Apologies

There have been numerous unavoidable problems in my life that have caused significant delays. When it rains, it pours. Things seem ok for now, so I hope to get some work done soon.

Metaplot

I'm enjoying a piece of cheesecake and an espresso after my lunch. I've got settings, timelines, and Metaplot on my mind. Last night I converted my ODT files to Google Docs so I can edit them on my phone at times like this. Today I sorted some of them into a folder for settings that I'd like to write up later, so I'm thinking about what I don't like about other settings.

I think constantly advancing timelines are terrible. I saw it as a customer when I was into "Legend of the Five Rings" and I had to deal with it as a writer when I was working on the Iron Kingdoms setting books. The second volume was seriously delayed because a book for the war game was released that advanced the time line and we had to re - write a lot (and cut out a lot of good material) to follow that.

It just struck me as really stupid to constantly make each book redundant or incompatible. If you're making a war game about Europe, you wouldn't write army books set in different years, but fantasy and Sci Fi games too often do that.

Here are the stats for the Prussians in 1770. Now here are the stats for the French under Napoleon. And the Russians in the Crimean War. Here are the British in WWI: they have machine guns and tanks, so those poor Prussians don't stand a chance. Oh, here's an update for the Russian army list. Now they have commisars and tanks (and by the way, Prussia is gone now).

What's the point of adding more detail to a setting if it's at a different time than the other details? If your campaign follows the same locations at the same time, it's not a problem, but it's a serious problem if you don't want to follow that one path.

If you wanted to play an Iron Kingdoms campaign set in Llael before Khador invaded, too bad! We threw that material away because the book about the invasion came out before we finished the setting book. If you want a Llaelese campaign, you're going to be freedom fighters resisting Khador's occupation.

I never played in Hârn but I heard that they avoided this problem by explicitly not describing anything in the world that happens after a certain date. The books provide background and detail, but they won't contradict your campaign by introducing new events. That seems like the best way to handle things to me.

Possible futures can be described (i.e. "Here's how a war between A and B might go" or "new technologies that might come up soon"), but as soon as you pick one path to follow with the official Metaplot, you cut off all the other options.

Further trimming

I haven't forgotten to update the blog, but for a long time I had nothing to say. Real life became very busy for a while due to job, family, and health issues. I recently returned to working on Impressions with fresh eyes (one benefit of an extended break) and cleaned things up a bit more.

I transferred my files to my Google Drive and now I can work on them on my phone during lunch breaks and other quiet times away from home or office. I prefer to work on my laptop but that only works when I have plenty of time to work. With my phone, I can open a file and edit a paragraph or two while I finish my coffee after lunch.

I'm still slogging through the powers section and I'm having a lot of second thoughts about the content. There are some powers that I included just for completeness but which I don't really have much interest in using in a game. Mind control, for example. Should I include those for people that want to use them or just cut them out to save myself some time?

Sorting Powers

Since I posted the sample character sheet for Goran, I've been trying to sort out the chapter on Powers so that I can do a sample character that uses them. I've been struggling to organize all my ideas. I've got a lot of ideas for how different things can interact but I wasn't sure where to start. After all, there has to be a starting point before all the tweaks and adjustments. I think I've finally settled on a solution.

The base cost of a power will be based on it's duration: Instant (one quick effect that won't last into the next round), Focus (lasts as long as the caster maintains it as an action each round), and Scene (lasts for the rest of the scene). This base cost will be the basis for the target number of the casting roll and the cost to learn the power. The cost to learn the power will also be modified by a multiplier based on versatility and power compared to mundane options. In a wuxia game for example, if everyone has access to super-powered kung fu, then it doesn't matter how much the powers cost because everyone has them. On the other hand, in a fantasy setting with a mundane/magic divide, that cost is more important. If the powers are too cheap, you get D&D where casters can do anything and other characters are just along for the ride.

There are three rough categories of powers: Limited, Flexible, and Unlimited. For the sake of simplicity, this will be set according to each power source (i.e. arcane magic, super kung fu, etc.) instead and not per power. Powers can be limited in various ways. A flexible wizard who wants to blast things with fire and lightning can learn one expensive spell that can be cast as either fire or lightning; a limited wizard would have to learn two separate spells (the same Power twice with different special effects each time). There are several ways to limit powers, but I can't really make a GURPS style point break down for them. I can't say things like "requiring material components is a 5 point disadvantage" or "spells that drain the Body facet instead of the Magic facet are worth a 50% discount on cost" because the actual value of limitations like that will vary from setting to setting or campaign to campaign. I'm just going to provide the 3 categories and a list of ideas for limitations and some thoughts on their potential value in different situations. It will be up to GM in each group to decide how many limitations are needed to count as "Limited" and which limitations are actually limiting. I had already planned to include several examples of power sources to show how the generic powers could be used to represent different things. I think I'll tweak those examples to also show how powers can be limited for a given setting's tone.

When balancing powers, you need to consider not just how powerful they are, but also how powerful other options are. In a world with no ranged weapons, being able to telekinetically punch a dude is pretty useful. If everyone is carrying an AK-47, then it's not so powerful. In a primitive stone age tribe, being the shaman who can magically summon handfuls of salt makes you a handy guy to have around when it's time to make mammoth jerky, but it's hardly an overpowering ability. When your primitive stone age world is being invaded by the hyper-slug empire from space, being the guy who can magically summon handfuls of salt makes you a god on the battlefield and the savior of your planet. I can't foresee everyone's campaign for them, and I'm not going to try. I'm just going to try to make a checklist of things for GMs to consider when designing their own settings so that powers are as limited as they want them to be.

Because honestly, sometimes you want things to be overpowered. If you're running a Star Wars game set during the original trilogy, the Force is fairly understated: a little telekinesis, some telepathy, and a lot of intuition. You don't need a lot of powerful abilities and a blaster at your side is just as good. If you're playing in a setting like the prequel trilogy or the video games, you'll want the Jedi to be over the top and you don't want them to break a sweat when they use their powers in extreme ways.

After taking my latest thoughts about scale and using Facets to fuel powers into account, I can see that some of the powers are really redundant. Some are no longer needed as separate powers because they can be modeled as one power on different scales; some are redundant because they refer to the old preliminary damage system that I had penciled in back when I started working on the system (before I decided on using Facets). For example, "Bolt" is just "Strike" with range; "Blast" is just a scaled up "Bolt"; and, "Energy Drain" is just a "Blast" that targets a different Facet. I think I can easily shorten the list of Powers, which is good because it still looks a little long to me.