Mister Monster's Workshop

Category: Dark Heresy

  • Fiddling with Talents

    Fiddling with Talents

    This week, I have been working on my Dark Heresy port. I’ve decided that I’m mostly satisfied with how the rules work, but they need to be easier to look up. Since the system is so based on slight upgrades to existing abilities, it leads to a lot of flipping back and forth through files to figure out what a character is even capable of. That won’t do.

    The approach I decided on is to make each player’s character sheet less of a copy-paste from the rules and more something you build up according to the rules. That way, you can ignore all the rules that don’t affect that particular player, and concentrate on what applies to them, personally.

    So I’ve been writing the basic moves up like this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.
    • Minor Success: if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, but no details of the nature of the threat.
    • Basic Success: the same, but if you are in fact in danger, the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why.
    • Major Success: you learn precisely what the danger is.
    • Absolute Success: you not only learn what danger is threatening you, but also the most promising way of avoiding it.
    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    Then a player will start out with a move that looks like this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, but no details of the nature of the threat. 15-19, the same, but if you are in fact in danger, the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 20+, you learn precisely what the danger is.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    Then, if that player takes the Awareness (Known) Talent (which bumps up the results of a successful move to show healthy paranoia), the move gets altered to this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, and the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 15+, the same, but you learn precisely what the danger is.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    And if the player further takes the Awareness (Trained) Talent, which adds an additional result on a roll of 20+, the move again gets rewritten to this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, and the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 15-19, the same, but you learn precisely what the danger is. 20+, you not only learn what danger is threatening you, but also the most promising way of avoiding it.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    You see what I mean. At every turn, the player’s sheet only contains the information that will apply to that player themself. This would absolutely not work if we were still using pen and paper like some sort of savages, but of course these are modern times and everything is stored in easily edited .txt files.

    I do worry that this will make it more troublesome for the players to choose new Talents, since now the information on what a move actually does and the information on how it is altered by a Talent will exist in two different places. But I’ll see what happens when I have a chance to run a session with the new PDF.

  • Honour to the Administratum

    Honour to the Administratum

    This week, my players ended up exploring the byzantine bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that most of my thinking this week has been about bookkeeping.

    Character bookkeeping, I mean. It’s not an especially sexy topic, but it’s something that really makes a difference for how easy it is to run a roleplaying session. You want to be able to tell, at a glance, just what rules apply to a character – what their abilities are, what modifiers are affecting them, what they can and can’t do. Because having to stop all the time and flip through the rulebook is freaking annoying.

    One of the charms of Powered by the Apocalypse style games is that they seek to make bookkeeping easy. Rules are kept as modular as possible, so that you usually just deal with one paragraph of text at the time, not three or four different ones that are spread throughout the book. When that isn’t possible, information is often repeated so that it appears everywhere it needs to be, even if that means adding to the page count. It’s part of what makes these games so smooth to run.

    As I’ve mentioned before, when porting Dark Heresy I eventually had to admit that I couldn’t make it quite that nice. I’ve tried my hardest to not make rules depend on other rules that depend on still other rules, but it’s still a big, sprawling, messy game set in a big, sprawling, messy world.

    For example, one thing that I struggled with in today’s session was constantly having to adjust the options available for fighting for the particular weapon the players were using. You see, my rules for ranged combat go like this:

    When you unleash the fire and fury, roll +Ballistic Skill. 10-14, choose 1 option below. You may spend Righteous Fury to choose additional options, 1 for each Righteous Fury spent. Each option can only be chosen once. 15-19, choose 2 options. 20+, choose 2 option, and hold Righteous Fury.

    • You manage to disengage from melee and get onto at least a range of reach to the nearest enemy.
    • You hit a single enemy within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.
    • You inflict 1 damage on an enemy Horde within range of your weapon.
    • A single enemy who has you within range of their weapon does not hit you and inflict weapon damage on you.
    • An enemy Horde who has you within range of their weapons does not hit you and inflict weapon damage on you.
    • You are not forced to retreat or to take or stay in cover.
    • You cause a single enemy within range of your weapon to find or stay in cover.
    • You establish overwatch; the first single enemy within range of your weapon to leave cover (including to fire a shot of their own) takes 1d10 damage, reduced by Armour.
    • You do not need to reduce your Ammo by 1. This can not be chosen for an Ammo-S weapon.

    Examples: Firing a lasgun, throwing a knife, sniping from ambush.

    But when you’re wielding a weapon with the Blast tag (such as the frag grenades my players were flinging around), the following extra rules apply:

    When you unleash the fire and fury with a weapon with the blast tag, you may also choose the following options:

    • You inflict 1d10 damage on an enemy Horde within range of your weapon.
    • You hit every character in a group standing closely together (such as enemies engaged in melee, allies covering each other’s sides, etc) within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.

    However, when you unleash the fire and fury with a weapon with the blast tag, you may not choose the following options:

    • You hit a single enemy within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.
    • You cause a single enemy within range of your weapon to find or stay in cover.
    • You establish overwatch; the first single enemy within range of your weapon to leave cover (including to fire a shot of their own) takes 1d10 damage, reduced by Armour.

    So while I can normally just copy-paste in the list of a player’s options as they succeed at something, neat as you please… here I have to edit the whole thing on the fly every time (okay, so after the first time I guess I should have saved the edited list, but I didn’t think of that at the time). And there seems to be no easy solution to it, beyond writing up the full list of options for every single weapon in the book… and that seems a little much even for PbtA.

    And then there are all the things that players can do, which are adjusted when they take certain Advances, and the things they implicitly can’t do because there are other Advances that allow you to do those things… It’s a lot.

    I think maybe I should restructure the port into a more traditional format. Man, Warhammer 40,000 fights back hard against being PbtA-ified! Possibly it thinks that it’s heretical or something…

  • Gear Porn

    Gear Porn

    I ended up spending this week working on the Dark Heresy port, particularly on the gear section.

    I have to admit, I’m not really a fan of gear in roleplaying games. It just feels anal-retentive to have to list every fiddly little implement your character carries around, and to have creative ideas that you can’t implement because you just didn’t bring the right tool. I’m more about the skills and inherent properties, the things that are always true about your character. But of course this is Warhammer 40,000, and running Warhammer 40,000 without drooling over the badass toys is just making a complete mockery of the whole thing.

    I did try to streamline it a bit, though. I assigned every weapon, armour and doodad a Req value between 1 and 10, and then assigned every Career a starting amount of Req. In between every mission, your Req refills and you can spend it on requisitioning new equipment. And the effects of different items have been simplified to the point where it’s hopefully easier to remember – a lot of things just give a +1 bonus to some particular move.

    I note, not for the first time, that it’s very unclear who this port is even for. I mean, I’m pretty sure that anyone who likes Powered by the Apocalypse games is going to think it misses the point entirely by having so many over-specific rules, and anyone who likes Dark Heresy the way it is is of course not going to see the point of my converting it to an entirely different format. I guess in the end, it’s just for me, to make it possible to at some point run games in the Warhammer 40,000 universe that don’t feel quite so painful.

    Of course, disliking pain might also be missing the whole point of Warhammer 40,000…

  • Dark Heresy powerup

    Dark Heresy powerup

    Well, tying back to my thoughts from the last Dark Heresy game, me and the player talked about it after today’s session and it was agreed that the higher starting Characteristics would be a good idea, for many of the reasons I mentioned in that post. We’ll see next time how that works out, but I feel like it’s the right move.

    I did manage to write a bit on the Corruption rules this week in preparation for this session, too, so here is where they stand:

    CORRUPTION AND MUTATION

    Humanity is eternally under spiritual siege, the dark lore of Chaos threatening every second to find its way into each human’s soul. When it finds a vector, whether through unclean teachings or the direct touch of Warp entities, it threatens to remake the victim of the revelation into its twisted image. Whenever you encounter blasphemy or supernatural horrors, you gain some amount of Corruption Points. Whenever your Corruption Points equal or exceed 10, reduce them by the largest possible multiple of 10 (i.e., from 17 to 7, or from 23 to 3) and roll to battle for your very soul. This may cause you to advance your Damnation Track, which looks as follows:

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Mutation.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Mutation.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] You permanently transform into a deranged Chaos Spawn under the GM’s control. Make a new character.

    Malignancies and Mutations are both permanent. Purity, once lost, is never regained.

    MALIGNANCIES

    • Wasted Frame. The flesh wither on your bones. Permanently reduce your Strength by 1.
    • Poor Health. Your breathing is laboured and your blood flows sluggishly. Permanently reduce your Toughness by 1.
    • Palsy. You suffer from constant tics and tremors. Permanently reduce your Agility by 1.
    • Dark-Hearted. You are filled unholy spite that you can never entirely hide from others. Permanently reduce your Fellowship by 1.
    • Morbid. Your critical thinking is constantly distracted by macabre fantasies. Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1.
    • Malign Sight. Unclean voices whisper in your ears and nightmare visions dance in the corner of your eyes. Permanently reduce your Perception by 1.
    • Skin Affliction. You become plagued by boils, scabs and weeping sores. You are immediately noticeable and memorable. If you have or acquire the Unremarkable talent, it cancels out this Malignancy, making you recognisable to anyone who’s ever had a good look at you but not immediately noticeable in a crowd – you look terrible, but no more so than any dozen other diseased beggars. Without that talent, people stare at you in horror wherever you go and there is probably not as wretched a visage in the entire star system.
    • Night Eyes. Bright light hurts your eyes, forcing you to squint. This does not confer any sort of ability to see in the dark, so unless you have access to that from some other source, your vision is always impaired from either too much light or too little. Your visual acuity at the best of times is roughly equivalent to what it would be in darkness lit by a single candle, with all what that implies for your ability to spot things and discover people sneaking up on you.
    • Witch-Mark. You gain a cosmetic but highly obvious physical mutation, such as a small tentacle growing from your elbow or a third eye in the back of your neck. You must conceal the mutation at all cost or risk being executed for being a mutant.
    • Night Terrors. Like the Horrific Nightmares Disorder.
    • Strange Addiction. Like the Addiction Disorder, but instead of a normal drug, you are addicted to some strange substance, like rose petals or widows’ tears.
    • Ashen Taste. Food and drink tastes foul to you, and you can’t bring yourself to ingest more than absolutely necessary. As a result, you are perpetually weak with hunger. Whenever you achieve a result of 10-14 on a roll to refuse to fall, take -2 ongoing to further rolls to refuse to fall instead of -1 ongoing.
    • Irrational Nausea. Something entirely innocent causes you to feel sick at the sight of it. When you face your anathema, roll +Toughness. 9-, you become violently ill and must spend the next scene doing little more than puking your guts out. 10-14, you master your treacherous belly, but take -1 ongoing while you remain in the presence of the anathema. 15+, you manage to push down your bile. For a weakness, choose one of:
      • Flowers in bloom
      • Human laughter
      • Fresh food
      • Prayer books and holy items
      • Bare skin (other than faces and hands)
    • Blackouts. You suffer regular blackouts. As a GM move, the GM can declare that the consequences of something you have no recollection of doing suddenly catch up with you.
    • Hatred. You develop an irrational hatred for some group of people. This is not the sort of holy fury that the Imperium approves of; not only do you have no socially acceptable reason to hate the group, but instead of being strengthened by your hatred you loathe them so much that you can barely function when one of them is around. You take -1 ongoing to all Fellowship and Willpower rolls at such times. Choose one of the groups below:
      • Soldiers and warriors.
      • Priests and the deeply religious.
      • Scholars and bureaucrats.
      • Lawkeeper and authority figures.
      • Common labourers and the poor.
      • Tech-priests and technomancers.
      • Criminals and outlaws.
    • Bloodlust. When the battle frenzy is upon you, mere victory is not enough; you must see the light die in the foe’s eyes. If enemies flee from you, you must chase them by whatever available means is most efficient, even if that might catch you in a trap or if it pulls you away from your true objectives.
    • Distrustful. You cannot bring yourself to trust a stranger, and it makes interaction with them problematic. When making a Fellowship roll that involves strangers, treat any result of 10+ as a result of 10-14.
    • Self-Scarification. Like the Self-Mortification Disorder, except instead of wholesome religious flagellation your self-harm takes the form of carving elaborate occult symbols into your flesh with a blade.
    • Vivisector. You are driven to cut up living creatures and study their insides. While PETA has been disbanded for many thousands of years, this behaviour draws its share of ire. As a move, the GM can proclaim that you sliced up something you really shouldn’t, whether someone’s pet, a valuable prisoner, or a creature with a big, angry mate.

    As you can see, the Mutations are still missing, but since by these rules no one can get a Mutation before taking a whole lot of Malignancies, I still have some time to work on converting those.

    No work done on the GM Moves, though. I really do need to sit down with one. I feel like I’m getting better at bringing the grimdark (this session included stifling bureaucracy in the face of humanitarian crisis, misanthropic religious fanaticism, and a band of renegade plague victims, so I think I did okay), but I still don’t feel like I’ve done a very good job of codifying it.

  • Dark Heresy playtest

    Dark Heresy playtest

    So, we ended up playing some more Dark Heresy this week. It involved the daring acolytes trying to escape from a collapsing mine while being gassed by inflexible authorities and trying not to be eaten by a river of daemonic slugs, so I feel that at the very least the “grimdark” was firmly in place…

    This was the first session with the new version of the rules, and I do think it went a lot more smoothly. The success chances are rather unforgiving, but that might be on point – possibly it helps with the feeling of a hostile universe where your skills are only moderately helpful? Not sure.

    I do think that there’s a problem with the stat increase Advances, though. See, I’ve streamlined everything so that there are certain Advances that just says, basically, “you get +1 to such-and-such stat.” Which is nice and simple… but it also kind of makes those Advances sort of overpowered. I mean, in the original game only the first increases to your core stats cost 100 XP apiece, everything else costs 250 XP or more, so there is some incentive to instead choose the skills or talents that cost less. Without that price hike, there’s really very little sane reason to not take stat increase Advances as long as you have any at all that are available.

    One possible solution would be to take out the stat increase Advances and instead make characters start with +1 in their core stats, +0 in their non-core stats, and -1 in their weak stats, and that pretty much just keep it like that. Maybe let them take stat increases after their first 10 or 20 Advances or something. Of course, then we don’t get that aforementioned feeling of all your traits being equally useless, so if we want that one that’s bad.

    But we’ll see how I feel after another bunch of sessions.

    Other things to work on: the corruption rules. They’re going to become relevant sooner than I thought, since two of the players are now heading into corrupted territory. Also, I need to expand the World Moves and Chaos Moves (for Imperial Worlds and Nurgle, respectively, for this particular scenario – the others can wait) and add some more granularity to them.

  • Dark Heresy headache

    Dark Heresy headache

    Every game I do a port of is, in some way, a pain in the ass. If they weren’t actively painful to play, I wouldn’t need to do a port of them. But man, Dark Heresy is a pain in the ass.

    I’m at something like my fourth attempt at it, and this time I think I might be on the right track, but only by throwing away most of my initial goals and trying to save what can be saved. See, the main reason why I make these ports is that game systems are too fiddly, too packed with rules and calculations. A system should be simple to use, without requiring constant flipping back and forth through a doorstopper of a rulebook. So for each of my previous DH attempts, I tried to streamline things down to something easily memorable.

    And they all fell flat, because that kind of thing is actively opposed to what Warhammer 40,000 is. W40K is all about the clutter, all about the detail added to detail, about the neurotic beancounting and rote memorisation of things that don’t, when it comes right down to it, really matter much. That’s what the setting is, a giant glorious mess of people fighting to the death over trivia. Simplify it too much, and you might as well be playing a different game.

    So I had to take a step back, and resign myself to actually make use of all the fiddly little rules, all the “take +1 to Crotcheting except on the second Monday after New Years” modifiers, but to try to somehow carve them into something that was modular enough that you could at least grasp the situation at hand. Shorten the combat rules to, at least, two pages instead of twenty, and make the talents more or less independent of each other rather so you could focus on the next thing you wanted to be able to do instead of obsess over your “build.”

    All of which amounts to the fact that my cleaner-and-simpler version is at 107 pages and counting. Though in fairness, a lot of it is repetition, since one way to make it unnecessary to flip back and forth through the book is to write out the full information everywhere you actually need it. But still, Emperor have mercy…