical know how and courage to create content that others could review/criticize.

Recently, I was thinking about the theoretical section of my Ph.D. prospectus (read...procrastinating) and decided to watch their "Couple's Therapy" show on Twitch to pass the time. "Couple's Therapy" is a let's play show featuring Jordan and Meghan Caves-Callarman who are two Saving Throw Show regulars. During the episode, Jordan mentioned that he had created a Kid Friendly role playing game entitled Goobles and Goblins. So I logged onto Amazon and quickly ordered a copy of the game for analysis and am now ready to give you a quick review of the game.

TL:DR so far? You should watch Saving Throw Show and it introduced me to a new Kid Friendly RPG.

What is Goobles & Goblins?

 

Goobles & Goblins is an entry level role playing game designed to be played with younger players and to introduce those younger players to the larger hobby of role playing games. The game was created by Jordan Callarman (now Jordan Caves-Callarman) and its print version was funded through a small Kickstarter campaign back in 2015. The project had 84 backers and is in a similar Kickstarter success category as Jody and my Cthulhu Claus project was in 2012. The game was once supported by a webpage at www.gooblesandgoblins.com, but the site has since expired (hence no link).

Adventures in Goobles & Goblins take place in the magic filled Land of Glythe, but most of the details about the Land of Glythe have to be extracted from the text via complex hermeneutics. What information about Glythe there is within the pages of Goobles & Goblins is pretty wonderful, but it is as sparse as information about Fillory in the first episode of The Magicians. Jordan manages to drop little gems (the official currency of Glythe) to spark the imagination, but also leaves readers wanting a lot more.

How Does Goobles & Goblins Play?

 

Jordan discusses Goobles & Goblins at WonderCon. Image from WonderCon.

Goobles & Goblins features a very simple game engine, so simple that if I go into too much detail here it would serve as a replacement for buying the book. I want Jordan to sell copies, so I'll only touch upon the minimum necessary. Like most role playing games, Goobles & Goblins uses numerical characteristics to represent the effectiveness of characters with regard to specific tasks. In Goobles & Goblins these characteristics are Smarts, Speed, Strength, and Hits. These characteristics are rated on a scale of 1 to 3 (with Hits having possibly more points) based upon the adventuring degree the character attained from one of Lord Maxwell Armstrong's Academy of the Combative Arts, the Underground Rogue's Guild, or the Endless Tower. 

These characteristics are used as modifiers to opposed rolls where the player and GM roll a die and compare final results of die + modifier. It's a simple system that is very good for the age range it is aimed at. I will have some comments below about how I think this could improved in an introductory game, one of Jordan's stated goals is to have resolution of actions be fast and fun and opposed rolls can slow things down.

Key Innovation in Goobles & Goblins.

 

There is one really inspired innovation in Goobles and Goblins and that's its magic system. Many role playing games attempt to either imitate D&D's magic system, create an abstract system like Mage, or to emulate the magic of an existing fantasy world. That's not what Jordan did with Goobles & Goblins magic system. Jordan may not even realize this, but he has invented a magic system that hints at a wonderful and mysterious world of magic and adventure. The magic system of Goobles & Goblins is very simple. Wizards have the ability to summon a fighting companion using a magic artifact called an Animal Totem and they have access to a Magic Bag that contains three different randomly determined magic items each day. Wizards don't have spells. Instead, they are more capable of using the magic items that can be found throughout the world and have access to some additional items from their Magic Bag.

This suggests a couple of things. The first thing this suggests is that the Land of Glythe is in a world where magic was once common place, but where it is now largely relegated to those who possess items of power. For most people these items can be used only a limited number of times, but Wizards are more adept at using these items and might be able to use artifacts for many sessions. Since anyone can use Magic Items, anyone can use the items in the Wizard's Magic Bag, but only the Wizard might be able to use those more than once. There are a host of ideas to explore narratively regarding the Magic Items of Glythe and by having magic be item based Jordan has simultaneously created a system with some game balance elements and added some narrative mystery.

 

Areas for Improvement

 

I like Goobles & Goblins and I think it offers a lot of great ideas that can be incorporated into my own gaming with History and Mystery (my 8 year old twins). It does have several areas for improvement though.

First, I'm not fond of opposed rolls in games in general and especially in games with kids. The key to gaming with kids is to make sure that the focus is on the "play" and not on "rolling" and every time someone picks up a die it increases the time that it takes to resolve conflicts. My recommendation is to have the players make all die rolls. The kids should be rolling to hit, to dodge, and to use skills to overcome challenges against a fixed number. This fixed number should be the average roll (rounded down) plus challenge rating for the obstacle. For example, if a Monster has a Strength of 2 then the difficulty number should be the average roll of a die (rounded down) +2. You can round up the base difficulty for elite monsters. This halves the number of rolls being made on the table and gives a sense of agency to the kids playing.

Second, I think that the art needs an upgrade. While I think the art is whimsical and fun, I think that a more polished cartoony style might have increased the sales of the book. I'm not just saying this because I think that my wife Jody's artwork would work well for Glythe (though it would). I'm saying this because Kid Friendly games are becoming more common and that competition is pretty high. It includes games like Hero Kids and No Thank You, Evil! and I think that Goobles & Goblins has a skeleton that could be competitive with those games.

Third, the book needs work on the layout and content. Jordan Callarman gives us glimpses of Glythe, and they are wonderful glimpses, but I want more. I would like to see some more detail in the setting. This is something that could truly make the game competitive in the Kid Friendly market. I know the market isn't fully developed yet, but Goobles & Goblins has potential and "heart" that could secure a segment of the niche. Certainly a larger segment than the 84 people who backed it on Kickstarter. It most certainly deserves more support than that!

 

A Final Wonderful Touch

 

Look very carefully at that picture of Jordan at WonderCon promoting the game. It shows me a couple of things. The first is that Jordan is proud, rightly so, of his project. More importantly, look at those pictures behind him. Do you know what those are? Those are Goobles. Those are Goobles created by kids who stopped by Jordan's booth. That shows that Jordan "gets it." He knows what this game is about and he wrote a section of the book that displays this too. His "what is a Gooble" section is a delight and it needs to be expanded upon and moved forward. Goobles need to enter our lexicon. They are the monsters/creatures, friend or foe, who populate the imaginations of children. That's what a Gooble is and they are there for the discovering.

Why "Heartbreaker"?

 

My post title calls Goobles & Goblins an RPG Heartbreaker. One might wonder why I would use a pejorative to describe a game I think is very good. I'm not using the term Heartbreaker in the dismissive way that so many use the term today when talking about "Fantasy Heartbreakers." I'm using it in the original sense. When Ron Edwards coined the term "Fantasy Heartbreaker" he stated that they were "truly impressive in terms of the drive, commitment, and personal joy that's evident in both their existence and in their details." The Fantasy Heartbreakers were heartbreaking because we want them to be perfect, but they fall short in some way. For many of the games Edwards was writing about that failing was a lack of real innovation. That's not the case here. There is enough innovation in Goobles & Goblins to provoke a desire to play the game, but there is also "just enough" that it leaves me wanting so much more and I know I'm not going to get that so much more any time soon.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that Jordan does a second edition which streamlines a couple of things, expands upon some others, and goes into great detail about the Land of Glythe with wonderful cartoony art and dynamic layout. The foundation is strong here, just as it was with the Little Brown Books of D&D.

Check out Goobles & Goblins and give it a play at your table.

The Evolution of Savage Worlds Damage and Effects: Toward a Faster, Furiouser, and Funner Process.

When I had my first opportunity to see Savage Worlds in action at a Gen Con demonstration in 2002, I was blown away. There were two things that jumped out at me.

First was the bravery of Shane and crew at Pinnacle. The gaming industry was in the midst of the d20 boom, products like d20 Stargate and d20 Everquest were being released, and it looked like the entire hobby would be Hero or d20 based. Even Green Ronin's innovative Mutants and Masterminds game was d20 adjacent and based on the OGL. For a company, especially a mid-range company that would be more vulnerable to shifts in the market winds, to release a new system in that environment was a truly brave move. Doubly brave considering the push-back they eventually received on their Deadlands d20 line when fans failed to notice that future products were double stat-ed for d20 and Classic rules sets.

Second was how the game lived up to the "Fast! Furious! Fun!" tagline on the cover. If you take the time to watch any of the how to play videos from Saving Throw or Wil Wheaton's TitansGrave series on Geek & Sundry, you will notice that roleplaying games can bog down during combat pretty quickly. This is even the case with good Game Masters (like Wheaton) and experienced gamers (like the Saving Throw crew). Savage Worlds isn't immune to this problem, but it is suffers from it less than many other systems. Combat in the game is definitely Fast and Furious. Whether it is Fun can depend on the Game Master and Players, but I think the default is yes.

Savage Worlds was designed to be able to handle combats of a relatively large nature in very little time and to achieve this goal it incorporated a couple of key mechanics. The first was the use of different categories for different kinds of characters. Characters who are meant to be fodder, or at least easier to defeat than others, are classified as "Extras" and those who are meant to stick around a while - like the Player's characters - are called "Wild Cards." It's a system inspired by games like Feng Shui, but it's a very effective system. The second way that Savage Worlds speeds up combat is through its Keep It Simple/Is It Simple Enough philosophy. A perfect example of this is the "Up, Down, or Off the Table" principle of combat (pg 68 of Savage Worlds Deluxe HC) which was the underlying reason for the recent change to the game's "Shaken" rules. This rules change isn't the first relatively major change in Savage Worlds' combat system and I'd like to take you through many of those changes to show you how the game has changed in order to keep things moving Fast! and Furious! in order to maximize the Fun!

In the 2003 edition of the game (which you can play using the v3 of the Test Drive Rules), combat worked in the following way. A player rolled to hit. If the player hit the opponent, then they had to keep track of how much they hit that opponent by and for each 4 points over the number needed the player added +2 to the damage dealt to an opponent. This damage was resisted by Toughness and could be "soaked" if the victim spent a "Benny" to make the roll. If a player took more than 3 wounds, then that character would suffer the effects of a knockout blow. The effects of this knockout blow depended on the amount of damage the attack did while the character was at three wounds. For example, Hugh Manley has taken 3 damage from attacks earlier in combat. He suffers another attack and it would do 2 points of damage. This would leave Hugh incapacitated, but Hugh could spend a "Benny" to soak the damage to prevent the knockout effect.

This system was fast, but probably wasn't fast enough for the designers because by the time that the 2004 Revised Edition, the bonus damage had been changed from +2 "per raise" to "+1d6 per raise." Given that the average damage of a d6 is 3.5 and that these dice could "ace" (be rolled again and added on a 6) it made it possible to do more damage. The system for incapacitation remained the same for this edition.

Counting how many successes one has achieved, and rolling an additional number of d6s equal to that number, can be time consuming. This is likely why the team changed the rule again in the Explorer's Edition in 2008. You can play this edition using v6.0 of the Test Drive Rules. In this edition, the attacker rolled +1d6 if he or she rolled any raises, but only an additional +1d6. Using the older Incapacitation rules though, this might still end up bogging things down. With this new edition Players made an "incapacitation roll" when their character takes more than their three wound allotment. Now, instead of comparing the amount of damage from the final attack against a chart and deciding whether to soak the damage, the player would decide whether to soak or make an incapacitation roll where if the character rolled high enough then it would still be active. This system was quicker than before and worked pretty well.

Then Necessary Evil came out, and with it characters with enough Vigor to almost always get a raise on an "incapacitation" check and thus who were nigh impossible to knock out of a fight. So this brought about one more change. Like the Explorer's Edition, damage in the Savage Worlds Deluxe edition was an additional +1d6 if the attack had any raises (and only +1d6), but incapacitation changed. This time, any time a character suffers more than three wounds that character is incapacitated...period. A Vigor roll is made to see if there is permanent damage or death, but the character is out of the fight period...unless the character makes a soak roll, but that requires a Benny.  This change made combat much faster, and scaled well with the new Super Hero rules and characters with higher stats.

But combats could still bog down a little and so Pinnacle made one more change, this time to the Shaken rules.  It's a small change, but it has some significant effects on combat. One of the most significant of these changes is that it speeds things up. Players can still spend Bennies to keep their characters moving, but the importance of Bennies has been increased. Given how the rules have been written since day one, this seems intentional. The designers want there to be a good and moving Benny economy.

Since the game was released in 2003, it has seen a number of changes and editions, but it seems that uniformly the question underlying the changes is "How can we make this simpler?" The thing that most impresses me with Savage Worlds is how it strives to capture all the granularity of a complex game like Hero or 3.x while keeping the game as simple as possible. I think that they manage this feat remarkably well.

If you are interested in playing Savage Worlds, and you should be, you can download and play the modern day adventure The Wild Hunt for free. It even includes a recent version of the Test Drive rules. There is a more recent version of the rules in the Lankhmar set, but that is for another post.