The Necessity of Rules in RPGs

I recently came across a discussion debating the validity of this quote by Gary Gygax, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." I'd just like to talk about my experience and opinions regarding the sentiment behind this. First off we should acknowledge that this was probably said in a business sense, meaning that if the DMs knew they didn't need rules or books published by the company, then RPG publishing wouldn't be a viable source of income.

Alexis Smolensk on the Tao of D&D blog has often explained the need for codified rules in an RPG with an emphasis on the Game aspect of Role-Playing Game. I generally tend to agree with what he has written on the subject. The more we treat RPGs as games and less as story-telling devices, the more varied and meaningful our game sessions will be.

However, some of my experience contradicts this sentiment. My best friend, Christian, invented what he called "Mind Games" before I met him or introduced him to D&D. These games were very similar in play to RPGS. He would take the role of narrator and anyone else would play a character. Before the game would start, Christian would describe the setting, and each player would describe their character. He would then describe events based on what we chose to do. There were no dice or paper or pencils or anything to keep records, except sometimes we would draw a map. Consequences of actions were decided by what is now called 'DM fiat' though we didn't know of the term at the time. In many ways it could be called a 'story-game'. Yet the game played out in a manner very similar to our D&D games run by my father at the same time. In my view at the time, it was D&D without any rules.

So, I guess the takeaway is that RPGs don't need rules if a certain style of play is wanted and if you have a good DM.

Fatigue and Exhaustion

Go to the Delvers and Denizens Index

Today I was pondering the problems of fatigue in D&D and how its effects have been modeled throughout the editions and in other RPGs, and a solution occurred  to me. This solution is specific to D&D and its relatives, but should be applicable to any edition.

There are specific actions which cause a character to become fatigued. These are called Fatiguing Actions. A Fatiguing Action could be sprinting for 30 seconds, marching/walking for an hour, participating in combat for 1 minute, or anything else the DM thinks would cause a character to tire.

When a character performs a Fatiguing Action that character loses a set value of HP (this could be variable based on the class of the character, 4 for a magic-user, 6 for a cleric, or 8 for a fighter, or based on HD, etc), 1 constitution point, and takes a -1 penalty to all rolls.

(When I run D&D, PCs don't die at 0 hp, they receive a wound instead. Hp represent the PCs ability to avoid wounds, so this loss of hp reflects a loss of combat ability without being a direct threat to their life. If you run the game so that PCs die at 0 hp, you may want to forego the hp loss depending on how harsh you want your game to be.)

Characters can recover from fatigue by taking a short rest of 10 minutes (1 Turn). (this ties into the rule that PCs have to rest for 1 Turn in 6, and also spend a Turn resting after every combat) This will restore the hp lost, the constitution point, and negate the penalty to rolls. If a character performs a 2nd Fatiguing Action without taking this short rest in between the actions, he must make a system shock roll. If he fails this roll he receives twice the penalty as normal; on a success only the normal penalties apply. This extra penalty also applies if the character has not rested to fully recover from their fatigue.

Example: If a character had performed 3 sequential Fatiguing Actions and had succeeded his system shock roll both times he would have a -3 constitution and a -3 penalty to all rolls. He rests for 1 Turn, bringing his penalties to a -2. He then performs another Fatiguing Action and must make a system shock roll. If he succeeds he receives only the normal -1 penalty, putting him at -3 again; if he fails he receives a -2 penalty bring him down to a -4.

When a character's constitution score reaches 3 they become Exhausted (PCs that start with a 3 constitution are always exhausted). A character will also become exhausted by being active (awake and doing stuff) for extended periods of time (16 hours for humans, if they are awake but physically inactive this period of time can be stretched out to say 24 hours). An Exhausted character will be so tired they have no energy to do anything; their movement rate drops to practically 0 and they can only perform basic actions which require little mental power and cannot perform Fatiguing Actions.

An Exhausted character can try to shrug off the effects of Exhaustion by making a system shock roll. On a success the character can function normally for 1 hour before making another system shock roll. If a character who has shrugged off the effects of Exhaustion wants to perform a Fatiguing Action they must make a system shock roll. On a success they are able to perform the Fatiguing Action and takes the -2 penalties. On a failure the character simply does not have the energy to continue on and isn't able to perform the action, and the character also takes another -1 penalty for their effort.

The effects of both Exhaustion and Fatigue will be completely negated by sleeping For a requisite number of hours (8 for humans). If a character ever reaches a Constitution score of 0, that character dies from exhaustion.

There are details that need to be filled in, like what actions constitute fatiguing actions. I also haven't taken food/water into account. The effects of dehydration and/or lack of food can be very similar to just being extremely tired. This is just an idea, and I'm putting it out there to see what others think of it.

Ruling Classes of Magic

This blogpost got me thinking about the nature of magic in D&D and its relation to social classes and the regions of the Known World. I've been thinking of treating D&D classes as social classes and vice versa for awhile now, but now I've come up with some new ideas that will really differentiate the different regions of the Known World.

The basic premise of my idea is this: each country/region of the Known World has a specific type of magic is common among an elite class which holds political power. This goes hand in hand with my continued attempts to differentiate the types of magic mechanically, Cleric magic works different than Wizardly magic, which is different than Elves/sorcerers, which is different than witchcraft, etc. Each country would have a ruling class which are these specialized magic user types, one country is ruled by magic-users, one country is ruled by druids, one country is ruled by clerics, etc., and any other form of magic is rare in that country and viewed with suspicion. Of course the magic user class may share power with another class, similar to medieval Europe where the church and the nobility ruled together. The clothes and attire and ritual accouterments of different types of magic users would make it immediately obvious that these characters are foreigners and there would probably be laws forbidding the use of 'foreign' magic in major population centers. Even in their native country magic users would have to follow strict rules of how and when they can use their magic.

So to apply this to the Known World there are a few obvious places I think this can apply. Glantri stands out first, as it is described in the expert set as being a magocracy. This would be where vancian magic user would originate and their center of power; each ruler in Glantri would have to be minimum of a 9th level wizard.The other easy choice is placing clerics as the center of religious and magical power in the empire (as designated in this post) similar to the status of the orthodox church in the Byzantine Empire. Alfheim and other centers of Elven population would obviously be ruled by their specific brand of magic and maybe a mostly human land could be ruled by Sorcerers (Humans with elven ancestry who inherited some magical abilities), maybe Wendar, I'll have to think about that.

That leaves the Northern Reaches, Ethengar, Atruaghin clans, Ylaruam, and Rockhome. Some form of Shamanism could be prevalent in Ethengar and Atruaghin. The northern reaches would use some sort of Runic magic, there's no shortage of D&D rules for that have been proposed, The northern reaches gazetteer and historical vikings setting for 2nd edition just to name two examples. Rockhome I would prefer to have a form of magic specifically tied to smithing somehow. A modified form of the dervish class from the gazetteer could be used for Ylaruam, or maybe a modified clerical class based on the Imam. Another option for Ylaruam, if I want to disregard most cannon information, is creating an entirely new religious ruling class based on Zoroastrianism.

I've also been considering the origin of Druids/bards and how to make them reflect their celtic origins better. We don't know much about the ancient druids, but it does seem they acted more as judges and priests and had authority covering political matters as much as spiritual matters, and the nature loving druids of D&D are completely unrelated to historical druids. Given that, I think maybe the best place for a druid ruled country might be the Isle of Dawn as it's supposed to be the Mystara analog to Britain/Ireland.

I also will probably have Hule be the origin of Necromancy which uses a form of Blood sacrifice powered magic. We haven't gotten there in our interview yet, but in one of the campaigns my dad ran for us, one of my sister's friends was given a special dagger and magical spells/abilities. He had to use the dagger on himself to draw certain amounts of blood from different parts of the body to enact his spells. I think this would go well with our version of Hule since the Master commanded hordes of undead we had to defeat.

The last option I'm thinking about is Alphatia. Since we already have assigned Vancian spell casters to Glantri, I think Alphatia should be different. One option that intrigues me is to make all the 'magic-users' of Aphatia be able to use psionics. We could keep the genetically different groups of Alpatians, and have the  purebloods have psionic abilities and that is how they maintain their rule of the less gifted natives.

Another option for Alphatia is to focus on the Mystara-Atlantis side of things. I always liked the culture and pseudo-technology presented in the Disney Atlantis movie, which I think ties in well with some elements from Eberron. I've been reading the Eberron Campaign Setting book recently and I really want to port the idea of the setting into Alphatia. The Alphatian Empire could be tweaked to be similar to the Galifar Empire. The common magic based technology is already present in a lot of the Alphatian material and fits my vision of what the Disney atlantis could have been like before they lost their tech. Both Alphatia and Ebberon have skyships. And I can see the dragon marks as being manifestations of pure Alphatian bloodlines. I think warforged would easily fit into this version of Alphatia. And Artificers could be the Alphation version of the magic-user, the council of 100 wizards are not vancian spell casters, but renowned artificers.