Shifting Gears

I got distracted over on my other blog, so I haven't updated in a while. But here's a teaser of the sort of things I'm thinking about in terms of BTR.

On thing that many people complained about regarding earlier editions of D&D (Anything before 4e, that is) was its tendency towards Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards(Warning! TVTropes Link!). And it's true, if all you're looking at is the class tables in the PHB. A wizard constantly gets new abilities, while a fighter's power is only slowly doled out (and is nowhere near as cool).

But what this comparison fails to account for is gear. Equipment. Weapons, armor and all that jazz. Fighters may not get a lot of power from their class, but they have much better opportunities to improve themselves with gear. +1 flaming ax? Fighter loot. +2 plate mail of spell resistance? Fighter loot. Scroll of fireball? Okay, the wizard can have that one. So while the wizard is building a "golf bag" of spells, the fighter is building a "golf bag" of specially enchanted weapons and armors.

Gear balance is equally important in Rifts. Actually, it is absolutely vital. Many critics will point out how great a divide it is between the SDC and MDC tiers. Put a dragon up against a Rogue Scholar, and it's very clearly a curb stomp battle. The dragon wins because it can deal 100 SDC on a hit even if it rolls a 1 for damage. That poor SDC wimp doesn't stand a chance.

But what they fail to notice is that the MDC gap is one that be readily bridged. That Rogue Scholar is very likely to have access to some sort of MDC body armor. The most protective armor in the core Rifts rulebook (not counting powered armor) is the heavy Dead Boy armor with 80 MDC. Just by slipping that puppy on, our Rogue Scholar just made that confrontation a bit more fair. Add an MDC weapon of some kind, and this fight suddenly becomes interesting.

If there's a balance problem here, it is that a Rifts character is overly reliant on MDC gear to compete. Rather than the game being about the character underneath all of that weaponry, it can readily become a contest to see how much stuff can be piled on a character.

BTR Design Goals

Okay, I've been sharing bits and pieces of what Project BTR is about for a long time now, but haven't really given you a real overview of what sort of changes I want to make to the system and setting of Rifts as I design.

1) Eliminate classes and levels. As much as Palladium may pride themselves on the realism of their system, classes and levels strike me as unrealistic. Especially the narrow sort of classes that Rifts features around 10 of in every book, each with their own experience table.

2) Mitigate Mega-Damage. My view on this one has softened somewhat. I started out as a typical hater and pointed to the concept of MD as "proof" that the Palladium system was broken. I now see it as an attempt to create a feeling that the PCs are Big Damn Heroes and empowered to fight evil that no one else can face. But I think that as the game line progressed, the PCs stopped being treated by the designers as "Gods among Men" but simply "Gods" (metaphorically speaking, anyway).

3) Consistency and elegance. The Palladium system has grown mostly via agglomeration, the accumulation of small rules patches and adjustments over a long span of time. Many of these rules are not only spread out among the multitudes of books that have been published, but also not necessarily consistent from book to book. One of the reasons I'm opting for a ground-up approach is so that all of those special cases can be looked at and designed for at the beginning, rather than having to kludge them later.

4) Tame the tech porn. Big guns are cool. Giant mecha are cool. But between all the new guns, mecha and other toys, there's not much room for setting. I don't need every detail of the setting, but I'd like a reason to care about why I'm trying to protect this world from the eldritch horrors that are trying to eat it. But instead, I get a picture postcard version of a setting followed by page upon page of stuff to fight things with, followed by page upon page of MDC critters to kill.

This Island Earth

In my last post, I mentioned one of the things that really turned me off about the default Rifts setting. Namely, the prevalence of the Coalition. On the one hand, it does mean that your money is good wherever you go in the world, because everyone wants to do business with the Coalition. On the other hand, in this war-torn post-apocalyptic world, how are they able to establish and maintain the economic links that allow this to be practical?

But that's not the only thing that bothers me. Here are a few more.

It doesn't matter that it's Earth: Not only is the setting Earth after an apocalypse, but Earth having experienced a Golden Age of technological advancement and then an apocalypse. Which makes the main reason to insist that it's somehow the Earth we all know and love is so that they don't have to come up with a new map (Much like many fantasy heartbreakers included settings that were redrawn maps of medieval Europe). While earlier material left some room for Gamma World-style "relics of the present", the focus rather quickly switched to stuff from the rifts and advanced military technologies. Finding a reference to "Old Earth" these days becomes more of a Planet of the Apes-type reveal ("Everything's so different, but it was Earth all along!)

It also saves on that pesky little thing called "research." Because Rifts England doesn't care about whether or not Buckingham Palace or Big Ben survived the apocalypse. It just recreates Arthurian myth with an MDC veneer. How is this new King Arthur related to the existing royal family? There's no extrapolation of the modern world, just whole cloth fabrications justified by the rifts and the Rule of Cool.

It Comes From The Factory: We all know that our cheeseburger used to be part of a cow, and that our paper was once a tree. But with many other manufactured goods, we follow its origins back to the factory and stop there. And the way that manufacturing is discussed in the setting material, I wonder if KS actually believes that things work that way. There is much talk of factories and manufacturing techniques, but incredibly little on resource gathering.

With all of the advanced technology in the setting, it is conceivable that raw materials could be created from thin air in a process similar to how a Star Trek replicator causes food to materialize. But it's never mentioned, or even implied.

And resource gathering adds so much story potential. Rather than attacking an enemies' fortified bunkers or munitions plants, why not attack their supplies of raw materials? Can Free Quebec keep manufacturing Glitter Boys without the materials to make their special, laser-resistant alloys?

Here's my current plan to address those issues in my own setting design.

My initial setting will be a world colonized by Earth and one or more of the other galactic powers (the elves and dwarves and such). Since it's not Earth, no one can be particularly upset with me if I don't mention or include certain details or if I just make stuff up. And because the world is a fairly recent colony, it's easy to justify a fairly high level of economic unification. Even the hermit who hasn't spoke to anyone in 10 years and eats bark was on one of a fairly small number of colony ships and wandered away from one of the few settlement sites on the planet.

It allows for the world to be largely uncivilized, but with fairly advanced humans (and other races), just like Rifts Earth.

And once I'm done exploring that world, there are other worlds in the universe to explore. Maybe explore something more civilized, or with a different mix of races (an elven world where dwarves are forbidden and humans are begrudged a small embassy).

Fantastic Racism

One of the issues that has plagued the Palladium system has been balance between the races. Well, balance in general, but we're taking baby steps here.

For the most part, races seem to be either overwhelming or underwhelming compared to humans, with very few of them hitting that sweet spot of simply being whelming. Overwhelming is practically a Rifts trademark. Underwhelming is generally the province of Palladium Fantasy, but it does have some exceptions.

As I'm designing BTR, the question comes up: How do I balance races against each other?

Balance everything against humans: Since most of our real life experience has to do with humans, this is the "default" race in most games. So fantasy and alien races are often compared against that standard. Under this scheme, most of the races will only have an advantage over humans if they have some balancing detriment.

Balance humans against everything else: This is the route that most modern versions of D&D use. Every race gets something cool, even humans. The downside is that this requires that humans get something. But while the bonuses that elves get are intended to make them feel more "elvish", it's damned difficult to come up with bonuses to make humans cool. Because there's that need to treat them as "generic" so whatever they get has to be completely flavorless.

Give the races a cost: Many point-based systems do this. Being human costs 0 points, while other races must pay for their abilities. So non-humans will have abilities or bonuses specific to their kinds, humans have the advantage of spending all of their points on personal abilities.

Palladium has currently given little thought to balancing humans against other races. It's not as bad in Palladium Fantasy, where the bonuses that the other races get are not so overwhelming, but it can still be an issue. In old school D&D, humans could take any class and ascend to the maximum level within that class, while non-humans were limited in classes and levels. When Palladium Fantasy did away with these restrictions (which many people considered an improvement), they failed to offer another way to make humans a compelling choice for PCs, leaving them somewhat behind the curve.

Rifts does try to make humans a compelling choice, but does so in a rather ham-handed way. The Coalition's paranoia regarding non-humans and supernatural powers means that anytime your party has to do business with the Coalition, they have to send in the human. So in order to make humans a compelling choice for players throughout Rifts Earth, the Coalition has to be everywhere. (It also makes sure that your money is good wherever you go) Which is one of the most unrealistic elements of the setting: The idea that this upstart government in this post-apocalyptic world has such a vast influence.

My current plan is actually "A little from Column A and a little from Column B". Each race will have a modest set of bonuses at character creation, and will also have advancement options to give more flavor to their race. Race specific milestones, spell lists, and such.

It's The Little Things That Matter

The good news is: it seems that I am able to resume my monthly schedule.

The bad news is: That means that I'm going to have to start coming up with some actual content here.

While some of the bigger ideas are flowing, one thing I'm realizing is that some little things still need settling before things can begin taking shape.

15 second melee round: While it allowed for finer detail than OD&D's 1-minute combat round, other games have since eclipsed it. D&D 3.x used a 6 second combat round, the D6 System uses a 5 second round, and World of Darkness uses a 3 second round. GURPS takes the cake with a 1-second round.

I'm sure there's a contingent out there that doesn't care. As long as the round is long enough for them to do their thing, they're okay. But the ability to convert an abstract unit, like a round, into a real unit, like minutes and seconds, does have its uses.

The Metric System: Palladium started publishing back in the '80's, when there was a push to convert the country to the metric system. We tried it for a while, but never fully made the move to metric. So apparently Palladium's style guide is frozen to the time when "dual-statting" measurements was the (experimental) standard. (Yes, I know the food industry loves the metric system. That way, they can get people panicked over grams of fat who don't have a solid idea of what a gram is.)

Do any Palladium players care about the metric system? I do seem to recall a push toward the metric system in science-fiction games in this same period. It was likely an attempt to create a more "scientific" feel to the game. Most of them were games I'd never play anyway, so it's hard to say.

The Hit Point

As I've mentioned at other points on this blog, the Palladium system is an advancement and refinement of old school D&D. One of those advancements was in the field of hit points. You see, before the 3rd edition of D&D all hit dice were rolled, even the first one. Which meant that if you were unlucky, it was possible to enter the dungeon with only one hit point.

Palladium starts you off with hit points equal to your P.E. score +1d6. Then gives you physical skills that can improve P.E., offer S.D.C. upgrades, and so on. Then armor provides its own pool of SDC (or MDC) to protect you. This means that your character has a better chance of surviving first level, which is good. But it also means that characters can very quickly wind up with unrealistic amounts of durability.

Stories circulate around the Palladium community of players exploiting this superhuman durability in interesting ways. Shooting themselves with assault weapons to intimidate a foe. Leaping on a grenade and expecting to walk away with only a small portion of their SDC gone. If you've got a fun story to share, feel free to drop it in the comments.

The important thing to remember is that, in D&D, hit points are an abstraction. They don't represent actual injury. D&D characters really only have one hit point (their last) and all their other hit points represent the character's ability to defend the one that matters. A friend of mine gave this concept a very clever name: "Ablative Awesomeness." When you make a successful attack, you're not hacking away at the other guy's spleen. You're hacking away at his ability to defend his spleen from later attacks. This is why experience (generally gained from fighting) grants more hit points.

The Palladium system doesn't seem to believe in Ablative Awesomeness even as it looks for ways to add more. The description of SDC in the main Rifts book describes a character taking an injury, but shrugging it off. The justification for increasing hit points as the character levels is that the character actually got tougher. Taking a hit in combat is apparently all about being a manly badass.

But with characters having all of these hit points and damage absorbing resources, the things that are supposed to kill them suddenly aren't scary enough. So you make up new stuff that is scary. In Palladium Fantasy, this is magic weapons, going all the way up to rune weapons. In Rifts, this is MDC.

But MDC adds a new wrinkle to this arms race. In Rifts, your MDC armor is your hit points. Without it, you are a 1 hit point mook. So as the weapons get scarier, you look to buy more powerful armor. Once you get more powerful armor, the GM has to look for tougher monsters and tougher weapons to fight you with. Leading to a little thing we like to call "power creep."

My current plan for BTR does include the potential for increasing hit points but nowhere near to the generous levels that Palladium provides. They will be available as a milestone attached to a character's combat skills. This should provide a balance, as there will be many other combat milestones to acquire as well. Playtesting will tell.

Magic & Technology

I touched a little on the way I want magic to work in the setting of BTR while talking about elves. But after reading a couple other blogs, I want to go into a little more depth on this subject.

There seem to be two major schools of thought regarding how magic and technology (specifically science) would interact.

1) Magic would supplant science & technology. Since spells can do wonderful things that medieval technology can't, everyone who wanted to do something cool would learn magic rather than science.

2) Magic would accelerate science & technology. Magic is an extra set of tools for discovery and experimentation.

So which option am I choosing? Both, really.

My current concept for elves fits rather closely to #1. They are highly proficient with magic, to the point where magic is their technology. But this doesn't mean medieval stasis. They have developed a starfaring culture and have colonies and outposts on several worlds. But they did it all using magic that could do what science can't or won't do easily. (For one thing, I'm thinking that they use stargates that are actually giant teleportation circles for FTL travel)

Humans fit in #2. Recall a few posts back that I used the word technomancer. While the Rifts setting does include Techno-Wizards, I'm actually thinking of something a bit different. Techno-Wizards seem oddly limited. Their main gimmick seems to be the creation of Techno-Wizard items, or converting technological devices to run on magical power.

That's cool and all, but they don't strike me as very techno or very wizard. While they can learn spells, these spells are reduced in effectiveness unless they are using them to power a device. Their techno side is limited as well, since they have a hard time picking up the skills that actually let them play with technology.

To me, a technomancer is a character that either uses their magic to do science or uses their science to do magic. Like casting a spell to detect radiation, or enchanting a Geiger counter to detect magical emanations. Maybe in later supplements, Techno-Wizards get something that is like this, but the main thing they seem to get in the core book is flying skateboards.