How does my character get better?

One of the things that has troubled me since getting back into D&D in 2008 is how the game system conveys character growth and how they get better at what they do. There has to be more than simply Hit Points and Ability Bonuses. Having spent 30+ years playing the D&D Gold Box games on my Commodore 64 or IBM Clone and more recently playing Skyrim & Mass Effect on my XBox 360 or PC, character growth is a big part of why I play games. It’s why I play Mass Effect or Skyrim over the GTA’s and COD’s in the world.

You might be inclined to say that “Those are video games. Role Playing games are different.”

Are they?

Do they have to be?

If the last few years of being back in this tabletop RPG world has taught me one thing, “it’s your game, make your own.” If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t see so many KickStarter RPG systems being built. People want to play the games they want and like to play. If you want to play in a dungeon crawl where the “Save or Die” rule is still in effect, then by all means play with that rule. As for me and my group, that is not fun for us.

YES, we come from a Video Game world and YES, we want to play in a tabletop RPG that is fun for us and if we want to include Video Game mechanics in our RPG game, that’s what we want to do. The entire basis of our hacking the D&D 5e rule set is to play in the Mass Effect Universe, to show our love for Video Games and our love of D&D.

D&D 3 and 3.5 had tons and tons of rules (it’s partly why I never picked it up), but I think their skill system was a really good system. Most people complain that it’s too complicated but if that was the case, Pathfinder would not be so popular. I was happy to see the return of an enhanced skill system in the early packets of the year-long D&D Next play test but got really bummed out when they were finally dropped. I was  looking for ways to build it into the D&D 5e campaign that I was planning but never really had the time to work on that.

Since I was looking at rebuilding the Encounter Building guidelines for our Alliance Chronicles: 2160 game system we’re putting together, I decided to do a little more research into skill systems. I ran across the D20 Modern system, and had more than one discussion with my brother about dumping our entire D&D 5e hack that we had been working on since October of 2014 and just adapting the D20 Modern system to play our game but ultimately decided the character creation rules we already had plus the simplified D&D 5e combat mechanics overruled any benefit of the D20 Modern system as a whole would give us. With that said, we decided to create a hybrid skill system that incorporates the skills light D&D 5e system with select skills from the d20 Modern system that makes sense for the game we are building. We’ve developed a list of skills that we think will enhance role-play and provide the characters with skill centric options if a player wants to create a soldier who is an expert at using a computer. Those are options we want in our games. I think the system we’ve come up with will enhance our game and make it even better.

Excerpt from the player’s guide…

 

Until next time…

Let’s Talk Encounter Building

There has been a lot of discussion about D&D 5e’s encounter building process since its release last August; or should I say, the lack of encounter building clarity for D&D 5e.

I’ve studied the section in the 5e DMG on encounter building at length. I’ve listened to numerous podcasts where DMs discuss their encounter building attempts in 5e and I even found a 5e Encounter Builder Spreadsheet online. The end result is always the same… it’s basically just a guess at creating a balanced encounter in D&D 5e. According to WOTC, 5e encounter building is meant to be flexible. It’s been designed to provide the DM with the most flexibility in creating encounters for their game worlds. That flexibility apparently comes at a cost, you can’t build “balanced” encounters in 5e.

Balanced encounters may not be that big of an issue for DM’s coming from older editions where balanced encounters was not expected but there are a lot of players and DMs out there who’s most recent foray into D&D is 4e. Balanced encounters were a must in 4e adventures. Players expect it. DMs expect it. Why then has WOTC turned its back 5e Dungeon Masters trying to build balanced encounters?

Until such a time as WOTC sees fit to provide the tools necessary to build balanced encounters in 5e, we’ll just have to make do. Or, like what I’m doing with the Mass Effect: 2160 rule set, adopt another system’s encounter builder. (and creature builder for that matter)

The last few Mass Effect: 2160 playtests have seen multiple iterations of my attempts at balanced encounters using the 5e encounter building guidelines. I spent the month of March, researching, developing and testing encounter building guidelines based on the D&D 4e encounter building guidelines to be used within the Mass Effect: 2160 rule set. The D&D 4e encounter building guidelines made sense to me but it does mean that all the creatures and encounter building processes I was using to build encounters and playtest up to this point have to be recreated but that’s what I’m doing.

The recreation of the setting’s bad guys is a small price to pay if it means a better play experience for me and my players. Playtest # 7 proved that a more balanced encounter plays out at the table better and everyone has more fun.

We still have a lot of playtesting to do until we find that “sweet spot” of encounter building but I think the move to a more balanced encounter system will pay off in the end. Currently, the builder I’m using is a massive spreadsheet that allows me to tweak base numbers between playtest sessions but in the end I will probably build my own MS Windows application to build and run my encounters once our campaign starts.

I have other beefs with the 5e system but all in all I think it is a great system and I love how fast combat runs. That was my biggest draw in wanting to do this hack, the speed of combat in the new 5e rules. In the end, I think we’ll wind up with a system that pulls in needed elements from other systems as we see fit to do what it is we want to do.

The goal remains the same, build a rule set based on D&D 5e that allows us to play in the Mass Effect universe. I think we’re about there.

Until next time…

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #8

April 11, 2015

 

One last playtest before vacation season….. This playtest is all about the Encounter Builder I’ve been working on. Playtest #6 and Playtest #7 were all about data collection for the Encounter Builder and this playtest is to determine which XP Budget level matches our definition of a “Standard Encounter”.

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #7

April 4, 2015

 

No, the title is correct. This post is about Playtest #7; Playtest #6 was a number-crunching session where I simply collected dice rolls from the players and entered them into a spreadsheet as they cut down “unarmed” creatures. The numbers were used to assess the creature builder that I’m putting together.

Welcome to Spartan: AX

“Spartans were a group of elite warriors from ancient Greece… is a man who thinks nothing of danger, expects to win, and creates a sense of dread in his opponents.” – The Urban Dictionary

Spartan is a name  synonymous with Halo in the video gaming community. Who wouldn’t want to role play as one the the baddest dudes in the galaxy? A one-man army. That’s the feeling that I’m shooting for. Not just a one-man army, but a team of one-man armies. Players will join forces with 2 – 4 other players and create their very own Spartan III super soldiers to fight the covenant. This will be the story of the very first Experimental SPARTAN-III soldiers from Alpha Company.

SPARTAN-III soldiers are to be the next generation of super soldiers. Composed primarily of vengeful orphans from fallen colonies, they will be cheaper to arm, train, and produce; being chosen from a wider pool of candidates, they will also be more numerous than their SPARTAN-II predecessors. They will rely on superior battle tactics, and teamwork rather than advanced technology and equipment to achieve their combat effectiveness. – Colonel James Ackerson, Office of Naval Intelligence

“Spartan: AX” is an attempt to hack the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition rule set to enable a tabletop role playing experience in the Halo universe. I’m sure there have been numerous attempts at a Halo RPG over the years using multiple gaming systems but I love the D&D 5e rule set and that’s what I want to use. I’ve recently worked on a successful project (*Mass Effect: 2160) to hack the same D&D 5e rule set to play in the Mass Effect universe and the system works great. I will be relying heavily on the D&D core rule books as well as the Halo video game material I own and of course the Halo Wiki.

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll adapt the D&D 5e rule set to the Halo Universe. I’m looking forward to this journey.

 

Welcome to Spartan: AX.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The Mass Effect:2160 project is closed to the general public.

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #5 – Part 2

February 14, 2015

 

The morning session ran a bit long and after coming back from a quick break, energy levels had dropped. We still needed to test the Asari Adept so there was not near as much “playing” as there was testing.

During encounter #2 we had 1 Krogan Soldier (Assault Rifle specialist),   1 Turian Soldier (Assault Rifle Specialist) and 1 Asari Adept.  The characters were up against  7 opponents (4 CR1, 1 CR2 & 2 CR4); encounter XP was 3450xp (target was 3300).

 

The main goal during this encounter was the new Asari, and Turian Races along with the Adept Class.

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #5–Part 1

February 14, 2015

 

This was a big playtest session. All 3 classes and 5 of the 6 races would be tested before this day was over. We tested the 2nd Tier of game play during this session and used 5th level characters.

During encounter #1 we had 1 Krogan Soldier (Assault Rifle specialist),   1 Salarian Engineer (Tech Operative) and 1 Human Soldier (Dual-Wielding Specialist). The characters were up against 10 opponents (7 CR1, 2 CR2 & 1 CR4); encounter XP was 3400xp (target was 3300).

During encounter #2 we had 1 Krogan Soldier (Assault Rifle specialist),   1 Turian Soldier (Assault Rifle Specialist) and 1 Asari Adept.  The characters were up against  7 opponents (4 CR1, 1 CR2 & 2 CR4); encounter XP was 3450xp (target was 3300).

 

The main goal during this playtest was the new Asari, Krogan and Salarian Races along the Adept & Engineer Classes.

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #4

January 31, 2015

 

The 3 Human Soldiers (Assault Rifle, Shotgun & Dual-Wielding specialists)  and 1 Human Engineer (Tech Operative) at 3rd level were used during this playtest. We had several issues we were looking at from our previous playtests and a lot of new material to test this go around. The main goal during this playtest was the new Engineer Class. The characters were up against 7 opponents (6 CR1 & 1 CR2); encounter XP was 1650xp (target was 1600).

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #3

December 23, 2014

 

The 3 Human Soldiers(Fighters) at 3rd level are used during this playtest. We focused on the Sniper Rifle Specialist for this test but also tested the Assault Rifle Specialist and the Duel-Wielding Specialist.  The 3 Soldiers were up against 8 opponents; encounter XP was 1250xp (target was 1200).

Mass Effect: 2160 Playtest #2 – Part 2

December 20, 2014

 

The 3 Human Soldiers(Fighters) at 3rd & 5th level are used during this playtest. We focused on 3 of the 7 Fighting Styles that Soldiers can chose from. (Assault Rifle Specialist, Shotgun Specialist and the Duel-Wielding Specialist) The first encounter we ran with the 3rd level group against 9 opponents; encounter XP was 1250xp (target was 1200). The second encounter was with the 5th level group (same specialties) against 14 opponents; encounter XP was 3050. (target was 3300)