Roleplaying Games

Running Heists in Cortex Prime (using Doom Pools)

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I’ve been working on some Cortex rulesets for a number of different settings and games that involve dramatic heists, espionage, and the types of tense action found in as varied places as Andor, For a Few Dollars More, Heat, Inception, the Gentlemen Bastards series, Mission Impossible, the Ocean’s films, etc., etc. I also recently watched most of Netflix’s Kaleidoscope (very much worth seeing), which might have been the direct catalyst for this write-up.

Regardless, these are the rules I’ll be using to run heists in my Cortex games until playtesting moves me to modify them. Maybe they’ll be useful for you, as well. If you’ve got criticism, thoughts for expansion and improvement, or stories of using the system, I will very much look forward to hearing them.

Heists

Rather than the default difficulty rules, Heists use a variation of the Limited Doom Pool system as well as Crisis Pools (Cortex Prime Handbook, pp. 32-33). Note that this system is only one in the toolbox for resolving actions—some “heist-like” activities (like a smash-and-grab) may be better served by the Narrative Action or Combined Action systems.

The Heist itself has a Doom Pool, starting with dice that represent the difficulty and complexity of the Heist (a low-level job begins with d6, d6; while breaking into the highest security facilities may start with a d12, d12 (such facilities should likely be the grand target after a series of set-up heists and should be used sparingly). We will call this specialized Doom Pool the Heist Pool.

Play starts with a brief Legwork phase as the players take actions to discover the countermeasures, security, and particular nuances of the heist they’re planning, then proceeds to the heist proper, and then to the aftermath.

Legwork

In the Legwork phase, each player describes an action their character is taking to learn about the target person, object, or facilities. The GM and player determine the Traits applicable to the test and then that pool is rolled against the Doom Pool.

If the test is successful, the character’s Effect Die is added to the characters’ collective Plan Pool. At the same time, the GM may purchase hitches from the player’s pool to add to the Heist Pool, representing security features identified, the target getting some indication of a potential attack, etc.

Each participating player should get at least one Legwork test. Once each player has had a chance to make a Legwork test, the players may discretionarily make additional rolls. Bear in mind that each roll carries the risk of increasing the Heist Pool as well as providing additional dice to the Plan Pool. Regardless of the number of tests made, no test may duplicate the action of a previous test made by another player; each new test must involve a new method of inquiry or course of action.

The GM should allow the players to see both the Plan Pool and the Heist Pool. If, after conducting their Legwork, they look at the relative pools and decide not to proceed, jump to the Aftermath phase.

Execution

Once the Legwork phase is complete, the players determine the general layout of the plan; they do not need to go into too much detail—the broad scope of who is doing what should suffice. Once established, the Plan Pool is rolled against the Heist Pool; this is called the Position Test.

If the Plan Pool beats the stakes established by the Heist Pool, the Effect Die may be used to reduce or eliminate a die from the Heist Pool. However, the GM may purchase hitches for the Heist Pool as usual.

The general result of the test should be interpreted to determine the general situation when we jump into the action of the heist. If the Plan Pool defeated the Heist Pool, the heist is going relatively smoothly when detailed play begins. If it failed, an unexpected complication has thrown a wrench into the works, part of the plan didn’t pan out, or something else has happened to leave the players scrambling to react and adapt to complete the mission.

At this point, use the Doom Pool to play out the heist. In addition to the other options, players may spend Plot Points for a Flashback; this allows a player to create Assets representing previous actions taken before the heist to set up the current action even though they had not been previously described. This ability is essential to ensuring that play keeps moving and that players don’t get incapacitated trying to plan for every possible scenario in the Legwork phase.

During a heist, the expenditure of d12, d12 (to end the current scene) indicates that the heist has failed and moves play to the Aftermath—with the characters all having successfully escaped without further consequences over those suffered during the heist. If the initial difficulty dice in the Doom Pool were d12, d12 (which should be an exceedingly rare event), do not spend those dice to achieve this effect.

The expenditure of d12, d12 is not the only way the heist may end unsuccessfully. If a series of failed tests against the Heist Pool results in a narrative where failure makes the most sense, declare that to be the result and move to having the characters attempt to escape before being capture, killed, identified, or otherwise inconvenienced.

Once the characters have escaped, move to the Aftermath phase.

Aftermath

Some consequences of the heist (including but not limited to injury) will undoubtedly occur during the heist itself. But no heist goes entirely smoothly, and here is where the GM gets to put some additional pressure on the players and their characters.

The mechanics of this are simple: the GM may transfer the remaining dice from the Heist Pool to one or more Crisis Pools representing continuing consequences of the heist. These may represent an institutional response to increased crime, investigation by law enforcement, a team of hit men dispatched by the target to recover lost goods, the betrayal of a fence or other trusted person, the ignition of a war between criminal or other factions, etc.

The players may attempt to address these crises per the normal rules—taking actions to throw pursuers off the trail, getting revenge on traitors, etc. They may also attempt to avoid these consequences as best they can—lying low for a while, fleeing to another jurisdiction, or taking other actions to let the heat die down. If the narrative militates that a crisis pool should no longer exist, take it out of play whether or not the characters have acted against it directly. Cases and trails go cold, new crises of the day emerge, the news cycle refreshes, and even the biggest of jobs becomes history eventually.

Milton’s Areopagitica and the Christian Gamer

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Nearly all of us are familiar with Milton’s Paradise Lost, having voluntarily read it–or, more likely, having been forced to read it in school at some point or other. But John Milton wrote far more than that, and while there is a special place in my heart for Paradise Lost, my favorite of his works is undoubtedly his Areopagitica. If you want to read the full text, you can find it here. I’ll endeavor to summarize the text in this post to spare you (mostly) the irregularities of spelling and unwieldy grammars of times long gone.

Areopagitica was written in 1644 (at the height of the English Civil War) against censorship, particularly the prepublication censorship of England’s Licensing Order of 1643, which required texts to be reviewed and licensed before they could be published. The censors were aggressive, and the punishments were severe. Keep in mind that this was a time when harsh physical punishments: time in the pillory, floggings, brandings, ear-clippings, and more were more common than imprisonment. For a more complete background on Areopagitica (as far as information on Wikipedia is “complete”), go here.

Those of you who have read Milton widely or who are familiar with his life and biography know that he was in many ways a radical–he was a Reformed Puritan and, at the vary least, probably not much fun at parties. He vehemently hated Catholicism. Scholars have sifted through his works and life to make arguments that he may have adopted some unorthodox religious views and interpretations. All of this is to say that my endorsement of (some of the ideas of) Areopagitica is not an endorsement of the man himself or the totality of his ideas. While I, personally, find aspects of both Calvinist and Catholic theology unworkable and potentially harmful, I have no ill will toward those who practice those versions of the Christian faith and do not (at least no longer) have the arrogance to presume that I have the truth of all things. Most important, this article is not about Milton in general or large-scale theological beliefs, so we can leave all of these issues for some other time.

We live in a time where there is much in Areopagitica that we ought consider. In America, we have extremists using all means possible to ban books in schools, often for reasons they’ve constructed themselves instead of based on reality. Elon Musk claims to be an absolutist when it comes to free speech, and then uses his ownership of Twitter to silence those he doesn’t like. Both of these are elements of a larger debate in American culture about the scope of and limits that might be placed on speech in a free society.

As an aside, since this gets bandied about so much: the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects individuals from infringement of free speech of citizens by the government. It does not apply to corporations or private individuals who do not want certain speech to occur in the forums over which they have control. There is a difference–a broad difference, between the right to say what you want and entitlement to be heard. Too many loud voices are currently conflating these things. A person should be protected from criminal punishment for uttering hate speech (provided that, as the law considers, it is not made with the intent to instigate criminal activity), but that person should also be ridiculed by society at large and not given a forum to spread groundless, harmful, and blatantly wrong ideas. Despite this mini-diatribe, this is not the point of this post, either. I hope you’ll allow a little authorial (in)discretion in this tangent.

I lured you here under the pretext that Areopagitica has something to offer Christian gamers; it is my intent to make good on that promise. To do that, we’re going to look at arguments–mostly religious based–about censorship in Areopagitica and see where it gets us.

Milton begins by reasoning that books are like those “fabulous Dragons teeth” of Greek legend that spring up warriors when planted–books can spur dangerous ideas and actions. I can’t disagree with this; I can think of many books that have spread harmful ideas to the detriment of humanity. But with this concession to the censors, he begins to deconstruct the reasons for the Licensing Order.

He urges caution in the censorship or destruction of books, saying:

…as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good Booke is pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.

For Milton (and I think he’s right), ideas are eternal; if we believe that we are creatures destined for an eternal life beyond this one, then ideas and knowledge are the only things we can take with us, and they ought to be treated as having that kind of value. For Milton, this militates for caution in deciding that a “Booke” is not “good.”

Some of Milton’s earliest arguments in the text are his best, and the ones which concern us (or me, at least) most. He writes:

…Read any books what ever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter….Prove all things, hold fast that which is good….To the pure, all things are pure, not only meats and drinks, but all kinde of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defil’d. For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evill substance, and yet God in that unaprocryphall vision, said without exeception Rise Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each mans discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomack differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evill. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forwarn and to illustrate.

To put it plainly, the person strong in spirit is not corrupted by mere exposure. Quite the opposite; the exposure to different ideas allows one to test their beliefs and confirm what is and is not good, growing in understanding (and, I’d argue, compassion, which seems to me to necessarily accompany understanding).

Milton says further:

They are not skilfull considerers of human things, who imagin to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universall thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains entire.

From there, Milton reminds us that few arguments, texts or broad ideas are entirely good. It is a consequence of the limitations of human intellect that even our best ideas are often muddled with those that are mediocre, indifferent, or outright bad. He asserts that, were we to try to rid ourselves of all the bad by some means other than knowing good and evil and separating the good things from the bad things as they come, we’d have to do away with (or at least require licensing for) all good pleasures: music, art, dance, fraternization between men and women. For me, Areopagitica itself is an excellent example of this precept; I love it for the excellent points it makes, despite the points with which I disagree (such as Milton’s unreserved bigotry).

The next point is especially poignant. To summarize, Milton reminds us that the Bible itself is full of “untoward” stories: stories of violence and greed and corruption. And yet, when these kinds of stories are in Scripture, we view them as instructional, not corrupting. Why can that not be the case in other works?

Next, Milton flexes his classical muscles and looks to historic censorship in Greek and Roman culture for examples of what ought be banned. He settles on two major themes: atheism (represented by the books of Protagoras, Plato’s archetypal sophist, who wrote in ambivalence about the existence of the divine and in favor of the belief that all truth is relative) and libel (represented by Ben Jonson’s satirical Vetus Comoedia. He specifically mentions that neither Epicurus nor the school of Cynicism were censored in ancient Greece. For reference, Epicurus was a materialist who advocated for the pursuit of (moderated) pleasure free from fear and anxiety as the proper goal of life, while Cynicism advocated for “living naturally,” that is, in accordance with one’s nature–and rejecting common desires for wealth and power, as the desirable method of living. Milton seems to treat both as examples of “libertine” works that ought still be allowed. He continues with his historical review, but the argument flows from the above, so we’ll move along.

After this, Milton examines the role of the church (after the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity) in censorship. He notes that books (of heretics) were not forbidden or burnt until they had been “examin’d” and “refuted” by church councils. This flows with Milton’s overarching argument: remember, he is not writing against the banning of books per se, but against the Licensing Order that created a system of pre-publication censorship. Milton is perfectly fine with books being burnt and banned if they are determined to be “blasphemous” and without redeeming quality; his caveat is that they should be subject to publication and public review of their ideas before the determination of banning is made. In this sense, of course, Milton’s advocacy against censorship does not go as far as would many today (myself included) or who would follow him historically.

He notes that the church councils mostly determined what books were “not commendable” but left the determination as to whether to read those books to the individual. And now his hatred of the Catholic Church rears its ugly head and he blames the pope and the church councils of the 16th century (the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent in particular) for going too far in efforts to censor. He laments in particular the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In subsequent parts of the text, Milton argues that the Catholic Church’s prohibition of books (through the requirement of an imprimatur certifying that books were allowed by the Church) derived from a desire to generate revenue rather than any desire to direct the goodness of humanity.

Here, the argument turns toward the inadvisability of having a small group of licensers determine what is and is not fit to print–and this is the crux of Milton’s point. He haughtily reminds us (perhaps speaking of himself) that the licenser may be too stupid to understand the content of the writing and may censor it unjustly. He asserts that the whim (or personal leanings) of a single reviewer may cause a book to be banned when it should not be. In one of the key sentences of the text, Milton writes, “Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopoliz’d and traded in by tickets and statutes, and standards.”

After comparing England’s situation to those of other nations, Milton turns his argument to the ineffectiveness of censorship, writing that it, “…stops but one breach of license, nor that neither; whenas those corruptions which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other dores which cannot be shut,” and following with the statement that, “The punishing of wits enhaunces their authority, saith the Vicount of St. Albans, and a forbidd’n writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seeke to tread it out.”

In other words, as my constitutional law professor liked to say, “sometimes more speech is better than less speech.” Sometimes speech needs to be dragged out into the light and ridiculed for its stupidity rather than forbidden if we want to take away its power. For a tangible example, investigate the background of the “Clan of the Fiery Cross” run of the 1940’s radio program Adventures of Superman, which exposed (and made fun of) the Ku Klux Klan, permanently damaging its reputation and reducing its membership.

In true Protestant fashion, Milton then argues that religion is a personal and continuing endeavor, a responsibility that may not be given away to another without consequence. He writes:

Truth is compar’d in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, they sick’n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly so determins, without knowing other reason, becomes his heresie.

Maybe he goes too far in the supposed consequences of not heeding his warning, but I do think he’s correct that Christians have some responsibility, to the extent that they are able, to make their own determinations of what is and is not acceptable in the light of their faith. Milton follows the spiritual warning with a more practical one–the withholding of knowledge from the people can be a factor in dulling their overall inquisitiveness and intellect, and this should not be allowed.

After this, Milton returns to his previous thought, arguing that it is better to put ideas–especially religious ones–in the open where they may be fairly tested rather than spreading them by whispers. He then waxes polemic again to compare the Licensure Act to attempts by the Catholic Church to stamp out the Reformation; we’ll glide by these allegations and leave them to history.

In the following paragraph, Milton fulfills that obligation of all learned men of the 17th century: use of ancient myths and cultures to demonstrate one’s learnedness. He likens the Christian Truth to Osiris’ destroyed and scattered body, arguing that the truth shall not be fully known until the Second Coming, but that we nevertheless have the task of seeking out and reassembling all the truth that we can. Given the debate that persisted from at least the Renaissance as to whether it was proper for Christians to study pagan thought, Milton can only be drawing this comparison purposefully; by using pagan myth to illustrate his own argument, he thereby demonstrates the value of non-Christian thought, culture, history and myth to the Christian. He blames the religious who forbid non-Christian texts and ideas simply because they are not Christian as doing a disservice to all, writing:

They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissever’d peeces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth….A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and som grain of charity might win all these diligences to joyn, and unite into one generall and brotherly search after Truth; could we but forgoe this Prelaticall tradition of crowding consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men.

In other words, as he said at the beginning of the tract, we need to continuously confront ideas that differ from our own to test the rightness of our beliefs.

Perhaps my favorite sentence of the whole work is: “How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief strong hold of our hypocrisie to be ever judging one another.” These words remain as true today (in my own experience in the split within the United Methodist Church) as they were when Milton wrote them.

Milton concludes by returning to the his argument citing Acts 10 (“Kill, and eat.”) that God has given us freedom and knowledge to determine what is good and what is not, and that no good can come from the prepublication censorship of books.

Great. Well, what does all of this have to do with Christian gamers?

As it turns, out, one of the most popular posts on my blog, one that is read by someone almost daily, is my post on Christianity and Warhammer 40k. There seem to be a large number of Christians who are gamers who yet feel some guilt about playing in fantasy worlds, like the act of doing so is itself somehow blasphemous. To my mind, Areopagitica’s arguments address this directly. In summation:

  • Playing in fantasy worlds will not corrupt you in and of itself. That you are worried about such a thing should be taken as evidence that you know how to discern between what is real and what is not, and between what is good and what is not. Games allow us to safely explore alternate realities, cosmologies, situations and experiences. This is both fun and edifying. Gaming doesn’t threaten your faith; it strengthens it by exposing you to new and different ideas that you can then examine in light of your beliefs and convictions.
  • You should not rely solely on someone else telling you what is and is not acceptable in light of your faith. As a Weslayan, I’m a firm believer that spiritual questions ought be answered by resorting to Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience (Albert Outler’s Weslayan Quadrilateral). Don’t let someone tell you that Harry Potter or D&D is blasphemous simply because it isn’t overtly Christian. I’ve yet to meet someone whose exposure to either has lured them into demonaltry. On the other hand, I’ve had many discussions with Christians whose experiences in those or other created worlds have brought them increased understanding of their faith.
  • Few ideas, narratives or texts have solely good or bad ideas; you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is good preparation for actual living, where you’ll often have to judge between what is good and what is evil. And let me tell you, in the real world, some of those choices can be damned tough.
  • Sequestering oneself from all that may be disagreeable only results in stagnation. Exposure to the fantastic is mind-expanding in the best of ways.
  • Harmful ideas are rendered harmless by identifying, discussing, and rejecting them, not by hiding them.
  • At the end of the day, it’s your conscience, and not someone else’s, that you must confront and satisfy. Do what you think is best and have the humility to allow others to do the same.

Maybe you read through all of this and end up not agreeing with Areopagitica’s arguments or my conclusions. In such a case, I’d posit that you’ve proved the very point–the reading or experiencing of something by itself is not going to change you against your will.

I hope that this gives those of you who read it some comfort to lay some of these questions aside and to live a life that is both one of faith and one that is filled with wonder, the fantastic, and games.

Happy New Year.

Fighting Styles in WFRP 4e

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If you’re a follower of this blog, you know that I am fascinated by swordmanship and historical European martial arts (HEMA), and that I very much enjoy roleplaying games that demonstrate some knowledge, however abstracted, of the actual practicalities of melee combat. In that vein, I’m going to discuss in this article melee combat and fighting styles in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 4th Edition.

Whether by intent or happenstance, the designers of WFRP 4e managed to capture some of the feel (and advantages) of certain fighting styles in their mechanics. This article will be partly a review of those design choices and their effectiveness, but a good deal of space will also be devoted to some character build advice in light of various fighting styles.

Generalities

The various incarnations of WFRP (for now, we’ll leave 3rd edition out–I very much liked what FFG was doing there, but it’s its own creature) have long erred toward deadly combat. The grittier feel, the pastiche of early 16th century Europe, and the incorporation of some of the less pleasant aspects of late medieval/Northern Renaissance life (treated, of course, with some humor) have always attracted me to this setting and ruleset over something like D&D (which has it’s own advantages and attractions, don’t get me wrong).

With regards to combat, there’s just enough of the feel of HEMA to sate desire, without something as complex and specifically focused on medieval combat as The Riddle of Steel. I have, years back, run a WFRP game using TRoS, with good result, and while that system will always have a fond place in my heart, my current mood does not need the full complexity (and time consumption) of that combat system in my already-tight gaming time.

The first thing that WFRP 4e gets right, I think, is opposed melee tests. Earlier editions first had the attacker make an attack test and, if successful, the defender could make a parry or dodge test to deflect. Omitting the additional step eases things along and captures more of the feel of HEMA, where combatants are not taking turns pounding on one another but involved in a complex and fast-paced set of test attacks, maneuvering, feints, parries, moves and countermoves. While it might be more “realistic” to have melee combat resolved by a single opposed test, winner scoring the hit, the attack roll vs. defense roll allows for additional mechanics (like certain Talents and weapon Qualities) that further deepen the choices available in the system.

The second point is the (optional) rule for bonuses and penalties for relative weapon length and In-fighting (WFRP 4e p. 297, hidden in the Consumer’s Guide and not the Combat section). These rules are simple enough not to slow combat while providing a greater significance for choice of weapon in particular circumstances. In fact, the In-Fighter and Enclosed Fighter Talents really aren’t of much use if the GM is not taking bonuses and/or penalties for weapon length into account. In my opinion, these rules should always be used.

Hit locations, critical hits by location, and piecemeal armor likewise add to verisimilitudinous combat. Wounds are visceral and specific, the choice of how much armor to wear–and where to wear it–matters. Again, this really only works to full advantage if the GM and players are paying attention to the Encumbrance rules. I realize that many GMs and players hate using all but the most abstracted of Encumbrance rules, but these really aren’t that bad and are worthwhile in the end.

Some players don’t like their characters to be permanently injured and/or disfigured, and I understand that, but the roleplaying opportunities that are opened up by these systems should also not be overlooked (the Physician career is an extremely valuable one in WFRP!). If necessary, allow means of reversing permanent injuries (Shallyan blessings or Jade magic) some additional prevalence and accessibility–give your players a few scenes or sessions to grapple with lasting injuries with the hope of undoing them in the long-run. Some groups, of course, are happy to retire characters who sustain significant injuries (and content with a high character death-rate to boot), and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Further methods of keeping visceral injury while softening the long-term effects would be to adopt a troupe-style play system (where each player has several different characters to choose from in each session) or to allow a greater carry-over of XP between characters than the rules-as-written provide for.

The Advantage system in the core book, though perhaps more narrative than realistic, does provide a method for mechanically mapping the fact that, once a fight hits a crucial turning point, it becomes more and more difficult for the underdog to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The Group Advantage system in the Up in Arms supplement provides a system more in line with Wrath in Wrath and Glory, which is mechanically satisfying and promotes teamwork amongst players (both in themselves admirable goals) but provides less verisimilitude than the core system. On the other hand, no one wants to watch their character get hit right out of the gate and then be locked into a long pummeling as the opponent gains ever more Advantage, so opinions may vary.

The last thing I’d like to point out here before moving to specifics is the use of weapon and armor Qualities. I don’t always agree with specific choices made by designers from a “realism” standpoint, but I find that they are well-written to provide for actually-different styles of fighting. I’ll mention some of these minor criticism and some ideas for “correcting” them below.

Fighting Styles and Builds

Combat Skills and Characters

Note that the Endeavors rules (WFRP 4e p. 195) make it relatively easy to learn the various Melee skills outside of a character’s career, but much more difficult to learn Talents from outside of one’s career. Therefore, if your character is not in the Warrior class, or one of the careers in other classes that contain combat Talents, err on the side of combat styles that require few or no Talents.

If your table has altered the way you treat the Unusual Learning endeavor for purposes of Talents, then the above may not apply. You may also plan to move between careers (and classes) to collect the skills and Talents you want for your character. Personally, though, I could drive myself mad in consideration of all the different possible career combinations focused on acquiring specific Skills and Talents, so I would also consider letting the narrative dictate your career choices and taking the below into account as a separate consideration.

Sword and Shield: The Go-To Style

The sword and shield (or buckler) fighting-style should be the go-to fighting-style for most characters, and particularly those without much skill in combat. This style offers good advantages without having any Talents dedicated to it and can become even more effective with just a few Talents.

Characters who do not intend to fight unless absolutely necessary should carry a sword and buckler. The first advantage of this is that a sword has only 1 Encumbrance and the buckler has no Encumbrance. The buckler provides both an armor bonus to all areas (with the Shield 1 Quality) and a bonus to defense (with the Defensive Quality) and they are, relatively speaking, easy to acquire and inexpensive. As a bonus, this follows historical precedent: in 16th century England, the sword and buckler were known as “the servingman’s weapons.” They were easy for retainers to carry (where weapons were allowed) and also allowed for shows of bravado in fighting the retainers of other nobles houses while minimizing (to the extend possible while swinging sharpened steel) of significant injury. (On the other hand, the earliest fighting manual of which I’m aware, the Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, a German sword-and-buckler manual from around the 1320’s, also demonstrates the complexity of sword-and-buckler fighting and its usefulness for skilled combatants).

Shields fall under the Melee (Basic) skill, meaning that your character may start with some skill in the style even in a non-combatant career, and the Unusual Learning Endeavor allows easy training in the skill even if it is not a career skill. Regardless of Talents, this weapon combination is strong one. As a side note, my read of the rules (particularly those regarding off-hand parrying weapons) leaves the possibility that defending with a shield in the off-hand (without the Ambidextrous Talent) imposes a -20 penalty on rolls. However, I believe that that would be a misreading of the rules as intended and that using a shield imposes no penalties to defense.

As a point of strategy, I would recommend that the sword-and-buckler fighter use the Fighting Defensively rules (WFRP 4e p. 158, upper sidebar) to first generate Advantage. If you’re using the Advantage rules from the core book, this allows you to potentially generate a significant bonus to your tests before going on the offensive. If using the Group Advantage rules from Up in Arms (p. 132-136), you don’t gain Advantage for winning defensive opposed rolls (the test must be one you initiated to gain Advantage). Still, for a character not intended for fighting, use of defensive fighting until you can get help from a more-skilled ally must be considered.

There are two Talents that may be of particular benefit to the sword-and-shield fighter: Reversal and Shieldsman. Both are somewhat contingent on which Advantage system you are using (Core or Up in Arms Group Advantage), so I’ll address them under each system:

Under the core Advantage system, Reversal allows you to take all of an opponent’s Advantage on a successful opposed melee test (including defense). That could potentially be a tide-changer. On the other hand, it’s usefulness is limited by the fact that, under the basic rules, your opponent would lose all Advantage and you would gain one Advantage anyway. Shieldsman is also of somewhat dubious use; the core description of the Talent gives you Advantage when you lose one the defensive side of opposed melee test. The cost for gaining the benefit of the Talent is high; I’d rank “don’t get hit” among the top rules of combat, so maybe pass on this one. The good news is that, under the core Advantage system, there’s not a strong reason to devote XP (or career choices) to specific combat Talents at all.

Both Talents become much more useful under the Group Advantage system: Reversal as revised in Up in Arms retains the benefit of gaining Advantage on successful opposed tests while defending with a shield. Shieldsman allows you to spend Advantage to deal damage when successfully defending (or to push your opponent). Since those careers that include Shieldsman do so at level two, this is one of the easiest Talents to achieve to increase damage output (through a pesudo-extra-attack)–but contrast with Two-Weapon fighting below.

The concepts above are equally applicable to sword and shield as to sword and buckler. The advantages of the larger shields are additional armor points and the ability to oppose ranged attack tests at the cost of increased Encumbrance. If you’re character is going to be at the forefront of the fighting, a larger shield makes more sense than the buckler.

As a last consideration in this style: the bonus armor points from shields are especially helpful if you are wearing light or no armor. But what about heavier armor? The Knight, Knight of the Blazing Sun, and Knight of the Panther careers all assume you’ll be donning heavy armor (see below) but also contain the Shieldsman Talent. I think that a shield is less useful when wearing heavier armors for several reasons: (1) you’re much likelier to be over your basic Encumbrance allotment, (2) there are better weapons to use when you already have high armor (such as polearms and two-handed weapons, see below), and (3) you hit somewhat diminishing returns on armor points by stacking in this way.

Fencing: The Masterclass

By “fencing” I mean the use of the rapier and parrying dagger (“main gauche”). This style offers some excellent benefits but requires a character who is devoting the majority of their XP to fighting. In fact, my personal view is that this method of fighting is too costly outside of the Duellist career. Some benefit may be seen by fighting with rapier and buckler for those outside of the Duellist career who do not want to spend too many resources on combat.

I’ll address the latter situation first: WFRP’s description of the rapier doesn’t actually fit the typical description of the mid-to-late 16th-century and early 17th-century rapier (which would have been a long thrusting weapon with a blade cross-section that doesn’t allow for strong cutting, if any at all). Instead, it describes the “cut-and-thrust” swords that began to focus on the thrust but retain strong cutting ability (the “espada ropera”). These begin to show up in the early 16th-century and continue alongside the development of the rapier. The confusion of terms is entirely forgivable, as the distinction is really a modern one and the contemporary terms used to describe sword types lacked hard categorizations that would be satisfactory to the 21st-century scholar. For ease, I’m going to follow the WFRP naming convention and use “rapier” generally.

The buckler was used with both types of weapons (the “cut-and-thrust” swords and the “true” rapier). In WFRP, you only need the Melee (Fencing) skill to gain the benefits of the rapier–you get the defensive benefits from the buckler without having to acquire the Melee (Parry) skill (see below). What are those benefits? The rapier has three potential advantages over the basic sword: the Fast and Impale Qualities and a long length rather than average (despite the description of the sword given, the mechanics of the weapon do seem to lean toward the “true” rapier intended particularly for thrusting). Again, with the weapon length rules, this can be a good additional advantage (though context matters, and tight spaces or in-fighting will make the weapon a liability, as was historically the case). Fast and Impale are the real attraction. Fast allows you to make attacks outside of the Initiative order and imposes a -10 penalty to defend for weapons that do not also have the Fast quality. Impale increases the likelihood of Critical Hits. If you want to spend some of your character resources on combat skill, but not too many, rapier and buckler is a strong choice, requiring only a single Melee skill and no Talents to get solid benefits.

The “true” fencer is the one who devotes great resources to combat with rapier and an off-hand weapon (cloak or parrying dagger, primarily). In such a case, both the Melee (Fencing) and Melee (Parrying) skills are required (the Parrying skill, not the Fencing skill is used for defending with the off-hand weapon, otherwise a -20 penalty is suffered, so the Defensive quality of the parrying weapon is useless without the proper skill). What are the benefits of the parrying dagger over the buckler? There are a few: first, the dagger gives you a backup weapon in the case of in-fighting, hedging some of the liability of the rapier. Second, the off-hand dagger does not have the Undamaging Quality (which shields do) in the case of dual-wielding attacks. The cloak offers the Entangling Quality rather than a significant attack, which may be a worthwhile exchange when fighting in a group.

I’ll also pick out the “hidden” advantage. As discussed below, the Ambidextrous and Dual Wielder Talents are requirements for the successful use of rapier-and-dagger in making two attacks per turn. Both Talents apply equally to ranged weapons and melee weapons, meaning a character can carry a brace of pistols, fire them both in the first round of combat (before others have a chance to react if you have the Fast Shot Talent), switching to sword-and-dagger to follow. That gives two high-damage attacks that may cause the Broken condition right out of the gate, an impressive opening move.

The rapier-and-off-hand fighting style needs several Talents to reach full potential. As mentioned above, Ambidextrous (two levels, for 300 XP in-career) and Dual Wielder remove all penalties to making attacks with both weapons in a turn. Levels in Riposte allow a character to deal damage while successfully defending with a Fast weapon (a number of times in a turn equal to the levels in Riposte). Combined with the two-weapon-fighting talents, a character using this style can put out a lot of damage in a turn, against multiple targets.

This combination of Talents is only found in the Duellist career, meaning only characters in that career are especially well-suited to this style of combat. Fortunately, that class is also full of other useful Talents: Combat Reflexes is of only some use given the Fast quality of the Rapier, but Beat Blade, Distract, Feint, Step Aside, Combat Master, Reaction Strike and Strike to Injure are all strong combat Talents (if somewhat contextual). Disarm seem to me to be a niche Talent; most of the time it will be a better choice to deal damage.

Two-Handed Fighting: The Damage-Dealer

The downside of the Two-Handed fighting style is that it requires a skill only a few careers have access to (though far more than the Fencing and Parrying skills). The upside is the Qualities available on two-handed weapons. I believe that this is a fighting-style worth considering even for characters outside of careers particularly suited to it (such as the Up in Arms Greatsword career.

I’m going to focus on swords here, as they have fewer downsides when compared to the Great Axe, Pick and Warhammer (which can be great weapons for tough and heavily-armored characters). The Zweihander gives you the Damaging and Hack abilities, which are both excellent. Damaging allows you to use the one’s place of the attack roll rather than the Success Level to calculate additional damage. That could mean up to 9 additional damage on a roll that barely hits–combine this with an already-high damage rating (SB+5), and you have the potential to drop many combatants in a single blow. Hack deals damage to armor, helping you win fights by attrition against heavily-armored opponents. Additionally, the high damage output can be an extremely efficient way to secure multiple attacks in a turn if using the Deathblow! optional rule (

The Bastard Sword trades out Hack for Defensive but retains Damaging; this is a very worthwhile trade in my mind.

Two-handed fighting lends itself to heavy armor, which I’ll address separately below. Aside from those Talents generally useful for combat, I find the Berserk Charge, Strike Mighty Blow, Strike to Injure, Very Strong, and Resolute Talents particularly useful for the two-handed fighter.

The knightly careers and Greatsword career are most suited to two-handed weapons as a style, though the basic Soldier career can be used, and, if willing not to worry too much about the Talents, any career could acquire the skill through the Unusual Learning Endeavor.

A brief aside for some rules modification changes: the Zweihander is a very specific Renaissance weapon, one designed for fighting pike formations and not general combat. It averages six feet in length, up to eight pounds or so (extremely heavy for a melee weapon), has a long grip, often hooks on the blade and a leather-wrapped ricasso (the portion of the blade that is not sharpened, closest to the hilt). The purpose was to swing the weapon like a big sword to knock long pikes out of the way (or potentially chop them up) and then to shift to holding the weapon like a spear (with one hand on the hilt and the other on the ricasso) upon closing with the enemy. The first technique allowed you to close in without being stabbed; the second shortened your weapon for closer combat while pikemen were struggle to drop their pikes and draw their swords. Outside of this situation, other two-handed swords were faster and more effective.

WFRP and Games Workshop seem to use the terms “Zweihander” and “Greatsword” interchangeably. A greatsword unlike a zweihander, was of a more modest length (closer to four feet, with plenty of variation either way in a matter of inches) and weight (three to four pounds). The greatsword was differentiated (or at least is now) from the longsword (a two-handed sword, despite what D&D tries to tell you) by its focus on the cut rather than having a blade shape more versatile between cutting and thrusting.

I believe that the weapon in WFRP really represents the greatsword rather than a zweihander. A zweihander write-up should have two entries: one for using the weapon like a huge sword, one for using it in a more spear-like manner.

While I’m nitpicking, I think WFRP’s “bastard sword” really represents a more traditional longsword. I’d changing that naming and I’d use the following for a true bastard sword (which often had a blade shorter than a longsword but could be wielded in one or two hands): I’d make damage SB+4, length Average, and give it the Defensive and Fast Qualities when used in two hands and no Qualities when used in one hand. Set cost and availability by reference to the two-handed weapons and the basic sword, leaning toward the former.

Polearm Fighting: The Versatile Choice

At face value, polearms are very similar to two-handed weapons. They have a dedicated skill (Melee (Polearms)), the weapons take two hands to use, seem to favor a heavier choice of armor, and even have similar stats (with polearms generally doing less damage than two-handed weapons).

The difference is that polearms offer versatility in a single weapon. For this article, I’m going to focus on the Bill, Halberd, Partizan/Glaive, and Pollaxe. Each of these weapons has the Defensive quality–if eschewing a shield in favor of a two-handed weapon, this offers some parity between the styles. Each then, based on the specific design of the weapon, offers some combination of Hack, Impale, Pummel, Slash (2A) and Trip. The specific choice of weapon should perhaps depend on your character’s Talents: Pummel is especially useful with Strike to Stun, but of limited use otherwise. Hack, Slash, Impale and Trip need no particular Talents. All but the partizan have Hack, making them useful for those times you need to wear down an armored foe. Impale is generally useful for increasing Critical Hits. Because Slash requires a Critical Hit, and the partizan gives you the choice between Impale and Slash, the combination is perhaps less effective than others. Trip can be an excellent Quality, particularly if used to set up strikes by teammates (or if using Group Advantage and spending for immediate follow-on attacks).

I would be comfortable saying that the choice between two-handed weapons and polearms is a toss-up and depends on your character’s (and your group’s) needs. I personally lean towards the two-handers.

Since I’ve made some suggestions for weapon changes in the categories above, I’ll do so here as well. Historically, there were two major styles of using a spear and/or quarterstaff (and these correspond somewhat with the use of other polearms). In the English style, the focus was on the thrust, making the weapon fast to strike and useful for maintaining distance. The German style wielded the weapon much like a longsword, focusing on strikes rather than thrusts and better able to defend against incoming attack. Switching between methods is not terribly difficult on the fly. That being the case, I would add Defensive or Fast to the spear (I’d also allow players to choose between Long and Very Long lengths) and change the quarterstaff’s Defensive to Defensive or Fast.

Cavalry: I’ll Take Swords for Five-Hundred

The lance and demi-lance are useful weapons…once. The Impact Quality makes them truly devastating, but outside of the battlefield, how often are you really going to use one? That leaves the Cavalry Hammer and the Sabre. Both use Melee (Cavalry) from horseback but a different skill (Melee (Two-Handed) and Melee (Basic), respectively) when on foot. The hammer has Pummel so, if your character also has the Two-handed skill (and Strike to Stun, preferably) it might be preferred. However, none of the Knight careers have the Talent (I might have thought the Knight of the White Wolf would), nor does Cavalryman or Light Cavalryman. Less than useful, then. On the other hand, the sabre uses a widely-available skill (all of the careers mentioned above get Melee (Basic), though Freelancer and Knight do not until Level 2). The sabre can be used in one-hand, allowing for the use of a shield and retains the Slash Quality (though it changes from 1A to 2A unless you use it with the Melee (Fencing) skill, but why bother), making it better than a basic sword.

The choice here is clear.

Armored Combat: Do You Even Lift, Bro?

Given the danger of combat in WFRP, armoring up as early and often as possible can be a useful choice. But it’s not necessarily an easy one. First, you need to look at the inherent penalties that accompany certain pieces of armor (particularly helmets and plate leggings, but bear in mind you suffer -10 to stealth if wearing any chain or plate). Then, you need to consider the Encumbrance penalties from lots of armor: you’re very likely to suffer -1 Movement and -10 Agility from your armor (And that’s before you consider your weapons and any traveling gear. Also, don’t travel in your heavy armor unless you’re expecting a fight).

A full suit of Plate Armor will give you 10-11 Encumbrance points from the get-go. You may want to wear some chain or leather under it (you can choose either or combine them). The relatively low ratings of armor (even plate) means that you either need to double up or accept that there’s a high cost and quickly diminishing returns for wearing lots of armor. But armor rating isn’t the only consideration: plate armor allows you to ignore half of Critical Hits, and that’s no small thing.

A fairly well-rounded set-up with some “oomph” to it would be a leather jack, leggings and skullcap under a breastplate and open helm. That gives you three points of armor on head and torso with one point on arms and legs and six points of Encumbrance. Add a shield and you get another one (buckler, no encumbrance) or two (shield, one additional Encumbrance). Even that, though, will put you into Encumbrance penalties unless you’ve specifically built your character in expectation of wearing armor.

Your basic Encumbrance level is Strength Bonus plus Toughness Bonus. You’ll want to get these stats into the forties as soon as possible. Very Strong and Very Resilient will be of significant benefit, if you can get them. Strong Back and Sturdy should also be acquired if you can. With the exception of the Knight of the Blazing Sun, all knight careers offer Sturdy at Level 1. Sturdy increases your Encumbrance rating by 2 x level, so picking up several levels before advancing would go a long way.

Bear in mind diminishing returns: assuming you get your Strength and Toughness up to at least forty and take four levels of Sturdy (a whopping 1,000XP), your Encumbrance maximum would be fourteen. You’ll have two to three points of Encumbrance for your weapon (assuming you’re not carrying several), leaving you eleven points for that full suit of plate with nothing underneath.

A durable set-up would be full plate (closed helm) with a mail shirt, a leather jack, leggings and skull cap. That’s fifteen encumbrance, plus three for your weapon. So, if you can get your Strength and Toughness into the forties and take one level of Sturdy, and tolerate the first level of Encumbrance penalties, you’re good to go. Take two levels of Sturdy and you can add a medium shield for even more protection. Without the shield, you’d have five AP on your torso and three AP everywhere else (while ignoring half of Critical Hits). With the shield and a Toughness bonus of four, you’re ignoring the first nine points of damage–that’s not too shabby.

Bear in mind, though, that the Robust Talent adds damage reduction per level of the Talent in a manner similar to Armor Points. You should strongly consider (if available to your character), adding this to the list of your character’s Talents if pursuing a front-line fighter, armored or not.

The Knifefighter: Close and Personal

This is not a mainline fighting style; it should be reserved for those characters who never intend to fight fair but may need to do some dirt from time to time–particularly when the victim–erm, opponent–is unawares.

Knives and daggers don’t do a whole lot of damage to begin with (and knives have the Undamaging Quality), so a high Melee skill and Strength bonus will be helpful. On the same lines, the Strike Mighty Blow Talent would be useful, as would the Stealth skill. The Combat Reflexes, In-Fighter, Enclosed Fighter and Disarm Talents would all be useful if you are unable to take down your target in the first strike.

There may also be times when a dagger or knife is all you have on you–the social or legal formalities may prevent the carrying of serious weapons in certain areas, or you may simply be caught traveling light. All of the above would help in such situations; as the goal when outgunned should be to break off the engagement and survive, the Flee! Talent may prove useful in such situations.

The Brawler: Back to Basics

The Brancalonia Roleplaying Game emphasizes as part of its genre that the law is unlikely to take much notice of the occasional bar brawl or streetfight where no weapons are produced and no “serious” injuries are inflicted (though unarmed combat can, of course, prove deadly). The same idea fits in WFRP: there are plenty of times when the Powers that Be simply have too much else going on (or simply don’t care) to deal with petty conflicts that do not involve anyone of importance. Further, there are some times when violence is a means to an end and not the end itself–the Protagonist and Racketeer careers are plenty evidence of this. You’ve always got your fists (almost always, anyway), and sometimes a knuckleduster is easier to carry into a restricted area than even a knife.

Then there’s the historical fact that all combatants were expected to have some skill in unarmed combat. Learning to brawl was a part of childhood, a fundamental that ought to be established before teaching skill in any weapon, and a common feature of melee combat even when weapons were involved. For all of these reasons, a character whose identity (read: career) involves combat ought to have some proficiency in the Melee (Brawling) skill. Most of the Talents applicable to knifefighting above, as well as the Dirty Fighter talent, make for good supplements. But, unless the character expects to do a lot of roughing people up without permanently injuring them, the Brawling skill is secondary to the armed-combat skills.

Conclusion

I hope this article has given some ideas of how the WFRP system captures the “feel” (to the extent that we can honestly reconstruct it) of medieval/early-modern combat without adhering to intricate and byzantine complexities. I hope also that it’s given you some solid build advice on choosing what kind of fighting techniques and equipment will best suit your character. On the other hand, there were a number of “masters of the art of defence” in the period, and a character whose ambitions lie in becoming one among them could be interesting to play and an effective member of a party. There are a number of ways such a character could go, moving between careers as necessary to represent different courses of study.

If I’ve missed something you see in the WFRP system, or if you’ve got other thoughts to contribute to mine above, I look forward to hearing from you!

Addendum – Shields and Melee (Parry)

It has been brought to my attention that the WFRP4e errata “clarifies” the use of shields. Despite the listing of shields as “basic” weapons, the errata states that a -20 penalty should be assessed to a character defending (or attacking) with a shield unless the Melee (Parry) skill is used, forcing a player to decide whether they want to trade AP for a -10 penalty on defense (as a shield adds its AP to all locations and the -20 penalty is partially offset by the +1 SL to defense tests granted by the “Defensive” quality) or whether they want to devote precious character resources to the Parry (Melee) skill. AP are nice, but not getting hit is better–especially in a system as deadly as WFRP!

From a mechanical standpoint, this makes very little sense. Instead of providing a solid (and marginally affordable) defense for characters less-skilled in combat it provides a nuanced and ultimately problematic choice. And, from a historical/practical perspective, this is not how shields work. I’ve never sparred with someone using a shield where the shield made them easier to hit. To my knowledge, none of my shield-wielding sparring partners were either ambidextrous or had any training in sword-and-dagger or rapier-and-dagger styles of fighting (I’m thinking here of situations that would translate to the mechanical reduction of the shield penalty described above under the WFRP rules). The use of a shield is instinctive and natural, while it may require training to fully master, it requires little or none to achieve basic proficiency. The nicest thing I can say about the errata is that it’s a headscratcher of a design choice.

Needless to say, if you give effect to the errata in adjudicating your game, almost all of the advice I’ve given above in the main article regarding shields goes out the window. I’m inclined to believe that that should not be the case. You are, of course, free to disagree.

So, how do we remedy this issue, should one be so inclined? The simplest thing to do is to just ignore the errata statement–there is no penalty to defending with a shield and it uses the Melee (Basic) skill. But, if you want to take a more moderated approach, remove the penalty and also remove the AP bonus or the + 1 SL to defense–I’d personally lean toward removing the former. Alternatively, you could remove the penalty but say that the Melee (Parry) skill must be used to get the additional +1 SL to defense tests. That would at least replace stick with carrot.

Addendum – Damage

Having now played a few sessions under the new rules, I must admit some shock at the particulars of attack and defense rolls. I had mistakenly taken for granted that attack and defense worked mostly like previous editions: i.e. (1) the attacker makes a test, (2) defender makes a test (which I viewed as a parry test in previous editions but now made automatic), and the attack fails if either the attacker fails at his roll or the defender succeeds at his. This is not the case. The current system has each side make their test and calculate their success/failure levels separately, with success levels represented by positive numbers and failure levels by negative. The difference between the two (assuming the difference is in the attacker’s favor) is added to damage dealt. In other words, the defender’s result is subtracted from the attacker’s result and, if the sum is a positive number, the attacker deals the sum as extra damage. The result is essentially the same as if we were using a roll-high system where each side rolls dice and adds applicable bonuses and then the defender’s result is subtracted from the attacker’s result to determine whether the attack was successful and, if so, how successful. It’s the fact that we’re using a roll-under system here that gives the approach some quirks. The foremost of these quirks is that the attacker can technically fail his roll and win–if the defender fails their roll by a greater number of levels. That situation “feels” odd but is mechanically effective.

Because the statistical effects of a mechanic and the “feel” of the mechanic do not always coincide (human perception and emotion being the odd thing that it is), player’s ought to be prepped for this potential result so that they are not blindsided by an attack they think has failed based on the attacker’s roll but that has not because of the sum of both rolls. Is that logical? Not really, but to effectively deal with another’s emotions, we must accept those emotions as they are rather than telling the person whether they “should” or “should not” feel that way. Be prepared.

At the same time, this system allows for some truly massive damage to be done in a single strike. That’s not necessarily a bug, you might well see it as a feature, especially given the reputation and intent that WFRP combat be lethal. I’m not particularly in favor of altering the “rules as written” in this case, but I do want to point this out so that individual tables can make sure the system is working for them and not vice versa.

If you don’t want your characters to be so susceptible to unlucky falls of the dice, you might consider altering this rule so that only the attacker’s positive success levels are added to attacks as additional damage. That makes characters slightly safer, but also drags out your fights, makes armor that much more effective, and probably has some additional effects I’m not thinking of, so proceed with caution.

Alternative Combat Systems in Cortex Prime Part I: The Rationale

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Combat can be the most exciting—or the most excruciating—part of a gaming session. It’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae: checking particular rules (and exceptions), contemplating the potential results of every available action like you’re Deep Blue, clarifying who’s where, what conditions are in effect and what happened on previous actions.

We’ve all been there. The active player is taking minutes to determine his turn while everyone else is playing on their phone. The combat itself is necessarily a matter of slow attrition punctuated only rarely by decisive blows. Rinse and repeat, potentially for hours. I don’t want to say that the conventional style of RPG combat, with its sequential individual turns and actions for each character involved doesn’t work; it can result in exciting and enjoyable combats. But if we take the example of D&D in particular, as the originator and exemplar of this system, the smorgasbord of titles both amateur and professional available on DriveThruRPG.com to “make combat more exciting” indicates that there are many cases where the system doesn’t work as well as we’d like.

And this figures, given that D&D (and therefore RPGs in general) developed out of wargaming. The turn-by-turn system is an artifact of, and beholden to, the miniatures wargame.

Some Alternatives

There are a number of ways that games or homebrews have tried to address this, with varying degrees of success. Making a game deadlier necessarily condenses combat and makes clever tactics (and/or use of rules) even more important.

The Riddle of Steel is one of my favorite examples of this. Its visceral combat system attempts to closely model the actual mechanics demonstrated in the fight manuals of the medieval and Renaissance periods. It does so quite successfully. When I ran games in this system I was simultaneously a study group leader for the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA); I’d spend hours as a “Session -1” with wooden weapons showing those players who weren’t in ARMA with me what the techniques in TROS actually looked like. But the system is not without its faults, either: it had no significant guidance for an overall initiative system, leaving players to judgment calls for a number of situations commonly addressed in other games. To me, it’s a prime example that no RPG combat system can do everything, even if it does some things exceptionally well.

Knowing that, why do we expect a single system to effectively cover all combat situations equally well? The result, as with D&D, is that we have a combat system on top of which we add the occasional non-combat goal for flavor and variety. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t we have systems, plural, each focused on different types of situation. Some combats are about injuring or killing the enemy, yes, but many resort to violence in service of a goal that is, ultimately separate from the injuries inflicted on the opposition. This is true even of military operations. As commonly as they are deployed simply to destroy the enemy, they are directed to capture and hold valuable locations, to destroy enemy resources, to drive the enemy from a particular area, to infiltrate an area to perform reconnaissance and surveillance—or to provide forward observation for targeting airborne or artillery-based weapons. In many of these cases, the enemy will be engaged only to the extent necessary to accomplish the mission, because simple attrition is not a great way to win a war (as the American Civil War and, especially, World War I demonstrated).

The Torchbearer RPG keeps this in mind, at least on an abstract level, where the various “intents” (such as Capture, Drive Off, Kill) in a conflict determine the character traits used for rolls.

“Powered by the Apocalypse” systems ultimately treat combat no differently from the rest of the rules, except that consequences and GM “moves” may more frequently cause Harm to the characters. There is no set initiative system, and each “combat test” remains more about the development of the narrative than a tactical mini-game. It leaves much flexibility for how the GM interprets player cleverness, creativity and innovation without needing rules to explicitly do this. On the other hand, for those who are more Gamer-oriented (if you subscribe to Ron Edwards GNS Theory) may find this less than satisfactory.

This Series

This series will present a set of systems for Cortex Prime for particular types of combats, not as an obviation of or replacement for the standard “man-to-man” general RPG combat approach, which has its appropriate uses, but to work together with that system based on the narrative needs of a particular game and the desires for depth of tactics for players.

Elsewhere on the blog, I’ve provided some rules for streamlined military/modern combat engagements. Those will not be repeated in this series, but could be added to the list of options provided here if so desired.

Some of these systems will be taken from the ideas and creations of other writers (and credit will be given where due) and adapted to Cortex Prime, but most of them will be my own creations.

But let us begin with some theory about the role and nature of combat in RPGs.

What is War For? What is it Made of?

Combat is an essential feature of most (but certainly not all) RPGs, whether or not they fall into the “traditional” camp. There are, I think, a few reasons that this is the case. Let’s look:

First, there is the simple fact that many people play roleplaying games because they are a way to experience adventure and danger in a safe way. Most people do not want to be punched in the face, much less risk their lives without extreme need. But they do want the thrill of such stakes, which is why video games, combat sports (whether martial arts, paintball and airsoft or competition shooting), action movies and combat in RPGs are popular.

Second, satisfying narrative requires conflict. Armed (or otherwise) violent confrontation is conflict in its barest sense; it necessarily poses questions to drive a story: Will the characters prevail? Will they survive?

Third, as Louis XIV had cast on his canons (albeit in Latin) and as Joe Abercrombie used as the title of one of his novels, violence is “the last argument of kings.” Or, if we’d rather resort to Heinlein, who has his Mr. Dubois the teacher of “moral” philosophy in Starship Troopers remark to a student who tells him the “violence doesn’t solve anything,”

“I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that….Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.”

When two sides refuse to compromise, and a situation must be resolved, violence may sometimes be the only available course of action. I don’t think I enjoy that fact as much as Heinlein did, but I agree that it is sometimes an existential truth we must face. In the adventures of our heroes in particular, violence may be the logical (narrative) result when all other means fail.

Fourth, some gamers really enjoy the challenge of combat, of making tactical decisions and outmaneuvering the enemy. And that’s as good a reason as any.

By way of transition from what combat is for into what it should do, the astute GM should bear in mind that that means that combat should be actually challenging—otherwise you’re depriving your players of the satisfaction of victory. The good GM should be a student of war in all its forms (this does not require one to be a practitioner of war, which is perhaps another matter altogether, discussed on other portions of the blog). So, number one—combat is another type of puzzle, problem and challenge for the players to address, and one with stakes higher than many others they’ll face.

As Apocalypse games make plain, combat should drive the story forward. This does not mean that every combat need be decisive; a battle in which the two sides fight to a standstill and must withdraw heightens the conflict and must necessarily make the players question whether they are powerful enough to prevail by force and whether another approach might be preferred.

Combat, when done well and used well, at least, provides options for high drama. What will the character’s fight for? What won’t they fight for? What is significant enough to a character that she is willing to kill (or die) for it? The cliché that you truly learn who a person is by seeing them in a fight is true when it comes to crafted (even when collaborative) narrative—combat need not be just a matter of mechanics; it can become an opportunity for deep roleplaying.

As much, combat is a useful tool for pacing a Roleplaying Game. There is, of course, the old gaming adage that if things slow down too much, have the bad guys suddenly show up to kick things back into gear. But it goes far beyond that. There’s not room to go into the full details of this subject (which can easily be a blog series—or book—in its own right), but good narrative swings back and forth between high-intensity scenes and low intensity scenes. This gives the audience both excitement and pauses to reflect on what the occurrences of the “high points” mean for the narrative moving forward. Think about the Fellowship in Khazad-Dȗm—they flee from goblins and Gandalf confronts the Balrog in a high-intensity scene. The scene that follows the rest of the Fellowship’s escape slows down so that the characters can reflect on the loss of their erstwhile leader and what it means for their quest.

Here’s the issue, though: when combat slows to a crawl as you play out each second by second, it fails to provide the high-intensity sort of scene that it should. When a low-intensity scene follows, as it naturally should, the energy at the table remains low and everyone loses immersion and attention. This is fine if the players enjoy intricate combat for its own sake, but it’s been my experience that I only have one or two of the players in my group for whom the gaming or simulationist approaches to combat are a particular draw.

Conclusion

I think all of this gives us a rubric by which to judge the utility and value of some alternative combat systems. Any system that replaces turn-by-turn combat must: (1) make at least enough logical sense to be acceptable to gamers and simulationists, given the caveat that they must necessarily be more abstract than turn-by-turn systems, (2) following the first point, be at least somewhat satisfying to use, (3) move the story forward in a meaningful way, regardless of specific outcome, (4) allow for meaningful choices, which in turn allows for drama and character development, (5) have stakes high enough to match a “standard” combat system, sometimes softened to account for less control on the part of the players as to outcome, (6) must provide a useful tool for maintaining pacing.

The flexibility of the Cortex Prime system allows us to create a number of different approaches to combat, as you’ll see.

What’s Next?

In the first substantive post in the series, we’ll look at two general systems I’m adapting from other games: Luke Crane’s “Bloody Versus” from The Burning Wheel RPG and Peter Rudin-Burgess’ “One Roll Combat,” a brilliant article written for the Zweihander roleplaying game and appearing in Lowborn: an Independent Grim & Perilous Fanzine for Zweihander RPG’s first issue.

After that, we’ll look at some systems for particular types of engagements created by yours truly.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Brancalonia: D&D Meets a Lighter-Hearted Blades in the Dark

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Those of you who’ve been with me for a while know that I’m not a big fan of the systems used for D&D. The older and wiser I get, and the more I come to understand game design, the more I see the justification for the choices the system makes. It seems that a lot of times, my upset with the design choices are amplified by traditional (mis-)interpretations of the intent of those systems. At the end of the day, D&D is a game people love, and there’s nothing wrong with preferring that system over others. For me, though, I prefer my games a little harsher and grittier, and while I think D&D should best be considered a toolkit along the lines of Fate or Cortex (certainly not marketed that way but treated that way by DMs by long tradition), I find that it would take as much or more work to kitbash D&D into something approximating what I want as to design a system particular to my tastes. In fact, a few weeks ago I got some of my gaming friends together in our first post-vaccination meet-up to discuss putting together a fantasy game using highly-modified D&D rules (for all my complaints about the system, I listen to actual play podcasts and get a desire to play all the same). Instead of spending a lot of time discussing changes and systems, as I’d expected, we relatively quickly came to the decision that they’d (and I don’t disagree) that I devote my time to setting and system for Avar Narn and that they help playtest rules.

That’s a long walk to the real beginning of this post, mostly to explain that I don’t usually review or spend a lot of time on D&D-related books or systems as part of the blog. Brancalonia, though, is just that captivating.

Brancalonia is a setting (with rules modules) for 5e D&D, taking place in a “spaghetti fantasy” version of late-medieval/early modern Italy. Those of you who know my background understand that my interest is immediately piqued. Even without my deep love for the Renaissance in Italy, a mashup of fantasy and the spaghetti western genres sounds like two great tastes that taste great together. In execution, the “western” influence gives way more to the Renaissance themes of misrule, the Commedia Dell’Arte, and the best parts of early-modern humor. The fantasy is low without being gritty (think of a greasier, sleazier, ne’er-do-well with a heart of gold sort of vibe).

The mechanics of the system accomplish this in several ways. First, the restriction of characters to level 6 (a common change to evoke “low” fantasy in D&D without much fuss), though there are character advances that may continue to occur after hitting maximum level. Second, the inclusion of subclasses that evoke the feel of the setting without requiring massive overhauls of the core D&D classes. Third, a bevy of rules additions (more than modifications) that reinforce the feeling of Brancalonia. Short rests are changed to a full night and long rests to a week in line with the suggested rules modification in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The long rest is then incorporated into a downtime “Rollick” system.

Other rules include a system for Brawls (a non-lethal combat type indicative of both semi-good-natured contests between rivals and conflicts between criminals who know that drawing steel changes the context of the fight into something of interest to the authorities–to say nothing of lethality), methods for tracking characters’ bounties for their misdeeds (and the potential consequences thereof), the aforementioned “Rollick” system and rules for relationships to the characters’ band and company as well as an upgradable hideout. The standard D&D economy is changed not by complex changes to numbers in costs but by the vast lowering of the amount of gold characters are likely to have at any given time, limitations on magic items, a system for squandering winnings (reminiscent of Barbarians of Lemuria) and rules for “shoddy” equipment–what the characters will most often be using.

I make mention of Blades in the Dark in the title of this review not simply because it’s the previous game I reviewed, but because the systems in Brancalonia remind me of a (lighter) version of Blades in the Dark crew rules. Rather than managing the relationships between rival gangs as in BitD, the Knaves of Brancalonia are “Bounty Brothers” more often than deadly rivals. But the game does follow the same sort of job–downtime–job cycle as BitD, with a simple but perhaps more formalized system for managing the group’s hideout and its available amenities (described as Grandluxuries). The jobs set to a group of Knaves is implied to be a little more varied, both in context and geography, than the heists of Doskvol.

Also like BitD, characters regularly engage in their vices during downtime in Brancalonia, though the results in the latter are more often amusingly complicating than the self-destruction of the former. The best summary of the relationship between the two, I think is that Brancalonia takes itself less seriously, creating a picaresque tale of rowdy louts rather than a depressing story about desperate criminals.

Some notes about the writing itself: the game was originally written in Italian, and I get the feeling (or make the assumption) that part of the mastery of the feel of the setting is the immersion of the writers in both Italian culture and European history in ways that a Yank like myself can only dream of. The translation into English leaves a text that is clear and easy-to-understand–as well as very well-written. The book could have used some more editing, but the issues I find are typically minor mispellings and particularly the omission of certain letters in words (including within chapter titles!). Still, I found nothing that endangered comprehension or that reasonably compared with the first released draft of the latest Shadowrun rules.

I really can’t over-emphasize how well-written the setting material is. Not only from the standpoint of well-constructed and stylistically-impressive sentences, but also of language that evokes the feel the setting aspires to. I imagine both the original writers (the team of Epic Party Games) and the translator (Sarah Jane Webb) are to be commended for this feat. To boot, the artwork is amazing and highly evocative. I daresay that it’s worth the price of admission alone.

I must admit a certain forlorn agreement with all of the “What our party thinks it is/What our party actually is” memes when I see them, and herein lies another strength of Brancalonia–its tone is that sort of light-hearted foolishness often achieved by players of fantasy RPGs to begin with, so what may be considered a falling-short of the transcendent heights of “great roleplaying” in other conditions is right in with the theme and style of the game in Brancalonia. This alone is a huge strength.

If you’re a less-experienced GM looking for the style of BitD in an easy-to-run system, or a group who couldn’t care less about roleplaying as “Art” so long as everyone is having fun (always the first principle of committing free time to an RPG, I think, even if you want to make “Art” as well), a group looking for a grittier but light-hearted D&D setting, a new gamer wanting to learn to play RPGs, an aspiring designer looking for an excellent example of setting writing (rather than excellent worldbuilding–it may be that, too, but there’s so much material to draw on to create the setting that I’m not sure that it deserves that categorization), or a veteran gamer looking to do something decidedly fun and different, Bracalonia is definitely worth checking out.

Is it just me, or are we in something of a golden age for Italian game designers? I think of The One Ring as well and expect we’ll see more games of note from this group of designers as well.

Blades in the Dark: A Different Kind of Fiddly

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As I’d mentioned before, I’ve been, off and on, playing in a campaign of Blades in the Dark over the past few months. I’ve played or run several other iterations of the Powered by the Apocalypse system, but this has been my first foray into actual play of a Forged in the Dark Game. Rather than give a traditional review–as so many have already done this capably–I’m going to leave some remarks about specific “issues” with the game (read “nuances” rather than “deficiencies”). Most of the things I’ll talk about are really aspects of the same issue: BitD requires a very skilled GM to run well.

All Improv, All the Time

That may be an overstatement, but, as with PbtA games, the “freeform” and “narrative” focus of the BitD system puts a lot of pressure on the GM and requires a lot more from them. Every roll requires some level of interpretation, and there is less scaffolding for that interpretation or how to work out the consequences of certain actions as with other, rules-heavier games. There is, of course, an upside to this; otherwise, John Harper’s game would not have become such a successful system being adapted to so many other games.

The benefits mostly accrue to the players, however, at least in practice as I have experienced it. In D&D, for instance, the existence of certain feats and class abilities implies restrictions on characters who do not have those abilities. Not a rogue? You can’t Backstab, so you’re not as likely to choose to sneak up on someone and stab them in the back. Yes, BitD does have “classes” and “abilities” in the playbooks, but these tend to give added bonuses to certain actions without depriving others of meaningfully taking those actions that a more tactical game does not. I’m always telling players, “don’t look at the rules; tell me what you want to do and we’ll figure out how to use the rules to do it.” PbtA and BitD naturally push in that direction. But that also means that the GM has to be ready for anything and can’t be too committed to any particular expectations.

With the game’s mechanics focused on creating “success at cost” results, the GM is constantly forced to, on the fly, come up with reasonable costs and reasonable degrees of success under the circumstances. Likewise, the importance of “positioning” within the game, somehow both a rule and a complete abstraction, gives the GM a shove into the deep end of GMing. Clocks can make for excellent pacing tools and representations of certain obstacles, but if they’re not used regularly and with consistency between uses, they serve only as a doodle representing GM fiat.

I want to be clear here: BitD doesn’t make it hard to run a game. Quite the opposite. It does, however, put a lot of extra responsibility on the GM to make the game go well, and if the GM doesn’t either have a virtuoso intuition for such things, or a good deal of experience with games that have more support for interpreting results, things can go sideways very quickly. When things go well, though, the player freedom and the pace of the narrative created by the system makes for excellent gaming.

So Many Rulings

This is, perhaps, only a specific instance of the general issue of the above, but here it is: There needs to be a discussion of what “success at a cost” means and consistency in the application of that very common result. Starting characters in BitD start with only a few dice in a smattering of skills. While there are very well-designed resources that allow characters to push past their normal limits, the resource-management of which underscores the desperate feel of the setting, the skewing of results toward success at a cost means that the GM has great power (and, thus, of course, great responsibility) for how capable the characters seem to their players. If costs for successes are relatively low, the characters feel capable, triumphing in the face of overwhelming odds. If costs are always made significant, the characters feel like imbeciles, way out of their element and having no business trying to pull heists in Doskvol. This quickly becomes frustrating to the players, and not much fun.

This is, I think where “positioning” comes in. A “properly” paced heist in BitD begins with small costs for success but allows those costs to add up over time until new and significant complications arise. Likewise, there should be an “aim small, miss small,” mentality, where cost is directly proportional to the risk of the action undertaken. The rules explain this, and do a pretty good job of doing so, but the devil is in the details, and when the GM is worried about coming up with a new cost for that unexpected action, keeping track of all this pacing, tension-building, and consistent rulings begins to feel like juggling chainsaws (at least, if you feel that your players are as volatile as chainsaws).

There are a few techniques that may help here. First, of course, is practice. Second is maintaining the “conversation” of the game with the players–it’s completely okay for there to be some back-and-forth between GM and players to establish consequences and costs of an action before the player makes the final decision to take it. This is a game about calculated risks more than overwhelming surprises; so using the “conversational” form of narrative roleplaying is, I think, exactly what is intended here. For bonus points, get the players to make suggestions about results. “I want my character to try to climb the building. I know its raining and dangerous, but the storm also masks his movements. How about a clear success is climbing without issue, the cost is knocking free a loose brick that makes the guards that much more suspicious, and failure means a fall?” If everyone is participating like this, the game becomes (a) much easier to run and (b) more interesting in the telling.

I’ll admit that, even as someone very interested in narrative style games, my background in more “traditional” GM roles sometimes makes it difficult to switch into that other style.

Seduction by Mechanics

Here’s something that hit me quite unexpectedly in playing BitD. The rules for managing your crew, its relationships, holdings, and lackeys is very cool. But there’s an issue with having mechanics for these systems that seems more defined than those for playing through character scenes: it’s easy to fall into the trap that the rules are the sum total of Crew management. Go on a heist, calculate results, make decisions according to the rules, plan next heist. That’s clearly not what’s intended; the crew rules are there to facilitate story, to bring to mind more plotlines and character arcs aside from playing heist after heist after heist. BitD should have a fair amount of Gangs of New York or Peaky Blinders in it–dealing with the shit your lackeys get into and the beef you start with rivals should form a substantial part of play of the game beyond the processes, mechanics and selections that facilitate the crew section. While BitD does have an innovative approach to running heists (or at least a very cogent and elegant iteration cobbled together from the ideas of previous games), it’s not just about the heist. This is evident in the fiction and examples interspersed with the rules, but leaving many of the details of Doskvol to mere implication may subconsciously reinforce the tendency toward a focus on heists rather than other interactions with the world. Again, added weight on the GM. Maybe not unlooked for; worldbuilding (even fleshing out the framework of a provided world) can be an extremely satisfying aspect of GMing in the first place.

Conclusion

All of this is to say that BitD is probably not the sort of game to cut your chops as a GM on. Unless you’re very confident in your ability to run the game well, it wouldn’t be at the top of my list to introduce new players with, either. Running the game well requires a working knowledge of the GM’s narrative and practical toolbox; some familiarity with story structure, tension-building and drama; good improvisational skills and adaptability; and more theorycraft of roleplaying games than most competitors require. But, for some thing, you only get what you give.