When it has no mechanical weight.

Alignment can be a touchy issue for gamers. Some people insist that it’s a great way to inform roleplaying, a starting point for your character. Others think it’s an unrealistic straight jacket, that nobody’s always good all of the time or wholly and irredeemably evil. It could be either of these things but most of the time it seems like an afterthought, a vestigial rule that lacks meaning for modern gamers.

Why does it lack meaning? Are the concepts of good and evil no longer relevant in a society of moral grays? Is it unrealistic to think that a character can be a shining beacon of his or her beliefs, an example to others? I kind of doubt that this is the case; I think these ideas are just as relevant now as they always were, and may actually be appealing to many because of their simplicity, their black and white nature. The problem, I think, is with implementation.

Let’s look at the current incarnation of D&D as an example. Alignment exists but it has very little effect on the game. Yes, your cleric has to be of an alignment compatible with his or her god, but what does being Good or Lawful Good or whatever actually mean? It can inform roleplay in the right hands but there’s no incentive to let it do so. I think a lot of people probably forget that it’s even on their character sheet; I certainly had to remind the paladin in my group that he’d find torture repugnant on more than one occasion.

Past editions gave it some weight: your alignment could be detected, certain weapons would respond well (or not so well) to certain alignments, and violating your alignment came with some sort of penalty. But even this isn’t a great way to incentivize alignment. It’s like working at a job you don’t care about: the threat of being fired will keep you working just well enough to not get fired, but you’re unlikely to do anything beyond that.

The solution (my solution at least) is incentive. Reward. I talk about incentives an awful lot for a reason: mechanical incentives are how you encourage the behavior you want in your games. If you want the Lawful Good paladin to uphold the law and oppose evil, you need to provide an incentive to do so that’s more attractive than the alternative. This could be as simple as providing bonuses to skill checks, attack rolls, damage, and so forth whenever the spirit of the alignment is being actively pursued. It could involve bonus XP. It could involve earning some sort of points or tokens that can be cashed in for benefits later. The exact incentive doesn’t really matter.

The important thing is that, if alignment is an important part of your game and the characters within your game, there needs to be a reason to pay attention to it. Punishment will help but will only get you so far; players will work a lot harder for rewards, things that make them better.

Alignment without mechanical weight, without incentive, fails to fulfil its purpose in the game. It might as well not even be there.

What’s this? It’s another preview for Becoming!. Following the philosophy of “show, don’t tell”, I’m going to give you a sample turn of the game, along with a little bit of setup. I won’t delve too much into specific mechanics, but it should give you an idea of how the game plays.

Setup: Our Hero is a peasant named Carter whose home has been destroyed by a dragon. He used the Words of Virtue provided with the Quest to come up with a backstory for himself and his village, as well as three Virtues, to which he assigned some dice.

This turn is a few rounds in, in the second Act of the game. He’s lost some things and had to sacrifice some things to come this far, and the Chorus is starting to really put the screws to him. In addition to Carter (the Hero), there are three players in the Chorus: Fear, Pain, and Doubt. Pain is the current Choregus.

The Turn

Pain looks at the current Scene (entitled “Trouble”) and its associated Theme Words. She takes a few moments to gather her thoughts, then frames the scene.

Pain: You sit upon your horse, slowly following the path through the woods. An ominious presence bears down on you but you pay it no mind. When you look up, though, you find that you are surrounded by men wearing wolf skins, wielding naked swords in their hands.

A large fellow steps forward and speaks. “With a horse like that, you likely have other things we might want. Hand it all over and we won’t take your life, too.”

To illustrate the point one of the men behind you steps forward and swings his cudgel, knocking you from your horse. The challenge is simple: fight through the pain and drive these men off so that you can continue your quest. This challenge has a difficulty of . . . oh, let’s say twelve.

Pain slides some tokens into the middle of the table.

Carter: Yikes. Okay, let’s do this. I struggle to my feet and stare the leader in the eyes. I know that my family is depending on me to slay this dragon, an I can’t do that if these bandits kill me or take my weapons away. I’m going to use My Family Needs Me to grit through the pain and stand up to them. That gives me three dice.

Pain: Okay. There’s the very real threat of death here, though. I’m going to invoke one of your Flaws here: Fear of Widowing Your Wife. That gives me . . . let’s see, six more tokens. Difficulty’s up to eighteen now.

Carter: Uh oh. I could use some help here.

Doubt: You’re not sure you can do this. It might be easier to just let them have your things and go back home. You can always say you tried.

Doubt slides forward two more tokens.

Doubt: You might be able to fight past this, though. I might be willing to take these tokens back and give you a die for this challenge, but it’ll cost you something. To fight past your doubt you’re going to have to fight dirty. That’ll cost you a die from your Honor.

Fear: Not so fast. You’re pretty scared here. There are, like, seven of these guys and only one of you. Like Doubt said, you’ll have to fight dirty, but fear can give you power. You feel all that adrenaline coursing through you? That’s fear. If you give me that Honor die instead of Doubt, I’ll give you three dice for this challenge. How’s that sound?

Carter thinks for a few moments, then replies.

Carter: I’m going with Fear on this one. The difficulty will go up to twenty, but I’ll have six dice on my side. I like my chances.

Carter slides a die from Honor over to Fear, and Fear gives him three of her own dice. Doubt slides two of his tokens into the center of the table. Carter picks up his six dice and rolls them, coming up with 18. Not quite good enough.

No! Oh, man. That didn’t go well for me.

Carter takes two of his dice and gives them to Pain for winning the challenge. Then Pain and Doubt, who both had tokens in the challenge, get to put some of them on Carter’s Flaws. Fear gets her dice back.

Pain: You swing your sword wildly, killing two of the men and driving the rest off. However, one of them managed to give you a nasty cut across the ribs, and you injured your leg falling off your horse. I’m going to give you a new Flaw: Badly Injured.

Things didn’t go well for the Hero in this turn, but he’s got more chances to make that up. Doubt will be the next Choregus, and a new Scene begins.

Below is a rough draft of some of the introductory material for Becoming. I got inspired and wrote this tonight, and I thought I’d share.

What Is This Thing?
Becoming starts with a question: what does it mean to be a hero? A hero is someone who saves lives, protects others, and fights those who would do them harm. A hero stands up for what she believes in, suffers through great hardship, and wins the day no matter the cost. But what is the cost?

Being a hero is not easy. It requires pain and sacrifice; it comes at a steep cost. The hero often has to give up the things she holds most dear, the very things she is fighting to protect. When the hero comes back from her quest, she comes back changed. She has faced hardship and torment that her friends and family cannot imagine, and she is no longer the same person she once was. She is more, but also less. She is an outcast, and she cannot truly go home again.

That’s what Becoming is: it’s the story of the hero facing adversity and overcoming it at a steep cost. Sometimes it’s a story of triumph over impossible odds. Sometimes it’s the story of a fall from grace. It can be an exciting adventure or a heartbreaking tragedy; often it’s a little of both.

But Becoming is also a game. It’s a framework of rules that helps you tell these stories, your stories. It’s meant to be exciting and tragic, but it’s also meant to be fun. You may see the hero lose everything she has, but you’ll have a good time doing it.

It’s a special kind of game: a story game. During play you’ll each contribute to a shared narrative, building the characters and the world in turns, showing each other your own vision of the story and meeting in the middle to create something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Be not afraid, hero.

What Do I Need?
To play a game of Becoming, you’ll need a few things. First, you’ll need this book. This book contains all of the rules you need to play the game, as well as the Quests that you’ll use to help you tell the story.

You’ll need several six-sided dice in four different colors. You’ll need nine of one color (for the Hero) and five of each of three other, different colors (for the Chorus).

You’ll need tokens for the Chorus in three different colors. Each member of the Chorus needs twenty tokens in a single color. Poker chips work well for this purpose, as do glass beads. In a pinch, you could even use three different denominations of pocket change.

You’ll need some index cards, probably about ten or fifteen of them. If you don’t have any, you can use scraps of paper. You have paper, right?

You’ll need friends, three of them to be precise. Becoming is a game for four players exactly. If you don’t have friends you might find some at your local gaming store, supermarket, or homeless shelter.

Finally, you’ll need some pencils or other writing implements.

What Do All These Crazy Words Mean?
Becoming uses some mechanics that you may find unfamiliar, and certainly some of the terminology is unusual. Luckily, I’ve decided to provide a list of terms and their in-game definitions. Some of the words are weird, but it’s really not a hard game to learn to play.

The Hero: the protagonist of the story. The Hero is the one who goes on a journey, defeats evil, protects his loved ones, and saves the day. He’s also the one who has to sacrifice everything important to him in order to succeed.

Words of Virtue: a list of nine words, specific to the Quest being played, that provide inspiration for coming up with the Hero’s Virtues.

Virtues: a Hero starts with three Virtues. These are things that are important to the Hero, things he draws strength from. They are used to overcome challenges, but they can also be sacrificed or lost.

Flaws: when the Hero loses challenges, Flaws are introduced. Flaws represent the Hero’s weaknesses, his vices, or direct manifestations of Fear, Pain, or Doubt.

Quest: a collection of scenes to be played out in order, creating a cohesive story in which the Hero is the main character.

The Chorus: these three players provide opposition and temptation for the Hero. They frame scenes, present challenges, and offer bargains. There are three members of the Chorus: Fear, Pain, and Doubt.

The Choregus: first among equals, the Choregus is the active member of the Chorus. It is her job to frame the current scene, present the challenge, and decide upon its difficulty. The Choregus is a rotating position; each member of the Chorus will get a chance to play this role. Three, in fact.

The Stasimonos: the members who are not the current Choregus are known as the Stasimonos. While they do not provide direct opposition to the Hero, it is their job to tempt the Hero by offering bargains, aid for a cost. They can also threaten the Hero.

Act: the game is played in three acts, each containing three scenes. Things are relatively easy on the Hero in the first act, but the stakes get higher with each subsequent act.

Scene: there are nine scenes in the game. During a scene, the Choregus uses theme words to help frame the scene, setting it up and describing the situation. Each scene also has a challenge, presented by the Choregus.

Challenge: a conflict of some sort where the outcome is in doubt. The conflict grows out of the framed scene and is informed by it. It need not be a physical conflict; Fear and Doubt are motivators just as powerful as Pain.

Theme Words: a collection of nine words specific to a scene, used as inspiration for the Choregus while framing the current scene.

Challenge Tokens: chips or other small markers that the Choregus uses to indicate how difficult a challenge is to overcome. They can be wagered, lost, and bartered throughout the course of the game.

Bargain: the heart of the challenge mechanic, the Stasimonos offer the Hero aid in exchange for things the Hero holds dear. Nothing is free in Becoming, and all bargains are binding.

Today Monte Cook posted a short article entitled Mechanics Supporting Story. I clicked on the link immediately. One of the things I love about most indie games is that their mechanics are informed by the story and built around it, and they not only support the story but are often inseparable from it. I was excited to hear what Monte would say about this idea and how it applied to D&D. I thought, “Man, wouldn’t it be great if D&D actually did mechanically support story telling, rather than having it just be the thing that you’re doing when you’re not rolling dice?”

I was disappointed. If you haven’t read the article, go do so. It won’t take long; it’s only a couple of paragraphs long.

Why was I disappointed? Because Monte wasn’t talking about mechanics that support story; he was talking about racial bonuses. He was talking about dwarves that get a +2 to damage with axes, or gnomes that get a +1 to hit against kobolds, or bards that . . . get a +1 to being dapper in fancy clothes. Or something. Yes, these things do offer some mechanical support to concepts found within the established fiction of D&D. But do they support story? Not really.

Let’s take the example of dwarves getting a +2 to damage with axes. This is supporting the concept of “dwarves use axes”, which is a concept that I know is near and dear to all of our grognardian little hearts. Great, so my dwarf uses an axe and gets the bonus. Where’s the story? The story — the only story so far — is that I have a dwarf who uses axes like 99% of the other dwarves in his hold. Not very interesting, is it? I’d argue that this kind of mechanic actually runs counter to supporting story; it discourages making characters with interesting and unique concepts, like dwarven wizards or rogues, because if you take one of those classes you’re not getting the full benefit of your race. It may not be punishment per se, but it skirts awfully close to that territory. Beyond that, though, the fact that my character uses an axe or a sword or a ship’s anchor is an expression of who my character is, but it doesn’t tell me anything about his motivations or his story arc. It does virtually nothing to mechanically support any story I have in mind, unless that story is, “I like to hit things with an axe.”

Now let’s look at that second one: gnomes and their bonus against kobolds. That one’s a little better because at least it implies some sort of emotion. Gnomes hate kobolds. Great. Do all gnomes hate kobolds? Even the ones who have never met a kobold? Even the ones raised by kobolds? Again, we’re discouraging alternate character concepts by rewarding the stereotype, to say nothing of the fact that we’re basically mechanizing racism.

My point is this: if you want to support story, support story. Don’t hand out some stereotypical racial bonuses and call it a day; that’s a half-measure at best. Give the players tools with which to express their characters, with which to tell their stories. Give them ways to take hold of the narrative and steer it in directions they think are interesting and fun. Let’s not forget that the DM is not the only storyteller at the table.

At Metatopia I heard a quote that I can’t get out of my head. I’m unsure who to attribute the quote to (it could be Ken Hite, Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue, Brennan Taylor, Joshua A.C. Newman, or any number of smart people; I just don’t remember), but the quote itself strikes me as a set of words for a game designer to live by.

“If you want your game to be about something, you need mechanics supporting that thing.”

The corrolary of this is: If you do not mechanically support a thing, your game is not about that thing. You can say it is and you can support it with your fiction, but the grim truth is that, if you do not incent players to do the things you want them to do in your game, they may never do those things.

When it came time to design mechanics for Becoming, this quote was rattling around in my head the whole time. I knew what I wanted my game to be about. I wanted Becoming to be about what it costs to be a hero, not just in terms of the adversity that the hero must overcome but what he or she must give up to overcome it. The game is, at its core, about heroic sacrifice. At least, that’s what I wanted it to be about; I needed to make sure the mechanics said that too.

Becoming has a dice-based resolution mechanic where the Hero rolls dice to try to overcome a static difficulty set by a member of the Chorus (roughly analagous to a GM, at least a little bit). More dice equals higher chance of victory, and failure means that the Hero must pay a cost of some sort. I knew this much, but it wasn’t enough. The mechanic was sound, but it didn’t encourage sacrifice; it was a simple pass-fail mechanic that required sacrifice as a result of failure, but it wasn’t enough. In order for the Hero’s sacrifice to be meaningful in this game, it had to be a choice.

That’s where the bargaining mechanic came from. The Chorus is made up of three players, and there’s a very good reason for that. While only one player at a time may place a challenge in front of the Hero, the other members are not without purpose during that scene. In most cases the Hero will be outgunned, or at least daunted, by the difficulty of the challenge in front of him or her. Success is going to be a slim possibility.

That’s where the rest of the Chorus come in. The Hero can bargain with the other two members of the Chorus, giving up pieces of him/herself in order to gain aid from them. This aid comes in the form of additional dice for the most part, but it costs the Hero some of his/her own dice that are not currently being used (the Hero can’t bring all of his/her dice to bear on a single challenge). In most cases the Hero has the ability to pull off a victory, but it will come at a cost. The interesting bits come when the Hero has to weigh the cost of victory against the cost of failure, and decide which is the lesser evil.

A month or so ago I got the seed of an idea. That seed sat in my head, refusing to let me think about other things until I watered it, nurtured it, and let it start growing. I did so, and it’s growing into a game called Becoming.

Rather than simply explaining what Becoming is, I’ll let my pitch do the talking.

Becoming is a game about what you must sacrifice to be a hero. Taking on the mantle of the hero makes you an outcast. In order to save the things you love, you must lose them. When you complete your quest will you still be a hero? Or have you become something else?

Simply put, Becoming is a game about going on a heroic journey, but there’s a twist: the outcome of the journey is not in doubt. You will succeed in your quest. You will slay the dragon or find a new homeworld for Earth. What is in doubt is the price of your heroism: what will you have to give up? Will you still be the same person at the end of the quest? Will you be able to go home again?

The core of the game is all about making choices, about choosing what to give up and what to hold on to. There is dice rolling. There are conflict resolution mechaincs. But tied intrinsicly to these things is a system of bargaining and of sacrifice.

The game is still in its early stages. I don’t have a fully playtestable prototype yet, but I will. I’ve made it my goal to get this thing written and published this year. My intent is to document the design process to some extent. Because I’m very excited about it, you’ll likely hear more about it in the future.

A little while back, during the Meetup of Doom, my friend Nick and I were talking about D&D and the kinds of things you can do to it to make it run more smoothly at the table, and to make it more improv-friendly. It got me to thinking about various ways that I’d like to hack the game before running it again. I figured I’d share them here, if for no other reason than to get some feedback on them.

Hacking Monsters
I like the way monsters work in 4e quite a bit. However, making encounters can be a real bear sometimes, and you have to spend a lot of time doing it if you want to fill a session. The problem with all this front-loaded prep work is that you wind up creating a fairly linear path for the PCs to move down.

I’d like to go for more of a sandbox-style game, running pretty much everything off of the Page 42 Table (or whatever the more modern version of that is). To that end, I’d probably wind up creating a few sets of generic monster stats and just making up monsters on the fly, adding abilities to them as I feel appropriate.

In addition, rather than tracking individual hit points, I’d like to use a series of check boxes. That is, a monster can take X hits before it dies, where X is probably around four or 5 for a standard monster, 6 for a brute, 8 for an elite, and 10 for a solo. Each time a player hits a monster, check off a box. If the player does a large amount of damage (as strikers are capable of doing), check off two or even three boxes. Easy book-keeping, and I’d probably feel better about just declaring a monster dead if a PC did something really cool to finish it off.

Hacking Powers and the Action Point Economy
I like powers. I like that they give everyone cool stuff to do. I also like action points, but I feel like they don’t do enough. There’s the start of an economy there with action points, but I feel like it could be pushed further. So, here are some ways I’d like to change action points, and how they interact with powers.

• At the beginning of the day, players start with action points equal to their level, or possibly half their level (not sure yet).
• They get the same number at each milestone.
• The various pillars of character creation–race, class, theme, and background–are treated sort of like Fate aspects. They can be invoked for a benefit by spending an action point, and they can be compelled in order to give players action points.
• Action points are used to power Encounter and Daily powers. These powers can’t be used on their own. Instead you spend X action points to use one of them, where X is probably somewhere around 4 for an Encounter power and 8 for a Daily. Powers of a level lower than your character level get a discount, allowing you to use them more often. As long as you can pay the price, you can use these powers.
• Doing awesome things allows your friends to award you action points!
• I’d also like to reduce the number of powers that PCs actually get. Instead of getting tons and tons of Encounters and Dailies, I’d like to have Encounters eventually replace At-Wills, and Dailies eventually replace Encounters. Because powers can be used multiple times, I’d probably try to stick to having two of each type of power: two At-Wills, two Encoutners, and two Dailies–at the most. This might have to be altered a bit for some of the Essentials classes that don’t use the standard power structure.
• Finally, and this isn’t necessarily related to the above stuff, I’d probably want to cap the game at level 10, but start telling epic-style stories around level 8 and paragon-style stories around level 5.

Hacking Conditions
Conditions eat up a lot of time and brain-space at the table. However, I like them and think they’re necessary to the game. Rather than getting rid of them, I’d like to just get rid of the explicit mechanical effects of conditions. Instead I’d run them sort of like aspects or consequences in Fate. So, if you’re Blinded, that doesn’t impose any kind of explicit penalty. However, any time you do something that being Blinded would affect, the DM can compel the condition to complicate your life. This winds up being an additional source of action points, and also allows for situations where players can use their conditions creatively to actually invoke them for a benefit.

Hacking Magic Items
This might be controversial: I want to get rid of magic items. Well, not entirely. I want to get rid of all of the pre-created magic items in the various books and replace the mathematical necessity of them with inherent bonuses. Magic items, themselves, would be pretty rare and, again, would be a bit more Fate-like. For example, you might find a sword that has magical properties like Flaming, Bloodthirsty, and Protective of its Wielder. These can then be invoked or compelled with action points.

Going along with this, I’d probably do away with the gold piece economy altogether and instead add a more abstract wealth system, similar to what’s found in Fate, World of Darkness, or d20 Modern.

So, that’s what I’d do. Thoughts?

We had that meetup today, and it was a rousing success. We had a mixed group of game designers, podcasters, artists, and editors, and it was really interesting to get together and talk about the process of game design from all of these varying perspectives. There was a lot of general chatter at first, with topics ranging from what’s wrong with the current state of D&D, to how Paizo took everyone by surprise with Pathfinder, to how various board, card, and roleplaying games achieve their goals with varying levels of success.

We also discussed what we want out of this thing in the future. There was a general consensus that it should stay relatively casual; we want to hang out, talk, play games, eat snacks, and drink beer (well, Jenn and I drank beer; everyone else abstained). However, we also want this to be a resource for Philly area game designers, and we want to achieve that in a couple of different ways.

First, this is a good networking tool. It allows people connected to the industry in various ways to meet up with people connected in other ways, ways which may be valuable. Hopefully it’ll grow as it goes on, which will make this element of the meetup even more valuable.

Second, this is a great opportunity for game designers to playtest their games and get feedback from other people who are looking at the game with an eye toward analyzing it from a mechanical and thematic perspective. Jenn ran her game, Project Ninja Panda Taco, and not only was it great fun (seriously, back this game when it goes to Kickstarter), I think she got a lot of valuable feedback from the group there. She was presented with a group of people who were really enthusiastic about her game, and who wanted to make it as awesome as it can be, many of whom had experience designing games, themselves. Valuable stuff.

Third, something we want to do is play actual complete games–games that are currently for sale on the market–with an eye toward analysis. So maybe one day we sit down and play Settlers of Catan, or Nightfall, or Fiasco, and we talk about what works and doesn’t work, and what can be applied to other games.

All in all, very successful, and a lot of fun. There is an extremely high degree of likelihood that there will be another one in January, and a similarly high likelihood that there will be further meetups in the future. This is something we want to keep doing, and something we want to grow. As such, I hope you’ll join us in the future.

Wow, it’s been . . . a month or so since my last post? That’s not so good. I’m going to make an effort to start up again. The thing is, I have freelance writing and such that I’m working on, for pay and publication, and every time I sit down to blog, I think to myself, “I could be designing right now.” My own personal hangup, and probably not the best mindset, but there you go; I’ll try to get past it.

At any rate, I thought I’d go ahead and post my schedule for Metatopia, which I will be attending on the 4th, 5th, and 6th of November. For those who are unaware of what Metatopia is: it is a gaming convention with a primary focus on helping independent designers test their games and learn their craft. You can go if you just want to play games; that’s allowed, and helps those designers get their things tested. However, you can also sign up as a designer (which is a little more expensive), and schedule events for people to participate in. Pretty cool, right? I signed up as a player because none of the stuff I’m working on is really ready for prime time yet, but I’m going to be attending a lot of seminars to help me get better at what I do. Here’s the rundown:

Friday
Fortune Cookie Kung Fu – 8pm – 12am

Saturday
Self-Publishing – 10am – 11am
Wanderlust Focus Group – 12pm – 1pm
Game Design Roundtable – 3pm – 5pm
Independent Gaming Roundtable – 5pm – 7pm
Champion of the Realm – 8pm – 12am

Sunday
Game Mechanics: What Works, What Doesn’t? – 1pm-2pm

Note that, while I only have a single event scheduled for Friday and Sunday, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those will be the only times I’m there. Work is going to make it difficult to spend a lot of time at the convention on Friday, but I might use Sunday to meet up with other people at the convention. If you’re attending, feel free to send me a message on Twitter (@Zelgadas), or shoot me an email (engard at gmail dot com) if you want to meet up. If you’re not attending but want to, well you’ve basically got the rest of tonight and tomorrow (Halloween) to sign up. Best of luck.

Hope to see you there!

Recently it was announced that Monte Cook was returning to work on D&D, an announcement that got the Internet in a tizzy. Speculation abounds, with many people asking the question: does this mean that 5th Edition is on its way? Certainly there have been hints of this, in Mike Mearls’ Legends and Lore articles. I’ve made it no secret that I’m a little burnt out on the current edition of D&D. I still like it, I still think it’s great; I play Encounters at my FLGS whenever I can. However, I’m finding more of what I enjoy playing in various indie RPGs, so that’s where my interests currently lie.

However, I’d be interested in seeing what Mearls and Cook do in a 5th edition of the game. I might not adopt it as readily as I did 4th Edition; I saw 4th as a vast improvement over 3.x, so I had immediate and intense enthusiasm for it, which lasted several years. That said, 4th Edition is not perfect. It is largely a combat engine, and I find that I want more than that in an RPG. With that in mind, I’m going to discuss some things I’d like to see in a 5th edition of the game.

A few disclaimers first. Some of these ideas are extrapolated from, or even shamelessly stolen from, a Twitter conversation between Sarah Darkmagic, Fred Hicks, and the Newbie DM. Credit where it’s due. Also, note my bias: I’m really into a variety of indie RPGs right now; most notably, FATE has been on my mind a lot due to a number of reasons, such as Bulldogs! and The Demolished Ones.

Mechanics that Support Roleplay
Back when D&D was my bread and butter, I would have scoffed at this notion. Why do you need mechanics to support roleplay? It’s roleplay; the players should be doing it, and there don’t need to be rules codifying it. I’ve since read a number of games in which such mechanics are employed, and I’ve changed my tune about them. A well-developed roleplay mechanic can stay out of the way when it’s not needed, but can reward and incentivize good characterization when it is.

The main issue, as I see it, is that everything on a D&D character sheet describes what your character does, what he or she is good at. Most of this is also combat-oriented; what does he or she do in a fight? There’s little to nothing on that character sheet that describes why the character does what he or she does. What are your characters goals? Motivations? Relationships? Fears? These things matter if you want to play a convincing person rather than a set of stats. While it’s true that there’s nothing preventing you from coming up with this stuff on your own, there’s nothing supporting it either. There’s nothing making it easier, or making it worth your time, within the game. Some groups will do it because that’s the kind of game they like; others won’t because it won’t even occur to them. I’d like to see rules space devoted to this kind of thing; not just advice for players, but real, concrete rules that encourage you to play a person in the game, with all the baggage that goes along with being an individual.

More Power to Skills
Skills are an underutilized commodity within D&D. Everybody has them, to some degree or another, but there are too many arbitrary limitations, and their utility is far too situational. In some games, skills will get a lot of use; people will jump across chasms, swing from chandeliers, run up walls, charm the guards, create cunning distractions, and so forth. That’s awesome. In other games, skills will be numbers on your sheet that mean very little. What I want to see is more mechanical benefit for taking those skills, and fewer restrictions on which skills you can take. Why, for example, can’t my fighter take Bluff without spending a feat on it? Are fighters incapable of lying without special training or effort? These sorts of things play to stereotypes, which can be a useful shorthand, but has the mechanical effect of limiting character concept potential.

And speaking of feats, I’d like to see feats directly tied to skills. I’m thinking specifically of a system similar to FATE’s, with feats taking a role similar to those of stunts. Rather than a bunch of conditional combat bonuses, I’d like to see feats used as ways to do additional things with your skills. Some of these things might be combat bonus-related; for example, maybe an Arcana feat can be taken to imbue a weapon with magical power for +1d6 fire damage for a short period of time. The key is that they’re tied to skills, making the choice of skills more important and the payoff for taking a particular skill greater.

Finally, I’d like to see the explicit link between skills and ability scores go away. In some cases, this makes sense; Endurance and Constitution make sense together. But I’d much rather see a system in which the bonuses are separate, and your description of how you use the skill determines which ability score bonus is added to it. For example, a fighter flexing his muscles menacingly could use Strength + Intimidation, while a ranger employing his knowledge of how to survive in a hostile environment could use Wisdom or Intelligence + Endurance to survive a desert’s heat. The description is a requisite for this; you can’t just say “I use Intelligence + Endurance”; you have to explain why the two go together.

Less Explicit Combat Focus for Powers
I like powers; I like the variety they can add to the game. However, they can also cause monotony, when players simply tell you what power they’re using, rather than describing their actions. I think that part of this is due to the fact that so many powers are simply attacks. I played a game of Old School Hack a while ago, which uses things called Talents, which are similar to D&D’s powers. However, many Talents are not simply attacks, and are not purely combat-focused. The magic-user for example, rather than taking a spell that might make her more powerful in combat, took a spell that allowed her to talk to doors, and unlock and lock them at will. It turned out to be a great choice, not just mechanically (though it was very helpful during the game), but for fleshing out her character and informing her decisions and descriptions during play. I’d like to see fewer powers per character, and I’d like to see them do something other than just damage + condition + effect. I’d like to see powers that you have to work a little bit in order to use, powers that require descriptions in order to make useful.

The Rest
There are a lot of things that I still like about D&D. I like the simplicity of hit points and defenses, and I like the way monsters work quite a bit. I like experience points and levels, and I like action points. The class system is simple, evocative, and fun, and I like the different races and how they work. I like a lot about D&D, but I think it can be more than it is. I hope it will be.