Conan 2d20. Skill Trials

In previous articles I have talked about how success in Conan2d20 aren't simply pass/fail. There is a measure of how well a character completes a skill test; how well you attack, observe or hide. Momentum is an easy way to track this, each point you generate allows you cause more damage, do cool stunts or learn more about your environment.

Generally failure is, however, still failure. The one place this is different is combat. If I am fighting a skeleton and I make a melee skill check to hit and I fail, the skeleton is still there. I get to try again to succeed in the next round. Compare this to your party sage trying to decipher ancient runes on the wall. If he rolls a failure, it's all over and the meaning of the writing is lost forever, beyond the abilities of our heroes. Certainly there are mechanics in games that work to address this, such as "taking 20" but most of these make the assumption that the player and their character has essentially unlimited time to solve the puzzle or make the skill check.

Today we are going to try and address this potential issue with something I am calling a "Trial". I didn't invent this mechanic. Several other systems use it, such as ICRPG and the AGE system. (It has been noted since I published this that both the Infinty and Star Trek 2d20 RPG systems have similar mechanics.) These "Trials" also works well once it is placed alongside the "TIMER" mechanic from ICRPG. Now rolling a failure, in a time sensitive encounter, doesn't mean they will never know what it says. Now it just takes them longer to figure it out. How long it takes might be a key part of a combat encounter; can the sage get the door open before the horde of ghouls overwhelms the party?

Some ideas for skill tests that might benefit from these "Trials" are deciphering runes, solving puzzles, exploring ruins or jungles, negotiating costs etc. It can give your non-combat characters the ability to work to complete something during combat and contribute to success of the party instead of taking the backseat.

The Basic Idea

The current iteration of the system is quite simple. I make a note like 10-D3, which signifies a 10 momentum D3 challenge. Succeeding at the challenge lowers the total by 1 and momentum generated goes towards solving the puzzle or being stored in the pool. When challenge momentum reaches 10 you have solved the puzzle, deciphered the runes, made it through the jungle etc.

Probably the easiest way to track this is to pick a momentum score that is a multiple of one of the types of dice we use for general RPG play, this way you can easily use a die to track how much progress a players has made. You could even get a special set of dice that you use only for "Trials", this way players can easily tell what they are and how much work still needs to be done.

Round 1: Our Sage, Altan, has come across a series of strange runes at the end of a corridor. He suspects deciphering the runes is key to opening the passage, and so sets to work. Player: I try and decipher the runes. GM: Ok it's a 5-D3 test. Player: I will roll 4d20 against his Lore score of 13/2 and get 8,9,15,13. Altan looks over the runes and begins his work to decipher them. At first he doesn't recognize anything, but finally he thinks he has a good place to start and continues to work on them. Round 2: Altan continues to work on deciphering the runes, as his work continues his fellow adventurers hold off the ongoing things in the dark, but time runs short and his friends are being to fall back. Player: I continue to try working on the runes. GM: OK, since you succeeded last time it is now a 4-D3 test. Player: I will roll 5d20 against his Lore score of 13/2 and I will use a Fortune for one of the dice. 10,5,17,19,1. Giving me 1 point of momentum. GM: The test has been reduced to a 2d3 test. Altan works hurriedly decoding and deciphering, he believes he has slightly more than half of the words figured out, but they still don't make much sense. Round 3: In the darkness, something large stalks towards the party. Four warriors standing, heaving with exhaustion. Blood and sweat drip down their bodies. Behind them, seeking the way out, an older man in robes hurriedly works, scrawling in a notebook. GM: Something large will be upon your party next round Player: I continue to work! GM: OK, We now have a 2-D3 test! All you need is success and a momentum! . Player: I will roll 5d20 again agains his Lore score of 13/2. I roll 17,10,4,4,12, giving me 4 successes! GM: You solve the runes! They are an ancient version of Turanian your didn't initially recognize. They tell you to how to open this passage and so you do, allowing you and your fellows to escape the coming doom.

Lending a hand

Assistance generally works the same as before, players can try and lend a hand by rolling an extra die and hopefully adding momentum to the pool. It was suggested another way to handle this is to allow the players to choose which skill they will roll against to offer the assistance. All they have to do is narrate their character using the skill in the scene.

Our Heroes set out into the desert looking for a long forgotten tomb of an ancient Stygian king. All they have is a map and the setting sun. GM: It is going to take you 10-D2 Survival Trialto navigate the desert with the information you have. Failing a test will cause fatigue to occur. Player 1: I have the highest Survival test so I will make that as a roll. GM: Will anyone assist? Player 2: My alchemist would like to use Lore to assist to better understand the map. Player 3: I would like to use Observation to keep a keen eye on the horizon and make sure we are not going astray. Player 4: I use my counsel skill to keep everyone's spirits up, hoping the high moral will keep our heads about us. GM: Ok. make your rolls! Player 1: As lead I roll 5d20 against my Survival of 14/2. I roll 13,7,8,8,16 = Success and 3 momentum. Player 2: I roll my assist vs my Lore of 13/1. 10 = +1 momentum Player 3: My roll vs. my Observation of 12/2 is 3 = +1 momentum. player 4: I roll against my Counsel of 12/2. I get a 5. +1 momentum! GM: Your total is 7, reducing the "Trial" to a 3-D2 test on your next round.

Fatigue and Despair

If your players are exploring a deep oppressive dungeons, parching desert or big infested swamps, it might be worth while having a negative effect to an outright skill check failure. Perhaps if the party is working on a Survival Trial, rolling to navigate the desert and they fail it can be assumed they wander hopelessly and gain 1cd Fatigue, and likewise if trapped in the oppressive dark of a dungeon and they fail they gain 1cd Despair.

Complications

The simplest complication is to raise the difficulty of the next test by 1. But other things could occur depending on what the test is. In a dungeon? Perhaps they set off a trap. In a desert? Perhaps they encounter a snake and they take 2cd before killing it. Negotiating in a tavern? Maybe they have been pickpocketed and lose 1cd+1 gold. Another idea is, especially if they are burning through the test too fast, to extend the length of the test by 2 per complication, or some variant depending on how much you want to slow them down.

Conclusion

I have used this a few times and find it to be a decent way to abstract explorations without having to focus on mapping. It allows you plenty of places to use combat and encounters to spice things up. It also allows non-combat characters to participate more and at a similar level to combat characters. Going forward I have a few more articles planned that will utilize this mechanic to enhance your sessions of Conan 2d20.

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

Zones Revisited for Miniatures. Conan 2d20 RPG

One of the things I have struggled with is zones, especially when outdoors. Playing an action scene with miniatures and having zones that are not clearly defined can be difficult. D&D and others get around this by using grids, one square typically equals five feet. If you character has a move of 30'/turn, they move 6 squares. Nice and easy. Some players of these systems have moved away from grids and gone gridless. In systems like this if 1 inch equals 5 feet. A character with a 30'/turn moves 6". Still simple. This is generally how wargames work.

Of note is an independent skirmish wargame called "A Song of Blades and Heros", which is an awesome game that I highly recommend. In this game characters are moved via a move stick. No measuring apart from the stick. You do lose a little granularity, but what you lose there you make up in speed. It's a cool system.

I am sure some of you are wondering what I am on about. This is CONAN 2d20! It doesn't use a grid! It uses abstract zones! Zones based around scenery, zones based around where the action is happening!

Yes. This is all 100% true and if you can easily define zones you can create areas that are larger and some that are smaller, allowing you to control speed of the characters moving across the environment. ie a large zone represents an area a character can move fast and a small zone represents an area a character needs to move slowly across.

If you have time and can create defined zones in your outdoor scenes that your players can clearly identify, this is the way that more closely resembles how the rules are written and I suggest that it might be the best way to go. Best, but not fastest.

Using some of the above ideas from gridless D&D games as well as SoBH, I want to suggest the use of a stick. This stick is the size you want your average zone to be, + 1/2 that length again. In the case of a 4.5" stick we mark it at 1.5" from the end, and label it "Close", label the remainder as "Medium".

Indoors it might be small, say 4.5" long, and outdoors it might be double that size representing faster movement in larger, more open areas. As you can gather this stick represents the length of a zone. At the start of a players turn we assume his or hers character is sitting in the middle of their "zone".

• Adjust - Free action - Miniature may move within any point listed as "Close" on the stick. Representing moving within the zone.
• Move - Minor action - Miniature may move within any point on the stick. This represents moving to any place within "Medium" Range.
• Sprint - Standard - Miniature may move to any point on the stick + the medium range portion of the stick, representing moving to "Long Range".

Basically we are picking a length for what we want the "MOVE" action to be. In D&D that might be a 6" stick representing the move of 30'. Once we have that we are allowing half that distance in the free action "Adjust", that full length for "Move" and two of those lengths for "Spring". Compared to the zone map we had before we can see how this might look and how well it translates.

This is a simple method that will allow your more tactically minded players to have a better grip on how far they can move in a round of play. It does have it's downsides, the biggest of them is you can't simply make a zone larger or smaller because the terrain is easier or more difficult to move across.

If you play Conan 2d20 with miniatures I would love to hear your thoughts on using a measuring system vs a zone system. Drop me a comment below and let me know. If you don't play Conan 2d20 but do play gridless I'd also love to hear what you think of it. Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

T-shirts For the Gamer in You.

First things first. This is gonna contain links to my affiliate store on TeePublic.

A few years ago I was looking for some cool ass t-shirts to wear. I wanted something that represented my love for Conan, but there wasn't much official on the market. I started looking elsewhere and eventually came acorss sites like TeePublic and TeeFury. At the time TeePublic had a larger selection of Conan shirts so I ended up purchasing from them. I have at least one shirt from TeeFury and it has held up as well as the ones I have recieved from TeePublic. My choice to buy largely from TeePublic isn't one of quality, it was simply one of sticking to what I know.

I spend some time on the site looking for shirts I might enjoy. Awhile back I though I could do this easier and offer up my ideas to people that might read my blog and so I became an affiliate and set up a little store. I am adding new cool shirts to the store everyday but thought I would share a few of my favorites in this post!

As I mentioned I looked into these several years back. At that time I bought several Conan shirts, which I wear a LOT. I still have them. I still wear them. They body and graphic on the shirt have held up well. These shirts generally run for about $20USD each, which means I don't personally buy them all that often. However at certain times of the year, and it's not rare, they have site wide sales for $14!

One of the things I appreciate about a good t-shirt design is subtlety. If a person is unfamiliar with what the show is based on, they very well might not know it's based on anything.

First up is shirts inspired by The Expanse!

Canterbury	MCRN Tachi	Remember The Cant	Star Helix

Next up we have some cool Conan inspired shirts!

Two Snakes	Cimmeria Warrior	Crom Does Not Care	Doom!

Finally a small random selection from my TeePublic list. RPGs and COBRA KAI!

Roll For Initiative	You Can Try	Cobra Kai

The Expanse RPG: Ship Combat!

Today in an Expanse Extra Kickstarter update we got our first flavors of what ship to ship combat will look like in the rpg. The RPG is a literary license and not a TV license, so although we have seen some cool ship combat realized on the screen, I don't expect it to be what drives the RPG ship combat.

The ship combat in the books is good and as with the other outer space stuff it tries to be as realistic as possible. To realize this we need ship momentum, range and 3d space, all of which can be tricky in a wargame scenario where the ships are the *WHOLE* game. Let's take a look at the sample we got today to see how well it stacks up. Is it a good mix of realism vs excitement and playability?

Upon first glance it appears a ship combat phase has a few segments. Please don't forget these are just my first impressions from the example and I could be totally out to lunch on how the rules will actually look.

• Orders.
• Maneuvers.
• Electronic Warfare.
• Weapons Fire.
• Defensive Action.
• Weapons Damage.
• Damage Control.

From the example I will try and break down what is going on in each phase.

Orders

The Captain makes a Communication(Leadership) roll to see if the orders are successful, gaining stunt points which can be used later. Failure here doesn't cripple the ship, but the crew has no stunt points from the Captain to help them out of a tough situation.

Maneuvers.

We don't get much information on maneuvers, but from the example it looks like they are a way for the ships to primarily control range against each other, meaning all the specifics of 3d space may simply be left to the GMs description. I don't hate that idea. We also see that pulling high G maneuvers will have possible negative effects on the crew represented, at least in this example, by Constitution(Stamina) checks

Electronic Warfare

This looks like a simple Intelligence(Technology) roll giving the players a bonus to their defensive maneuvers, or the opportunity to use the stunt points. We see a ship rendered unable to attack by spending 3 SPs in the example.

Weapons Fire

The example makes this out to be a simple declaration of fire.

Defensive Maneuvers

This portion is where the hits and misses are determined. Generally rolling piloting vs the attacking ships sensor suite +10. ie A sensor score of 10 means your evasion roll is against 14. This is where we can use those EW points.

Weapons Damage

If a hit is scored simply roll damage and subtract the hull rating of the ship, which appears to be a rolled number. Remaining damage is handled through losses, which read much like how we deal with player damage. Each loss, I suspect, reduces remaining damage by 1d6. It is possible a ship can only handle a certain number of losses in a turn, as we see a ship removed from play as, even after 2 losses, a single damage point remains. The largest question I have here is if ships have hull points like characters have fortune points. We see these losses cause all kinds of havoc from the reduction in Piloting to collateral damage amongst the crew, meaning they behave like a condition applied to a character. It will be interesting to see how this all comes together in the rules.

Damage Control

This looks to be a simple Intelligence (Engineering Test) allowing a player to fix the ship, ie remove penalties. We also see these describes as advanced tests, so the players might be working hard to fix a problem and end up with another before they are finished.

Stunts
I suspect we will see a list of stunts for spaceship combat, possible for most of the areas, with the command stunts able to help out the remaining crew members as needed.

Overall it looks like it has potential to be a cool system, and the use of those stunt points and EW points is going to make every member of the crew important in the game universe. If however you were hoping for some kind of wargames system to allow Expanse style miniature combat, this is not that.

What are your thoughts on this combat system? Drop me a comment below and lets get some discussion going!

Back to the Pulps. Clark Ashton Smith.

Yesterday, August 14, is a day that marks the anniversary of the passing of Clark Ashton Smith. Smith became known to me through reading Robert E Howard. CAS is often spoken in the same sentences that name Robert E Howard and Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He was a common contributor to Weird Tales at the same time as the other two, often being referred to as part of a trio of weird. Like Howard he was a member of what has come to be known as Lovecraft's literary circle.

If you haven't read any Clark Ashton Smith I highly recommend you pick up some of his work and get to know him a little. To help you with that I found a website containing a fairly large repository of his writing, "The Eldritch Dark, The Sanctum of Clark Ashton Smith" and I am going to link some of my favorites below for you to check out.

Here we have five stories to read and a website full of many many more. I myself have only read a small portion of this author's work but you should give him a shot if you haven't. You will be rewarded with a myriad of strange and fantastic worlds the likes of which you have not seen before.

• The Charnel God
• The Abominations of Yondo
• Master of the Asteroid
• The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
• The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

The Expanse RPG: The Zone, Part 1: The Basics.

I first encountered this idea in Conan 2d20, which isn't surprising since it was the RPG that brought me back to this hobby. I've seen it used a spatial idea in other games since then, which isn't to say Conan was the first, just the first to me.

When not playing theatre of the mind, games like Pathfinder use a grid or a measurement to move miniatures around and determine if they can attack. ie Thogar, my warrior can move 20' in a turn and a square is typically 5 feet, allowing my character to move 4 spaces in a turn.

Zones allow us to understand our spatial relationships but remove the idea of moving 4 squares or 5 squares. It gives up some granularity and some level of tactics, but gives us a fairly nice bridge between the boardgame/wargame feel of a grid/measurement based system and a theatre of the mind.

If you are unfamiliar with a zone, you can think of it as a spatial area where some action might take place. It's size isn't *THAT* important but should probably make some sense given the encounter. If we take a generic tavern we might have 4 or 5 zones.

• The Bar.
• The Front Entrance.
• The Tables.
• The Fireplace.
• The Dark Corner.

Instead of measuring your 4 or 5 spaces a character can generally use their standard action/move to simply move from one zone into another. Moving around inside a zone is generally a simple/minor/half-move action depending on the game you are playing. Yes it removes the ability to do tactically think about where a character is moving and if they will trigger attacks of opportunity or similar. Yes it removes the ability of some players to be a little faster than others. What it does give you is a fairly simply way to spatially show about where players and their antagonists are located in an environment.

You can also fairly easily define areas that are slower to move through by simply making those zones a little smaller. Consider the following graphic showing a road flanked on either side by dense forests. Without specifically counting squares we can see that the road is a faster way to travel and in this case, twice as fast.

You can further make the environments interesting by adding skill tests or increased difficulties to the zones. In Conan 2d20 perhaps the forests add +1D to all skill tests including combat unless they are at home in the forest. In something like ICRPG where you set a TN for the room, you could now set it for each zone instead. Perhaps the zone is on a cliff edge and requires a dexterity test to not slip and another once slipped to not fall off the edge? As you can see it has the ability to add a lot of environmental factors in pretty easily.

You can define these zones with terrain as normal, although this is often the most challenging way to do it as terrain will often bleed together and where a zone is exactly can be difficult for a player to see, especially if they are used to a grid or measure based system. Another way to define a zone is with a set of simple index cards, and I would be remiss without mentioning Runehammer's collections of index cards that make excellent zone markers. Currently he is up to four collections of these cards, with volume 3 being sci-fi oriented.

Our next installment is going to look at how I am thinking of implanting this with Expanse given the full set of Modern Age rules. Things may change but it will give us a good starting place on how to implement this awesome and simple system in our games.

Modern Age: Making a Character.

Now that we've had a quick look at the print edition of Modern Age, I thought I would go a little more in depth into various parts of the rulebook. Starting off this series: Characters.

Without characters the players would have no real ability to interact with the world and without that our story is going to suffer. It makes sense to start our look at these rules with character generation.

As most RPGs characters are defined by a list of attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, Constitution and Charisma....No wait that's D&D, a game I haven't really played in close to 25 years. Although I admit to a few pathfinder sessions. It's funny to me that I can still recall the attributes from that game. These are of course NOT the attributes used in Modern Age. Modern Age uses the following attributes to define a character

• Accuracy - Aim, precision, ability to use ranged weapons.
• Communication - Social skills, personal interactions.
• Constitution - Health and fortitude.
• Dexterity - Hand-eye coordination, reaction time.
• Fighting - Close combat/melee weapons.
• Intelligence - Reasoning, memory, problem solving.
• Perception - Ability to use the characters senses, how observant they are.
• Strength - How strong the character is.
• Willpower - Self control, discipline.

BUT before we get around to generating your alter-egos physical and mental abilities lets do one thing first, which is actually listed as step 1 of character creation in the rule book. The first thing we need is a basic concept. Having an idea of the campaign you are going to play in will be an important thing to know. If your adventures are set in the south American jungle, choosing a street wise private eye is probably not your best choice.

Knowing the group is going to play a group trying to rid the city of crime in a gritty 70s/80s type cop show, we will choose that street wise private investigator as our basic idea for our character.

Now that we have our basic idea we can determine our stats. The base method of determining this is to roll 3d6 in order and consult a table. This will generate a stat from -2 to 4. It also include the ability to swap any two rolls to more closely meet the character as he or she develops. They include two other methods, one is random and one is a point build system. I am in favor of point build systems in a lot of cases. I like the idea of allowing a player to build the character they like and want to play.

Using the standard method of rolling 3d6 in order we come up with the following for stats. Accuracy - 2 Communication - 0 Constitution - 2 Dexterity - 3 Fighting - 0 Intelligence - 1 Perception - 2 Strength - 2 Willpower - 2

Once we have the attributes figured out we figure out our characters social class, background. These are a few simple rolls or choices and will give the character a random bonus as well as an increase to an attribute, a focus and a talent.

My rolls for my class and background roll out as follows.... Social class: Outsider Background: Bohemian Background Bonus: Acrobatics Bohemian grants +1 Communication, One of two different focuses, keeping our character in mind we will choose Communication (Performance) and one of two talents. We will again choose Performance. Our roll of Acrobatics grants us that as a focus. Communication - 1, Performance Dexterity - 3, Acrobatics Talents: Performance.

The next step we are going to complete is the characters profession. Again it is a simple roll or a choice. The profession will give you another focus and another talent as well as the characters base health and resource score.

For a profession we roll Survivalist. This grants us another focus. We will choose Accuracy (Pistols) And another Talent. We choose Tactical Awareness. Our base health, as this is a physical profession is 20+Con, or 22. Accuracy - 2, Pistols Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness.

Once we have our abilities, background, social class and profession we need to determine what drives the character. As the rest of the steps this is a pretty simple set of rolls and will give you a description of the things that drive your character as well as a quality and a downfall. You will also gain a new Talent and the ability to improve something, from a list of 3 things.

Our characters drive is Builder. You are someone who wants to create something lasting. A foundation, community etc. How you get it? That is less important. We again get another Talent and we will choose "Maker". We also get an improvement. Right now our Resource score is 0, so we will move that to 2 At this time now that we have a better understanding of our character we can swap out two abilities, but I think ours are looking ok, so we will leave them as is. Resources - 2 Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness, Maker.

Equipment in the game is a basic set of starting equipment your character might actually have. Is she a PI? She might have a low budget office, cell and computer. Maybe a pistol. The game lists starting equipment as clothing, equipment and weapons in line with the character. It is in general a pretty open thing that will need to be discussed with the GM. Money in this game is handled in a very abstract way, so you won't be buying 50 feet of rope and deducting 10gp from your character sheet.

A basic set of equipment that fits our character and current abilities. Equipment: Basic simple clothing and tie. Pistol. Cell phone. Older cool car.

We have a few more stats to figure out which are just simple derived stats based on a base + ability. ie Health is determined by your profession and now we learn your health is that base + your characters Con. We determine health, defense, toughness and speed this way.

Our final derived stats look like this: Health - 22 Defense - 13 Toughness - 2 Speed - 13

The penultimate step in character creation is a little more abstract. Determining a few goals as well as relationships and strengths of those relationships. Did someone save your life? Would you take a bullet for someone? Does someone have to die? The number of these is determined by your characters communication skill.

Goals: He's seen too much crime in his life. All he wants to do is to take down as many bad guys as possible. Goals: Form a group of men and women that can act outside the law to take down criminals and others. Relationships: Close relationship with a detective on the police force. Ties: This will be some ideas about how this character knows the other PCs in his group.

Finally name and describe your character. Figure out who he or she is exactly. Once that is complete you have your first character for Modern Age.

Name: Jim Height: 5'11" Weight: 189lbs Age: 31

And finally the completed character. Overall I found the system easy to learn and follow along with. I hope you have a better understanding of how a build might look.

Name: Jim Height: 5'11" Weight: 189lbs Age: 31	Early middle age, shabby clothing, dark slightly curly hair.
Health - 22 Defense - 13	Toughness - 2 Speed - 13
Accuracy - 2, Pistols Communication - 1, Performance Constitution - 2 Dexterity - 3, Acrobatics Fighting - 0 Intelligence - 1 Perception - 2 Strength - 2 Willpower - 2	Resources: 2 Equipment: Clothing, tie Pistol. Cell phone. Older cool car.
Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness, Maker.
Goals: He's seen too much crime in his life. All he wants to do is to take down as many bad guys as possible. Goals: Form a group of men and women that can act outside the law to take down criminals and others. Relationships: Close relationship with a detective on the police force. Ties: This will be some ideas about how this character knows the other PCs in his group.
Weapon Attack Bonus Damage ROF/RNG/CAP/RELOAD SA Handgun +4 2d6 -B-W- SA/55yrd/5 cap/minor