I’ve been wrestling with the combat mechanics of the Hogwarts RPG, mostly because combat(in an in-game sense) isn’t really meant to be a matter of life and death. So I thought, and the obvious answer was subdual damage. But that just seems like an excuse to replace “Killed” with “K.O.ed” for a PG rating and that feels like a cop out. So I brainstormed for a bit, and came up with a couple of ideas, the first of which will be playtested next week, but here it is.
To do this, begin with standard Health values, whatever the character has. This Health is considered, for the purposes of all spells that do not deal direct damage, is the fatigue of the student in the face of the spells cast upon him. Each time a spell is cast at the student, subtract one, until the Health value drops to 5 or below.
At this point, the character starts making yield rolls of 1d6 versus the health value. If the roll is higher, the student is overcome and yeilds to the opponent. However, if the character has WIL or STR at 5 or greater, he can reroll once on each yeild check, provided the hit is not a critical hit. A yeild does not imply anything greater than the effect of the spell cast at the player, simply that the effect was so extreme as to be disabling for the normal duration of the spell.
I’ve always liked playing versions of myself, or myself, in games. I think it comes from a long standing desire to truly escape from the dullness of my sheltered childhood. I realize now that dullness beat the heck out of some of the adventures children in the world have, but I still appreciate a good ‘Me’ Game.
One problem that arises when creating a ‘Me’ game is the decision of how to assign ability scores. One or two resources to account for equivalent ability scores exist, especially for converting INT scores to IQ, multiple versions of which exist. The following table follows the school of thought that a ‘Me’ game should use ability scores that work equivalently with real-world measures. So, here’s the table I use now, appended with D&D ability score equivalents to the prevalence of that ability level.
*Reaction Time Test
There is another method of calculating AD&D stats specifically located at KevinHaw.com
It is a common complaint that most of today’s non-written entertainment is shallow or malevolent, with journalism so yellow it may as well be flushed and 4 song playlists on the radio. I personally have made it an important pastime to find independent medias that buck this trend, things I find to be of quality, and I try to find them for free or low cost, to spread the word and do what I can to make sure that independent media stays viable. A singularly good case of this relevant to the content of this blog is PodCastle.
PodCastle is a podcast that on a roughly weekly basis dramatizes a short story of the fantasy genre. My first impression was that the stories were surprisingly widely varied, ranging from superhero/espionage(Podcastle: Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters) to urban reconstructions of folklore(Podcastle: The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park). Those two, by the way, were definitely my favorites. The stories tend toward stronger themes and well executed twists, especially the occasional O’Henry style ironic ending.
Variety: 18. The stories are all clearly fantasy, but the site puts imagination before genre and makes sure that all kinds of fantasy are covered. The stories come from all different authors and all different areas, with all different backgrounds to make up the stories.
Themes: 16 The themes range from mature issues such as the problems of being in the public eye, to euthanasia and animal rights, to standard good versus evil fare. Most of the stories I’ve heard tend toward the heavy, if not always the difficult.
Sound Quality: 18 You’ll have no trouble hearing it, the sound is consistently clear. It sounds like it has been done in a professional studio. All in all, very evocative of literature oriented public radio shows, except with more literature and less pretention.
Organization: 18 It’s a podcast, so there isn’t much to tell, but one thing that I like is that they publish the age-range as a category in the podcast feed, not so much that it is secure but that so few podcasts bother to use this feature at all. On that note, I may as well put that up here: Age-Range: 13+ years is a good guideline for most of the stories, varies from child-safe to adults only. The site has it’s own rating system built in to it’s feed.
Overall: 18. Far out.
Similar Sites: Escape Pod, Pseudopod
Divination
Sybll Trelawney’s divination class simutaneously confirms everyone’s contradicting suspicions about divination. Hermione Granger and Minerva McGonagall both believe that the discipline is ‘very wooly’ and they’re right, most of the prophecies offered by seers were simply ominous sounding vague(and incorrect) warnings of imminent demise. However, when Professor Trelawney offers up her second real prophecy(involuntarily) she shows that divination can illuminate an individual’s path. However, even a real prophecy isn’t set in stone, and Harry defies it on many occasions.
Obviously, this presents some problems as a game designer. I’m writing rules, for god’s sake. Just saying “Random GM call” is too much of a blatant cop out. Ok, here goes.
Destined Events: Destined Events are parts of the campaign that the GM feels are so necessary to the continuation of the story that they are specifically more likely to happen than others. This can be arbitrarily made or simply be a difficult to resist part of the story. Destined Events are what divination predicts. Each Destined Event, depending on it’s obscurity, will be harder to perceive and will penalize the roll to percieve it. The GM should roll this an appropriate number of times per session, I recommend once for every 3-4 sessions.
