The Problem With "Epic" Campaigns

 

Like Hollywood, many GMs are under the impression that the bigger the Threat to Existence, the more compelling the story will be. In my opinion, that's not going great for Hollywood right now and it may not be working great for your campaign either.

What's Bigger?

One problem with Epic storylines is that if you revisit a storyline based on saving All of Existence, your next story has to be even bigger (Dragonball Z)! Because it has nothing else really going for it except spectacle, does it? Sooner or later, you or your players will either get fed up with increasingly outrageous ways to threaten the universe (Star Trek: Discovery) or you'll just reboot or abandon it.

Not every story needs to be about saving All of Existence. Heroes can get just as much or maybe more enjoyment from just saving a village from the Barbarian Raiders. But if the heroes are working to save a village, I bet the village will know about it.

All Alone in the Night

Your heroes fight the spectacular battle with the Forces of Naughtiness, and though it was tough, they prevail. But... I've noticed a trend in Epic Stories where the world isn't necessarily aware it is in any danger, only the heroes and the villains know what is truly going on. And while a heroic victory without seeking glory is very noble, this is a game of Fantasy. Your players might be looking for some positive reinforcement beyond treasure for what they've done. How about a parade, or at least a heartfelt "Good Job" and "Thank You". Your players likely aren't getting thanks in their real life. 

However, all too often the heroes stand alone.

Take Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. During the final battle over Endor, Skywalker has a serious battle of his own going on and the death of Palpatine and Vader may have helped turn the tide of the war. But I doubt anyone except Leia was told about what when down. There are parades for the Rebellion, but not for him. Very noble, the cause is more important than the person.

But! Your players might prefer a different ending, one where the people being saved know that the heroes are there doing what they can. It's all unfolding right in front of them. And when it is all over, the heroes get the recognition they've earned (see Army of Darkness).

All I am trying to say is that if the world is in constant danger of being obliterated every week, what does that say about the world? If the novelizations of Star Wars are to be believed, Republics are made out of tissue paper. 

And the Mandalorian? He just wants The Child back. That's all his story needs.

An Issue of Tone...

I've been silent for a while. Part of it is chaotic home life. Part of it is I am still developing Starpunk, now for SWADE. I'm having difficulty gauging how silly I want to make it (leading me to create the meme above.

I'm leaning somewhere between Star Wars Holiday Special and Lilo and Stitch. Honestly, the games usually end up like Stitch, but I have had a few players that want something more "serious". When I do, they still end up playing Stitch.

I'm mulling over publishing Starpunk. I'll need to scrub it. I began this setting using Daring Tales of the Space Lanes. I'll need to scrub out anything that plagiarizes his work.

Starpunk Update

For those that have been following my blog, I have been working on a sci-fi setting called Starpunk. It's kind of like Daring Tales of the Space Lanes but with an actual setting (and I'm leaning more toward a comedic bent). One of the biggest hurdles has been generating starships because the Sci-Fi Companion generator never sat right with me, and I have worked on a lot of Starship generator ideas. Here's what I have discovered:

a) I shouldn't need a starship generator ruleset. The point of the game is to play, not munchkin the ruleset to see what cool combo can be built.
b) The more complicated the starship builds get, the easier it is to introduce overpowered ships and weapons.
c) The more complicated the system, the less F!F!F! it got.

Well I finally have something worked out, at least for capital scale ships. It borrows concepts from a variety of sources but also required me to change my thinking process.

In every rpg that involves large starships, they have always treated them the same way as they treated smaller vessels: listing each individual weapon and its damage. If you ended up with two capital ships fighting each other, then you were expected to roll for each gun to hit, roll damage for each hit, etc. This takes too long, but thankfully it is rarely ever used since the players don't command these type of vessels in an rpg. What GMs should be concerned about is what affect all of those guns have on our hero's stock light freighter.

Here's my solution:
Don't sweat the details. Worry about the overall effect.

Capital ships have three weapon entries: Port Batteries, Starboard Batteries, and CIDS (Close In Defense Systems).

CIDS are what capital ships would use against small craft. It's treated as a single weapon, but with a RoF. The bigger the ship, the bigger its RoF (rated 2-4). A capital ship can make a single CIDS attack against each enemy fighter or missile per round.

If I do want to run two capital ships duking it out, the the Capital ships fire their batteries at each other. Each battery is considered a single attack roll. A starship can only attack with one side Battery per target unless they draw a face Card, and Ace, or a Joker for their action card. If they do, then the ship has maneuvered in a way to bring both side Batteries to fire on a single target.

Of course, if I'm going to involve more capital ships and fighters, then I would just bring out the Mass combat rules.

My Mad Quest for a Starship Design System.

Whew....where do I start?

First, I came up with a list of things I didn't like about the way the Sci-Fi Companion handled starships. Here were my issues.

1) Buckets o'dice: I don't like them and feel they slow down the game when you have a player who isn't good at math.

2) Buckets o' weapons: I don't want to spend a long time rolling a hit for each of a Battleship's weapons if possible.

3) Do I need a ship design system? Once there is a system, I found there was a desire to break it or munchkin it, even on my end. I don't want players designing their own ship, and if I intend to keep my prep down, there is no reason I should either.

4) A balance between weapons damage and ship Toughness that doesn't make things either an insta-kill or impossible to kill. Looking at the math, the Sci-Fi Companion tends to be one or the other as the scales get bigger.

So what I did was go through ships from a variety of settings and compared them to the weapons available to those settings to find the "sweet spot" or the balance point between damage and Toughness that Pinnacle designs toward. Here's what I found out.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH!

It's all over the place! There is no sweet spot that they design for!

Okay, deep breaths. I'll just have to make one for myself. I created charts of all the various dice combinations (2-6 dice, d4-d12 with explosions accounted for) And decided to place my sweet spot at about 75% chance to get a Shaken result and about 50% chance of Scoring one wound.

Then I recorded the resulting sweet spot Toughnesses. And guess what? They were nearly identical to the vehicle design rules in the Sci-Fi Toolkit. Those figures were also used in Daring Tales of the Space Lanes: Starships of the Galaxy. Wiggy had already dialed into what I wanted.

DTotSL also had a bunch of other rules I intended to copy for starship combat, like Shield Pods and Batteries. Since a there were already a good spread of Starships pre-designed in the book... okay there was no point in reinventing the wheel. I decided to save myself from my growing headache and just use the Daring Tales of the Spacelanes rules. By the way, this is a conclusion it took me 2 months to arrive at. 2 Months of math, study, re-concept, and return.

I considered applying to make Starpunk an official setting, and even asked Wiggy for permissions to use some of his rules. He never got back to me. It's just as well. I think Starpunk should just be a fan setting adaptation for Daring Tales of the Space Lanes, if that's okay with him. So from here on out, everything this site produces related to Starpunk will use DTotSL.

I bow before your skillz, Wiggy!

More on Chases and Vehicle Combat

I've been delving more into Vehicle Chases and Combat, mainly because I want to keep them abstract and not need tabletop miniatures. I've done some personal hacks during game to keep things running F!F!F! but I want to codify my house rules so they aren't constantly changing in game (due to my forgetful nature). Here's what I have so far.

Chases

Honestly, I'm going back to the Explorer's Edition for Chase rules. It handles range and catching your opponent better (imho) than the SWDEX rules. So...

Determine the chase duration. I'd go with 5-10 increments. Pursuers start at 0. Prey start at 1 increment per range of head start (1 short, 2 medium, 3 long, 4 extreme). The goal for the Prey is to reach the end of the chase without being stopped, at which point they escape. The goal of the Pursuer is to stop the Prey before they get there.

In a chase, each vehicle is dealt an initiative card and its occupants act on that card (in the event of a foot chase, each individual character is considered a vehicle and gets their own initiative card). At the beginning of their turn, each vehicle makes a Piloting roll (Driving for cars, Agility for running, etc.) with + 1 if their vehicle is faster than their Prey or Pursuer, +2 if their speed is double their Prey or Pursuer). A success moves the vehicle forward 1 range increment. A raise moves them forward an additional range increment (additional raises do not move the vehicle further).

As always, a draw of a club for an initiative card indicates an Obstacle that must be avoided with a driving roll or the vehicle suffers damage (I'm lifting the modifiers from Daring Tales of the Space Lanes).

Obstacle Table
Card              Modifier
Deuce                -6
3-4                     -4
5-6                     -2
7-10                   -1
Jack-Ace            0

Attacking
The range of the attack is determined by how many range increments there are between Pursuer and Prey. Each range increment counts as a level of combat range (if Prey is one range increment ahead, the range is Short, 2 is Medium range, 3 is Long, 4 is Extreme). When in a fast paced chase, you don't need to worry about exact inches or weapon variables.

Pursuers may fire forward-fixed weapons at their targets. Prey cannot fire forward-fixed weapons at their Pursuers.

Turret Weapons from any vehicle (Pursuer or Prey) may always attack at a -2 Unstable Platform penalty. Passengers in a vehicle that wish to fire personal weapons in a chase count as turrets.

Dogfights

To me, a dogfight is a close combat affair (dare I say melee?). All dogfights occur at Short range so their are no range modifiers to worry about.

To initiate a dogfight, an attacker must pilot their vehicle to close range (0 range increment if it's a Chase) to his target and declare that he is initiating a dogfight.  Other vehicles within Short Range may join this dogfight with a successful Piloting roll, providing a Gang Up Bonus.

Attacking
A dogfight is rapid movement affair best captured in abstract. However, due to such intimate ranges, vehicles are harder to hit. When in a dogfight, attackers must roll against the target's Evasion (Pilot skill + the vehicle's Handling)/2 +2 ). Gang Up bonuses apply.

Turret weapons may always attack, with the -2 Unstable Platform penalty.

Fixed Forward weapons may only be used when the attacker's Initiative card is a 10 or higher. Yes the means that there will be times where both sides are attacking each other in the same turn. It simply represents the furious movement as they dodge each other or fly at each other in a dogfight.

Escaping a Dogfight
Vehicles that wish to flee a dogfight or break the tangle of close combat must succeed a Piloting roll with a raise.

That's my design so far. Any thoughts?

More On Making Pawns

It's official, Glue Sticks are worthless when working with craft foam. The paper just peels off after a while. Instead I'm going ahead with white glue and an old credit card as a glue spreader.

I updated my pawns for The Wild Hunt and look forward to using them at the next con I attend which ought to be Dragonflight.

I added a thick black outline to the figures to make them pop as well as to unify the appearance of all of the pawns, whether they are based on artwork or photographs.

I also cobbled together Daring Tales of the Space Lanes pawns with the help of some familiar robots. But I will have to start drawing the other races for more usable pawns. At least those I will be able to post for download.

As for my old tokens, they will get a paint job and become shaken markers that I will slide under the figures when appropriate.

And here's a short video about the process. Do I really sound like that?

Repeat After Me... Play It RAW Before You Tinker.

I wasn't overly thrilled with the starship rules in the Sci-Fi Companion as many of you might know. So I set out to build a better starship system. I poured over the Sci-Fi Companion and Daring Tales of the Space Lanes over and over again in an attempt to figure out the math and the means. Keep in mind that I hadn't played either RAW. That was a cardinal sin. When I stepped back from the math, broke out the dice and ran them, a lot of information unfolded. Here's what I learned.

A) When calculating Toughness versus die type, there is no flat ratio. This is because of the potential for acing. The two easily identifiable benchmarks are 2/3s for d6 and 1/2 for d12. Example: a 3d6 weapon is at its sweet spot against a 12 Toughness (3x6 = 18 cut in 2/3s is 12). Whereas a a 3d12 weapon is at its sweet spot against an 18 Toughness (3x12 = 36/2 = 18).

B) Both the SFC and DTotSL work just fine as is. No tinkering needed. But there are some differences that made me choose one over the other. And here they are...

Crafting Ships

Both DTotSL and the SFC have example starships. The need to craft your own is actually quite low. Crafting starships is a mini game of sorts.
I used to play a lot of Mekton and by the time that Mekton Zeta Plus came out, I was arms deep into tweaking and crafting Mecha. My game suffered for it because I was focusing too much on the gear and not on the plot.

DTotSL gives you all the basic ships you need. If you want to make it slightly different, add one of the Modifications listed in the back of Starships of the Galaxy. Less headache. less prep. Point to DTotSL.

Shields

In the SFC, shields act like extra Hit Points. It is at odds with how the rest of the game plays. I get it though. "Shields at 20%, Captain!" It's just not my cup of tea.

In DTotSL, shields use the Powers rules and you have limited uses of them. Also, someone has to run the shields and decide which power to use. It's more interactive for a crew member and it uses rules they should be familiar with. Point to DTotSL.

Summary

I'm going to use Daring Tales of the Space Lanes. I highly recommend it. In fact, if you buy Compendium 1 it comes with it's own world creation rules, the free setting rules are in the book, Random hazards, and four adventures. And it's all written by Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams (of Triple Ace Games) & Umberto Pignatelli. Paul wrote the original Sci-Fi Toolkits on which the Sci-Fi Companion is based.

That's not to say that the Sci Fi Comapion isn't good. There is a lot of stuff in there, such as races and alien critters, as well as more refined and balanced race creation. I'm glad I bought it, but I won't be using it for my sci-fi games. It's best that I stick to one setting and the core rulebook at my table so as to avoid confusion.

So from now on, all of my sci-fi work, aliens, worlds, etc., will be in support of Daring Tales of the Space Lanes. I recommend checking out the Free Setting Rules. If that is enough to get you interested, then I suggest buying the DTotSL Compendium 1, DTotSL Extras Pack (which contains Starships of the Galaxy), and Fighter Swarms (Free)!