The trouble with layouts

+Erik McGrath

I'm not yet any good at layout. I have been attempting to learn as I go for some time now, but progress has been slow. I only have what I can term 'reasonable results' with Powerpoint and LaTeX, neither of which you could call industry standards for RPGs.

This has been most telling, and frustrating, for 16 Bit Tactics. 16BT has a lot of tables and graphics that require a considerable amount of effort on my part to make them usable by humans. From this experience I have begun weighing other options for getting useful documents into the hands of people who would like them.

Option 1: Screw It

The simplest option is just don't bother. I can always use my notes to play and hand out said notes to others who wish to play. Those are the only advantages I can think of.

The disadvantages are that I'm supposedly making games and part of that is making them look like someone spent some time doing that. Presentation is a big deal if for no other reason than what it says about your commitment to helping people enjoy the game. 

Option 2: Fake It

Powerpoint and LaTeX give me results. Not pretty but it is coming along. I'm very familiar with both programs as well as the rest of the MS suite and I used them constantly in college to put together reports, grants and presentations. All the things I have released so far for 16 Bit Tactics were done in Powerpoint.

The pro here is that it does eventually give me results and I already know how to pull the levers. The con is that I'm pushing the limits of my tools so there will be a maximum benefit wall reached soon in terms of time input vs work output.

Option 3: Suck It Up

Just keep banging my head at it and work toward a breakthrough. My experience with GIMP (used heavily for Battle Tank, mainly by +Christopher Andersen ) has not been positive in the Suck It Up column. I have done some things with it; they have been awful.

I'm basically starting at the bottom so there is nowhere to go but up. The downside is new programs are time intensive and these ones are hardly intuitive to me.

Wargaming

+Erik McGrath

Recently I've been doing a lot of wargaming.

The first kind is Epic: Armageddon. It is an unsupported Games Workshop game based in the Warhammer 40k universe. I play Imperial Guard, Orks, and Dark Eldar and it's a tremendous amount of fun. The scale is 6mm so it is about companies of infantry and dozens of tanks, rather than the handful of units you would use in 40k or Warmahordes.

You can find out much more about it at Tactical Command or our G+ Community.

The second kind is a 25mm skirmish game that is being invented as we play. In this case, "we" refers to myself and my father. My old man is a combat veteran who served as a Field Artillery Surveyor. We're using WW2 and jumping around to include all the various belligerents. Yesterday was our first crack at using tanks and AT guns, specifically T-34s and a PAK 75. Previous scenarios have been located in Europe and focused on the Western Front with only a few games in the eastern theater. We plan to do a Stalingrad scenario soon.

Scale and Goals

The interesting thing about this, for me, is trying to keep a solid scale that can still allow meaningful activity. Rather than use telescoping distances or artificially low ranges on guns, we've opted to make 1"=10' (2.5cm=3m for our friends outside the US) and use a standard 6'x4' (180x120cm) table. This means that a rifle can reach out the entire length of the board, though it is not very accurate at that range.

A guiding principle is that casualties should not be high on a turn to turn basis when the units involved are standing off and using small arms. To accomplish this we are using a D12 roll-under system with a typical, regular infantryman having stats of 4. So to hit an enemy with his rifle you need to roll a 4 or less on a D12 assuming you have no modifiers, which is pretty rare. Cover, distance, whether the shooter moved, if the shooting is reactive vs active, is the shooter is pinned down, and other things all make it hard to hit. So far in play the most common scenario is that you get a -2 to hit, so you would need to roll a 2 on a D12 for a 1-in-6 chance of having any effect whatsoever.

Then when you do hit, you roll to see what effect you had: KIA, Wounded, Disrupted, or Nothing. KIA generally requires a critical hit and Nothing needs a Fumble. A unit that is Wounded gets a saving throw to determine how badly they are hurt. Disrupted is automatic and is a measure of suppression and loss of command and control.

To sum up our goals:

• Realistic casualty levels
• Leaders are vital
• Each soldier matters
• Objective based
• Encourage use of real tactics
• Playtime under 3 hours

Issues and Methods

The main difficulties encountered so far are mainly bookkeeping issues. Tracking who is wounded for instance as well as morale states take up a lot of time. Another related thing is damage to vehicles and structures. Tank armor varies a great deal, especially when you can turn your heavily armored turret to any direction.

So far there are tables upon tables to refer to. Streamlining those is going to be a major theme of the next few playtests.

The game has evolved and grown a lot in the past couple weeks. We began with only a few assumptions that I mention above and add 2-3 new rules or special effects each game. A new thing can be as simple as a weapon we haven't used yet or a new nationality or type of soldier. It can be complicated such as how to handle smoke. Smoke interacts with the visibility, area fire and windage rules, and it moves and disperses as well.

It is a lot of work, but it is also a lot of fun.

Future

Once the rules are more settled, we will be doing some hacks for using popular 25mm games in our rules because I have a large number of models for them that don't get much use. A small unit of heavily armored superhumans vs a vast tide of aliens has to happen at least once. :)

We're also planning to do a demo this summer. We've already picked out a scenario: French Resistance vs German officers in the Paris Opera. With that we'll be able to showcase more than a dozen special rules including unarmed combat, bystanders, snipers, and heroes, as well as having several different troop types present.

Sometimes we just game

+Erik McGrath 

Recently I've been working on a few more things. Some are Inspired things as always but some are just things that I want to play or run. 

Inspired things

I'm a wargamer. 

I've played many varieties of wargame as well as other miniatures games that I prefer to call skirmish games. My personal favorite for company scale is Epic: Armageddon. It does all the things I like and requires a combined arms approach to win. For those skirmish games though I don't have a favorite. I have hundreds of models for several but I'm not sold on the rules for any. 

What gets me about them most is the treatment of linear distance. I understand that a 6'x4' table is not that big a space even at 25mm scale when you compare to the range of a rifle. But that just means I prefer to see that fact used, rather than worked around. I don't want there to be small squads of infantry running around with a mix of tanks and aircraft all playing in that same tiny space with their low ranges. If there is artillery on the board it ought to be an objective in this scale from my perspective.

To that extent, I've been working on a 25mm game that uses only the smallest amount of abstract range: 1"=10' but the models have 1" bases so it's a little loose at melee range. In this case, I like the fuzzy range because hand to hand combat is extremely chaotic and I don't want the game to bog down in an area that will typically not be a huge part of the action despite often being a decisive part of the game.

It uses d12s, one of my old favorites, and your basic trooper has 4s in their stats. There are 9 stats in 3 categoies: Combat (Firefight, Close Quarters, Hand to Hand), Discipline (Command, Initiative, Morale) and Physical (Carry, Move, Wound). We played a few test games using squads of WW2 soldiers (Russians vs Germans) taking a farm house.

So far the rules are behaving and giving pleasant results.

Just things

OSR Romance of the Three Kingdoms

For those that aren't OSR players the acronym means Old School Revival and refers to a collection of D&D editions and clones. My poison of choice for this game is Adventurer Conqueror King System. Normally just called ACKS.

I'm using ACKS basically intact though I customized the classes for this game (Courtier, Strategist, Doctor, General) and added Weapon Mastery adapted from the venerable Rules Cyclopedia I got in '91. I've also lifted some concepts from Flying Swordsmen. Not much of the rules from FS are getting used but the idea of Chi Abilities is there because I want to emulate the proto-wuxia flavor of the novel. The specific powers come mainly from Qin: The Warring States and are adapted to ACKS rules. 

One of my goals was to allow players to make anyone from Lu Bu to Zhuge Liang. So far I think it worked.

The game begins with the Yellow Scarf Rebellion in 184. The PCs are officers in Bing Province under the command of governor Ding Yuan and his chief secretary, Lu Bu.

Vampire Blood & Smoke

I'm a big fan of the new WOD reboots so far. Blood and Smoke has a lot of things going for it, specifically making the vampires more monstrous and their powers more interesting.

My game is set in Greater Boston in 1890. I've removed Clans as a rule and as an in-setting thing. Mechanically players get to pick their 3 Clan Disciplines, their Clan Bane and where their free Attribute dot goes rather than those being predetermined. Covenants et al work as written. For chargen I put a few limits and also give out more points in Disciplines: 6 total dots in Clan Disc ranked 3,2,1 and 1 dot in anything (can raise the 3 to a 4 or but a non-Clan Disc). The 10 Merit points also can only be spent on Merits and Blood Potency is 2.

I created 3 NPCs for each PC: 1 rival, 1 enemy, 1 neutral. The players got to define their rivals and enemies, the neutrals were essentially random. This gives us about 25 Kindred to populate the rather considerable area involved. It feels like a good amount.

What do you want to see from Inspired?

+Erik McGrath

Where We Are

For awhile now I've been dedicating my free time to 16-Bit Tactics, and the majority of the things we've come up with at Inspired have been pushed back or left hanging. That's one of the problems we have here due to our staff also being our core gaming group. When we get together, we tend to play games of both the board and RP variety so that means we have to not do that in order to work on Inspired stuff together.

So here's an accounting of where the various things I've talked about are at. If any of them interest you feel free to demand more information or just let us know what you like.

Near Completed

Nothing has been physically published but as it turns out we do have a few games that are either finished PNP or so close I'm not really sure why they haven't been finished. 

Sudden Death: This could be printed as is but to sell it we'd need to polish the art. Specifically we need the artist to have time to do the rest of the pieces and of course the money to pay her.

Battle Tank: The expense of producing a board game is what stopped this project. It could be PNP as is.

Celestial Warriors: Our first RPG. Like the others, it's playable but it is not something I would even do POD given the layout is just MS Word mark up.

16-Bit Adventures: The layout is not high quality but its all in one package and you can play it from level 1-10 right now.

Squabbling Corbies: I did this one for a contest but we don't have the rights to the art. We could reskin the game and release it, or see if the artist wanted to partner up for a release. 

Rules Finished, Needs Polishing

These are the things that you could play, but are still in a choppy format.

16-Bit Tactics: My current obsession. The numbers aren't solid but it is achingly close. This one should move up to the next category and join the holding pattern soon.

Eight Directions: This was a 24-hr RPG that I never got back to. It's playable but very bare.

So Close, yet so Far

Here I'll list the games that are still in rough prototype format but that have working beta versions.

Chem 101: I think Chem 101 is our best prototype and it is currently the only educational game we have. The trick with it is we don't have a clear concept of the game part so it's purely an educational tool.

Drachenheim: We've hit a few snags and done several version of this card game. The last few versions were all decent games but it still feels like it's missing something. 

Aces High: Another achingly close card game. This one is all in the details because I don't want it to be any more abstract than it needs to be. 

Minimal Progress

We've had so many starts and stops on these as well as a few complete overhauls that despite all of them being in the first crop of "thing Erik wanted to do" we never got off the ground. 

Flash of the Blade: My first card game. Because it's one of my first ideas I am constantly re-thinking it. One day I hope to cut that out and just pick a direction and stick to it.

Gobbo Wars: In some ways this card/board game is a victim of its own cleverness. It was one of those things where I had some neat rules but then it got way too complex. It also feels too close to some other games out there so it needs more thinking on how to make it unique.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Battle Tank writ large. As a board game it is already fighting uphill and as a wargame it is going to end up complicated. Combined, those things mean it simply takes a lot of my time to make progress and that means not spending that time on the many other ideas already listed.

16 Bit tactics: Format and Updates

+Erik McGrath

I have not been able to devote as much time as I would like to working on 16-Bit Tactics lately, but I have still managed some progress.

Right here is a pic of the current format, such as it is. I've been toying with a few ways to set things up and it's surprising to me how time consuming it all is. Ultimately it should be worth it to hammer out a decent format now rather than having a good idea later and needing to redo the entire thing.

For those following along at home there are two rules changes that you can see with this new Job sheet. First is that DEF/M.Def is now part of your current job rather than based on your current armor. Second is the addition of M.Eva.

The additive stats have been reformatted so that it's plain to see which things get added per level and which stay the same across levels. We will be keeping some form of the high/low threat rule for fighting creatures of much higher or lower level. With defenses and evasions now baked into Job, it will be much easier to word things as well.

Rules Explanations

If you squint you should be able to make out that Battle Tech includes 3 types of things: 5 weapon attacks, 1 self buff, and 1 unarmed attack. 

Weapon attacks are the largest subset of melee attacks. They use the normal rules. Since the generic Fight command is a weapon attack, this means that once a Fighter has learned any one of the 5 special attacks they have very little use for basic attacks.

Unarmed attacks are another subset of attacks. They work just like weapon attacks except you do not add any of the stats for your equipped weapon(s). Mostly this means you don't add its DMG bonus to your hits, but it would also ignore any elemental or status effects provided by the weapon. 

Buffs are a type of status effect. The effects themselves are standardized and they do not stack with themselves. So the DMG Up status granted by Focus would not combine with other affects that also grant DMG Up such as the Bravery spell. They do, however, stack with Support abilities that give the same effect as those abilities essentially change the character's base stats rather than giving a status effect.

Items and Gear

Just as a character has 5 slots for abilities, they also have 5 slots for equipable items. The mini table at the bottom of the Job sheet shows which items can be used. Unless an ability says otherwise, a character should only have at most one head, one body, one weapon and one shield equipped. Equipping two weapons (or a single, two-handed weapon) additionally precludes using a shield. For accessories the main limitation is that only one of each kind can be used. So you could have both boots and gloves, but not two gloves.

Downloads

16-Bit Tactics: Jobs

16 Bit Tactics Jobs Continuing Progress

+Erik McGrath

Good evening and thanks for bearing with me.


Included herein is most of a jobs document. I say "most" because Thief and Samurai are still missing rules for one JA each and Summoner has no descriptions for its JAs at all.

Jobs So far

Fighter
Black Mage
Thief
White Mage
Monk
Red Mage
Paladin
Dark Knight
Samurai
Dragoon
Ninja
Ranger
Summoner
Time Mage
Geomancer
Blue Mage

16 Bits, 16 Jobs. I like when things like that happen.

Coming Up

Now what I need to finish up is the rules themselves, and of course write up some gear and some example battlefields.

Monsters and enemy NPCs look like they will be simple. Common adversaries will just have levels in a single job, so when you encounter an enemy Black Mage all it is going to do is nuke. You won't need to worry about it knowing healing or status spells or being able to wear heavy armor.

Named NPCs, of course, are built like PCs and can have many different abilities available. I do not plan to create NPC-only Jobs though, so everything the enemy human-types can do is something that PCs are able to do. Barring any scenario special rules like them having control of a massive crystal that hurls Mega-Flare spells or similar.

There will be suggestions of how much XP/AP things like that should be worth though.

Downloads

16 Bit Tactics Jobs: Current

16 Bit Tactics Progress

+Erik McGrath

As always, layout is the bane of my creative existence. Eventually I hope my skill in that area will improve; if not in quality than at least in time spent. But since this is the 40th birthday of D&D I wanted to be sure I made some progress.

Job Sheets

Here's a pic of the job sheets for Fighter and Black Mage complete with fancy, isometric sprites.

The top part shows the stats and values for each job as well as containing a space to record LV, XP, and AP. The AP box is handy but the LV and XP boxes are redundant since they are the same for each character regardless of job.

I decided to do these two jobs first because they are polar opposites of each other. The Fighter has the highest HP, DMG and ATK stats as well as the lowest values in MP, M.Dmg and M.Atk while the Black Mage is the exact reverse situation. With that said, you may notice that HP and MP are not on the same scale. Everyone gains some of each but HP range from 15-30 and MP from 3-20. DMG and M.Dmg are almost the same scale. Both have a minimum value of 3 but M.Dmg caps at 12 rather than 10.

Abilities

This pic shows the complete list of abilities for each job. The Black Mage has only one option in both the Reaction and Support categories, and no Movement abilities at all. The Fighter, by contrast, has the very useful "Move+1" Movement ability and a choice of two each in Support and Reaction, though neither of their Support abilities are actually useful when Fighter is set as the main job because they are both Equip abilities.

If you add up the AP costs you will also see that to Master the Black Mage job it costs 200 more points than the Fighter. AP costs, as of now, are taken directly from the video games and that means that different jobs can cost different amounts to master and that is okay. The specific costs will certainly change in order to achieve better balance, but I am not committing to making the jobs all cost the same.

Mastering Jobs

As mentioned above, mastering a Job is easy, all you need to do is buy all of its abilities. As of now, what that does for you is grant permissions to use certain items and unlock additional jobs. I'm considering treating mastery as a bonus level so that when you finally master a job you get all the HP, MP, DMG and M.Dmg of gaining a level while that job is primary. 

There could be other benefits, such as allowing certain equipment in other jobs, but that can't be too much or it makes the Equip type support abilities redundant. In some cases it could allow a boost when using job abilities, so that your Fighter who has already mastered Black Mage isn't choking on a D6 M.Atk die.

But that's a problem for another post.

Links

Full size Fighter and Black Mage Job Sheet