The final layout style has been designed for Legends of Lang'Kor, which means we're kind of in the home stretch. There are likely some bugs that will come out in the final phases of testing, which will include the blind testing, but things are looking good.
Stay tuned for updates.
Unique and strange dice have been tied to role playing games since their inception. For many gamers the iconography of the 20-sided die is a badge of honour worn to identify themselves as tabletop RPG fans. But what is (or should be) the role of such dice in our games? And why do we need such strange implements to run our games?
The answer to the latter is merely a mathematical one. Without getting to deep into it, the six-sided die and its limited number generating potential has been cast aside by many (if not most) game designers. Generating numbers consistently at higher ranges is not possible without being forced to handle handfuls of six-sided dice at a time.
But the real question (and the most contentious) is what role these dice have in the game. Simply put, they are there to randomize the outcome of an event. A version of that statement has probably been written by every game designer for the last half century. But if tabletop RPGs attempt to strike a balance between simulating adventurous storytelling and being a game that is fun to play, how often should the element of chance factor into the game?
My opinions on this topic have changed from one side to another as I tried different games, but now, after about 20 years in the hobby, I think I can say that I've come to decision about how I feel about it. Dice should only be used when the outcome of a situation (skill test, check, or whatever) will a) alter the narrative in a meaningful way, and b) no other in-game resource is being paid. Let me elaborate on these two points.
There's a common meme about gamers "rolling for it" when their characters do almost anything. Roll to pet the cat, roll to find a lucky penny, roll to intimidate the guard, roll to tie your shoes, etc. This started as a joke, but it seems that (at least in part) it comes from a critical analysis of the "new school" games that attempted to change how RPGs are played. Games that rely heavily on skills or player abilities and that are often open-ended. Now I'm not saying that those games are written like this, the problem with what I call "over-rolling" comes from the players that misinterpret the game mechanics. New players especially seem to think that characters should roll for literally every action they take, as if the game was designed so that every time a player spoke they had to roll something to see if it worked.
The problem with this approach should be obvious for the most part, but there is a subtlety to it that is often overlooked. I'll make comparisons to real life and other forms of media in this section, I know that RPGs are not movies or real life, but bear with me.
The issue that comes up (and attempts to be resolved by modifiers and whatever else) is that a player should be confident of the outcome of something that is either unchallenged or doesn't affect the narrative. If a player states that their character pets a cat that is lounging on a tavern counter, does it matter if they "succeed"? Is there anything on their character sheet that can be applied to the roll? If the answer to either of these questions is 'no', why bother rolling it.
I've had players that want to engage with a scene, so they say something like "while talking to the innkeeper I try to pet the cat". These are great little moments, they shouldn't be narrative-stopping moments where a character's skills are called into question. If the player instead asks something like "can I diagnose this cat for rabies" then a roll of some veterinarian skill might be called for.
In-game resources, or currency, as some people call it, are values that must be paid throughout the game to stay alive. These include hit points, money, food, medical supplies, and time. Rolling for something should only occur when a cost is not already being paid with some other resource. For example, looking for something in a dungeon. In Legends of Lang'Kor, the primary resource being spent while exploring dungeons is time. Lighting only lasts a finite duration, so dawdling is not a good idea. Since the characters are already on the clock, the cost to, say, find a hidden door is that it could potentially be a waste of time. If you throw a "looking for doors" roll on top of that, you've doubled the difficulty of this task, making it nearly impossible to accomplish.
So what's the bottom line? I'd say don't overdo it with dice rolls. Only roll when it's actually necessary or when something else isn't being paid.
As a game designer and forever GM, I've been often faced with a player that responds to an in-game skill/proficiency/ability or otherwise and saying "why would I spent points/time on that? It doesn't do anything for my character."
Many games are rife with worldbuilding disguised as, let's call them character options. For example, a skill related to the history of the game world, or the skill to cook. In some games these are mere window dressing, used to pad out a character's back story. So, again, why would I spend my precious in-game meta currency on something that only tells a story. The truth is, when it comes to making decisions about a character, a player will not prioritize story telling elements if they have no mechanical benefit.
When designing Legends of Lang'Kor, my approach has been to instead design every skill so that it does something for the characters. To be honest though, I didn't know how it would all work at first. I wanted to create a skill-based game, reminiscent of GURPS or Basic Role Playing, so I started with an extensive list of skills (I think there were over 200).
Some were easy to tie to mechanics. Combat skills, those were the easiest, you test them and the result shows whether you hit someone or not. There were other obvious ones: climbing, persuasion, woodcrafting, etc. Any skill where the output was either a certain action (climbing a wall), making something (crafting a wooden table), or getting an NPC to do something (persuading them to let you into town after dark) was easy to tie to the rules. But I had a few that were more abstract, things like architecture, chess, cooking, survival, etc. I had to find a way for the outcome to be more than just "well, you got a good roll on cooking so you made a good meal."
So I thought about what would motivate a player to spend points on cooking, for example. Because if the outcome was simply a scene setting item, no one would spend points on it. Multiple playtesting sessions confirmed this, as no one spent time training these "fluff" skills. Instead of simply taking them out of the game, I decided to try to tie them to game mechanics I already had in place. With cooking, I granted a recovery bonus for adventurers having a warm meal. As in, finding an Inn to sleep in or having someone cook for the party while traveling helped them overcome fatigue. It also had the added perk of lending itself well to the thematic elements of the game.
“Technology Level” as a concept was first introduced to me in GURPS, a wonderful Do-it-yourself game system. In GURPS, the items and skills available to the players and NPCs are governed by the technology level of the campaign setting. This typically ranges from stone age to nanotechnology.
This prevents obvious things like not having a caveman who has knowledge of computers. As GURPS is a system that is intended to be adapted to a huge number of settings, these guidelines can be quite broad (e.g. TL4 includes antiquity all the way to the renaissance).
In my experience, some periods, fantasy or otherwise, require a closer examination of technology levels and their impact on the world.
Throughout this article, I’ll be using the word “anachronism” or “anachronistic” to describe elements that are technologically out of place, despite the fact that I’ll be using a medieval fantasy setting as the example. Obviously I don’t mean that I’m using real-world history to define the fantasy world, but it does contain familiar elements to our own world and how its technology has developed.
The in-game world of Legends of Lang’Kor is designed to be as medieval as possible, without being an exact carbon copy of our own history. But with that said, the “medieval” era is a huge span of time which saw a lot of technological development.
To decide where to place it, as in, which century was technologically equivalent, I decided on which technologies I either wanted to feature or those that I didn’t want to have.
Steel Weapons
Plate armour is still rare and expensive
A strong merchant class
Windmills/Watermills are common
Naval travel is possible, but is restricted to the coasts (no ocean-wide travel)
As any history buff will probably recognize, there are a few anachronistic elements to this list, which don’t quite line up to a specific historical period. The closest approximation I found was 14th century Europe with a few splashes of renaissance. Obviously, most of my decisions were based on the aesthetic I wanted for the game world.
To be able to confidently put together a world’s technology, especially one so limited as the medieval ages, we can use our preferred technologies (as above) to fill in the gaps. Using our chosen time period as a baseline helps.
For example, if ocean-wide naval travel is not possible, what does this mean for local economies and availability of products? What did it mean for European cities before the age of sail?
Another example would be the way we want armour to be used. If plate armour is not common, firearms would likely not be in use.
The very nature of fantasy (or advanced technological) elements are that they deviate from our known reality. This can complicate things in unforeseen ways.
For example, I wanted there to be an Alchemical tradition in the world, which was more about creating medicine and potions than trying to convert lead into gold. This created a few precedents, a) this could clash with a medieval view of medical science, b) this would likely require glass fabrication techniques to be far more advanced than what was present in the 14th century.
Addressing these concerns could be as simple as assuming that advanced glass fabrication would mean that glassware was more commonplace in this world than in history. That’s easy to swallow. For a role-playing game, being able to drink a potion and feel better is almost a staple, so it fits what gamers expect from medieval fantasy. But it also means that these potions are available to the general public (if they can afford it).
This would mean that life expectancy would probably be increased, which is also easy to accept. We don’t necessarily romanticize the middle ages because of the increased death toll.
In summary, whichever fantasy elements you decide to insert into your world, consider the ramifications that come with them.
As a Game Master, I want to provide an experience that feels authentic within itself. If I made an entire session or adventure around walking all across the continent when the party could have hired a boat to take them across an ocean, the setup would probably feel contrived.
The bottom line is, if you don’t define the boundaries of what can be done, the only boundary is everyone’s assumption of what they can do. This can lead to mismatched expectations about character creation and interaction with the game world.
By Gordon R. Dickson
Published by Ace Fantasy, 1994
By L. Sprague de Camp
