[Cold Iron] Applying lessons learned

[ffilz]

My Cold Iron campaign has been steaming along pretty well. I've really been enjoying not having to prep for hours before the game, though I have sometimes not done prep I wanted to do. As as result I have had to spend a few precious minutes of session time figuring out opposition stats, but I've wasted more time digging around for "just the right" map for an inn.

It's nice seeing how making all the character generation really focused on what the game is about has improved play. We don't have any characters who stumble around in combat being innefective.

I had also realized that the way I used alertness (perception) checks in the past was totally bogus. Basically, people rolled, and if I was impressed by their roll, they got to spot encounters with more warning. I worked up some mechanics for converting the alertness check into an encounter distance. These mechanics need some work, but it actually makes it easier for me to run the game.

It's also been very refreshing to totally abandon my old vice of rescuing the PCs when an encounter went badly. We've had one encounter where after the fight, we decided it was a bad dream, and the players made a decision to try again which went really well. There was also one encounter where I realized a mistake the round after a PC was killed and we rewound - the PCs still lost the encounter, but it went down well.

As I've been running this game though, I've really been realizing how incomplete Cold Iron is as a game, and that really, I'm running "Frank's Game" not Mark Christiansen's Cold Iron. Combined with my frustration with not really having permission to distribute the rules, and being called out by Chris Chinn, I've really been thinking about starting from scratch and designing my own game, borrowing many ideas from Cold Iron. To that end, I've been sharing some design thoughts on my blog, but I'm also struggling with not necessarily wanting to throw out parts of Cold Iron that work just fine (there's 150 pages or so of magic rules and spell descriptions for example that work fine - though I could see some areas that might be worth changing).

Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I encourage you indeed to design your own game. You might review your final sentence in the post too; it's revealing. "I won't redo the magic, though, because it works fine ... oh wait, except for here, here, and here." See what I mean?

I guess I don't understand this sentence at all:

It's also been very refreshing to totally abandon my old vice of rescuing the PCs when an encounter went badly.

... because then you describe two instances when you did, apparently, rescue them when an encounter went badly. I realize the second one was a rules-glitch, but that's irrelevant. Were there scenes in play in which you guys played it correctly, one or another player-character died or the group lost badly or whatever, and you said, "Hey, that's what happens," and moved on? 'Cause that's what I expected given your first sentence (the one I quoted).

Finally, yes, standard perception checks in role-playing are just ass. Every game designer out there needs to review why they do them during play at all, and if there's a reason, design toward it, and if there's not, chuck'em.

Best,
Ron

[ffilz]

Good point on the "oh, except here and here and here.." And that's a good point overall. Sure, Cold Iron generally satisfies me, but gee, here and here, it could be better. And over here, wow, it like totally sucks (perhaps because the rules just plain aren't there). A question I have is where does one draw the line on cannibalizing existing systems? I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I'm planning on answering the "Power 19" this weekend.

On rescuing the PCs, I guess I should have been more clear. What I've abandoned is rescuing the PCs by fudging dice, or having NPCs ride out to bail them out. In our Arcana Evolved campaign, I ran an encounter that after the fact seemed totally off base. The players and I spent some time talking about it, and then decided it was "just a dream" rather than killing the characters. By being an agreement with the players, it felt so much better than the GM fiat save of old. Hmm, I guess I can see your point about a rules application error being the same thing.

Finally, yes, standard perception checks in role-playing are just ass. Every game designer out there needs to review why they do them during play at all, and if there's a reason, design toward it, and if there's not, chuck'em.

Yup. Of course this is just a specific example of make sure all the rules drive the game in the direction intended. It's interesting that D&D 3e has perception checks, and hit has rules for determining encounter distance, but it doesn't tie the two together, or tell you what it really means to succeed in the perception check (well ok, it has surprise rules, but there's no procedure for determining the perception check DC to avoid surprise). Since I've realized I never had good guidelines for encounter distance, I've decided, hey, let's tie the perception checks into determining encounter distance. Now there is a clear rule that can be easily applied, and that players can react to and make meaningfull decisions about. Of course my rule requires work, but it's a heck of a lot better to have a rule that needs tuning than to have some mishmash thing no one really knows what it means (other than that it seems to be good to have a high alertness score - but if I can't quantify it, how do I decide how much strength to trade off for alertness, especially when strength is so clearly quantified).

Frank