The Viking Hat GM

No game is complete without falling damage rules. And there are, of course, many other ways to get badly hurt, such as vehicle collision, suffocation, drowning, electrocution, flammable liquids, poison and disease. Cold, heat, thirst and hunger are also relevant, especially in a game of modern warfare, but we'll leave those till later and deal with immediate violence both accidental and deliberate. These are abstracted with the wounding system, using the hit locations and wound effects .  Falling  causes one blunt  wound to a random location for each 3m fallen onto a medium-hard surface like grass. This may be protected against with body armour, with the falling injury using the "frag" category. A hard  surface like concrete or metal adds a wound. A soft  surface like a mattress subtracts a wound, as does being drunk.  The Athletics expertise has a familiarity breakfall , which automatically turns the first wound from falling onto the back - this always co...

In Classic Traveller books 1-3, player-characters get relatively fewer skills than later books, and certainly later editions. This is a game design decision which should be reflected in GMing style. There are two basic ways of looking at the skills on a character sheet: inclusive : that which is not listed can be done, even if not as well exclusive : that which is not listed cannot be do ne at all Long lists of possible skills, as in GURPS, encourage an exclusive mentality. "I'm sorry, but longsword use is completely different to shortsword use." Shorter skill lists, as in AD&D1e (a character class is simply a very broad skill) encourage an inclusive mentality. "Sure, you can climb a rope."  Part of the change from an inclusive to exclusive way of looking at skills is a change in Western society. When roleplaying games began in the 1970s, it was fair for a GM to assume that almost all of their players could swim, shoot, climb a rope, start a fire and so o...

Bill the Dungeon Delver does a regular livestream which you should subscribe to, and each week I join him to talk all things gaming. If you prefer video, watch - we get right into the guts of it from 22'40" in. This is the text version which is clearer but not as funny.  We talked about how AD&D1e's abstractions just work . You shouldn't mistake  precision  for  accuracy . Just because it's detailed doesn't mean it's right , and just because it's abstract doesn't mean it's wrong . Armour Class and Hit Points are not precise, but they're accurate.  The first thing to say that all game rules must be subordinate to the referee's common sense. If a fighter in plate mail with 100 hit points is tied to an altar to the evil ape god Ollirog, the priest Thulsa Ook need not roll to hit or for damage, still less would they need to strike 30 or so times to sacrifice them to the hungry god. He's tied up and helpless, he will  die. The wis...

  In any game system, one of the more difficult aspects is initiative. Who gets to go first, and why? If they can act, how much can they do in each round? Can the foe interrupt their action? Can they change their minds partway through the round? Every system is necessarily an imperfect abstraction. Luckily, abstractions work - if you do them right. Because Conflict has the aim of encouraging scouting, planning and teamwork, as well as trying to model individual training beyond performance on the firing range, Readiness is key.  The unfortunate truth is that there really only three kinds of combats: Ambush! - all of you live, all of them die. Ambush ed! - all of you die, all of them live. Stand-up fight - everyone dies.  The sensible adventurer will endeavour to ensure they are always ambushing. An ambush is achieved when the attackers achieve surprise . When two parties come across one another unexpectedly, or when one lies in wait for the other, there is a check for...

Honi C844789-7 Ag S "The Coin" With both sci-fi and fantasy games, we Hex On Up and generate a random setting. Because the dice are always right.  As with the fantasy setting, we go  deep rather than broad . You don't need a starmap of a 12,000-system Galactic Imperium - the players will never visit them all. At most  they will visit one world each game session, typically weekly. In a year that's at most 52 sessions, and given holidays and life happening, 40 is more likely - plus if a world's interesting the players might spend a few sessions there. Probably a dozen worlds will do before someone says, "Look, I just wanted to play Mechwarrior."  Here's the summary. select a starting world, and using  this random generator , create a system for it.  develop this world in detail, using Zozer's Universal World Profile  (UWP), and not forgetting its starport , if any. and its system create a subsector, using random generation. You may choose to do th...

  Among my house rules is, Character generation : roll 3d6 down the line, choose from fighter, magic-user, cleric or thief. Regardless of rolls, characters may be of any of fighter, magic-user, cleric or thief, but will suffer a 10% malus to XP if they lack a prerequisite attribute. You character may not commit suicide, but if they happen to die, you can roll another character.  Remember that we have an open game table , which means we constantly have newbies coming - which we want to encourage. Any game has some combination of choice  and chance . Chess is all choice, snakes & ladders is entirely chance, roleplaying games are a mixture of the two. The more choice  you have the slower the game, as each choice takes time to make, with its own pros and cons and considerations and so on and so forth. If there are a large number of choices during character generation, then it takes a whole session to make a character, and casual players won't give it a go. Newbie pl...

In the most popular and well-written system using 2d6 for task resolution, Traveller , typically 8+ will achieve success. With no modifiers either way, that means a 15/36 = 42% chance of success. In Conflict , we have made it 10+, which is 6/36 = 17% chance of success. This is deliberate. We are not trying to reproduce Rambo, Jack Ryan, James Bond or Ethan Hunt, but the small unit actions of modern conflicts - teams  of people who plan . We have allowed more bonuses to the throw, to encourage teamwork and planning. Part of this is assistance .  Someone else's familiarities may improve the odds; throw 10+ for the first person, 12+ for the second, and 14+ for the third; there may sometimes be limited to less than 3 assistants, but 3 is always the maximum useful.  If the throw succeeds then the primary may add +1 to their throw, at the first failure they must go ahead and use their expertise as it is, so for example a shooter may get their +3 for Firearms expertise to hit a ...