Racial Diversity in Gaming

Once again I'm trying to tackle the question of how much or how little difference race selection should make in the game.  It seems like any explanation for giving bonuses or detriments, whether to stats, skills, or classes, is based on an attempt to propagate a stereotype of the race in question.  Yet this is generally only helpful if you intend to play to the stereotype, and most players I know like to break them instead.  Further, if you are playing in a system that allows you to place your ability scores as you like, rather than as you rolled them, then you're already optimizing for the class you want to play, and can manipulate the placement to either offset disadvantages or boost bonuses.

Back to the stereotyping issue: "Everyone" knows humans jack all the trades, elves are better at everything except being clerics and taking hits, dwarves are better at hitting things, getting hit, and making stuff, and sometimes being clerics, halflings are good at being sneaky, stealing anything not bolted down, and in some cases being clerics, while gnomes are the quirky alchemically-inclined arcanists.  If anyone plays a half-orc, it's always optimized for bashing things.  There are sub-races that break some of these rules, but generally speaking you don't see gnome barbarians, dwarven wizards, or half-orc bards.  There are various "reasons" given for these things, but without the setting's background it more or less seems arbitrary.  It gives a bit of flavor, another choice for the player, while still remaining (in theory) numerically balanced.

I guess what I'm getting into is flavor vs. substance.  Ice cream is ice cream, but choosing chocolate, vanilla, or any of the other 47 flavors is what makes the experience personalized, unique, and memorable.  Yet when it comes to race, what would be the ultimate difference between playing an elf (for example) rather than a human?  If you're already placing stats as you want them, you can put your high numbers in Dex and Int if you want to play to the widespread stereotypes.  Is it enough to simply state "my character is an elf?"  Is roleplay the major factor, or does there need to be a mechanical variance in order to really feel like you made a defining choice in the character's development?

I spoke with my wife about some of this, and came to the conclusion that I don't like assigning racial stereotypes.  Considering I'm a Sociology major, I guess this shouldn't be a surprise.  I'd rather leave it up to the player to determine what stereotype, if any, they want to play to or break away from.  But if there are no defined norms or stereotypes to begin with, then the player has nothing to guide him or her.  Stereotypes and norms would only come about by having enough player-created characters to build them organically.

Overall, I've decided that it isn't within the scope of mechanics-building to define these things, but in setting or world-building.  It is the campaign world which determines what is the norm, and mechanics are altered to suit. I could build a world where dwarves are the penultimate magic-users, elves have developed steam technology, halflings can take a severe beating and still keep going, and humans are terrible at everything except being clerics.  Sure, this flies in the face of most fantasy literature, and I'd have to come up with some fairly solid reasoning and explanation for why things were that way, but there's nothing stopping me from doing so.  The biggest problem with this, though, is that if I provide a setting with norms that are too different from what players expect, it will likely be (at least at first) confusing and may put them off if they don't enjoy it.  If someone expects chocolate ice cream, and gets pistachio instead, they probably won't be happy.

On the far side of the moon, I remember one of my gaming books mentioning that, yes, the setting does have set and discriminatory gender roles, but that's just part of the game society and is something the character will have to deal with, either by trying to blend in or by fighting the system and trying to enact change.  By creating norms and stereotypes, I'd also be providing a social contract for the characters to either adhere to or challenge, which can make for really good RP, but doesn't necessarily help me test my game mechanics.

Okay, I've gotten sidetracked here.  Determining whether this is a system issue or a setting issue doesn't help me to decide what sorts of mechanical differences I should be applying.

Size is basic, and easy. Regardless of what a race is called or whatever abilities it may have, its relative size to humans is something that doesn't bug me to include.  It determines non-magical weaponry available, and by 3rd Ed. also has an effect on armor class.  Also by 3rd Ed. it has an effect on movement speed, and my friend brought up the effect of size on reach as well, but that tends to get into positional combat tactics that I was trying to avoid, for the most part, in system construction.  There is a part of me that it appeals to, but it also can slow combat down in contrast with the system I grew up on.

Various vision types are available, with variations between editions to draw upon.  It still touches on pre-existing stereotypes of what defines a race, but it's easier for me to deal with than stat boosts.

Bonuses with weapons or skills and stat bonuses, and even discounted experience costs for certain classes based on race, are things that would make mechanical differences, but are the strongest "offenders" as far as stereotyping go.  Is it somehow inherently flawed or wrong if every race is capable of being just as much a jack-of-all-lanterns as humans are?  Should humans have some sort of specialty as well?

Too many questions, and I've run out of pebbles for now.

Short Update

Having only two people in the party can be a challenge as it is, but when neither one has healing it really makes it difficult to gauge an appropriate challenge.  In the most recent game, and the one before that, at least one character has fallen into negative hit points, and needed to be dragged to a temple for healing.  It seems like the encounters I've been giving are either way too easy, or way too hard, and I'm having some trouble trying to find the middle ground.  Then again, I don't really get a lot of time to find it.

With Great Power Comes A Need For Control

I recently showed my static mana plan to my mother, the woman who raised me in modified AD&D. She liked the concept and implementation, up to a point - she raised concerns over it being too much power for a low-level character. My original thought was that, yeah, a 1st level mage might end up being able to cast 18 magic missiles, but magic is to a wizard what a sword is to a fighter, and the latter aren't restricted to how many swings in a day.

But then I thought about some of the other system changes I'd made from 1st and 3rd, and how weaponry and armor, as well as multiple attacks, have less to do with your class and more with your inherent stats. A mage might have stats optimized for casting, but if they'd taken fighter as a class instead they'd be no better off in physical combat. Any class can wear any armor, and my spell failure for arcane magic is based off of how much metal is in the armor rather than how much it inhibits arm movements for somatic components (something which seemed far too easily remedied with careful manufacture anyway).

So maybe I'm being too nice to casters.

Rather than come up with a system that limits how much mana is available until the maximum is reached, however, I thought about the possibility that spells might, at first, take more mana than would be indicated by their level. Say, for example, that at first level, a 1st level spell costs 5 mana instead of 1. You're just starting out in the world of magic, you haven't had a lot of practical experience, and you're still learning how to properly, and efficiently, wield the power you have. At second level, the cost goes down by 1 point. At third level, it now takes 3 mana for a 1st level spell, and so on until you reach the minimum of 1 point for a 1st level spell at 5th level.

Every time you gain access to a new level of spells, the cost of them is X higher than normal, let's say 4. That would mean that 4 levels after you start getting spells of that level, they would cost the normal minimum of 1 mana per spell level.

This could be a bit confusing for cantrips, since they normally take 1/4th of a mana. I could start them at 4, or I could be nice and start them at 1, dropping by 1/4 each level until the minimum.

Thoughts?

Keep Those Dice a'Rollin'

So my friend Jonathan came out this past week (Huzzah!) and we got to game a little bit. I am still fairly enamored with my new experience system, especially how clean it looks/feels to me at the moment. One potential concern that I noticed is that my system for saving throws and skill checks may be inherently flawed. The concept is that you roll 3d10, and you are aiming for a number lower than the relevant stat with a bonus gained from a secondary stat. With an expected average stat of 15, and a range of 3 to 30, I figured 3d10 would be appropriate. However, it seems that the majority of rolls are landing above 16 even after adjustments. I should have expected this, but I'm not yet sure how to deal with it. I was trying to approximate a d30, but I don't actually have any of those and they're not terribly common anyway. I suppose I could do a d6 and a d10, like how d20 rolls used to be done before d20s became popular. 1-2 on the d6 means the d10 is 1-10, 3-4 means it's 11-20, and 5-6 means 21-30. I'll have to do some blank rolling to find out if that brings the average down.

In pondering further upon the topic of skills, I thought about the idea of a slow method of improving skills based directly on Intelligence, rather than class as 3rd Edition had it. I'm thinking about putting a limiter, though, on how much of a bonus you can give any individual skill, based on the primary stat governing that skill. Maybe half of the stat? One of the things that really bugged me about 3rd Edition skills was that within a few levels the bonus to the skill far outstripped the ability of most challenges to keep up. Difficulty ratings kept getting arbitrarily bumped up just to have any chance of failure. I'm also, personally, a believer in inherent ability being a greater contributor than training.

Minor Update: Death Threshold

After playing around with various ways to implement the concept I wrote about here, including lots of number crunching and contemplation, I realized that messing with the death threshold and altering it from -10 would necessarily mean I would have to alter some of the other Fighting Skills I'd implemented. Certain abilities already altered how far below zero someone could go without dying. This isn't a major concern on its own, since it's easily enough fixed.

But I also came to the conclusion that unless I was going to go ahead and strip the ability to bring back the dead, as the other person had, then all I was doing was increasing an already generous hit point system at high levels, and in some cases (depending on how I chose to implement it) making lower level characters less likely to survive.

So at least for the moment, I'm not going to be using altered death threshold rules. I'm still fond of the idea, and like the increased realism that such a system would bring, but I'm already concerned about the level of complexity in my system anyway. Until I manage to do some serious playtesting to determine current power levels, I should probably just leave the mechanics alone.

Nielsen Family Diaries

A few weeks ago we got a letter in the mail from the Nielsen ratings people. They really do exist, and not just as a plot-device in movies! They gave us five new, crisp $1 bills to fill out a quick survey essentially stating how many television sets we have. I explained, in my responses to the online survey, that we do have televisions, but that we don't have cable or satellite or even access to public channels because of reception issues, and I expected that would be the end of it.

It wasn't. They called, and my wife answered and spoke to someone who said they wanted to send out a TV Viewing Diary for us to fill out, as well as $30 for the trouble. The diaries (one for each television set) arrived yesterday, and we got a reminder call today about filling them out. While I had the guy on the line, I again pointed out we don't have cable service, only internet, and asked if viewing a movie online, say through Netflix or similar, would be something they would want recorded. He said I could write that down, sure, as long as it was being shown on a television. I don't have any such internet movie subscription, but maybe Hulu would count.

I neglected to ask about purchased or rented DVDs, though. I mean, if Netflix would be something recordable, it would seem to follow that a rented DVD from an actual movie store would be just as valid. The instructions in the book only state what to do if you're watching something while recording it, or recording something for later viewing. It doesn't mention the possibility of viewing DVDs that have already been bought. Fortunately, such a circumstance is listed in the FAQ on their website, and it looks like I should write it down though it's still worded as though you had recorded the DVD yourself.

I guess I'll be keeping track of what DVDs our son watches, and maybe I'll see about some sort of movie night during this survey time. Then again, would that alter the actual information they're looking for, since I might not have done it otherwise? I must maintain the integrity of the survey, and not allow such a paradox to creep in!

Wow, who knew being a Nielsen family would be like time travel?

Methods of Improvement

I already had a system in place that would allow a character's Faith score to be malleable through the course of normal play, changing the score based on exceptional success or exceptional failure with Turning checks. Just today I wrote down and implemented a similar idea for the Luck stat, where the Luck would alter with exceptional critical hits (consecutive natural 20s), or exceptional critical fumbles (consecutive natural 1s).

I also allow stats to be built up using Combat Proficiencies (my term for Weapon Proficiencies, Non-Weapon Proficiencies, or Feats, depending on your chosen version. I don't know what the 4th Ed. equivalent is, but I don't care), but since I have these two stats as potentially variable I was wondering if there were other stats that people thought should be so quickly alterable. I know that physical stats such as Strength should not be so quickly or easily changed, but maybe Charisma might be affected by apparent wealth, or the Charisma scores of the people you're with?

Probably not, since it's a bit trickier than the systems I have in place for Faith and Luck. As it stands, Faith is really only important to one class, or anyone who wants to Turn or Rebuke undead. Luck is a bit more universally useful, since it affects saving throws, but there are two classes in particular that are majorly helped by having Luck as a primary stat. I like having these two stats alterable on-the-fly because I think it reflects the concept behind them well, but I don't know that any of the others really lend themselves to such.