Rules of Communication in My Homebrew Setting

In life, we all have our challenges. One of mine, as an autistic person, is communication. Don't get me wrong--I have a Master's in English Literature, I write constantly, and I know how to understand and be understood. But there are certain social cues that are not obvious to someone like me, and I've grown fascinated by the unspoken rules of communication that seemingly everyone else knows and I don't. That fascination is going to be expressed here, in this guide, and it will explore the different expectations people have for communicating, what is considered polite and rude, and the consequences of communicating in a way that other people find strange. As regular readers know, this will entail examining all eight of the cultural groups in my homebrew setting; this will add a fun dimension to roleplay where different cultures have different tendencies and preferences. So let's get started with the rules of communication in Evanoch:

Why I Use a Combination of 3.5 and 5E Rules

It's commonly considered pretty standard to play the current edition of a game. Most current D&D players play 5E and are abuzz about the upcoming new edition. I think that has a lot to do with the current generation of gamers being relatively new to tabletop games, which is in no way a criticism--you have to start somewhere. But as a more long-time gamer, my perspective is different. I was introduced to the tabletop world with D&D 3.5, a revision of the game's third edition. And I became very familiar with the rules of 3.5--so familiar, in fact, that I would entertain friends by referring to exact page numbers and page positions of specific information they were asking for. I had genuinely memorized the players handbook. Learning 5E was a long process; I had many things to unlearn and relearn. But ultimately, they are relatively similar systems, and each has its strengths. That's part of why I use a combination of 3.5 and 5E rules when I run D&D. 

Let's start with some information on 3.5 for those who are unfamiliar. Generally, in its time, it was a beloved system, but many complained that it was overly clunky. This idea is what led to the creation of Pathfinder, a game that set out to "fix" 3.5's flaws. (I haven't played Pathfinder personally, but I own the manual, and I agree that it looks a bit more elegant--you can also see where 5E was inspired by some decisions.) Nevertheless, 3.5 has some strengths that it's hard to ignore. My favorite thing about 3.5 was the way skills were structured. Where in 5E, you choose a few skills (depending on your class) to be boosted by your proficiency bonus, in 3.5, you would be given a bank of skill points at every level, which you would then invest in the skills you saw fit. There was a limit on how many skill points you could put in a skill, linked to your class levels, to prevent entirely broken numbers, but it still got out of control quickly. So what was great about this structure if it already sounds broken? 

It helped players in a number of ways. Firstly, it gave more control over what a character is good at to the player. Instead of a mere proficiency bonus, I could decide that my character had really focused on a few skills. This is incredibly useful for rogues, who need sizable bonus to skills like stealth and deception to be reliably helpful. (Of course, those skills were different things in 3.5--more on that later.) Players could also more easily choose to become fairly talented in multiple things, becoming jacks-of-all-trades in a way that 5E doesn't really allow for. (3.5 also had a system for making skills easier to access for certain classes where it cost double points to invest skill points in a skill that wasn't in the domain of your class. It was something I enjoyed for the added strategy of choosing a class and skills, but I know many people disliked it. I have abandoned it in my homebrew.) This skill system allowed for greater control and creativity with skills. 

Another advantage is the ability to redirect a character in the middle of a campaign. In 5E, when you want to change your character's path, you can change classes, but a lot of your character is set in stone. Your skills remain as they are, and you don't get to add new skill proficiencies. But in 3.5, you had the ability to totally control your skill points. You could then entirely change where your new skill points go, shifting all of your character's focus in the new direction. By way of example, I am currently playing a character who has six levels of rogue as a con artist, but has recanted her dishonest ways and become a healer with four levels of life domain cleric. I lived and died by my skill checks before as a rogue, but now, my skills as healer are very low. I'm playing a healer with a +13 to Deception and only a +4 to Medicine, and I can't really do much about that. If we were using the 3.5 skills system, I could have spent all my level-ups as a cleric putting points into Medicine so that I'd be more suited for my new role. It's worth noting that my situation is driven by role-playing, so this suggests that 3.5's skill system is more attuned to role-playing than 5E's. 

Finally, 3.5's skill system allowed players to become more powerful with specific skills than 5E allows, and I would argue that this does not break the game, but instead allows for more faithful role-playing. As I noted above, it was possible to get pretty crazy numbers for your skills in 3.5 if you were strategic. I played a cross-class Cleric of Boccob (the god of magic)/Wizard when I was first learning to play, and he managed to get a +18 in Bluff (3.5's version of Deception) despite being lower level than my 5E rogue/cleric. In practical game terms, this meant that sometimes, a character was almost guaranteed success on a roll. This happens in D&D, sometimes with the attack rolls of mighty warriors and other times on the Performance checks of talented bards. With this skill system, a sufficiently skilled character could reasonably have +18 to a skill, which would indicate that they're so good at the skill, they would almost never fail at it. I don't see it as a broken game so much as a way to acknowledge that a character is so good at something that they reliably succeed at it. This is especially rewarding as a player--feeling as though you can consistently do well at something is rewarding even when experienced narratively. It empowers your players. 

Another feature of 3.5 worth considering was its handling of feats. In 5E, you get the choice of a feat or something else (an ability score improvement when leveling, for instance). In 3.5, you get a feat independently of the ability score improvement every three levels. These feats are, as they are in 5E, exciting ways to boost your character. But in my experience with 5E, no one really takes the feats. Ability score improvements are generally more helpful, and the feats come off as optional. In 3.5, the feats were a regular and enjoyable part of the game. Every three levels, you would get to build on your character with powerful abilities, some which unlocked more powerful abilities down the line. These feats, made a proper part of the game, were very rewarding and helped make characters feel more heroic and exciting. 

I have one last thing that I borrow from 3.5 in my games, but it's not exactly a rules consideration. I really like that 5E includes multiple very distinct pantheons of deities in the appendices--I think that it allows DMs and players a wide range of possible experiences. However, in my experience, that list of pantheons is misunderstood. Many of the players I have run games for use the entire list as a roster of deities instead of using each individual list of deities as the group. It's the kind of small detail I'm loath to correct, but it ends up kind of breaking the game for me. On the other hand, I've written quite a bit about the 3.5 deities in my homebrew setting, so I choose to keep this more limited range of gods. Part of the reason, too, is that some players appeal to gods randomly and strike them from the list when the interaction goes sour. A smaller group means that strategy runs out of gas more quickly. Remember that your comfort zone as a DM is important too!

Beyond those things, 5E is either an updated, smoothed out version of 3.5 or an expansion on it, and I don't make many further distinctions. I do need to add, though, that although I prefer the 3.5 skill system, I do not prefer the 3.5 list of skills. As many people decried back in the day, making "Move Silently" and "Hide" different skills only meant that sneaking characters were twice as likely to fail. "Spot" and "Listen" were similarly frustrating distinctions, as was "Spot" and "Search" to many players. It wasn't that the list was bad--it was just too broad to be able to be strategic in-game, and it was hard to spread your skill points when some skills had a required balanced skill. So I use the much cleaner, more refined list from 5E, but with the 3.5 system of skill points. 

What is that system? I've reproduced it below for your use in your own homebrew games:

Class	1st-Level Skill Points	Higher-Level Skill Points
Barbarian	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Bard	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Cleric	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Druid	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Fighter	(2 + INT modifier) x4	2 + INT modifier
Monk	(4 + INT modifier) x 4	4 + INT modifier
Paladin	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Ranger	(6 + INT modifier) x 4	6 + INT modifier
Rogue	(8 + INT modifier) x 4	8 + INT modifier
Sorcerer	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Warlock	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier
Wizard	(2 + INT modifier) x 4	2 + INT modifier

I've added Warlock to this table with the same skills as the other main spellcasters, but feel free to adjust any of these numbers to suit your needs best. Every time a character levels up, have them spend their earned points to increase it. If you're using a digital character sheet maker, you may need to override the settings to get this to work--I've employed magical items with the same effect to get it to show up right on a character sheet in similar situations. 

So, I recommend that you give this skill system, the old feats rules, and whatever worldbuilding details suit you best a try. You may find that your players enjoy the increased sense of empowerment and improvement as characters. And remember--gaming inspiration can come from anywhere: the past, present, or future, inside or outside the gaming world. Whatever it is for you, find it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral, a list of interesting cities to use in your game, and an expanded list of thieves cant. Until next time, happy gaming!

Rules for Commanding and Sustaining Armies

A while ago, I created a series of custom classes that cover ideas not represented by traditional D&D classes. Among that list was a class called the Commander, whose powers derive from being able to lead and empower allies to victory. And since the birthplace of D&D (and thereby tabletop games at large) is in miniature wargaming, it's not a huge stretch to add the commanding of armies to the game. In this guide, I will outline the rules required to allow your players to command armies with or without the Commander class--read on for the full treatment on how to expand the scale of your battles. 

The first step is in building an army. If you're using the Commander class, build an army means using the Persuasive skill to convince people to join you. Without using the class, you can also use a Persuasion, Performance, or even Intimidation check to get people to join your team. You might also pay soldiers to be a part of your cause. For paid soldiers, use the following breakdown: 

• Infantry: 5 copper per day
• Archers: 7 copper per day
• Heavy Armor: 8 copper per day
• Cavalry: 9 copper per day
• Lieutenants (can command smaller units of soldiers): 1 silver per day
• Mages: 1 silver per day
• Siege Engineer: 1 silver per day
• Healers: 15 copper per day
• Player Character Level NPCS (at roughly the same level as the party's level): 2 silver per day

As you can see, building and sustaining an army can get expensive quickly. A contingent of 50 people in a balanced unit might include 20 infantry, 12 archers, 8 heavy armor, 3 lieutenants, 3 mages, 1 siege engineer, 2 healers, and 1 leveled NPC. This would cost a total of 368 copper pieces, which translates to 3.68 gold pieces. And this is only the cost of paying the salaries of the soldiers. In the section on sustaining armies below, we'll also take into account the cost of feeding them and keeping them supplied with gear. In some campaigns, your players will have more than enough money to pay a small army, or even a fairly large one, but there are other concerns to worry about besides money. We'll get to that soon; for now, let's finish building the army. 

When your players contract these soldiers, you will probably want to give the important ones names and personalities. Your players can just interact with nameless, faceless soldiers, but it's much more vivid and exciting when the players start to get to know some of the NPCs around them. To that end, you can use this database of NPC names and personalities to make it easier to make them a part of the game. At the very least, you want to give a first name to the specialized units. Everything in the bulleted list above from Lieutenants down should be given a name. If the party utilizes the army well, figures like healers and player-levelled NPCs will become like extensions of the party, so it's important to be able to characterize them. 

You also want to have the players convince the soldiers of the validity of the cause they're fighting for. Even if the party ultimately misleads the army about their cause, most of the soldiers are going to want to know what it is they're going into battle to do. You may incorporate Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation challenges to determine this, and you might just have most soldiers accept a simple answer if the paycheck is good enough. 

Then we have the second step: sustaining the army. Paying them ensures that they show up, but you have to care for the soldiers' needs as well. The most pressing consideration in this vein is in food. As commanders of the army, the party can arrange for mass amounts of rations to be delivered to the army from nearby towns; you can apply a 2 copper piece per day charge for every soldier. For the hypothetical group of 50 soldiers I used above, this would translate to 1 gold piece per day to feed everyone. But you don't have to buy food. You can also have your soldiers forage and hunt. If one-quarter of the army hunts and forages in woodlands or other abundant areas, they can feed the entire army for one day. If the area is less plentiful in terms of food, one-half of the army must hunt and forage to feed the army for the day. If the army decides to pillage a farm, the entire army can eat for one hour's worth of work from one-quarter of the army. However, hunting in others' hunting grounds will upset the locals, and repeated instances of it may result in a conflict between the locals and the army. Similarly, pillaging a farm will enrage the locals, who may go so far as to attack the soldiers. 

There are other concerns with sustaining the army as well. Their gear must be kept in proper condition or risk losing its effectiveness. The party can pay 1 copper piece per soldier per day to maintain all gear at the soldiers' own work. They can also hire or designate a quartermaster, whose job is to maintain all of the army's gear--the quartermaster rank confers an additional 5 copper pieces per day to the chosen soldier. We also need to worry about the soldiers' morale. After losing soldiers, some of the other soldiers will be upset and may consider leaving the army. Disagreements with the party can also lead to this reluctance to keep fighting. The party can use Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation in order to influence the soldiers. In general, a change to several soldiers' moods or thinking should ripple through the rest of the army, with the other soldiers updating their thoughts to match the others--but this won't be true of difficult-to-believe ideas. 

The final ingredient in this recipe for armies is in the actual commanding of those armies in battle. In order to effectively issue orders to the soldiers, the party must be able to be heard by those soldiers. In the pitch of battle, this can become an issue. This is where Lieutenants become highly helpful. The Lieutenants can act as intermediaries, relaying commands from the party to the soldiers. This still means that the Lieutenants must be close enough to the party to be able to communicate. One workaround to this is through the common D&D item which allows people to communicate at a distance without issue. I've heard many names for this item--the name doesn't matter too much--what matters is that the right people on the battlefield hear the commands. 

Commanding an army is about more than telling troops where to go. It also means setting objectives for the soldiers. Some sample commands that can allow your troops to execute specific actions: 

• Taking a Location: You can tell your troops to assault a specific area. It may be an attack on a fortified location, or it may be a race to take that position first. Troops will fight off enemies in an effort to keep this position. 
• Hold the Line: You can tell your troops to defend a location. With a DC 15 Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation check, your party can grant your soldiers a +1 to AC while defending. 
• Eliminate a Specific Enemy: You can direct your troops to focus their assault on a specific enemy. This can be especially useful in the enemy forces have healers, mages, or other experts. 
• Rallying Cry: You can direct your troops to regroup and empower them. With a DC 15 Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation check, your party can grant all your soldiers a +1 to attack for three rounds. 
• Clean-Up: You can direct your troops to take prisoners or wipe out remaining troops. When your troops have a decisive advantage, you can end the battle earlier by pushing your troops to overwhelm the enemy forces. In this situation, the party's army gains advantage to overpower the remaining enemies. 

The final ingredient for commanding an army is in the actual damage done by the soldiers. We could choose to run standard combat to determine the fate of battles, but with so many soldiers involved, the numbers get out of control quickly. That's why I've simplified army combat to reflect average damage output rather than making the DM roll attacks for every character. Here are the health and damage ratings for each of the soldiers listed above: 

• Infantry: 5 damage/turn, 15 hp
• Archers: 5 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Heavy Armor: 5 damage/turn, 20 hp
• Cavalry: 10 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Lieutenants (can command smaller units of soldiers): 3 damage/turn, 18 hp
• Mages: 12 damage/turn, 15 hp
• Siege Engineer: 12 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Healers: 3 damage/turn, 20 hp
• Player Character Level NPCS (at roughly the same level as the party's level): variable--at least 15 damage/turn, at least 30 hp

On any given turn, soldiers automatically deal their damage per turn to the enemy within reach of their choosing. They also take proportional damage from the enemies striking them on the enemies' turns. When a soldier on any team reaches 0 hp, they are rendered unconscious. At the end of the battle, unless actions by an army overrule this, half of the unconscious troops die, and the other half are collected by the remaining troops and nursed back to health. It's a good idea to have the players in the party roll for their attacks and damage and have NPC soldiers roll to attack the party, as this keeps them engaged with the combat, but spare yourself the details of the many soldiers and apply regular damage when player characters are not involved. 

There you have it: all the rules you need to add entire armies into your game. If your players are excited by the grand scale of this combat, you can build a campaign around it. Rather than simply defeating the ultimate villain, the party must reckon with their assembled armies. It would shape up to a dramatic and strategic showdown between the party and the commander of the opposed armies. With complex terrain and other complicating factors, you can keep these battles fresh. So get out there, build up your armies, and raise combat to the next level. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to use historical research as inspiration, how to implement Hope and Despair as a storytelling mechanism, and a one-shot adapted from the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Design a Custom TRPG

Much of the world of TRPGs--and much of this site, for that matter--is about Dungeons & Dragons. But there are many other games out there which provide different experiences for players, both well-known in the world of TRPGs and relatively unknown. What matters with a TRPG system is that the game's rules support the type of experience you want your players to have. And you can create your own system to meet the needs of your campaign and your players with a bit of time and attention; all it takes is thinking about what the players should experience. Read on for a guide to designing your own tabletop roleplaying game. 

I personally have created two tabletop games from scratch. I want to keep my descriptions of them here minimal, as I want to be able to retain publishing rights for later, but I will provide examples by way of these games in addition to directing the creation of a brand new TRPG system, one which revolves around the solving of mysteries (something near and dear to my heart). The first step is to devise a setting. You want something that is somewhat unique. For my first custom TRPG, which I call Algernon's Tower, I wanted a high-flying, spectacular combat system that allowed the players to creatively use their abilities. So Algernon's Tower is about combat, and in order to provide a variety of settings to enrich combat, I set the game in a dizzying tower where each floor of the tower provides a different setting: a lava level, an Old West level, a creepy museum level, etc. The second game I created I call A Time and Place, and it is dedicated to the concept of time travel; players choose a time and place from a set of options and can play sessions in three different time periods in that setting, trying to use time manipulation to creatively solve problems. The game is supposed to feature the setting heavily, so I chose places and time periods that would be broadly appealing, such as 1750s London or 1870s San Francisco. Finally, we have our to-be-designed system involving a mystery concept--we want a unique setting that also serves the mystery format. We might choose Victorian England for the game, casting it as a classic Sherlock Holmes-style game. We might similarly choose 1930s America and run a film noir-style campaign. But for the sake of making something that is more unique, let's pick a less reality-based setting. I am going to go with 1970s California; that way, we get a more modern setting that still doesn't have the narrative-destroyer that is the cell phone, and the setting is broad enough that practically any story could fit into it. 

Next, we need to consider win conditions and lose conditions. For some games, this is simple: as in Algernon's Tower, winning means being the best at combat, and losing means being defeated. It's more nebulous for A Time and Place; the GM will select a certain condition for winning, like "prevent such-and-such disaster from happening," and the players win when they prevent it; because the players can time travel, there is no such thing as a real loss condition, only more time spent trying to solve the problem. For the mystery system, which we'll call Truths for Sleuths (TfS) from here out, we need to know how the players win or lose. Let's say that the players must solve the crime correctly before a certain deadline in order to win; dying, identifying the wrong suspect as the perpetrator, or running out of time constitutes losing the campaign. 

Then we get to my favorite part of the design process: mechanics. This may be a surprise for regular readers of this site; I am a very storytelling-and-roleplaying focused GM, so designing numerical values is not exactly my wheelhouse. But it is very fun to determine mechanics because this is where your game really comes to life. You decide in this step how the players engage with challenges, and that means a great deal to the players. There are two main elements to the mechanics you'll need: player abilities and game mechanics. Let's start with abilities. 

In Algernon's Tower, players are outfitted almost entirely along the lines of combat. I created a series of five attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Thought, and Socialization) with five skills under each attribute (hit points and melee weapons under Strength, reading others and screen presence under Socialization). [Screen Presence refers to the fact that the fights in Algernon's Tower are broadcast live on television, and there is a mechanic whereby players advance through their powers by attracting more viewers.] Between these 25 skills, every action in combat should be represented. This is a system, which like most TRPGs, has a set selection of skills that the player chooses proficiency in. Your system doesn't have to work like that, though: in A Time and Place, the players choose their own skills altogether. It's a relatively simple system. Each player starts with a pyramid, with one slot at the top, two on the next rung, three on the next, and all the way down the the bottom. The pyramid has six rungs--one for each type of dice included in a standard set. The player places their most proficient skill in the top rung and rolls a d20 for it; the two next-most skilled areas go on the next rung down and roll d12s for their checks, and so on down the line. Players can choose any skill they choose; the more specific, the greater their successes, and the more broad, the lesser their successes (all as a mechanism to balance narrow versus broad skills). Now we need to design the player abilities for TfS. 

The most important thing in designing player abilities is in asking how they serve the players. This means we need to be thinking about how people will actually play the game, and that means you'll probably need to playtest your game to ensure that you've covered everything. Before you get there, though, you have to make some educated guesses. Let's shoot for a system that's somewhere in between Algernon's Tower and A Time and Place, a system that allows the players to use an array of skills, but with enough structure to allow for the creation of unique characters. For that, let's have a small number of attributes to work with and a slightly larger collection of skills related to them. I'm imagining three overall detective archetypes with a handful of skills underneath them, perhaps four or so skills per archetype. Let's go ahead and fill in those details.

For our three archetypes for detectives, we want to represent different styles of investigation. The classics that jump to mind would be brawler (a detective who gets into scrapes and fights his way out, like Bigby Wolf in The Wolf Among Us), a smooth talker (a detective who uses their wit and charisma to solve crimes, like Columbo), and a sneak (a detective whose specialty is moving about undetected, like some versions of Batman). This gives us some range to let the players express themselves, but all while providing a framework that reinforces the game's design and setting. 

Now we want some skills that can be associated with each archetype. The archetypes won't be something that the players are forced to stick with--they can choose skills from all three archetypes without issue--but they represent pure images of detectives. We might choose to grant a player a bonus for choosing all of an archetype's skills, and we may not, depending on what we want out of the structure. I'm of the mind that it's better to not grant a bonus, as I want my players to choose skills that inform their characters rather than build super-effective characters. So let's go ahead and create four skills for each archetype: 

Brawler:

1. Fists of Fury - Raises unarmed damage from 1d6 to 1d10. 
2. Pile of Bruises - When reduced to 0 hit points, you regain 3 hit points. This can be used once per day. 
3. Sap the Sap - Once per day, you can cleanly knock unconscious one distracted person with a sap.
4. Nerves of Steel - Once per day, you may intimidate someone into sharing what they know. 

Smooth Talker

1. Kind Eyes - Once per day, you may appeal to someone's emotions, convincing them to share what they know. 
2. Fast Talker - Once per day, you may confuse someone, possibly causing them to reveal what they know. 
3. Truce - Once per day, you may talk your way out of being physically attacked. 
4. Con Artist - Once per day, you can visually or audibly impersonate someone. Requires a roll of 1d10, and any roll of 4 or below blows your cover. 

Sneak

1. Right Place, Right Time - Once per day, you can overhear someone discussing important information. 
2. Silent Step - Once per day, you can approach someone without their noticing it. 
3. Shadow Strike - Once per day, you can render someone unconscious if they are unaware of you. 
4. Invisible - Once per day, you can create a distraction and evade anyone who had previously noticed you. 

You'll notice that none of these archetypes or skills are really related to intelligence--that's because I want all detective characters to have a certain intelligence to them, and I don't believe that any of the archetypes disqualify an intelligent character. Further, since none of the skills between archetypes have a monopoly on obtaining information, any character can be vital to uncovering the mystery. As written, these skills allow players to choose their strategy and roleplaying matches in almost any way they wish. I would advise awarding players either 3 or 4 skills at the beginning of a game and then awarding an additional skill each time a player levels up, which in this case will be determined according to progress through the story (as the players discover new secrets, they will be rewarded with new skills). 

So now we have both our archetypes and our skills. We just have a few more details to work out. I mentioned in the "Fists of Fury" skill that unarmed damage begins at 1d6 and goes up to 1d10, so let's fill in other weapon information. A melee weapon grants d10 damage, and a firearm grants 1d20 damage. Though it's tempting to add a "to hit" mechanic to combat, I don't really want combat to be the heart of this game, so I would rather simply say that any attack made by a player character or a non-trivial enemy should have a 75% chance of hitting, regardless of other details. We can have our players roll a d20 and opt for 6-20 being successes, or 26-100 on a d100, or 3-8 on a d8--whatever works best for you and inspires the most excitement. I think bigger dice generally equal greater excitement, but again what works for you is what matters most. 

Then we have the issue of hit points, which are mentioned in the "Pile of Bruises" skill. Again, combat isn't our focus, but detectives often end up in precarious situations, and we need to know how much punishment they can take. I intended 3 hit points to be non-neglible but also not huge; we want a firearm to be able to kill someone in one hit and the melee options to be more drawn-out. I think that a set 15 hit points would serve us well; that would be about three strikes from a melee weapon or one accurate shot with a firearm to render someone unconscious or dead. That's about the balance I want; my detectives are not meant to be running around killing people, but solving crimes, so quick and deadly combat works pretty well, as it will discourage players from spending too much time fighting. 

You may notice that most of these skills are not dice roll-based; rather, they grant the players daily abilities to act in special ways. This means that most of the game is based on strategy rather than luck, which is ideal for a mystery game. Generally speaking, storytelling- and roleplaying-focused games benefit from less randomization, and so I have opted for less dice rolls. But if you're designing a system that is chaotic or disorienting, lots of rolls should be factored into your system. 

This is enough of a framework to playtest. When playtesting, watch for which abilities seem to tilt the game away from where you want it to go, and pay extra special attention to the things your players get excited about. After playtesting, revise your system with your findings in mind; curtail the effects of overpowered abilities and expand on the things your players enjoy the most. But don't lose sight of why you designed the game this way in the first place--you want to keep the spirit you were aiming for alive throughout any revisions unless it doesn't serve you anymore. 

All you would really need now to run a game of Truths for Sleuths would be a story. You could turn to my guide for writing a mystery campaign, or you could use the following sample story, which illustrates how Truths for Sleuths might actually run. Let's pick something that suits our setting (1970s California). I think GMs should go where their inspiration guides them, and my inspiration reminds me that tarot cards (a great passion of mine) were of great popularity in California in the '70s. So this mystery will be a mystical one revolving around tracking down a deck of fabled tarot cards which were stolen from a medium. Now, as the players investigate the missing deck, they will meet a variety of colorful characters from the mystical reaches of California: the sniveling assistant to a mystic who dreams of one day being a master mystic themself, the retired detective who has reinvented themself as a palm reader, the eccentric millionaire who pays handsomely for the advice of the mystic. The deck will seem out of reach, always changing hands before the players can locate it. And as they investigate the mystical community, strange things begin to happen, things which suggest the mystics know more than they're letting on. 

So we started from the framework of "what do we want our game to accomplish?" and now, just a few pages later, we have a full TRPG system and notes for a campaign. It's really isn't too daunting if you take it a step at a time. Just remember to keep asking the question, "how do I create the experience for players that I'm imagining?" And don't be discouraged if your ideas come slowly or if playtesting reveals you need to return to the drawing board. This is just part of the process, and the more you work at it, the better your system will become for both you and your players. Good luck, and have fun!

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to roleplay learning new skills and abilities, descriptions of temples in D&D, and details about agriculture in the gameworld. Until next time, happy gaming!

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TRPG Courtesy Rules

The classic stereotype of TRPGs involves players of the game being antisocial goofballs who sit around in a basement. And while a lot of use are indeed goofballs in a basement, the stereotype is largely wrong. TRPGs are perhaps the most social games that we can play. And with that power comes responsibility: it is your job as the GM to look out for the social needs of your players. This guide will help you to anticipate your players' needs and give you the opportunity to provide a fun and balanced game for everyone at the table. 

To begin with, you want your players to be prepared for the game you're running. If your players are beginners to the game, use this guide for beginners. If they need more basic help, you can assist them with this guide to dice. If you're running a roleplaying-focused game, players can be helped with these guides to creating characters for roleplaying and to roleplaying at the table. It's vital that your players have the skills to succeed, or else they will spend the game unengaged and unsure what to do. Educating your players is the first step towards treating them well. 

Now let's move through a standard session, pointing out courtesy rules as we go. At the beginning of a session is socializing time. Players and GM alike spend time catching up, talking about games and life, checking in before getting down to the game. But not everyone is going to be able to share equally in this time. If you have a player in your group who doesn't know the other players as well, they might need some help getting to know the other players. You can pull them in by directing conversation to those players who get less time speaking. Ask open-ended questions about something you know the player is excited about, and point out things that this player has in common with the rest of the group. You as GM are the only person who will know everybody in the game, so use your position of power within the group to include everybody.

Likewise, you want to include everyone in the game as well. If you have a group of players who are very engaged with the game and who take a lot of actions, but you also have one player whose voice gets drowned out sometimes, deflect the focus onto that player's character at times. Create an in-game reason that NPCs take a special interest in this specific player character, or bestow a special mini-story on the player to jumpstart them. Think about it this way: the other players can't do anything about the marginalized player, and the marginalized player can't solve the situation themselves (or at least doesn't see how they can), so the only person who can address the problem is you as GM. Don't let your players get disconnected from the game or each other, but if you do see it happen, be ready to act to solve it. 

In roleplaying situations, the courtesy rule is to allow players to express themselves fully without restricting them beyond reason. I've addressed before how improvisation is the key to good roleplaying and storytelling, so you'll want to embody that. But you also want to watch for other players curtailing another player's roleplaying. If you have players who undermine each other in this way, address it either in- or out-of-game (in-game for first time offenses, out-of-game when it's a pattern). Remind them that everyone gets a chance to contribute and that even the most bizarre idea can be helpful. Most importantly, remind them that the most important thing at the table is that everyone has fun, so they cannot restrict the other player's fun unless it's causing game issues for everyone else. 

Likewise, in combat, people want to be able to do what seems like the best idea. If you have players who criticize each other's combat actions, you're dealing with a situation that can undermine player fun. Hopefully, you have built a cohesive party and this isn't an issue, but if it is, address it again either in-game or out-of-game, depending on how common the issue has become. The key idea here is that not everyone's fun in combat comes from completely destroying an enemy; some folks have more fun with a close fight that is rich with character moments. If this is your issue, communicate that fun is many-faced and that others' fun needs to be considered too; but you also have a compromise to make so that the combat experts get to have fun, too. I suggest granting them small bonuses in combat based on their careful strategy--this way they get to balance out the lessened damage from other player characters and feel even more empowered to do what they enjoy. 

With either roleplaying or combat, there's a chance that you'll have players who are highly opinionated about how the game should run. They may criticize or even heckle other players for making decisions that seem to the criticizing player to be obviously wrong. This is a small emergency. All players need to understand that TRPGs are a joint venture; it is a collection of people trying to work together to have fun. If the players get in the way of each others' fun, the game is a failure. Communicate to them that they must find a way to cooperate in the game. I don't think that a situation like this is inappropriate for delivering a bottom line, like "If we can't get this party to cooperate in a few sessions, I won't run the game anymore." Of course, during those sessions, you should do everything you can to bring the party together, but it's important that the players realize their good time is interconnected with the other players, and if it causes more frustration than joy, it can be better to let the game go. The possibility of losing the game will galvanize most players to meet you halfway. If it pushes your players further away, think of it as losing the complication that threatened your game. This can be delicate with friends involved, so use your best judgment, but remember that a game that isn't fun for everyone is a failure that needs to be resolved. 

An often-overlooked courtesy rule has to do with story developments. It's very common to think that you have described something exceptionally well only to discover your players don't understand it the way you wanted them to. You can tip the scales in your favor with these guides to describing combat, magic, critical rolls, and other details, but what can you do when the mistake is already made? It's simple: don't penalize your players for not understanding something. If there is a divide between your imagining of a scene and the players' imaginings of the same scene, it's not because the player or their character is failing at something. If the player character really existed and was in the scene you were describing, they would have a nearly perfect understanding of the situation. So if there's a disconnect, it's more than likely that either you failed to describe it accurately or that your player is struggling to connect your descriptions to an image of the gameworld. Let's break both of those options down: 

If you have failed to describe something adequately, there's little you can do after the fact once you've recognized the misunderstanding. In fact, the only real solution is to retcon. If a player truly did not grasp the meaning of their actions, and it seems reasonable that they would have acted differently if they knew the facts, let them change their actions. Even if it messes up your plans for the story, it's important to grant them the opportunity to act as they truly would have. If you don't, you are effectively telling your players that their agency in the game is less important than your having to move some details around to accommodate the change. That's not the kind of game you want to run, I assure you. If the misunderstanding and the corresponding action are less clear-cut, use your discretion; you can sometimes rationalize that a character behaved according to a momentary thought which wasn't entirely realized. The best guide for what to do is how the player feels about it. If they are adamant that their character would not have made the mistake they committed to, or if they seem reluctant to argue but unhappy about the result, retcon. If they're more entertained by the misunderstanding, move forward. Remember your goal is to make the players happy, so don't privilege your story over the people you're playing with. 

Then there's the possibility that the player is struggling to connect to your world. It may be that they're new to imaginative gaming like TRPGs, it may be that they're not paying enough attention to the game, and it may be that the player has a mental condition that precludes them from being totally present (ADHD, for instance). These options are quite broadly different, and yet they all have the same solution. Again, if it's a one-time issue or a rare occurrence, take an in-game moment to address it: "Is there anything I can do with my description to make it easier for you?" Players may or may not have good answers to this question, but you should have a better idea than previously what kind of solutions you might try. And it's a recurring issue, pull the player aside and address it directly: "I notice you're having a hard time keeping up with the story. Is something making it extra challenging? Do you have any ideas about how I can make it easier for you?" Notice that in both examples here, the emphasis is on solving the player's problem, not ours as GM. That's because solving the player problem effectively solves our GM problem as well. 

When you're getting into the later parts of a session, the question of when the session will end begins to arise. Many games run on a schedule; a game will last from one time on the clock to another time. But any campaign is likely to have shorter and longer sessions, depending on what happens that session. The decision to call a session is rarely a unanimous decision--you'll usually have a player or two who really wants to keep playing. But once one person really wants to end the session, it should be wrapped up as quickly as possible. Playing on when a player wants to leave is inconsiderate to that player, and I don't ever recommend playing without a player in a situation like this. It's better to pick up again later than exclude someone (especially someone who has a reason to stop playing for the session). 

Lots of TRPG sessions go pretty late into the night. Player sleepiness becomes an issue. If you as GM notice that a player seems sleepy, ask them if they're doing okay and offer to wrap things up for the night. Especially if you're meeting in person and your players need to drive home after the game, you don't want to give them an unsafe ride home just to game longer. (This goes for GMs too. As a GM who has fallen asleep mid-sentence on multiple occasions, I can attest that playing when you're exhausted will only leave regrets; let yourself game with your full wits about you next time and call it for now.)

Then there's the issue of intoxication. This is a house rule to be sure, but it's a delicate one. I played in a party years ago with a strict no-booze, no-drugs policy because the storytelling and roleplaying were so serious that intoxication could throw off the game. I also ran a game where every player brought either booze, cannabis, or both to every session; this party was more concerned with shenanigans than serious gaming. It all depends on what your party wants. You as GM have the final call; you can decide on a clean game, a game where everyone has a beer or two, or a wild game. But making this choice can be complicated. 

It's important to know before you decide intoxication rules how your players feel. For some GMs, this is easy--it's just a matter of your friends getting together and relaxing. For others, you'll be gathering people who are all strangers to one another, and they may have vastly different opinions of playing while intoxicated. Generally speaking, if you have one or zero people who are opposed to your house rule, you're fine. You can work with that one person to make them comfortable while everyone else gets what they want. If two or more people are opposed to your house rule, reconsider. Everyone should feel at home and comfortable with the process of playing, and drugs and alcohol are sensitive issues for some people. I defer again to the rule I named above for retconning: if the player has a strong emotional opinion about how things should be run, listen to them. If you're dealing with two people with strongly opposed emotional opinions, consider the positions of the rest of the party as well as your own preference, and make it clear to the minority opinion holder that it isn't a personal choice, simply the one that best serves the game. 

A final note about drugs and alcohol at the table: because they impair your self-awareness, you may not even notice that your GM skills are slipping due to intoxication. This has happened to me. I was running a session of my National Treasure campaign, which had a party of goofballs who brought booze and cannabis every session, and I was high. I like to be just a little bit high to GM things these days because it calms me down, inspires a bit of creativity, and slows my thought process enough to keep me from quickly saying the first (and not best) idea I have. But there are consequences. During this particular session, I had smoked enough that my memory of what had just happened became impaired. Around the fifth time I asked my players to remind me what I had just said, a player asked if we wanted to just reschedule the session for another time. I was crestfallen. I had let my desire to party with the players impact my ability to run the game. I always keep that in check now, afraid to ruin another session, and I recommend to any GM that you err on the side of sobriety unless you're certain you can handle yourself. Remember that if a player is intoxicated, it's like their character is intoxicated, but if you as GM are intoxicated, the whole world is drunk. 

Another note about courtesy rules: when you're planning your next session, be as respectful as possible to people's scheduling needs. At the end of a session, when the full weight of the story is pressing down on you, it will seem crucial to know when you're playing next. But in today's world, it is harder than ever to schedule a session. Be gentle with your players as they carve out time for you. And since life is complicated, send out reminder messages to your players a few days in advance of meeting. Something like "Looking forward to playing Friday at 7--is everybody still in?" works very well because it reminds your players gently about the next commitment and because it offers the ability to either confirm or guiltlessly ask to reschedule. You're not commanding an army platoon, you're running a game, and you should keep in mind that scheduling is something that unfortunately but almost unavoidably complicates the game. Be ready for it, work with your players, and you'll be ready to play before too long. 

And lastly, for players: your GM works hard. They spend considerable time working to give you a happy experience. They create worlds for you to inhabit and people for you to meet. They're doing more to create the game's experience than anyone else at the table. Appreciate them! Thank them for their work at the end of every session. Show your engagement, since it's the greatest reward most GMs can ask for. Even if you're not the world's biggest fan of your GM's style, recognize that there would be no game without them. Don't be afraid to offer help to the GM with things, and bringing snacks is a universal way to thank your GM for running the game. 

That's all for you. Hopefully you can keep your games respectful to everyone and have some fun with a better understanding of everyone's situation. Coming soon: the most important thing about tabletop games, how to design a campaign setting, and rules for my custom magic system. 

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