Brent P. Newhall's Blog

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival over at Mad Brew Labs is on Growing the Hobby. I quote:

While I don’t think the hobby is disappearing, by any means, I don’t see it expanding by leaps & bounds either. I’d personally like to see it grow, and I would like to hear what the RPG Blogosphere has to say.

“Blogosphere.” :shudder: I so hate that word. Ah well;  not their fault.

Can It Grow?

"Sprout is now growing up" by BONGURI on Flickr

Not to be negative, but I honestly suspect that there’s little room for growth in the RPG industry. And that’s okay.

I originally wrote half a dozen long paragraphs describing each demographic’s limited potential for RPG sales, then remembered that demographics are a terrible way of measuring anything these days.

So let’s put it this way: What itch does an RPG scratch?

Players get the ability to live the life of a more interesting person, in a way that is deeply interactive and long-form.  GMs are able to create worlds and tell complex stories.

Quick, walk into a sports bar, and find me somebody who wants to put a lot of thought into crafting a long-form story.  Find me somebody who wants to give up one night a week to sit around with a bunch of friends and actively use their imagination.

Most folks just don’t value that. Sure, they’ll watch a fantasy movie — because they’re watching it.

This is not a dig against “mundanes.” Most people just don’t value the same things that geeks value.

How To Grow It?

I can think of a couple of things.

One: The vast majority of RPGs focus on geek settings. I challenge you to find an RPG setting or product that doesn’t assume at least a fantastic or science fiction element.

(I always found it telling that the example shows in Primetime Adventures, which is about creating dramatic TV episodes, skews strongly towards SF/F shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

What if there was an RPG where you play a basketball star?  Or a private investigator?  Or a nurse in an ER?

Two: The systems have to be simpler and require fewer materials. There are only so many people in the world willing to go out and buy special dice for a game. (And since when was that considered an acceptable additional cost of playing a game? Board games don’t assume this; they come with the dice, board, etc.)

Three: The games have to provide a stronger initial punch. Most folks don’t want a multi-year commitment out of their game; they want Scattergories. Character creation (for most) is work with no obvious, direct reward.

Imagine an RPG that comes with two dozen vibrant, pre-generated characters and a dozen well-crafted, quick adventures. Want to play an adventure in an hour or two?  Grab a character and go.

I’m sure there are others. How would you grow the hobby beyond the folks who already play it?

This is part 4 in a series of posts about an RPG system that uses D&D 4E mechanics for a giant robot system.

D&D 4E simplified the skill list dramatically. Let’s look at each one, and figure out which ones can be transferred to a giant robot combat universe directly, which will need to be tweaked, which must be dropped, and what we must add.

• Acrobatics – OK
• Arcana – Not a fit. Mecha characters rarely tap into mystical energies, but they do often tap into computer systems.  So let’s replace this with Hacking.
• Athletics – OK
• Bluff – OK
• Diplomacy – OK
• Dungeoneering – Nope. Let’s replace this with something like Cosmonautics — knowledge of technology and engineering used in outer space.
• Endurance – OK
• Heal – OK
• History – Keep it, though it’s likely less useful.
• Insight – OK
• Intimidate – OK
• Nature – Keep it, but expand it to include knowledge of space habitats and such.
• Perception – OK
• Religion – Nope (remember, it’s SF, so we’re all rationalists in the future). But if Religion tracks a character’s knowledge of religion, how about a skill that tracks knowledge of mecha systems? Let’s say Nerdiness, in honor of that blonde military otaku in Full Metal Panic!
• Stealth – OK
• Streetwise – OK
• Thievery – OK

I’d also add Martial Arts to this list — the ability to defend oneself in unarmed combat.

In terms of feats, it’d be a waste of time and space to list every single feat that won’t apply to a mecha universe. But let’s identify a few feats that’d be particularly useful:

• Massive Machinery Operation — The ability to pilot and operate spaceships, doomsday weapons, etc.
• Mecha Intuition — You can learn to pilot an unfamiliar mecha with surprising speed (halve the negative penalties on attack rolls when piloting an unfamiliar mecha).

In the first post in this series, I laid out some basic ideas for a role-playing system for playing in giant robot universes, using a straight port of the D&D 4E system. In the second post, I defined basic stats and attributes for PCs and their mecha.

Today, I’m going to lay out the stats needed for a mecha, and the stats needed for a PC:

Mecha Character Sheet

• Name
• Manufacturer — Corresponds to race
• Class
• Size
• Speed
• Initiative
• Defenses
  • AC
  • Fortitude
  • Reflex
• Ability Scores
  • Strength
  • Constitution
  • Dexterity
• HP
• Sparking
• Repair Value
• Repair Operations Per Day
• Weapons
• At-Will Powers

While we’re at it, let’s define a PC sheet:

Player Character Sheet

• Name
• Level
• Military Organization
• Class
• XP
• Speed
• Initiative
• Defenses
  • AC
  • Fortitude
  • Reflex
  • Will
• Ability Scores
  • Strength
  • Constitution
  • Dexterity
  • Intelligence
  • Wisdom
  • Charisma
• Passive Insight
• Passive Perception
• HP
• Bloodied
• Surge Value
• Surges Per Day
• Action Points
• Weapons
• Skills
• Feats
• Encounter Powers
• Daily Powers
• Utility Powers

Gundam Robot by kcherif on Flickr

Last weekend, Saalon and I discussed a straight conversion of D&D 4th Edition for a universe of anime-style “real robot” giant robot combat. So, more like the serious war stories of Gundam than the goofy fistfights of Gigantor.

Scales of War

The first problem is one of scale. Giant robots operate weapons that can pulverize many individual soldiers in one hit. So, let’s identify a rule:

Mecha operate on a scale 10x that of the human scale. So, mecha weapons do 10x the damage of a human weapon, mecha are about 10x bigger than humans, etc.

As a result, mecha combat cannot properly include individual human units, and mecha units are simply too large to represent accurately in human combat. Humans can be grouped into units large enough to represent at mecha scale, and mecha units may be representable as abstract forces, but for now:

Mecha combat occurs on its own grid, which does not represent individual human units.  Similarly, human-scaled combat does not show mecha units.

Okay, so you have pilots inside mecha.  Here comes our next big problem: the player controls both a pilot character and a mecha.  Do both get stats?  Do both get powers?  How does one influence the other?  Does a character’s Constitution really have any affect on piloting the mecha?  Even more, do we want to simulate reality that closely?  Should a mecha have a Will score?

First, let’s think about the six basic stats.  The three body-related stats — Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity — all make sense for a mecha.  The three mental stats — Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma — don’t.   So:

Pilot characters have all six stats, while mecha have only Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity.  Any mecha attacks targeting those three stats are assumed to be targeting the mecha’s stats, rather than the pilot’s.  All other attacks target the pilot’s stats.

For defenses, we’ll take a similar tack:

Mecha have Reflex and Fortitude defenses, but no Will defense.

Powers

How about powers?  Well, let’s think about them for a second.

At will power are everyday attacks and maneuvers.  They do a little more damage or otherwise provide a minor advantage over a straight gun shot or beam sword swing.

Encounter and daily powers are special moves, only used when the situation is dire.  Examples in anime include a Seed Break in Gundam Seed and Berserker Mode in Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Those are represented as special abilities that come from within the pilot.

So, here’s something different:

Mecha have at-will powers.  PCs have encounter and daily powers.

This actually works nicely with the standard level progression in 4E.  Mecha provide an array of first-level at-will powers; the basic stuff that this mecha is good at.  As your PC progresses, he or she picks up new maneuvers (encounters and dailies) that he or she can do regardless of the mecha piloted.

At some point, I’d like to add certain mecha encounter and daily powers that are only available to players at levels 10 or 20.  But for now, we’ll keep it simple.  Mecha only provide basic at-will powers.

More later as I think through this.