I’ve updated Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer, with the cards from Doomgate Legion.

KindleCounter is my new Magic life counter for the Kindle. I tried it out for the first time  at the Scars of Mirrodin prerelease Friday night, and it worked great! The Kindle is a vastly superior platform for this sort of application over a phone because of the larger display and the fact that there are no worries about running out the battery.

I give a rundown of it in the video. Sorry for the blurriness.

Though it can be used on any device, it’s really designed for the kindle. It’s driven by the keyboard. The top row deals damage and gives poison counter, the second row gives life and removes poison counters. I tried to lay it out logically.

If you do want to try it on a computer, +1 life for the opponent is mapped to backspace (that’s the first key on the right of the second row on the Kindle).

I’d also like to point out that Thundermaster works great on the Kindle as well.

4th edition’s suggestions for magic item distribution has never been entirely satisfactory to me. Even as a player, I hate digging around to find enough things to fill out a wish list.

A lot of people also don’t care for the idea of the PCs always finding exactly what they want. There are various arguments for it, from matters of verisimilitude to those who enjoy the unexpected.

While reading through the new Essentials Rules Compendium on the train today, I had an epiphany.

First, a brief tangent. Schrödinger’s Gun is not my cat’s firearm, but rather the idea that until you, the DM, describe something to the players, the exact details can be changed without them ever knowing. Joe guesses that the kindly baron is really the BBEG as soon as he’s introduced? Change it!

So now we can apply the idea of Schrödinger’s gun to magic items. 4e assumes that PCs can figure out most magic items after spending a few minutes with them… Scratch that! From now on, the PCs simply get “some armor,” “a weapon,” or “some bracers.”

Then you give them a coupon with a slot, rarity and a level. The bearer of the coupon may turn it into any item for that slot, at that level or lower and that rarity or lower.

In game terms, when the PC finally decides what the item is, they’ve ‘identified’ it.

This adds some randomness back into the process, since the PCs have no control over what slot the item is for. It also adds some more competition for items. No longer does the set of plate armor go straight to the fighter. Rather, everyone has an interest in the generic, unidentified armor that was just found.

For players, it also gives them a lot more direction. Having to find an item of a particular level can be daunting, given all the choices. It’s much easier to pick something out with the slot so constrained.

Here are some tables you can roll on to determine type and rarity.

I’ve just completed work on Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer.

Thundermaster will ensure all the tools you need to defeat the monsters in the dungeon and get the most out of your heroes are always present. Never again must you suffer through an agonizingly slow game just because of bad luck in randomization.

Thundermaster can be used offline (just save the page, making sure to save it as a “Web page, complete”) and is also designed to be easily usable on any touch screen phone. Thundermaster has been tested and works in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera (on Windows, though it shouldn’t matter). It also mostly works in Internet Explorer 8, although there are occasional hiccups.

What are you waiting for? Try Thundermaster now!

D&D’s combat is great for dramatic fights, but it can be a bit of a drag when you keep pulling it out every time the PCs encounter a random brigand or bear. It can also be quite disruptive if for example a PC unexpectedly provokes a guard, and can lead to an inordinate amount of time being wasted on something of little consequence.

Enter skirmishes. Skirmishes are abstract combat. PCs roll initiative, use powers, and ultimately take damage in the form of healing surges.

Important note: Skirmishes have a threshold stat. When a player rolls damage, they gain a hit for every full multiple of the skirmish’s threshold which they beat. For example, if the threshold is 12 and the player rolls at least 12 damage, they’ll score one hit. If they roll at least 24, they’d instead score 2 hits, etc. Each role allows you to spend hits to do certain things.

To resolve a skirmish,

1. Take note of the skirmish’s stats, which are based on its level. Feel free to tweak the stats to suit the particular skirmish. For example, if the skirmish involves goblins, you might decrease the skirmish’s will defense and increase its reflex.
2. Calculate the starting surge damage. This is the initial surge damage from the table times the number of players. For example, if the initial surge damage is 2 and there are 5 players, the surge damage starts at 10.
3. Each player rolls initiative. The DM rolls initiative for the skirmish. Players act in initiative order, but may delay their turn as normal.
4. On a player’s turn, he uses one of his attack powers. If the player uses a daily power, he gets a +2 bonus on the attack roll. If the power affects multiple targets, the player only makes one attack roll, but gets a +5/tier bonus to damage. If they hit, apply the following effects based on the character’s role.
   • Controller: The skirmish gets -2 to all defenses during the next PC’s turn. Controllers may spend hits as follows.
     • 1 hit: Extend the duration of the defense penalty one additional PC’s turn.
     • 2 hits: Reduce surge damage by 1.
   • Leader: A character of your choice gains a +5/tier bonus to their next damage roll. Leaders may spend hits as follows.
     • 1 hit: A character of your choice gains a +5/tier bonus to their next damage roll. (this bonus stacks)
     • 3 hits: reduce surge damage by 2.
   • Defender: The defender may lose a healing surge to reduce surge damage by 1. Defenders may spend hits as follows.
     • 1 hit: The defender may lose a healing surge to reduce surge damage by 1.
     • 2 hits: Reduce surge damage by 1.
   • Striker: Reduce surge damage by 1. Strikers may spend hits as follows.
     • 1 hit: Reduce surge damage by 1.
     • 2 hits: Reduce surge damage by 3.
5. On the skirmish’s turn, double the current surge damage.
6. After everyone’s had a turn, distribute the surge damage among players as equally as possible. For example, if there are 5 PCs and 7 surge damage, 2 PCs must take 2 surge damage and the other 3 PCs must each take 1 surge damage. Players decide amongst themselves who gets the larger shares. For each point of surge damage, the PC loses a healing surge. If the PC has no more healing surges left, he takes damage equal to his surge value for each point of surge damage he couldn’t pay.
7. In the unlikely event that the PCs are all knocked unconscious, they have been defeated. Otherwise, they’re victorious. Their victory takes whatever form is appropriate, e.g. quelling a rebellion, slaughtering demons, or chasing off a pack of wolves. Just remember, this is meant to be a abstract an actual battle, and the story should follow exactly as if you’d played through the battle normally.

Skirmish statistics by level

Please note that I haven’t playtested this, and in particular the numbers probably need tweaking (especially the initial surge damage and threshold).

Suppose for a second that physics worked just ever so slightly differently, and gunpowder didn’t exist. Everything else still worked the same. Bombs, grenades, rockets, internal combustion. The only difference in this hypothetical world from our own is that the substance we call gunpowder can not be made.

Another caveat: in the absence of gunpowder, it’s entirely likely that something almost indistinguishable could be used. Maybe it’s slightly less efficient or more expensive than gunpowder, which is why it never took hold in our own reality. Regardless, when I say ‘no gunpowder,’ that’s my way saying ‘no guns.’

My initial thought was to try and find some way to have a modern setting where melee and swords were relevant alongside–and even superior in many cases to–ranged weaponry.

People are still going to want to be able to kill each other from across a room, and crossbows are fairly similar to guns. Here’s how I see crossbows evolving in a world where guns aren’t available.

First of all, they lose the whole bow part. Modern crossbows use springs to push the bolts. Top of the line models use titanium springs which are more durable and more powerful. ‘Civilian’ models use steel springs, still quite serviceable. Some crossbows have multiple arrays of springs and the trigger is created such that successive squeezes fire off different springs, allowing multiple shots without reloading/rearming.

The crossbows still have a crossbar, which pivots and usually remains in line with the bow, giving it a slim form factor. In combat, the bar is pivoted out and braced against the off-hand’s forearm. Even with the leverage, cocking the bow is difficult. Practiced shooters learn to use the recoil from the bow to help them rearm faster and more easily.

Modern materials make crossbows even more deadly and much more efficient, but still a far cry from firearms. Even the best of them are slow to rearm and reload, and doing such in a combat situation is largely feasible only when your enemies aren’t attempting to engage you in melee. And just for good measure, let’s pretend that a highly-skilled person can deflect crossbow bolts with a decent chance of success, at least turning for example a heart shot into a shoulder shot, if not outright knocking the bolt away.

Blade technology has been improved as well. Modern metallurgy makes blades more resistant to wear, sharper, and lighter.

Originally created for the soldiers, spring-loaded arm-blades displaces knives as the ‘concealable’ weapon of choice. Gang members hide the slim metal sheaths under baggy long-sleeved shirts. They’re quick and easy to deploy, nearly impossible to disarm, and the sword and arm mounting provide excellent defense against others’ melee weapons.

Non-lethal varieties are also available. Police, for example, are outfitted with baton versions of the arm-blades.

There’s also still a place for traditional, hand-held weapons. In particular, the arm-mounted weapons are designed to be worn regularly and are lightweight. You also lose hitting power by virtue of not being able to use your wrist to help bring the weapon around to strike. Hand-held swords and axes are thus more powerful and superior against armored targets. Hand-held weapons are also crafted to be somewhat flexible below the striking edge, adding a whip-like quality to them.

And so… that’s what I’ve got so far. A treatise on a modern world with swords and cellphones, bombs and bolts.

Resources

Combat in AARPG is all about resource management. You have to manage your initiative, and your energy.

Initiative

At the beginning of each round, each combatant rolls 3d6 and adds their initiative skill modifier. They get this many Initiative Points (IP). Ip should be kept track of with some kind of physical token.

Whoever has the most IP goes first. In case of ties, players go before NPCs. If players are tied with each other, they decide which of them goes first amongst themselves. Similarly, when NPCs are tied, the GM decides the order they act in.

Every action has an IP cost, which is a measure of the time and effort required to perform that action. The character spends an appropriate amount of IP, performs the action, and then their turn is done.

After each turn, whoever has the most IP goes next. If a character had a significant lead in IP and performed a quick enough action, they might actually get to take several turns in a row.

If a player doesn’t have enough IP to pay for the action they’d like to use, they take the amount they’re short in IP debt. For example, if a player wanted to use an attack which cost 5 IP but only had 3, they’d get 2 IP debt. IP debt is subtracted from your next initiative roll.

Whenever a character has no IP left, they may take no further actions in the current round. When all characters have run out of IP, everyone rolls initiative and gets IP again, just like at the beginning (although they may have to use some of it right away to pay off IP debt from the last round).

Energy

Every class uses a different type of energy, such as focus, discipline, rage or mana. The class”s description contains specific details on how much energy you start each battle with and how you recharge energy.

Casting and Channeling

Some powers are cast or channeled. These are similar in that both are hampered if someone casting or channeling is damaged while doing so. A cast spell does not take effect until it finishes casting, and will take longer to cast if you’re damaged. A channeled spell has a certain duration which is shortened when you’re damaged.

To track a casting power, first spend however much energy the power costs and then place 1 IP in your casting pool (it no longer counts for your total IP). Each turn thereafter, place an additional 1 IP in your casting pool. When you’ve accumulated enough IP in your casting pool, you execute the power. Whenever you’re damaged, you discard one IP from your casting pool. If your casting pool is ever empty, the power fizzles and you lose it; any energy spent to cast the spell are lost as well.

When you use a channeled power, first spend however much power it costs and then place as much IP in your channeling pool as the power specifies. Each turn thereafter you will continue to place IP in your channeling pool and continue the power’s effects. Once you have as many or more IP in your channeling pool than the power specifies, the power may no longer be channeled. You may also choose to stop channeling it sooner, though any energy spent remains spent. Whenever you’re dealt damage while channeling a spell, place 1 IP in the channeling pool. If you don’t have any IP left, take on one point of IP debt and then place an IP from the supply in your channeling pool.

Combat

Each character and NPC has three defense matrices–melee defense, ranged defense, and magic defense–which attackers will roll against to hit. With a melee attack, for example, you’d roll 1d100, add your melee skill modifier, and compare the result to your target’s melee defense matrix.

Defense Matrices

Defense matrices list a number of different results, based on the attacker’s roll. In general, higher rolls are better for the attacker. Here are a set of typical defense matrices.

Results generally don’t have any inherent meaning. Rather, the power you use will tell you what happens when you roll particular results, and additionally you or the defender may have traits which are triggered when a certain result is rolled, such as counterattacking when someone rolls parry on your melee defense matrix, or regaining hit points when you roll a crit against someone else.

Your class will tell you how ‘wide’ each result should be. You use the width of each result to determine the start and end of each range.

Damage

Characters may have one or more armor values, which directly reduce damage taken. For example, if you’re wearing a chain shirt which gives 5 armor and your shield gives you 5 armor on a block, you’d reduce damage you take by 5 when you’re hit and by 10 when you block.

Some attacks may have the armor piercing (AP) quality. Armor piercing reduces each individual armor value, so in the above example if you were being attacked with a spear which gives AP 2, your shirt’s armor would count as 3 against the attack and your shield’s armor would also count as 3. Armor value cannot be reduced below 0, and excess AP above the target’s armor value does not result in increased damage.

I’m currently working on an RPG… It’s not even in a playtestable form, yet. However, I have some ideas I’d like to share.

A bit of background: my working title for the RPG is AA RPG (Asmor’s Awesome RPG). I’ll change it when I come up with something better.

It’s sort of a hybrid of a class-based system and a point-based one. Each character will have three important choices to make; race, background, and class.

Today I’ll be talking about background. Background primarily affects your skills. So first, I’ve got to talk about skills…

Skills

Skill checks, like most things in the system, are d100 based. The GM assigns a difficulty, and you roll d100 and add your modifier. If you meet or beat the difficulty, you pass.

Most skills are categorized into one of 5 skill groups. There are also some combat skills which do not fall into any skill group.

• Athletics: Running, Jumping, Strength, Climbing, Swimming, Balance, Block
• Crime: Disable Device, Stealth, Pick Pocket, Sleight of Hand, Hide, Disguise
• Knowledge: History, Science, Strategy, Religion, Arcana, Nature, Geography, Resist Magic
• Social: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Empathy, Detect Lies
• Awareness: Spot, Search, Listen, Intuition, Detect Magic, Dodge
• Special (not a skill group): Parry, Ranged, Melee, Initiative

Your skill modifier is the sum of the points you’ve placed in the skill, your mastery for that skill’s group, and any other bonuses, e.g. racial bonuses.

Skill Group Mastery

One important innovation in my skill system is that training any skill actually makes you better with a variety of related skills. You have a mastery rating for each skill group, equal to half the sum of the points you’ve spent in that skill group, rounded down. For example, if you’ve got 5 points in stealth and 10 points in hide, you’d have a Crime Mastery rating of 7 ([10+5]/2). Your total modifier for stealth checks would be 12 (7+5) and your modifier for hide would be 17 (7+10). For any other skills in the Crime skill group, you’d have a modifier of 7.

The special skills do not belong to a skill group and do not receive any mastery bonuses. It’s also important to note that only spent skill points grant mastery; other skill bonuses do not.

Backgrounds

Your background gives you a number of skill points for certain skill groups, and a number of general skill points which can be spent as you please, per the table below.

• Martial: Someone trained to fight. E.g. bodyguard, militia
• Religious: Someone trained in the ways of the clergy. E.g. priest, temple maiden
• Nobility: Someone from the noble courts. E.g. prince, vizier
• Street: A poor peasant from an urban area. E.g. beggar, thief
• Rural: Someone raised in the countryside. E.g. farmer, hunter
• Merchant: “Middle-class” people with decent jobs. E.g. trader, cobbler
• Entertainer: Someone skilled in giving others a good time. E.g. jester, courtesan.
• Academic: Someone who’s spent a significant portion of their life studying or experimenting. E.g. student, professor.

A starting character may not put more than 10 points in any single skill, and not more than 40 points in any skill group.

There are a lot of boardgamers who avoid Magic because of the collectible aspect, and that’s certainly understandable. However, a while ago I discovered a wonderful variant called Stack, and it’s not my favorite way to play. And the best thing about Stack is… it’s completely non-collectible, and it costs only as much as you want to put in it.

At its core, the idea is very simple. Everyone plays from the same giant deck. Ideally, you should choose a selection of what you consider the most fun cards.

The stack is a lot of fun, and everyone I’ve played it with has enjoyed it. Won’t you give it a try?

Rules

There is one other rule which is very important. There should be a supply of basic lands, and whenever a player could draw a card he may instead choose to draw a basic land of his choice. Additionally, if a player could search the library for a basic land, they may take one from the basic land supply (there shouldn’t be any basic lands in the stack itself).

Other than that rule, the format is great because it allows you a huge amount of leeway to tailor it to suit you. For instance, I love Planechase, and a deck of Plane cards in the center of the table is always an important part of stack for me.

There are some practical issues which must be dealt with. Here are my rulings; you should come up with your own to suit your tastes (or you can just use mine, they’ve worked fine for as long as I’ve been using them…).

1. When you start a game of Stack, take a handful of the shuffled stack to form the initial library. Never reshuffle the same cards into the library, always replenish from the unused, shuffled stack.
2. If a basic land would be put into the graveyard, instead it is returned to the pool of basic lands (and note that it doesn’t trigger effects based on cards going to the graveyard).
3. For all effects, the library is both your library and your enemies’ libraries.
4. For all effects, the graveyard is both your graveyard and your enemies’ graveyards.
5. If a non-basic land card would be put in the library anywhere other than on top of the library, it’s exiled instead. If a basic land card would be put into the library anywhere (including on top), it’s returned to the pool of basic lands.
6. In a game with more than two players, the winner gets to sign a single, unsigned card of his choice. It must be a standard magic card (e.g. not a plane or archenemy card), and can not be a basic land. Additionally, it should be a card which was significant to his victory. The winner should sign and date the card, and optionally add a short quote or illustration.

Crafting your Stack

In crafting your stack, aim for cards that you think are fun. They don’t necessarily need to be powerful, or even particularly good (although they should be at least good enough to be worth playing). Though not strictly necessary, I recommend having no more than one copy of any given card in your stack.

In my stack, I put a special emphasis on cards that interacted with the graveyard to take advantage of the shared graveyard rules (e.g. incarnations, cards with flashback, etc), and I also put in pretty much every creature with morph I could find because that’s an ability particularly well-suited to this format.

In addition, you may want to limit cards which allow you to search your library (excepting cards which allow you to search for basic lands, of course), as in my experience they ruin a lot of the fun and unpredictability. I used to have several in the stack, but at best they added little and at worst you’d get people cherry picking the best cards in the stack.

And of course don’t forget all the other stuff out there you could add. I tried Vanguard for a while, but personally I didn’t care for it. Planechase has been a solid addition to my stack, and I’ve crafted some rules to integrate Archenemy into it as well (though they’re yet untested, I’ve only played one game with them).

Spoils of Victory

As I mentioned, one of my rules is that in a game with more than two players*, the winner gets to sign a card. This is one of my favorite parts of the stack, and I love drawing one of the signed cards and the memories it brings back. I’ve actually won with some of the cards I’d signed more than once, including Insurrection and Final Fortune.

Plus, it adds character to your stack, and ensures that you’ve got a chunk of gaming that’s always going to be unique.

*I added the clause about more than two players after a friend of mine, annoyed that he’d never signed a card, basically forced me to play him over and over… After I won 5 or 6 times in a row, and signed as many cards, I realized it was getting a bit silly, so threw the rule in there mostly just to get him to give it up. Incidentally, he did eventually manage to win a game and sign a card… after the rule was already in place. I bent it to get him to shut up.