Cosmic Horror SRD: Design Part II

Today I've been working on skills for the Cosmic Horror SRD.  I think the Call of Cthulhu d20 skill system - pulled from the D&D 3.0 SRD (I think) - is needlessly complex. I'm a fan of the Pathfinder skill system, which works great in Pathfinder, but I was concerned about how the changes would affect the Cosmic Horror SRD.

(D&D gives skill ranks equal to (X+INT)*4 at first level and X+INT at subsequent levels; class skills cost 1 rank per +1, non-class skill cost 2 ranks per +1; max ranks in a class skill is character level + 3, half that for a non-class skill.  Pathfinder gives X+INT ranks per level; max ranks in any skill is equal to character level; class skills with at least 1 rank get a +3 bonus.  In both cases, X is a variable number based on class; in Call of Cthulhu d20, X = 8.)

So, I did a little experiment.  I created a 1st level defensive option character with 13 in all abilities and the archaeologist profession using the Call of Cthulhu d20 rules, and a 1st level Defensive Investigator character with 13 in all abilities and the archaeologist occupation using the Cosmic Horror SRD and the Pathfinder skill system.  I then compared the two characters.

The Call of Cthulhu d20 character wound up with 36 skill points (8 base plus 1 for INT times 4).  Twelve skills from the archaeologist profession are class skills, so with a little basic division I put 3 ranks into each of the twelve class skills and no ranks into any non-class skills.  The character wound up with a +4 total in each of the skills.

The Cosmic Horror SRD character wound up with 9 skill points (8 base plus 1 for INT).  The same twelve skills from the archaeologist occupation were considered class skills.  I could not put a rank into all twelve skills with only 9 ranks and I could only put 1 rank into any given skill... so only 9 of the twelve skills were given a rank.  However, each of those 9 skills wound up with a total of +5 (+1 for 1 rank, +1 for INT, +3 for class skill bonus).

While I'd need many, many more test-case scenarios to scientifically back this up, I think I'm comfortable assuming that if I go with the D&D system in the Cosmic Horror SRD the characters will have more skills starting out at lower total bonuses than if I went with the Pathfinder system, where they'll have fewer skills with higher total bonuses.  So I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the Pathfinder system; if I need to, I can balance out the number of skills by increasing the ranks allotted (say to 9 or 10) and the overall total bonus by dropping the class bonus (say to a +2 instead of a +3).

Cosmic Horror SRD: Design Part I

So here I am, not even a week into working on the Cosmic Horror SRD, and I'm having to make design decisions.  Heh.

First up are classes.  In Call of Cthulhu d20 there are no classes.  There are levels and an offense option and a defense option.  I don't know if I can re-word that in such a way as to not cause copyright issues, so - taking a hint from d20 Modern - I'm going with a different approach: an offensive class ("The Offensive Investigator") and a defensive class ("The Defensive Investigator").  While the classes will have different class- and level-dependent tables, the values will be the same for all but base save and attack bonuses.

So... where you'd have a 1st level character with the defensive option in Call of Cthulhu d20, you'll have a 1st level Defensive Investigator character in the Cosmic Horror SRD.

Next up are skills.  First off, since I'm not willing to test the public domain-ness of the word "Cthulhu", there will be no Cthulhu Mythos skill.  Instead, there will be a Cosmic Mythos skill.  Above and beyond that, I'm working on testing the end result of the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern skill approach versus the Pathfinder skill approach.

In Call of Cthulhu d20, a character receives (8 + INT bonus) * 4 skill ranks at first level, and 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level thereafter.  Skills cost 1 rank per +1 for "in profession" skills and 2 ranks per +1 for "out of profession" skills.  The maximum ranks you can put into "in profession" skills is equal to your level plus 3, and half that for "out of profession" skills.

Using the Pathfinder skill approach, a character would receive 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level. Skills cost 1 rank per +1, regardless of if they're "in profession" or not, however, "in profession" skills receive a +3 bonus.  The maximum ranks you can put into any skill is equal to your level.

I vastly prefer the Pathfinder approach as it's much more elegant and easy to work with. I'm concerned, however, that characters will wind up less skilled than they would if I used the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern approach.  So over the next couple of days I'm going to create the same character using both approaches and see how they compare.  I'll post the results here, just in case anyone is interested.

Cosmic Horror SRD: Introduction

While I love Dungeons & Dragons and have been playing it for as long as I can remember, the game which truly captures my imagination is Call of Cthulhu. It's probably because I'm a bigger H.P. Lovecraft fan than I am a Tolkien/Moorcock/Donaldson/Weis & Hickman/Leiber/other fantasy author fan.  So when Wizards of the Coast struck up a licensing agreement with Chaosium and published Call of Cthulhu for d20, I was positively tickled.

Of course the license had a time limit and when it expired, Call of Cthulhu d20 seemed to all but completely disappear.  However, it remains one of my favorite d20 system implementations... if not my actual favorite.  Because Wizards of the Coast owns the d20 system and its trademarks, and because Call of Cthulhu d20 was a licensed property, the game wasn't actually released under the Open Game License even though at least 90% of the mechanics had already been released under that license elsewhere. Additional mechanics and monsters have been released under the Open Game License since Call of Cthulhu d20 went out-of-print.

So I've decided to create a "retro-clone" (more like a "modern-clone") of Call of Cthulhu d20 using the vast amount of open gaming content available today.  I'm calling it The Cosmic Horror SRD, and will have it all freely available online not only when I'm done but as I work through the development process.  My hope is that through The Cosmic Horror SRD people will remember that BRP is not the only system under which one can play a cosmic horror RPG and that the d20 system is as good of a contender as is any other system.

I'm starting off using both the d20 modern SRD and the d20 3.5 SRD as my main sources, although I know I'm going to have to reach into other SRDs and products for the sanity mechanics, monsters, and magic.  I'll be contributing my own Mythos constructs to the SRD as well, so watch out.

I'll keep this blog updated as I develop The Cosmic Horror SRD.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: D is for Dice

There is one thing all table-top D&D players have in common: dice.  It doesn't matter what edition of the game is being played, everyone needs and uses dice.

Dice come in all sizes, flavors, and colors, and for each different die there is a different approach taken to dice by the gamers that use them.  There are gamers who don't care about their dice and use whichever ones are tossed their way at the start of the game.  There are gamers who are hypersensitive about their entirely matching collection.  There are gamers who expect everyone to ooh and aah over their Crystal Caste Dwarven Stones dice as they are laid out on the table.

The same goes for dice bags.  I've seen gamers toss all their dice in metal lunchboxes.  I've seen hand-made dice bags, chain mail dice bags, renaissance fair pouches used as dice bags, Crown Royal bottle bags, Tupperware containers, the list goes on and on.  A buddy of mine has a pair of "lucky" d20s; he swears by them, stating that one consistently rolls low and the other consistently rolls high.  He keeps those in a miniature Tupperware container, inside a miniature pouch, inside his regular dice bag.

My dice are pictured above.  They're Chessex speckled dice which I purchased more years ago than I care to count.  They're elementally-themed: air, earth, fire, and water, with a single d20 from the para-elemental plane of lava, heh.  I keep them all in a Yellow Sign dice bag purchased from Chaosium some time ago.  When playing I tend to use the fire set, although I always roll to hit with the lava d20.  They work well for me and I like them.  I'm sure they'd work well for others as well... but I'll be damned if I'm going to let some other gamer lay their grubby hands on MY dice.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: C is for Character Creation

From Men & Magic, page 10: "Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role."

Because I started playing D&D with the Moldvay Basic Set and came to original D&D much later, I never really acknowledged that sentence until it was highlighted on one of the blogs I follow.  At first I was shocked and almost appalled to think that someone else would be rolling MY character's abilities.  But as I pondered it a bit more, I realized that it's a great way to generate memorable characters.

Imagine being handed a character sheet with an 8 STR and a 13 WIS, and being told that it would make a good Cleric.  You could make the character a Cleric or, if you're willing to take a possible XP hit, you could decide to play a Fighting-man; remember, there are no minimum ability requirements for any of the classes in 3LBB OD&D.

The question of why your character is a Fighting-man when he'd be better off as a Cleric is something that could be answered in play as the game progresses.  Perhaps he was slated to join the clergy but was mistreated by a priest and ran away.  Perhaps he actually joined the church but got caught up in a scandal and was defrocked.  There are so many good "bits" which can come out of such an unorthodox class selection, all of which will stick in your head when you think back upon the character...

...assuming he isn't killed in his first foray into the dungeon.  Heh.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: B is for Basic Set

I began playing D&D with the Moldvay-edited, Otus-decorated Basic Set pictured at right when I was but an elementary school lad.  I remember watching a group of kids playing D&D during lunch hour at school and I knew I wanted my own copy of the game.  With apologies to Despicable Me, I do believe I told my parents that D&D was "...so cool I'm gonna die!"

So, the D&D Basic Set showed up under the Christmas tree that December.

I remember the absolute awe I felt when I opened the box and flipped through the rulebook.  I remember being blown away by the map of the Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderland.  And I remember the confusion of a kid trying to figure out this game when his only exposure to it had been silently watching a group of other kids play from a few feet away, heh.

My biggest confusion was with hit dice and hit points.  For the longest time I believed them to be one and the same, and I couldn't figure out why my friend's 1st level fighter was so easily dispatching the monsters in the Caves of Chaos... Eventually I figured out the correct relationship between HD and HP and my dungeons suddenly became much more of a challenge.

Finally my buddy got his own copy of the Basic Set and I was able to roll some characters of my own.  Because it was just the two of us, we each ran two characters.  I was Blackpawn the thief and Glana Brano the magic-user.  For some reason Glana Brano stuck with me, and he's made many an NPC appearance in games I've run.  He's become the Gandalf or Elminster of my RPG worlds.

So yeah.  The Basic Set.  That's where it all started for me.

A to Z Blogging Challenge: A is for Ability Checks

So I'm coming a bit late to this party, but I've decided to go ahead and throw my hat into the A to Z Blogging Challenge ring.  It's all going to be RPG themed and is starting today with "A" for "Ability Checks".

My one and only issue with OD&D and old-school style play is that once your character's abilities are rolled, your modifiers tallied, and your experience point bonus calculated, the ability scores themselves tend to fade away.  Following the tenets of old-school play, you then go about adventuring via describing your characters actions so that the DM can interpret and adjudicate the results based on... well, largely DM fiat.  If your character has a completely average Dexterity, for instance, and you describe his or her actions well, it's completely up to the DM to determine if you fail or not.  Certainly, there's a level of trust which exists between player and DM that should stop a DM from acting out of spite (or favoritism), but there's nothing mechanically which stops him from doing so.

Take this example, for instance, by the fictitious player of Dorgo, the Fighter, who has a 9 Dexterity: "I push the end of my 10' pole along the dungeon floor ahead of me.  If it gets hung up on a crack I'll stop and pour a wee bit of water into the crack to see if it's a pit trap.  If it is a pit trap, I'll spring the trap by poking the pit's cover hard with the end of my pole.  Then, once it's sprung, I'll sneak around the pit by hugging the wall and inching along the very small ledge of the pit."

That's a great example and I know that as DM I'd be tempted to have Dorgo skate by the pit trap unscathed just based on that description alone.  But, c'mon, the dude's got a 9 Dexterity, and he's going to crawl along a maybe 3" ledge, hugging the wall, without falling in?  I think I have a higher than average Dexterity (not much higher than average, mind you) and I don't know if I could pull that off.

Tossing in an ability check at that point, however, increases the drama and excitement of the scene as everybody holds their breath and watches the d20 roll across the table in the hopes that it's going to roll less than Dorgo's Dexterity so he can pull off inching around the pit trap.  And if - after such a great description - he misses his Dexterity check and falls into the trap, give him a Saving Throw or another Dexterity check to see if he can grab the ledge as he falls and save himself.  Ability checks are not about punishing the character or minimizing descriptive play, they're about supporting descriptive play and adding a touch of mechanical drama and excitement to them.