Renown Points
I’ve already explained my rationale for using Renown Points, and I like the way it worked in the last session. I monkeyed with some of the values and achievements so that rarer achievements are worth more, and so that they work a little more as intended. Here’s my new score card.

Ally Cards
I shamelessly stole this idea from someone else. I’m modifying it a little to suit my tastes. Here’s how they work in my game.

Actions
Allies do not have their own actions; each ally is attached to one of the players and is under his/her control. Whenever a PC takes a move action, that player’s attached ally can also do so. The PC can spend a minor action to activate one of the ally’s encounter or daily abilities. Allies do not make opportunity attacks or take any other actions on their own. Some allies have passive abilities; these do not require an action to take effect. When an ally uses an encounter or daily ability, no roll is required; however, an ally cannot deal damage automatically. Instead, any ally power that deals damage must do so as a result of a PC’s roll, effectively granting bonus damage to a PC’s attack.

Damage and Healing
Allies do not have hit points; instead, they have hit boxes. When an ally takes damage from any source, mark off a hit box. Like minions, allies do not take damage from a miss, but can take automatic damage from an aura or other effect. When all hit boxes are marked off, the ally is unconscious. If an unconscious ally takes damage, that ally dies. Allies do not make death saving throws while they are unconscious; they are automatically stable.

Whenever an ally benefits from a healing ability that allows that ally to spend a healing surge or heal as if a healing surge had been spent, that ally erases one marked off hit box. Allies do not, however, have healing surges. During a short rest, an ally can erase all marked off hit boxes.

Resistances and vulnerabilities do not apply to allies.

Sample Ally Cards

Healbots
One of my players plays a warlord, and is the only leader in the party. The paladin and warlock can both do some healing, but not much, and both have access to healing on a daily basis rather than an encounter basis. The warlord is often unavailable, and until recently I simply had another player run his character. That, however, slowed things down and was, in general, complicated and not as effective as it could be. I also tried creating a monster version of the warlord, Sredni, so that he’d be easier to run. This, too, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then, I came across this post, which I’m going to shamelessly steal from (again). I’m modifying the healbot rules a little to give Sredni a little bit more autonomy, and so that the players still benefit from his passive abilities (warlords have awesome passive abilities). I’m also going to continue to have a player run him, but now there will be significantly less for that player to have to keep track of. I give you Sredni Vashtar, healbot:

I’ve tweaked a few of the Renown achievements, and lifted a lot of the per encounter/per session restrictions. None of the once-per-session achievements still carry that restriction, but some of the point values have been changed a little. As far as the ones that were once per encounter, I’ve lifted that restriction sort of. What I’ve done is I’ve created a score card for keeping track of your Renown Points.

For the stuff that is free of restrictions, basically the DM tells you that you earned that achievement, and you immediately add those Renown Points to your total. For the encounter-based ones, I included four spaces for check marks for each of those. Any time you hit that achievement, put a check mark in one of the spaces; when all your spaces for that achievement are full, you can’t earn any more check marks. At the end of the encounter, each check mark that you’ve earned turns into a Renown Point, and you erase all of those check marks so you can earn them again in the next encounter.

Because you can earn these achievements multiple times in an encounter, I’ve tweaked a couple of them. Now, instead of hitting for 15+ damage (which my strikers do pretty often), you have to hit for 20+ damage. It’ll happen a little less often, but it’ll still happen. Also, the achievement for taking 50 damage in one encounter seemed like too much book-keeping, like it would get forgotten a lot. Now, instead, you have to take damage equal to your bloodied value in a single round to earn a check.

You’ll also notice that the costs of the rewards have increased a little; specifically, each one is 5 points more expensive. This is to compensate for the fact that players will likely be earning more Renown Points than they would have before. Anyway, take a look at it, and feedback, as always, is welcome.

At any rate, this encounter is designed to be used when the PCs have camped for the night in a cave, taking shelter from a bad snowstorm. Orcs who are used to the weather and who know the area take advantage of the weather and the late hour to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting PCs.

Without further ado, I give you Orc Ambush.

Overall, it worked fairly well; the players used the terrain powers, and they used them to very good effect. There was one thing missing, though: my monsters never really used the terrain powers, because I forgot to. While the players had a handy visual reminder of what they could do with the terrain, I had neglected to give myself one; as the DM, I had a lot of powers to keep track of, and without something to remind me that they were there, I tended to focus on what my monsters could do by themselves. There is, I realized, a very simple solution to this problem: put the terrain powers right in the monster stat blocks.

Thanks to the Monster Builder, it’s easy enough to modify monster stat blocks and to copy terrain powers from one monster to another. Having terrain powers in the monster stat blocks acts as a handy reminder of what tactics are available to your monsters, as well as a good reference for how powerful those powers are in relation to their own. You can also use this technique to remind yourself of specific tactical tendencies of monsters. If you’re running a combat with a lot of different terrain powers, it’s easy enough to only put the powers in a given stat block that that monster is likely to use. Is there a mounted ballista that does less damage than your artillery monster’s own weapon? It doesn’t need that power. The skirmisher or brute might, though, until the PCs close the distance. Zombies aren’t likely to utilize the environment a lot, but orcs and goblins probably will, and you can bet your bottom dollar that kobolds will.

Here is a very simple example, an encounter from my last session that I modified after the fact. I encourage you to experiment with this technique, and I also encourage you to share your results and modifications here on this blog.

This has prompted me to share what I do for initiative tracking. I’ve actually gone through three different methods, and I’ll share them all here.

Method one was extremely old-school. I would print out this initiative tracker and hand-write characters and monsters in their initiative slots as initiative was rolled. It was time-consuming, especially when someone moved around in the initiative order via a delay or readied action. To save time, I’d often pre-roll monster initiative and write them in before the game, but that delay/ready problem was still a factor. It does allow you to track conditions and hit points, but things got overlooked a lot, and I ran into problems when two or three combatants had the same initiative count.

This prompted me to move to method 2. In method 2, I used a magnetic whiteboard and a number of magnetic index card-style tiles (all of them dry-erasable) to track initiative. Each PC, monster (or group of monsters), and trap/hazard would have its own card, and the cards would be arranged in initiative order as it was rolled. Hit points and conditions could be written directly on the cards, and they could be moved as initiative counts changed. There were a couple of problems with this method. First, because it was a dry-erasable product, text often got smudged and erased. Second, without an easel, there really was no easy way to prop it up so the whole group could see it, and it kept falling down. Third, I had to dragoon one of my players into being responsible for it, because it was too distracting for me while I was trying to run the combat. Below, you can see what it looked like in play.

So, because of the above issues, I only used this method for a few games before adopting a new one. I cannot, for the life of me, remember where I heard about this method, as it took a while for me to adopt it, so unfortunately I can’t give credit where it’s due. Suffice it to say, I like it quite a lot. It does take some prep before-hand, but now that the bulk of it is done, future games should be easier to prep for than the first time I used this method (I’ve only used it once, so far). So, what is it? First, I created this file, and another file like it with the monsters I was using. Then I printed everything out on card stock (a DM’s best friend, by the way), cut it all out, and folded everything along the center line. I used a bead box to organize my condition cards. During the game, as initiative is rolled, I drape these cards over my DM screen with the pictures facing the PCs and the info facing me. If someone changes their order in the initiative, I can just pick up a card and drop it in the right place. If someone applies a condition to someone else, I drape on of the condition cards over that combatant’s initiative card until the condition no longer applies. It works great, gives the players a nice visual representation of all of the combatants, and gives me a lot of useful information. It’s also easy to use in play, and doesn’t take up a lot of space or time at the table. Again, you can see it in action below.

So how do you track initiative?

The single greatest modification that I made to the published adventure was in the final battle of the adventure, against Kalarel. In the published adventure, Kalarel is accompanied by some skeletons and a wight, and there’s a trap in the form of the Thing in the Portal, which grabs and draws nearer adventurers who draw too near in the first place. When I first read the adventure, I thought it was a cool encounter, but that was before I had experienced more of the breadth of what 4th Edition had to offer. I do think that, for those who are still undecided about the new edition, taking D&D for a test drive with the adventure as written is perfectly viable, and probably lots of fun. But I wanted to do something different.

So, I completely rejiggered the final encounter. For starters, I created the corpse mound that I talked about before. Then I added a couple of hazards; one represented the darkness emanating from the portal, the other the subtle and seductive call of said darkness. Then I reduced Kalarel’s level a bit and modified some of his abilities so that the encounter’s level was a little more in-line with my party’s level.

It’s a level 7 encounter, all said, but with a lot of potential to be very, very difficult. There are some nasty threats in there, and all of them had at least a couple of levels on the party. So I staggered things a little bit. Initially, Kalarel is involved in completing the ritual, so the party only has to contend with the corpse mound. After a couple of rounds, Kalarel completes the ritual, joining the fray. The following round, the two hazards activate, and every round thereafter the darkness expands, filling more of the room.

Now, I had a way for the PCs to reverse the effects of the ritual built into the encounter, but I’m a firm believer that a big failure should not be a show-stopper, but should rather make things more interesting. Thus, I created a skill challenge that would trigger if the darkness expanded too much. This had the effect of also putting a time limit on the encounter, which prevented it from turning into too much of a slog.

At any rate, here is my writeup of the encounter. The experience per party member assumes a party of 5 characters, and there’s no treasure included in that writeup (I had that in a separate document for some reason). The encounter does use the standard battle map that the original encounter used; Kalarel starts in front of the altar, while the corpse mound appears as a mere pile of corpses in the pool of blood in the center of the room. The darkness, as you’d expect, emanates from the portal once Kalarel has completed the ritual. Enjoy.

All that aside, though, this is a great tool that is under active development, and the creator is receptive to feedback. I hope that the Adventure Tools that Wizards is making will be something like this, because I’m imagining something with the functionality of Masterplan, but tied to the Rules Compendium and to the Monster Builder, and it makes me very happy.

Other things. Dungeon Delve, it turns out, is a fantastic resource, not just for the obvious reason of having 30 pre-made delves at your fingertips. If you pay attention, you can glean a lot about what makes a good encounter, not just in terms of what monsters to use together, but also how to use traps and terrain to make things interesting. Even less obvious but, I think, more interesting, the book shows you how to use your Dungeon Tiles in creative ways, using features on specific tiles to represent interesting and important terrain.

Also, as you may have discerned from previous session reports, an NPC has joined the group: Splug the fey goblin. I’m using homebrewed follower rules to represent him in the battles (I’m aware that the Dungeon Master’s Guide II includes official rules for this, and I’m eager to see how close I am to the mark). For those who are interested, here is a PDF of Splug’s statistics as well as the rules for using followers.

You may have noticed that the stats for Splug were made using Wizards’ own beta version of the Monster Builder. I absolutely love this tool. For a beta, it’s extremely functional and remarkably free of show-stopping bugs (not to say that there aren’t any, just to say that I haven’t run into anything too inconvenient). There’s clearly some work left to be done on it, but there’s a lot of potential there. More than that, there’s a lot of functionality and ease of use already built into it, which is a great boon to me, and to other DMs that like to make stuff up for their campaigns. Now I just need something like this for traps.

Second, I recently downloaded the beta version of the D&D Character Builder. I have to say, it’s very impressive. The program makes it really easy to make D&D characters, and it’s fantastic how they’ve got content from Dragon and other published products, like the Adventurer’s Vault right in there for you to use, even if you don’t own the physical product. It’ll automatically generate a character sheet for your character, which you can customize to a pretty great degree, and it’ll generate power cards, magic item cards, and reference cards for you, too. It’s pretty sweet.

It isn’t perfect, though; there are a few things it could use. The ability to create your own items would be really nice, since most DMs are going to be giving their PCs various things that aren’t in any published product. I’m not even talking about new weapons or magic items here; the ability to give a PC an item like “an old, tattered journal” or “a necklace depicting a skull with ram’s horns” would be fantastic. Similarly, it would be nice if you could edit the text in the character sheet and power cards. Most of it is pretty good, and there’s a lot of auto-calculation (though there could be more), but I would like to be able to type in my own notes in various places. There are also some issues with the personalized information that it puts on your power cards. The ranger’s Twin Strike, for example, allows you to attack with both your primary weapon and your off-hand weapon, but the power card only includes an attack bonus and damage for your primary weapon. It would be nice if your off-hand weapon were included, or if you could type that in yourself. Since many of the ranger’s powers allow you to attack with two weapons, this seems like a glaring omission.

It is, however, still in beta, and there’s time for it to be tweaked still. As it stands, even with a few things missing, it is a fantastic product, and when the full version comes out, I’ll be really happy to be a D&D Insider subscriber.

• Wizards of the Coast actually puts out some quality products that I use, and I would be remiss if I didn’t at least give them a mention on this post. First is their line of Dungeon Tiles, which are excellent. They feature good artwork, clean, easy to see and use, 1-inch grids, they’re modular, and they’re somewhat dry-erasable. Also, they’re only $10 a pop, which is nice. One caveat: I say they’re somewhat dry-erasable because I’ve got a few tiles with what seem like permanent marks from dry-erase ink that sat on the tile too long. So be careful. That said, if you find yourself having to replace some tiles, they’re not that expensive. Also useful if you use Dungeon Tiles is Jai’s Dungeon Tile Mapper, a free program for creating DT-based maps on your computer. It’s basically the same program that Wizards hosts, except that it’s actually been updated since the third DT set came out; the only one currently missing is the newest one, Hall of the Giant Kings, which may be added soon.
• Also by Wizards is their line of D&D Miniatures, which I am a recent enthusiast and collector of. Booster packs are reasonably priced, and are even more so if you shop around a little bit, but are randomized. If you want specific, individual minis, Paizo.com is a good resource, as is ebay.
• But what if you don’t want to drop all that money on minis? What if you need a mini that doesn’t exist, is hard to get, or you can’t wait for it to ship because you’re playing tomorrow? Cardboard counters are a good way to go. I usually make my own, printed on card stock, which is pretty cheap at Staples and other office stores. As far as images for said counters, there are a number of good resources available. Wizards hosts a number of character portraits, as well as a multitude of images from their catalog of products that can be chopped up in your favorite image editing software. You could also check out these D&D counters. Finally, the art forum on EN World is a fantastic resource for all kinds of RPG-related artwork; of particular note is Storn’s thread, not only because his artwork is excellent but because it’s all released under a Creative Commons license. Beware, though; EN World can sometimes run a little slow due to their massive server load.
• Another thing that’s often required for D&D (especially under 4th Edition) is small counters and beads of various descriptions to keep track of conditions like marked, cursed, bloodied, and others. You could go to a gaming store, but you could also go someplace like AC Moore or Jo-Ann Fabrics. They have lots of beads, as well as bead boxes that can be used to store and organize your beads or other things. I use bead boxes to store my Dungeon Tiles, for example.
• Finally, I recently found a website that has all sorts of great stuff, including a nice landscape character sheet, some cards for tracking conditions, and some very nice power and magic item cards (I use the Magic Set Editor, but these are nice too).

I hope this has been helpful to people out there who want to DM, or already do DM. Maybe I saved you some time.

Also, while there are three pregens in the quick-start book, Wizards has released a sixth on D&D Insider. Nice.

[Edit: Five pregens. There are five pregens in the quick-start booklet.]

Zombies. Who the hell doesn’t love zombies? Besides the unfortunate people who can’t outrun them and get their brains eaten, I mean. Zombies are awesome. It is for this reason precisely that Left 4 Dead looks freaking awesome. For those who know nothing about it and can’t be bothered to click on the Wikipedia link provided, let me sum it up for you. You and a band of three other survivors are miraculously immune to a new and extremely virulent form of rabies that has turned 99% of the world’s population into ravening, bloodthirsty (brainthirsty?) zombies. These zombies are fast, they’re smart enough to dodge attacks, and they’re accompanied by a number of mutated super-zombies with special powers like the ability to scale walls and jump really high, 50-foot tongues, super strength and endurance, or a belly full of gas that allows projectile vomit and the ability to explode like a grenade when shot. Not interested yet? What if the other three survivors were played by other human beings via the Internet? No? Well, that’s not all. You can also play against human-controlled boss zombies for extra challenge. Still not enough? All of the zombies are spawned procedurally, in response to the perceived stress levels of you and your compatriots, to make sure you get the optimal experience each time and to ensure that it’s never the same experience twice. Trust me, it’s made of awesome.

And speaking of zombies, I just saw 28 Days Later (yeah, I know, that’s been out for a while), and absolutely loved it. Great zombie flick, even if the infected are never actually referred to as ‘zombies’ within the film.

Oh, and games. I’ve recently downloaded GameTap, and even if you don’t want to pay for the service I suggest that you go out and download the free version and give it a whirl. Even for free, GameTap provides you with access to some pretty good games, such as Tomb Raider: Legend, Psychonauts, and the first two Hitman games. I’m currently playing through Legend and loving it, and I plan on diving into Psychonauts next. The sheer brilliance of GameTap, though, is that even though I get access to these great games completely free, I still want to sign up for a gold account and get access to even more games. And heck, a gold account is only about $60, slightly more than the cost of a brand new PC game, for an entire year’s subscription.

And finally, 4E. Ah, 4E. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this, but I ordered the Core Rulebook Gift Set for myself a while ago, so it should arrive shortly after launch. I also recently pre-orderd Keep on the Shadowfell, and Amazon just sent me an email today letting me know that it had been shipped, and that I should expect it sometime around Saturday. Once I’ve digested that material, you can expect a review of it on this site (probably sometime in the next two weeks or so). Similarly, I’ll likely be reviewing the Core Books as I read them. I must admit that my excitement has been amped up to a fever pitch lately as the release date draws closer, in a large part because Wizards is releasing excerpts from the core books every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on D&D Insider (which is, for the moment, free). Everything I hear about the game makes me excited. I’m serious. I haven’t heard a single thing about the game that has made me want it less. Admittedly, some of this may be the novelty factor, and only time will tell if that is the case. But all signs indicate that 4E is going to be a very, very good game.

And speaking of 4E, I designed a 4E D&D Character Sheet in .doc format. Cute PDF does strange things with the table headers, so if someone else would like to convert it to PDF using something a little more robust, I’d gladly host it here. I’ve also been messing around with the character creation rules (those that I know at this time, at least), and I’ve created a couple of 1st-level characters: a human rogue with some warlock multiclassing, and a dwarf warlord. Both of these use the format for my character sheet. I should warn you that I’m not completely sure that all the math for attack bonuses and defenses is entirely kosher, since I don’t have access to the full rules. In particular, I think it’s a little weird that the rogue’s Reflex is higher than his AC. If someone wants to give them the old hairy eyeball and correct them for me, feel free and I’ll update the links.

Later.

About a week ago I downloaded the demo, just out of idle curiosity. And didn’t install it. Forgot about it, in fact. Then, two days ago, I was listening to the PC Gamer Podcast (which I highly recommend for any fans of PC gaming and/or game-related humor), and was privy to a lively debate about said game. It was fun to listen to, mainly because of the dialog rather than the content. The discussion boiled down to this: Norm, Logan, Dan, and Chuck all liked Crysis, and were hailing it as the Second Coming of PC Gaming (though not in those exact words). Jeremy and Garry, on the other hand, had each played the demo and had not been impressed. Their arguments were primarily that the “future-proofing” of the game was a gimmick, a sort of bait-and-switch tactic, that it was sluggish and unresponsive, that the system requirements were too high, that it was, effectively, Far Cry 2. Such comments did not make me any more likely to play the game, or the demo I had downloaded, and the arguments to the contrary sounded too much like simple evangelism to sway me in any other direction.

Still, the discussion had planted a seed. Something was percolating in my mind, growing legs and running about, messing with the silverware and knocking the pictures askew. Because of all these and other mediocre metaphors, I decided, when I got home, to install the demo and try it out, for no other reason than to see what all the fuss was about. I installed the demo, and it took a very long time. So far I was unimpressed. It finally finished and I loaded up the game, and was immediately assaulted by no fewer than four (!) advertisements for various sponsors. An unfortunate necessity, I know, but it rubbed me the wrong way none the less. I went in and fiddled with the options, clicked the button that would detect the optimal settings for my machine, and was told that everything had been set to ‘Low’. Not surprising, but still disappointing. Then I started playing.

And everything changed. The opening sequence was eye-catching and memorable, as my avatar and four other soldiers in nano-suits parachuted out of an airplane onto a tropical island in the dead of night. The graphics, despite being on the absolute lowest setting possible, were sharp and crisp and not at all disappointing. I had reared myself on sneakers like Thief and its ilk, so the slightly lower movement speed felt not at all uncomfortable, and encouraged the stealthy play that I prefer (a play style that, I’m glad to say, Crysis fully supports). I met my first pair of enemies, quickly dispatched them, and became engrossed in the game.

The environment is wide-open and allows for multiple solutions to problems. The enemies, while not always brilliant, try to do things like outflank you, flush you out with grenades, and take cover. The weapons are satisfying and effective. And the nano-suit, the game’s central mechanic, is well-realized and integral to play. While I rarely used the Maximum Speed or Maximum Strength settings, I could not possibly have traversed the demo without Maximum Armor and Stealth Mode, upon which I relied heavily. The suit, and the tactical options that it grants you, allow you to take on forces which are both numerically superior and better-armed than you, provided you think your way through the battle rather than charging in, guns blazing.

When I finished the demo, I had come to the conclusion that this is exactly the kind of game I enjoy playing. It has the right combination of verisimilitude and science fiction weirdness, the right amount of brains-over-brawn philosophy, the right degree of player freedom. I immediately went online afterward and added it to my Amazon wishlist. For those who are still on the fence (or otherwise), I suggest you download the demo and let it make up your mind for you. If you are like me, you will likely enjoy it and want more. If you don’t like the demo, chances are the game holds nothing that will change your mind.

Update: Thinking to tide myself over until I get Crysis, I went ahead and gave Far Cry another try. It’s like night and day. Where Crysis rewards tactical thinking and a stealthy approach, Far Cry seems to both require and punish such things. You cannot stand toe-to-toe with a large group of enemies, and most groups are large. Thus, you have to try to sneak up on them and take them out one by one, much as in Crysis. However, Far Cry (at least, up until the point where I got frustrated and gave up) gives you no tools for doing such. It’s very, very difficult to take out a single enemy without alerting the rest of them if you don’t have a silencer, and the lack of any reliable way to hide yourself exacerbates this. Combine this with the fact that the enemies are hyper-aware, capable of hearing a man walking slowly and quietly on grass, thirty feet below, and above the ambient jungle noises, and it makes a stealth-based approach stupidly difficult to affect. Oh, and the enemies are apparently psychically connected; once you alert one, they all know where you are. Finally, the checkpoint save system is a bad fit for this style of game. Twice I whittled down an enemy base to one or two mercenaries, only to be killed by those last one or two. The fact that I don’t get to choose when I save my game means that, when that happens, I have to start back at square one. Not fun. I have no idea why Far Cry was ever as popular as it was; it’s simply not a well-designed game.

Update, Part 2: I have now finished the full game of Crysis. While its system requirements were such that my computer often begged to run something else, it was fantastic from start to finish. I’ve rarely played a game that felt completely different at the end than it felt at the beginning, managing to stay fresh and provide new obstacles constantly. It kept me interested and engaged every second, and there’s very little about it that I wouldn’t recommend. Whenever I manage to score a new rig, I’m going to install it and play it with the settings cranked up higher. I hear it’s almost like a brand new experience, and the gameplay is such that replayability is high.

D&D Rules Modifications

1. I’ve been fiddling around with making characters in Star Wars Saga Edition, and it’s very easy, quick, and satisfying. Things like picking skills and such take a lot less time than they used to (or do in other d20 games), and the talent-and-feat-based class system allows for a lot of customization. So far I’ve created a dark side Jedi, a failed Jedi-turned-bounty hunter, and a combat droid with two extra arms that serve as blaster mounts. It was all pretty darned easy. The only complaint that I have is that the official character sheet doesn’t have space for enough information. As such, I created my own (available in PDF and MS Word formats). It’s pretty plain-looking, but it’s more functional than the official sheet. If anyone would care to fancy it up some with graphics and such, I’d gladly host it on my site.

2. I just got my review copy of HeroCard: Orc Wars in the mail today. I’ve played it once already (the introductory scenario, “The Prisoners”), and it was fun, though I don’t think the introductory scenario is a good indicator of what the game’s going to be like, as it removes a number of the more interesting rules and systems. I plan on playing it some more over the next few days, and I’ll have a review up soon. I do not have the Ranger or Sorceress expansion decks, so I’ll be reviewing it strictly as a two-player game. If TableStar decides to send me the expansion decks sometime in the future, I’ll post a second review, treating it as a multiplayer game.

3. I’m moving soon. We got an offer on our house, and we hope to make an offer on a house soon. So we’ll probably be moving soon. Exciting, but nerve-wracking, too.

There was a lot (and I do mean a lot) of talking and investigating, and only one big fight at the end. There were a few minor social conflicts throughout, but overall I think I could have made the game more challenging, rules-wise; most of the NPCs were pushovers (though the PCs never actually won one of the social conflicts; it ended in a stalemate, but they found information through . . . alternative means). The final, climactic battle went pretty well, I think. There was some physical combat and one big push of mental combat toward the end that did some serious damage to the PCs. They wound up winning, but I think they doubted that they would for a second there.

Things I took away from the game were that the rules on pushing needed to be revised, clarified, and made more useful (which I did in Beta 3, yesterday). I also looked at kismet damage and how it works, and revised it to make it a little more deadly. I also noticed that the PCs tended to roll huge handfuls of dice when they were playing to their strengths. As in, 20 or more. A few too many, in my opinion. So, I’ve done two things in Beta 4 to combat this issue. First, I’ve made a few changes to the way assets work that, I think, will make them easier to use, will reduce the number of dice rolled somewhat, and will make conflicts a little more challenging for the PCs (all goals I had in mind when I made the change). I also added a rule whereby you can trade in three dice for an automatic mark.

At any rate, here’s Beta 4. Hope you like it. Really, these changes should have been in Beta 3, yesterday, but I didn’t think of them then. It was 1am, after all.

Saga, Version Beta 4

At any rate, here’s the new revision:

Saga, Version Beta 3

Wow. That was misleading. What I mean to say is, the project is still happening, but the name is changing. Gamecraft 2.0 has always been a working title for me, and I’ve been wanting to change it for a while; it’s too wordy, and the system has never really been that similar to the original Gamecraft System. More a spiritual successor than an actual successor. Thus, I’ve changed the name to Saga.

Oh, and one more thing: it’s done. Sort of. The system is mechanically complete, but still under development. To put it in computer terminology, it’s entered beta phase, and is ready for open testing. As such, I’m releasing it on this website, in this very post. Feel free to download it, peruse it, play with it, and give me feedback on it (please). Also note that it’s being released under a different Creative Commons license from everything else on this site; effectively, you can use it, modify it, and create and sell a commercial product with it, as long as you give me credit for its original inception (the full license is in the document, itself). Anyway, here you go:

The Saga Rules System (Version Beta 2)

The Saga Character Sheet

[Edit 5/18/07: Saga has been updated; specifically, the rules on using skills and tokens outside of conflicts have changed.]
[Edit 6/10/07: Another Saga update. Mainly rules clarifications, but the rules for pushing have been improved, too.]
[Edit 2/6/09: The file that you used to be able to download from Lulu was corrupted somehow, and I'm unable to replace it. I'm now hosting the file directly on this website.]