I would really appreciate any intelligent feedback for my still uncompleted RPG set in 1141 England (it's called "Land Without a King"). The game is only 29 pages long right now and most sections are still incomplete (combat & healing, for example). But the game is finished enough so that it can be test played, reviewed, etc. A few notes on it before you go to the link:

- this game is historically based. No magic or monsters. It is set during the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. The focus is on normal people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. The mechanics are based around a d20 resolution (but it is not OGL/D20 in any way...no levels, etc). The detail level is similar to HarnMaster.

- it is not "rules lite". So if you love HeroQuest but hate HarnMaster, you probably won't like this.

- Besides feedback on the rules themselves, if you notice any historical inaccuracies, please let me know.

- any suggestions you have are appreciated.

Here is the link: http://www.excaliburvideoproductions.com/RPGdownlaods.html

Please leave feedback on this site (you can also email me)! Thanks!

From the look of it, it has resemblances to Harn, so in that at least, you succeeded.

It is neatly presented, maybe having the look of a historical textbook. Perhaps this is the feel you wanted to accomplish.

I am a fan of Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael novels, and your time period meshes well with those books.

I'm not a fan however, of lots of attributes and 8 seems too many. However, some people may like that, it's just not for me. The system seems ok at first glance, and would easily convert to d20 if anyone had a mind.

I'm not getting a sense of what players will do in this game. I know there is a civil war going on - so presumably spying missions, the occassional skirmish and maybe a bit of political stuff - will there be rules for this type of thing?

(Personally, I often wondered about doing a Cadfael-style game, with one player being a Cadfael-type detective-monk, and the others being his friends, like Hugh Berringer in the town of Shrewsbury. So I am intrigued by your game and look forward to seeing more).

Simon W
http://www.geocities.com/lashingsofgingerbeer2004/

Simon W wrote: I'm not a fan however, of lots of attributes and 8 seems too many. However, some people may like that, it's just not for me. The system seems ok at first glance, and would easily convert to d20 if anyone had a mind.

Simon W wrote: I'm not getting a sense of what players will do in this game. I know there is a civil war going on - so presumably spying missions, the occassional skirmish and maybe a bit of political stuff - will there be rules for this type of thing?

Simon W wrote: (Personally, I often wondered about doing a Cadfael-style game, with one player being a Cadfael-type detective-monk, and the others being his friends, like Hugh Berringer in the town of Shrewsbury. So I am intrigued by your game and look forward to seeing more).

One thing I will include is the idea of manor generation. That is, the PCs and GM sit down and design a manor or village and populate it with various personalities. Then the GM makes up a series of strange occurences . The players decide which characters would be most likely to act on such things and go from there. Thus, characters will have believable motivation for their actions and responses.

I'm guessing the lack of response comes from disinterest in the setting?

Hiya,

Patience, patience! A lot of people are checking out your game, but the Forge is glacially slow compared to most internet sites. For my part, I'd rather take a week and a half to look over the game before even thinking of posting about it.

Enjoy the feedback when it comes - snap-judgments aren't going to help, will they?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hiya,

Patience, patience! A lot of people are checking out your game, but the Forge is glacially slow compared to most internet sites. For my part, I'd rather take a week and a half to look over the game before even thinking of posting about it.

Enjoy the feedback when it comes - snap-judgments aren't going to help, will they?

Best,
Ron

I have a strong, and growing, preference for lighter rules so take my comments with a suitable pinch.

First impression - nicely laid, illustrated and written.

I'd like to see a chunk with more discussion of life in the land. You cover the high level stuff but what was it like to be a villein or monk in 12th century Britain?

The personality mechanics seem strangely half-hearted. Ever implement them properly and tie them to the game mechanics in a meaningful way or drop them altogether.

That is a VAST number of statistics you've got there, with a rather unclear division between what is a skill, and what is a stat - for example climbing is a stat but swimming is a skill, why?

Why are stats only relevant every other stat point? Why not simply buy the +/- value of the stat?

Your skill system seems overly complicated to me, with far too much variation between the skils and too many tables.

I like the ideas behind the kind of game you say you want to create, but the rules themselves do not seem to have been written to reflect your intention - something like a third of the rules cover combat which seems utterly excessive in a game that does not proport to being about combat.

You're equipment lists don't have price on them - this is a good thing. A fixed price list would be deeply anachronistic.

Jack Aidley wrote:
I'd like to see a chunk with more discussion of life in the land. You cover the high level stuff but what was it like to be a villein or monk in 12th century Britain?

Jack Aidley wrote: The personality mechanics seem strangely half-hearted. Ever implement them properly and tie them to the game mechanics in a meaningful way or drop them altogether.

Jack Aidley wrote: That is a VAST number of statistics you've got there, with a rather unclear division between what is a skill, and what is a stat - for example climbing is a stat but swimming is a skill, why?

Jack Aidley wrote: Why are stats only relevant every other stat point? Why not simply buy the +/- value of the stat?

Jack Aidley wrote: Your skill system seems overly complicated to me, with far too much variation between the skils and too many tables.

Jack Aidley wrote: I like the ideas behind the kind of game you say you want to create, but the rules themselves do not seem to have been written to reflect your intention - something like a third of the rules cover combat which seems utterly excessive in a game that does not proport to being about combat.

Jack Aidley wrote: You're equipment lists don't have price on them - this is a good thing. A fixed price list would be deeply anachronistic.

Sir Privy Toastrack wrote:
Thanks a TON for your feedback! I value every opinion and will take yours into account when making changes and additions. It's interesting to note that every response so far (on 4 different boards) has been either 'I love the game detail" or "it's too detailed". Not sure what to make of that!

I've made some big changes to the game, with a new 'rules-lite' version that emphasizes the medieval over game mechanics. Please check it out and tell me what you think:
http://www.excaliburvideoproductions.com/RPGdownlaods.html

Sir Privy Toastrack wrote: I've made some big changes to the game, with a new 'rules-lite' version that emphasizes the medieval over game mechanics. Please check it out and tell me what you think:
http://www.excaliburvideoproductions.com/RPGdownlaods.html

Land Without a King wrote: '...none the less those men were guilty of the greatest possible crime; they had broken their faith, spurned their oath, thought nothing of the homage they had done him, and had rebelled most wickedly and abominably against him, - him whom they had taken of their own free will as king and lord’.– King Stephen, after his captureEngland, 1141 AD. King Stephen has been imprisoned
by Matilda, daughter of the late King Henry I. Matilda, or Maud, considers herself the rightful ruler of England and has waged a Civil War against Stephen to claim the throne. Greedy barons, already tramping over the country under Stephen’s weak rulership, have escalated their corruption and pillaging to rampant new levels. They have built castles without leave, murdered peasants in cold blood, and ignored edicts by religious leaders.It is in this time of political and social turmoil that the world of Land Without a King takes shape.

Andrew Martin wrote:
Page 25, Humoral Theory.
The system penalises humoral theory, yet the text encourages players and GMs roleplay. Why not design the system so that PCs will go to doctors using humoral theory, rather that doing the modern day, realistic and rational behaviour of avoiding medieval doctors?

Andrew Martin wrote: Page 22, most of the missile weapons table seems to be missing?

Andrew Martin wrote: The system seems to be mostly about medieval skirmish battles.

Andrew Martin wrote: I like the medieval temperaments, virtues and sins. These are what I feel the game system should be about, along with the clash between Feudalism and the emerging middle classes in towns; Norman, Saxon and Cymric culture; pagan versus christian; Maud versus Stephen. Something like the following:

Land Without a King wrote: '...none the less those men were guilty of the greatest possible crime; they had broken their faith, spurned their oath, thought nothing of the homage they had done him, and had rebelled most wickedly and abominably against him, - him whom they had taken of their own free will as king and lord’.– King Stephen, after his captureEngland, 1141 AD. King Stephen has been imprisoned
by Matilda, daughter of the late King Henry I. Matilda, or Maud, considers herself the rightful ruler of England and has waged a Civil War against Stephen to claim the throne. Greedy barons, already tramping over the country under Stephen’s weak rulership, have escalated their corruption and pillaging to rampant new levels. They have built castles without leave, murdered peasants in cold blood, and ignored edicts by religious leaders.It is in this time of political and social turmoil that the world of Land Without a King takes shape.

:)

In case you haven't read this, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/

Please, first, it doesn't really matter whether your game fits in this or not: I link the article for the ideas it offers, not to classify.

But there are similarities: your game at a surface glance strongly resembles d20 in mechanics: you've got your ability scores (determined in all the standard d&d ways), skills, classes, oodles of combat modifiers and tables and rules, lists of lots of weapons differentiated in a very d20 fashion (baseline weapons with similar weapons differentiated by small mechanic boosts), you've got your combat manuevers, your 5' squares, and so on. I think it wouldn't be too tricky to just rework the entire game as is as a d20 game with bunches of house rules (not to say I recommend that, there are of course plenty of tradeoffs and benefits that aren't worth getting into here).

Most importantly, underlying it all, you've got neat setting which isn't reinforced by the system at all: your temperaments and virtues and sins do nothing in the game. There's no reinforcement that the players should have goals, or desires, and that the game should be about those. For me, the box on the char sheet which says history & reputation is more interesting than figuring out exactly how my sword fighter will hit a mace fighter: how does reputation spread in the Middle Ages? What kind of reputations are made? Who controls those reputations? What's common culture?

The answers to those, and a system which reinforces those might be a whole lot more interesting to myself. Trimming down combat to something which is quick, extraordinarily rules-lite, brutal, and deadly, along with some general notes on how combat worked might be much more effective, and taking that space and making rules which encourage players to have manors, use the spoils from those to increase their reputation and influence with people, and drive plot in ways the players and gm find enjoyable. That and the at-a-glance interesting and detailed setting is where I'd put the work. Your system right now emphasizes things that your setting tries to downplay, while the setting tries to get you interested in things which your system fails to care about at all.

I think another problem with the tactical wargame combat model with medium to high rules complexity is that it encourages this very contemplative, very "well, if I move two steps, perform this move, followed by this move, I gain +.4 expected damage per turn", which seems about as far away from the feel of the period you're trying to recreate as possible. That chaotic feel seems to be easy to create in two ways: making the combat more vague, such that careful risk/reward analysis is not encouraged, and by introducing chaos via rule mechanics. There are threads on the Forge and RPG's (the book to read is Burning Wheel), which talk about the latter.

Okay, back to work.

I guess there is a separate issue here as well: do you think that when a player character is disarmed from the lance, and picks up a mace that they're not familiar with, that the right thing to do is to go to one chart, figure out what class of weapon the new weapon is,, then go to another chart, look up that number versus every type of weapon they're proficient in, and then take the lowest result and apply that to the roll?

I think for any rule, whether in the heaviest ruleset, or lightest ruleset, the approach should be: "What does this add to the game? Do I better fulfill the premise and goals of my games by having this?"

--

EDIT: By the way, this isn't just me trying to get you to make your game rules-light: it's more that an interesting system coming out of this is likely to have very little to do with spending time writing a d20-style wargame.

statisticaltomfoolery wrote:
Most importantly, underlying it all, you've got neat setting which isn't reinforced by the system at all: your temperaments and virtues and sins do nothing in the game. There's no reinforcement that the players should have goals, or desires, and that the game should be about those.

statisticaltomfoolery wrote: The answers to those, and a system which reinforces those might be a whole lot more interesting to myself. Trimming down combat to something which is quick, extraordinarily rules-lite, brutal, and deadly, along with some general notes on how combat worked might be much more effective,

statisticaltomfoolery wrote: I think another problem with the tactical wargame combat model with medium to high rules complexity is that it encourages this very contemplative, very "well, if I move two steps, perform this move, followed by this move, I gain +.4 expected damage per turn", which seems about as far away from the feel of the period you're trying to recreate as possible.

I think that first, the free .pdf you want to download and read over is Ars Magica 4th. There are a lot of things that I wouldn't recommend adopting from Ars, but it emphasizes the covenant above all else, shows you how to spend time developing a rules-intensive system to support the idea of the covenant is being important, while not losing sight of the individual. I think that redefining the premise of the game to being: "The players play various roles of a community (whether that be a village, manor, or whatever) and work to support, defend, and grow that community." might be a very interesting way to proceed.

Secondly, as far as combat, if you still want a rules-moderate or more system, then I'd say there' splenty of work to be done making an interesting mass combat system, which works especially with the community idea. If the game is about investing yourself into the community, then you want to let people invest themselves into the defense of their community. I'm not recommending a tactical wargame, but the idea of the "setting up defenses strategic game/mass-combat tactical game/rules-light/narrative game where individual PC's do important actions to affect the tactical game" seems like a good start.

Finally, as far as the sins/temperaments/virtues go, and your completely understandable desire to avoid the syndrome of : "Well, you're not acting greedy, so WHACK!", I'd need to spend a lot more time thinking about this to come up with an actual system, but I think that an idea to start from is that each choose of virtues, temperaments, sins has to be accompanied by some concrete goal, or possible failing, or just plain old plot on why that makes sense. A person goes through, chooses a few of these things, and suddenly they've got a character with all these things that they want to accomplish, or be tempted by, and so on. You reinforce those decisions by making the game about the fulfilling or rejecting of those traits. What happens when someone gives in to their sinfulness? What happens when they stand the course? Those should be interesting decisions, which develop their character.

There's the idea that you could develop a game where all the numbers only applied to the town: what's the reputation of the town, what are the resources available, who are its friends, its enemies, its defense against the enemies. PCs could be represented by as little as just a collection of words: a word describing their role in their town, some skills they're familiar with, and their sins, temperaments, and virtues, and the concrete things which drive those sins, temperaments, and virtues.

To emphasize the Virtues make them vital to the progress of the character. Players who go against their Virtues/Humors, which they choose in the first place, should be unfulfilled humans who don't get ahead in life.

Also I agree with the earlier comment that the Humoral therapies should work better than doing nothing. I like the idea that if your humors get out of whack you get ill and can't perform correctly. There is some evidence that we have a similar faith in "modern medicine". The relationship of the proportion of auto accidents to neck injuries varies disproportianately around the world; leading some researchers to believe that some countries have a mythology of neck injury that is stronger than other areas. in those countries with a lower mythology the xrays of accident victims show a lower incident of neck injury even when read by doctors from higher mythology countries. I'm not saying that medicine is hokum or that Humors controll our lives but give it some thought.

Also along with the Humors/ Virtues affecting the characters progress, I would like to see some sort of my community is strong so I am strong sort of reward.

Thor wrote: To emphasize the Virtues make them vital to the progress of the character. Players who go against their Virtues/Humors, which they choose in the first place, should be unfulfilled humans who don't get ahead in life.

statisticaltomfoolery wrote:
You shouldn't have a player pick a sin, make an interesting plot, and then get rewards for steadfastly ignoring it. You should make it such that the plots and mechanics reward the player for interesting, game-advancing play. For me, at least, it's the exploration of one's roles, one's desires, and one's beliefs, and how it's hard to achieve without sacrifice, that's the interesting part.

I dunno, I'm going to disagree with statisticaltom and back up Thor.

If the Humors and Virtues are to be anything other than throw-away detail, they need to affect the game in some way.
Sure, with a hands-off approach - no in-game reinforcement - some percentage of folks will still get on-board. But it certainly wouldn't be the beating heart of the game.
With your sense of the medieval perspective, though, it seems like virtues and humors are the prime building blocks of human beings. That's saying something.


And this is why I'm firmly behind Thor. While stattom calls this "carrots and sticks for personality mechanics," I'd say that's what all rules are. If you want these pieces to matter, you have to make them matter.

And, further, this would make stattom's proposal more poignant:

statisticaltomfoolery wrote: Sometimes people betray their principles, and it works. Does it work for only a little bit? Does it work, but leave them haunted inside? Does it work, but leave them in the pitfires of hell?

I'm not sure we're disagreeing. You're saying: "There need to be consequences."

I'm with you 100%.

I'm just saying that the right way to do this is far, far away from: "You hath committed a sin. Take a -2 to all actions till your confess." The choices a player makes with regards to how they will play, or not play their various attributes should drive the game.

While I'm not advocating this mechanic in particular, the SA's in TROS are an excellent example: the game has a rich combat system, but is driven by the Spiritual Attributes at hand: if a GM is failing to pay attention to what the players believe in, the game will have a good chance of breaking down.

That's the kind of feel that the system should have here: it should be natural, based on the setting, system, and everything, to be exploring the issues at hand. The cudgel of standard personality mechanics (play this way or else!) should have no room.

statisticaltomfoolery wrote: I'm not sure we're disagreeing. You're saying: "There need to be consequences."

I'm with you 100%.

I'm just saying that the right way to do this is far, far away from: "You hath committed a sin. Take a -2 to all actions till your confess." The choices a player makes with regards to how they will play, or not play their various attributes should drive the game.

While I'm not advocating this mechanic in particular, the SA's in TROS are an excellent example: the game has a rich combat system, but is driven by the Spiritual Attributes at hand: if a GM is failing to pay attention to what the players believe in, the game will have a good chance of breaking down.

That's the kind of feel that the system should have here: it should be natural, based on the setting, system, and everything, to be exploring the issues at hand. The cudgel of standard personality mechanics (play this way or else!) should have no room.