I’ve been slowly writing and testing out my own OSR Roleplaying Game I call Battle Jacket. This is its development blog. [Part 1 Here]
Recap: I have been playing roleplaying games since I was eight years old. I love the concept. D&D is too much math for me to wrap my head around. I was introduced to Mörk Borg and the rest of the OSR which really inspired me. Now to begin work on my own game, but where do I start?
In philosophy we ask, “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”
In RPG’s we ask, “what comes first, the rules or the world?”
I’m a very artsy creative guy who is big on story and very weak on mathematical systems, so it is surprising that I actually began my writing of Battle Jacket with the rules-set before the world-lore.
Originally, this was not conceived of as a long term project to pour my heart into. My idea was to straight-up cannibalize the Mörk Borg rules-set and re-skin it in a strictly lip-stick job. It was going to be a quick fun little zine thing that I knock out for fun and move on. The only problem I had with the Mörk Borg rules were that they were slightly too stripped down. There are only 4 stats in the character sheet. I love the bare bones nature, but this is stripped one too far for me.
The Presence stat, I think, is too prominent. It makes up about half the rolls in almost any game I run. Furthermore, I believe in a fundamental difference between Intelligence and Wisdom both in-game and in life. Thus in the games I ran, I tested out changing Presence to Intelligence, and adding a Wisdom stat to the character sheet. The thought being, this would open up a new area of strengths and weaknesses in the party making the players more dependent on one another, and making the game more flavorful. Failing a Wis roll even though a character has a high Int is always funny. The reverse is equally funny. My players seem to enjoy it as well.
Wisdom vs. Intelligence; What’s the diff?
(Because you are in such a hurry.)
The way I understood this in life as a youngster was:
Intelligence describes the things you know. High intelligence means you know more things, and you learn them faster than other people.
Wisdom describes how well you use the knowledge you already have to your advantage. Or how well you recognize luck, and take advantage of it.
Forest Gump is an example of high Wis and low Int.
Almost every “Genius” doctor in a medical show is an example of high Int and low Wis.
Also German Shepherds. Smartest dogs in the world, but somehow still dumb as hell!
In game terms the distinction serves two purposes: Game Mechanics and Character Development. Mechanically, Int describes a character’s ability to know things. Wis describes a character’s ability to know people. In terms of Character Development, is your character the oblivious, but brilliant nerd? Or the Street Smart dullard who can’t read a clock, but definitely knows what time it is.
I introduced this distinction to my players in a few one-shot sessions of Mörk Borg to see how well they worked with the players. Roll Int to observe objects, search for traps, or know languages. Roll Wis to spot a liar or size up an NPC. The results were the players understood the strengths, weaknesses, and over all make-up of the character they were playing a bit better than before. Functionally it meant rolling dice on different stats instead of relying on one stat that the players had less control over.
In short, the change worked, so I wrote it down and kept it.
My only other gripe with the rules I was plagiarizing, was that characters were too weak. In Mörk Borg the players are playing poor discarded wretches who have no chance. Even if they survive today, tomorrow they will not. Rule-wise there are two mechanics to keep players alive long enough to have a chance at a decent game. The first is an armor rule-set that automatically reduces the damage characters suffer. The second is Omens.
I like the idea of armor reducing damage as opposed to increasing an armor-class, in principle, but in practice both I and my players are CONSTANTLY forgetting the armor stat. In short, the mechanic works in terms of keeping characters alive longer, but only if they have armor at all, and then only if they remember they have it in the first place.
I describe Omens as acting like in-game mulligans. You can use them to make re-rolls, automatically reduce damage, and a few other things. Full description in the image below.
At first, I loved Omens. They weren’t too many, and really did the trick of giving otherwise hopeless player characters a chance of living a bit longer, but they got less fun over time. My players kept forgetting that they had Omens at all. Or they would remember they had one or two, but forgot what they could do and had to constantly look up their options. They also kept forgetting how many they had. Too powerful and just slightly too complex to use without interrupting the flow of gameplay.
Hardcore gamers who read that will be flummoxed, I’m sure, that such a relatively simple mechanic is so easily forgotten and so difficult to internalize, but the thing to remember is, most players aren’t used to having a small trove of codified mulligans. I’m not used to tracking so many stats as a GM. Just one more layer of complexity standing in the way of imagination and game-play.
Role playing games only work if the stakes are right. If characters are nigh-invulnerable, the stakes are too low, because they won’t die. If characters are too weak, the stakes are too low again because characters becomes disposable.
My solution: All player characters roll and extra D4+1 and add the number to their existing hit points. This allows them to live long enough to have a fighting chance, but not so long that the player gets too precious.
These rule changes were tried verbally a few times in a few games, and I was able to test their efficacy that way, but world building is a different story.
As a writer, I like to keep my first drafts to myself. I need to give my ideas time to percolate and bounce off each other in my thick little noggin before I can do anything about them. As an artist, it is lovely because I can allow myself to daydream, percolate, and talk to myself all day while I am working away at the drawing board. Unfortunately, nothing was coming to me too distinctly for a bit. All of my ideas were to inject more jokes into the already existing framework of ultra-grimdark fantasy. Essentially, just play the game as it is with a few home-brew rules. Not worth wasting anyone’s time with. I almost abandoned the project here. However, the idea proved persistent. I started making small notes on my phone.
The first note I wrote was the names of each of the Demon Gods. Which meant my game had nameable knowable deities of a kind as well as a mythical underworld. A mythical underworld suggests the existence of a corporeal world that player characters exist in, as well as the possibility of an Overworld. One idea begets another, as it were, and they started to coalesce into a central theme.
All of the creatures, characters, and classes I thought of and doodled were all the sort of stuff that a metalhead in high school would doodle in his notebook when he was supposed to be paying attention in algebra class. Naturally, I was that kid, so the ideas started feeling more and more like I was returning to roots of a kind.
Mörk Borg was described as Heavy Metal in RPG form. I was discouraged because what I was putting together could be described as the same thing, but then I thought of Army of Darkness. The cartoonishness. The silliness. The marks that I believed Mörk Borg had missed.
Pelle and Johan had indeed made Heavy Metal Music in RPG form, but what they made was Swedish Black Metal (the best kind of Black Metal). I wanted cartoonish ultra-violence! I wanted gratuitous geysers of blood and guts. I wanted jokes woven in the very fabric. I wanted to make GWAR!
Next Time:
Actually writing out the damn thing! (Version 1.0)
Thanks for reading,
-Gabe D.