On Alignment

Alignment is a curious thing in D&D with a lot of different interpretations and versions. I want to look at it, so I may or may not implement alignment into my system.

The three point alignment system
Chainmail, OD&D, BX and BECMI use a singular axis:
Law—Neutrality—Chaos
As Dan "Delta" Collins descripes it: "When Cthulhu comes, do you fight against him? Than you are lawful. You run away? Than you're neutral. Do you help him destroy the world? Than you're chaotic."
Basically the question is: with whom would you align when all out war happends? Human civilization or the ones that want to destroy it.
I think a wargame could use this to great effect.

The nine point alignment system
AD&D introduced a second axis into alignment: Good—Neutral—Evil
The result is a gird of nine alignments. There are countless interpretations on this and non of them make sense to me. It feels like medieval monks arguing about the trinity — it's not that important to me.

Unusual five point alignment systems
Holmes Basic is in general an often forgotten link between OD&D and AD&D.
It uses the lawful—neutral—chaotic axis but adds good and evil for the poles. Resulting in an interesting grid of five fields, which also shows the alignment as a spectrum. 

For more on Holmes alignment see Zenopus Archives or Mythopoeic Rambelings.

D&D 4e uses a five point linear system:
lawful good—good—neutral—evil—chaotic evil
It is an interesting choice, but one I don't understand except for the memes (see further down).

Elder Goblin Games uses a five point alignment system I quite like. It uses neither axis nor a spectrum only five destinct categories: Good, Neutral, Chaotic, Evil, Lawful
But wait! Is it a circle?

So what now?
I think the last one is the best system, especially for inventing NPCs like Jorbin uses it.
But for my own campaign world I want to go back to the early idea of factions.
Matt Colville distinguishes between lawful and chaotic societies and that kind of makes sense to me, especially in the context of sword & sorcery. The Alexandrian has understood the genre best: the chaotic person is the nobel one, civilization is run by evil. So rather than lawful good and chaotic evil — which are THE memeable D&D alignments and probably why they are showing up in 4e — sword and sorcery should use chaotic good and lawful evil.

Yet, I still struggle with the concept of good in D&D. PCs kill and steal all the time I don't think good is the word I would use even for a paladin. Murder and thievery are arguably a neutral act in the world, mechanically it is mostly good! So villans need to be even worse than PCs. They need to be slavers or torturous rulers and genocidal warlords.

I think you need evil as villianous enemies. You also need beasts, monsters and barbarians, who are just wild. And you need civilization, which builds cities and uphelds laws.
So for now I think my alignment has no axis and consists of Evil, Wild and Civil.

Crazy DM-ing #1 - The Chessboard

I painted an 8x8 world map for my Osme campaigne, so I can use a chessboard.

Movement Rules:
•the party can only travel in one of the four cardinal directions — no diagonals.
•to travel one square, half a day or a whole night is needed.
 

Chessboard as a battle map:
I also use the chessboard and lego minis for grid combat. It seems too small at first, but with only three squares of movement for example it works great.
You can fit a small dungeon in a 8x8 grid, try it!

On Optimization

When the days were full of grief I build my own character in Shadowrun 5e - I spend over 300 hours creating her. And like most Shadowrun characters there was a heavy amount of min-maxing involved. She is a transfemale troll, which is not an easy life. She got addicted to Ripper because it was the only way for her to change her body. She made the money through underground fighting. This is were Renraku became interessted in her. They offered her surguries to become more beautiful, less troll. So she became a cybered up living ad to promote Renrakus disriminatory views on metahumans. This is how you get a combat ready, charisma 8 troll, while exploring your own difficult life as a transwoman. Pretty good for a solo minigame.

While I made this character to my likability I sometimes got frustrated. Why are there two types of toe protecting combat boots, but no high heels to step on people? Why can't I have a Vomeronasal Organ when its coolest feature would make my Adrenaline Pump even more fun? So I changed the data in chummer. (Where does it say that "Saeder-Krupp/Onotari Arms Silent Claw Stiletto" aren't high heels anyway?) But will the GM allow my non-RAW character?

This is the problem with min-maxing: you need to adhere to the rules.

The company putting out the rules makes you dependent on them. They can get your money just by creating new options. Which in turn also increase power creep, since options are only fun when they are better for optimization. Hasbros behavior is a good argument to reject the rules of D&D and keep its folk tradition alive. That's one reason I don't like min-maxing in D&D, it gives power to the corporation. But than again, it can be an awesome solo minigame.

"Body am I entirely, and nothing more"

In my last post I started to design Osme, my own system. (I'm doing it, Daniel! I'm doing it!)
Now I want to explore the implications of my choices. This will probably be a reoccurring thing since I'm prone to iterations.

————————————————————————————————

"Body am I entirely, and nothing more"
        -Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarathustra

An other kind of damage
Having the attributes Torso, Limbs and Brain does make one wonder: What happens when I get hit? Surely my torso will be damaged, my limb ripped off and a fall will give me a concussion.
I like this! But having Blood as Hit Points does normally eliminate this intuitive thinking. What to do?
Maybe there are situations and monster which will lower your attributes temporarily or even permanently. And if an organ hits 0 you are dead. This may be interesting since a bulky amazon warrior never has to worry about her brain in a sword fight, but may die very easily from a fall. I like it.

What do my terms imply?
Blood:
if you get cut you bleed. If you lose too much blood you die. Blood gets created in the red bone marrow, which is located in the ribs, vertebrae, sternum and pelvis.
Okay, so the torso is there for regenerating blood. Can you transfer ones blood into another body to heal them? Wait! That's a great idea for a spell!
Blood Transfer: you can transfer d4 blood from one body to someone elses.

Torso:
all the major living functions are here: eating, breathing, reproducing and keeping homeostasis. So, natural healing and resisting poison is key.
I love the drugs & toxins in Shadowrun and I want to get some of them into Osme, they should interact with the torso.
The torso also has huge and strong muscles, therefore it should be used for stength.

Limbs:
"if you break 'em you can't use 'em." So, if your arm is missing you can't use a sword and shield, you will have to decide. And if your leg is missing you will be much slower. If you rolled badly on limbs you will be clumsy and less dexterous.
This may also be the most obvious place to see how inherently ableist this system is.

Brain:
it interprets what your senses tell you (perception) and it remembers (knowledge). Technically it controls your whole body, but let us not do the capitalistic thing and put the emphasis on the workers instead of the manager. ^^
Maybe Brain is used to resist magic.

Voice:
now this one is different and difficult. Voice would be rolling for convincing, which has the huge problem that only the PC with the highest Voice will be talking. Also it is not made of flesh and I want my meatpunk.
How about Face? Well now it will refer to beauty and first impression. But thinking of the beginning of this post: it's not easy to hurt specifically ones face.
How about Skin? You can still vaguely make out that it refers to beauty and first impression. And you can definitely destroy the skin through fire and acid or even radiation damage. And another bonus: I can ask you to roll the skin color. I want  players to think about how divers this world is.

Bonuses for amazing bodies
I don't want to use modifiers like later D&Ds, but I like the Greyhawk (1975) method of giving small bonuses for high attributes.

Torso: 10+ = +1 melee damage
Limbs: 10+ = +1 range damage
Brain: 10+ = +1 language
Skin: 10+ = most monsters will not attack on sight

Osme - the system I hope to run

Designing an adventure game system is a lot of fun for me. This is the design compass I'll be using for Osme:

1) Sword & Sorcery: carnal sweaty bronze age
2) Elegance: short and simple rules (think Into the Odd)
3) small Numbers: only four dice, the Rule of 5
4) incomplete: embrace of ambiguity, no rigid system (think OD&D)

The Name
Osme (ancient greek: ὀσμή) means smell, scent or stench. Fitting for my definition of Sword & Sorcery.
Does the Os stand for Old school, like in the OSR? Maybe.
OSME is also a representation of the four dice.

The Organs
I want the attributes to refer to actual body parts, not just abstract concepts, since it is much more fitting for the Sword & Sorcery genre.

Strength/Constitution becomes Torso
Dexterity becomes Limbs
Intelligence/Wisdom becomes Brain
Charisma becomes Voice (to signify the social power of being heard)

How do I roll these? I don't have the classic 3d6. I do however have d4+d6+d8, which gives quite a nice spread. Try for yourself. 
But 3-18? Those numbers are getting big. Let's just use d4+d8 for 2-12, average is 7. Much better.

It would be easy and more popular to use modifiers and build a roll over system. BUT I do not like to think of target numbers. So I rather let the PCs roll against their own body. A d12 roll under system it is!
If rolling equal to your organ is a success, I don't want to specify (embrace of ambiguity). The Dungeon Mistress should decide for herself to tweak the difficulty for her players. Maybe she will rule it's a success but with a consequence.

For now let us finish with Hit Points. They will become Blood. Blood gets spilled in a fight, it's a nice representation of taking damage. Since the PCs always die on me, I will grant them:
Blood = Torso + 3 (5-15, average is 10).

Probability Pebbles

Why has the standard dice set seven dice?
It's D&Ds fault, isn't it? Then why do they have only one d6? Should I use my Shadowrun dice to roll my ability scores? And what are these two 10-sided monstrosities? Those are evil. I know they are because Call of Cthulhu uses them. Also the d12 only gets used if you play a barbarian — which I do, thank you very much. 

How do I fix this?
First of all I burn all the D&D books and make my own system. Hmm, yes very clever of me...

So, I'm left with a single set of dice. Which of those seven are actually trustworthy?

The Interview

• The d4: very pointy, hard to roll, more like a toss. But she's a platonic and small numbers are not easy to generate; looking at you, coin. You are in, d4. But I'm keeping an eye on you. Troublemaker.
  
• The d6: large faces so the numbers can be easily seen. She  knows how good she is, no need to be smug about it. Of course you are in.
  
• The d8: well, well, well, the pretty boy. Ohh, did I make you uncomfortable? Poor thing. There is no need to be shy. This will be fun... In with you.
• The d10: die, die!! You fraud evil bastard of a math rock, I will kill you and your family.
• The d12: this is a solid die. This guy plays the viola! Very down to earth, humble. I think he is my new buddy.  
  
• The d20: So, you are a platonic. Uhh, 20-sides is a lot. And your main gig is D&D, where you took over the show and once even got your own system named after yourself... Yeah, that's a no from me.
  
• The d%: Another one?! Roll for your life, double zero. I already met your little brother and he didn't make the save.

 

Meet the Team

d4, the Punk
She may be small, but don't mess with her.
She will hurt you.

The Team

d6, the Good Girl
She is sweet and confident,
the perfect little die. 

d8, the Pretty Boy
He's cute, but so awkward
when the girls are around. 

d12, the Bolder
This chunk of a die is a
gentle giant. He holds the team together.

 

Roll well, my little chaos cubes. I'm going to build an entire system on you.