History of the Astral Web, Part 3

This is the third in a series of articles covering the in-world history of the Astral Web. I originally wrote the history as 15 or so eras of history. Rather than make one long post, each era is getting its own post.

The Story so Far

In The First Step, mankind had terraformed Mars, and established settlements there.

In The Departure, mankind decided to send a million settlers to establish life around distant suns.

Left at Albuquerque¹

Somewhere deep in space, no one knows where it was for sure, but somewhere out there, something happened. Some scientists think that the fleet fell into a special rift known as a wormhole. Others think the fleet traveled too near the event horizon of a singularity.² The tabloid press theorizes that it was done on purpose … either by a conniving Earth command, or by aliens. Whatever the cause, the fleet was fragmented, and the crew were never revived until they were much farther from earth than anyone had ever dreamed.

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1. This section title was an homage to a running Bugs Bunny gag. In several cartoons Bugs will pop out of a hole in the ground in an unexpected place. He invariably looks at a map and says “I should have turned left at Albuquerque.”↩

2. In my mind, the fleet fell into a natural cascade of nexus points. I wrote it vague, though, so that other GM’s could make it whatever they wanted.↩

Initiative for U13, Take 2

Last week I talked about an initiative system for Unlucky 13. The solution was an attempt to use playing cards to mimik the token system from Troika. This week, I’m throwing that away.

Playtest Results

James read the post and agreed to help me playtest it. The playtest went well, but the chaos of the system could really work against the players. I like to encourage my players to take low stats, but the way the system penalizes a low speed character was (1) potentially deadly and more important (2) just boring/not fun for the player.

James and I brainstormed on some ways to improve it, and I walked away with a system that would work. But the more I thought about it, I really didn’t like adding a new mechanic to the game. U13 is based around d12 rolls. The cards seem foreign.

So I scrapped everything and went back to a system that I wrote long ago for Dekahedron.

The U13 Initiative System, Take 2

The new system is painfully simple: the first to attack is the first to declare their attack.

Consider the following example:

GM:	A troll stands before the bridge and bares his yellow teeth and says “You no pass unless you give me your gold!”
Player:	“I’ll give you 1 gold piece.”
GM:	“No! You give me ALL the gold!”
Player:	“I don’t think so my friend.”

If the next words spoken are the player saying “I run him through with my sword,” then the player gets the first attack. If, instead, the next words are the GM saying “The troll reaches out with his bony claws to attack you! Make a defense roll!” then it’s obvious that the troll moves first.

There’s no reason to make it more complicated than that, except…

What about speed?

What if the player is #Fast as lightning but the troll announced his attack first? The player still makes his defense roll, but he gets to apply his speed as a bonus die if he wishes. A successful defense simply means that troll’s action was detected by the player and the player gets to attack.

If the player is slower than the troll, then it would be a penalty factor instead.

Summary

This system feels more like U13. What do you think? Is it too simple?

I need to see if James will playtest it with me.

Initiative for U13

I was taking a break from the “Knoll” & “Astral Web” posts this week. This post was originally going to be “A Low Fantasy Combat in U13.” James was going to run a fighter through a combat with a skeleton so I could test the system, and I was going to let you know how it went.

It didn’t. It turns out that U13 doesn’t have an initiative system.

The “Unlucky 13” Gaming Engine (“U13” for short) combines elements of Clout and the Crowfield talent system. Because Crowfield assumes that there’s a D&D clone underneath it, that means that D&D’s DNA is a entwined within Crowfield’s.

That means I should be able to use the initiative system from Clout or D&D, right?

Nope.

Turns out that Clout doesn’t have an initiative system, either. But such a system wouldn’t make sense in Clout as it’s a “single roll combat” system: The player rolls once and that determines whether he hit the monster or vice versa.

Inspirations

RPGs have been around for about 50 years now. For pretty much any idea that I can come up with, I can be pretty sure that someone smarter than me has already done it. I’ve played enough games that I know that my thoughts are just evolutions of thoughts I came across before. Three games contributed to my solution.

Dungeons & Dragons

In older versions of D&D you determined initiative by rolling 1d6. In later editions you would add your dexterity modifier. While this is “boring,” it is simple and could easily be ported to U13.

Pros:

• Simple
• Matches U13 dice mechanics
• Roll20 compatible
• Allows some characters to be faster/slower than others
• Allows simultaneous actions

Cons:

• Rather boring and uninspired

Troika

I’ve never played Troika. In fact I never ever heard of it until a few days ago when it was mentioned in a podcast episode that I was listening to. In that game, each character/monster gets tokens that are put into a bag, box, or other container. Additionally an “end of turn” marker is also placed in the container. Tokens are pulled out of the container one by one, and the corresponding character gets to act. When the end of turn marker is drawn, the turn is over even if some players never got a move!

I like this system a lot. It adds variability. The random end of turn event makes combat feel that much faster and more furious. I’d love to use this system, except it does not translate into online play. There’s just no way to drawn tokens out on a bag if I’m playing on Roll20. I suppose that I could place tokens into a physical bag and tell the players what the result was, I prefer something that they can witness for themselves.

Pros:

• Interesting
• Allows some characters to be faster/slower than others

Cons:

• Not compatible with Roll20
• No simultaneous actions

Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds has a different initiative system. In that game each character is dealt a card from a standard poker deck. Characters then act in a weird sequence: play goes from high card to low card, except for “ones” which go first because counting is hard, I guess.¹ Also the system doesn’t allow simultaneous results, ruling that ties are settled buy some arbitrary sequence of suits.²

Because Savage Worlds was wildly popular a while back, Roll20 supports playing cards on the virtual tabletop.

Pros:

• Interesting
• Compatible with Roll20

Cons:

• No simultaneous actions
• All characters are equally fast/slow
• Poker theme seems out of place unless playing a wild west scenario.

The U13 Initiative System

I made a few systems, and experimented with them. In the end, this is what I came up with. It combines the systems above, and uses playing cards.

The first thing that you need to know is that characters in U13 might be #slow as molasses, or they might be #fast as lightning. Of course, most characters won’t be either.

1. Gather all the cards and shuffle the deck.
2. Deal one card to any combatant³ who is #fast as lightning.
3. If any combatants are neither #slow as molasses nor #fast as lightning, deal one card to those players and to those who are #fast as lightning.
4. If any combatant is #slow as molasses, then deal a card to every combatant. At this point every combatant should have one to three cards.
5. If any combatant received a Joker, deal that character two more cards and discard the Joker.
6. The combatant holding the highest card discards that card and can make a move.
   1. If there’s a tie, all the tied combatants are considered to act simultaneously.
   2. If a combatant holds multiple of the highest card (e.g. two kings), he can act twice.
7. If everyone has moved, this turn is over. Start the next turn (go to step 1).
8. The GM draws a card and places it on the table face up. This is called the action card.
   1. The combatant holding the highest card that is higher than the action card discards that card and can make a move.
   2. If no one has a card higher than the action card, this turn is over. Start the next turn (go to step 1).
9. Go to step 7.

Summary

So that’s the system. It’s more difficult to explain than it is to run. I like that you can never be sure if you’ll get a turn, yet fast character do have a better chance. It needs some playtesting, but from what I can tell so far, it has these pros and cons:

Pros:

• Interesting
• Compatible with Roll20
• Allows some characters to be faster/slower than others
• Allows simultaneous actions

Cons:

• Doesn’t match the U13 dice mechanics
• Cards might be weird, but they could be replaced with d12.

What do you think? Is it too complicated? Do you have a better mechanic?

I plan on writing an example in a future post, but for now this post is long enough.

UPDATE: This system didn't survive playtest. It has been replaced. You can read the new system here.

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1. Actually I think this has something to do with poker, but I’ve never played that game.↩

2. Maybe this is a poker thing too?↩

3. If the characters are facing many enemies it will probably make sense to group some of all of the enemies together.↩

History of the Astral Web, Part 2

This is the second in a series of articles covering the in-world history of the Astral Web. I originally wrote the history as 15 or so eras of history. Rather than make one long post, each era is getting its own post.

The Story so Far

In The First Step, mankind had terraformed Mars, and established settlements there.

The Departure

Scarred by eons of human abuse, Earth was on the brink of ecological collapse.¹ Encouraged by their success on Mars, UNICO began work on two new projects. Firstly, the long, difficult task of terraforming Venus was initiated. Secondly, work was started on a much more ambitious project: interstellar colonization.

A caravan of one-thousand sleeper ships was built, designed to carry one million colonists² across the universe at slower-than-light speeds. Along with the colonists, the vessels carried the terraforming and settlement equipment needed to tame almost any hostile world.

The ships were programmed with powerful computers and sophisticated sensors. The equally sophisticated auto-pilot was programmed on a course that would take the flotilla past at least a dozen systems. The computers were programmed to awaken the terraforming crew when the sensors detected a prospective planet.³

The construction of a thousand vessels was by no means an easy task. While there were problems and issues, none were severe and the flotilla was completed merely three years behind schedule.⁴ Three weeks⁵ after lift-off the command crew of each vessel switched on the auto-pilot, and entered the freeze tubes.

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1. In the original version, this was just “To further alleviate Earth’s overcrowding…”↩

2. I picked a million because I’m always afraid that too small of a number will lead to inbreeding issues.↩

3. In my old notes this section ended here, and the next paragraph was part of the next epoch. That’s clearly wrong, however, as the next paragraph is clearly the departure itself.↩

4. Originally I had the ships being built on Earth and launched into space. I think it’s more logical to imagine that the ships would have been assembled in space. Also, the ships were originally built “without a hitch.” It seems any project this large will have it’s share of issues, so I updated the text to reflect that.↩

5. This was originally “three days,” but that seemed too short.↩