Revisiting Wayshielders

My first few tests of Wayshielders did not run as well as I'd hoped. It may be that the aspects of modern and old school gaming I was trying to smash together are not well compatible. However I think there are a lot of ideas and design that can be salvaged.

It was an attempt to combine the "rulings not rules" and "player skill not character skill" concepts of old-school games with the resource management and tight tactical combat of more modern games. The long list of abilities for each class and their interactions seemed to be the tripping point (well, not that long - nine per class with a few tags on each). That was several months ago and I mostly put Wayshielders to the wayside.

A discussion about character resources in Sully's Dungeon World game, specifically the notion of an animal companion as a resource that could be threatened or expended, got me thinking about Wayshielders again.

No classes, but aspects

You can model most character archetypes with just a couple main concepts and a supporting one. A ranger is an archer with an animal companion who dabbles in nature magic. A barbarian wields a large weapon, is prone to enrage, and knows a bit of thievery. A cleric is a divine servant and a healer who is capable on the battlefield.

With that thesis in mind, I'm looking at moving away from classes to aspects. (Aspect is a working title here. Something better may suggest itself.) An aspect is a collection of three passive and two active abilities. The way the leveling system is paced out at the moment characters would start with two "ranks" of one aspect and one "rank" of another, giving them two passive and one active abilities, which feels manageable at first level. At 20th level they'd have 5 "ranks" in one, 4 in a second, and 3 in a third, meaning 5 active abilities and 7 passive - still manageable.

Hirelings might have a single aspect. Followers might have two. For a grittier game you could apply the same limitations to characters.

Here's how the leveling scheme looks at the moment:

level	aspect one	aspect two	aspect three	other
1	one active, one passive	one passive
2				focus boost
3		one active
4				one ability +1
5	one passive
6				all defenses +1
7			one passive
8				focus boost
9		one passive
10				two abilities +1
11	one active
12				all defenses +1
13			one active
14				one ability +1
15		one active
16				focus boost
17	one passive
18				all defenses +1
19			one passive
20				two abilities +1

Focus. Focus.

I'm looking at having one unified resource currently called "focus". Focus is rolled at the start of each combat (not sure of the die size yet) plus your Wisdom. Any damage is subtracted from focus first. 

There is a “defend” action that increases your defenses and restores some focus as well. Some of the active abilities could enhance your defend action - commander could give focus to allies for example.

I think using focus as the resource makes sense. It’s very easy to see for magical aspects. If a rogue-like character uses focus to backstab, their defend action might represent getting into and advantageous position again for example. Also many non-magical aspects can believably grant focus.

HP will need a bit of rebalancing in light of this most likely. Totals of HP and focus feel like they will be too high as currently written. But you also don’t get to roll focus until you’ve acted - being caught unawares is deadly.

As you level you will either get to roll larger or more focus dice. (Remember that in Wayshielders if you roll multiple dice you just take one of your choice.)

Monsters and hirelings most likely will not get focus, though perhaps some advanced monsters will. Also commander-type characters become more valuable because they can give hirelings focus.

There will likely be a defend action which grants some temporary defense boosts and allows you to restore or re-roll your Focus. Imagine that some aspects will play off this.

Fear and confusion effects could attack focus. In some ways nicer than forcing people to run around or roll on a random action table.

Play-by-post

I'm thinking of using this for a play-by-post hexcrawl where we'd have a weekly face-to-face session to resolve any conflicts that couldn't be worked out in text. Many of the potential players aren't familiar with games of this ilk but are into strategy games, so keeping the rules light with the capacity for emergent complexity will be even more important.

Some potential aspects

In gloriously incomplete and scribbly form without numbers to back them up.

Commander

Passive 1 - A morale bonus to hirelings in melee with you.

Active 1 - Your defend action grants some focus to allies in melee with you.

Berserker

Passive 1 - You get a bonus to melee hit and damage if you have no focus.

Void Disciple

Passive 1 - You get a bonus to Move while in shadows.

Active 1 - Spend focus to give your attack a chance to blind its target.

Brawler

Passive 1 - You get a bonus to melee hit and damage while unarmed.

Active 1 - Spend focus to give your unarmed attack a high chance to disarm its target.

Anatomist

Active 1 - Heal HP at the cost of the target's focus.

Assassin

Active 1 - Spend focus to deal extra damage when striking from hiding.

Wayshielders Peril & Chaos

The rules for Peril and Chaos describe a time-free method of tracking party action and decisions. From the Arbiter's rules:

Light, health, and safety are inimical concepts within a dungeon - its denizens sense them and grow agitated. Likewise, panic, bedlam, and doubt attract and bolster them. Actions such as these build Peril, which is tracked by the Arbiter and determines when wandering monsters or dangerous events occur.

Peril is, in many ways, a global counter of all the harm, danger, risk, stupidity, panic, and indecision the party has built up within a dungeon. Here are the current rules for:

Building Peril

• +10: Seizing a dungeon core.
• +3: Resting.
• +3: A mage's Breach reaches 6 or more.
• +2: An elf's Whim reaches 6 or more.
• +2: An orc's Mayhem reaches 6 or more.
• +2: Extremely loud actions (yelling, gongs ringing).
• +1: Using an Assist talent.
• +1: Creating a light.
• +1: Loud actions (arguments, dropping a heavy load, breaking glass).
• +1: Searching a zone.
• +1: A hireling failing a morale check.
• +1: Lingering too long in any one place.
• +1: A cleric's aura reaches 0.

Some spells, kit options, or monster abilities also build Peril.

So why Peril at all? Honestly much of it stems from my hatred of tracking long periods of time while playing. A torch burns for 6 turns, great. Let's all argue about if it's been 6 turns or five-and-a-half. Torches in Wayshielders are made by a civilization that exists only underground and in their own recursive cities - they each burn for a day. They go out when something puts them out.

Similarly, checking for wandering monsters every turn, with so many chances for nothing. We can simulate this in other ways with less record keeping and make it based on the decisions of the players.

A friend was concerned that Assist talents added Peril - she found this counter-intuitive, that assisting a group lessens peril for all involved. Perhaps Assist is not the right descriptor for these talents, but here some the rationales behind why they raise instead of lower Peril:

• From a meta-game perspective, all Assist talents are healing talents. If they're allowed unlimited use, the concepts of hit points or resource management go out the window. This introduces a decision - is it worth healing now to accelerate our next roll against Chaos (discussion of which follows).
• Aside from the healing, each Assist talent provides a buff or tactical bonus. In using these I feel a player has acknowledged their player has met a challenge worthy of some thought and consideration, that is, something dangerous. At these points the sum total of the danger experienced should go up.
• Narratively, the things in the dungeons, and the dungeon itself on some level, hate teamwork and health. They get under their skin (or whatever serves that purpose for them), drive them snuffling out of their lairs, waken dead and killing limbs.

Right now the kit options that build Peril are the ones that allow players to obliquely question the Arbiter directly. Speak with Dead, Speak with Plants, Speak with Stones: all these function only within dungeons and stretch the laws of sanity.

A number of spells add Peril as well. Anything that heals. Well, almost anything - the Weird spell can be turned into a potion that increases the healing done by resting. Weird in Wayshielders is Cantrip or Prestidigitation in many other games, "Harmless dancing lights, modify flavors, clean a small item or area, and all manner of frivolity" to take the spell description. But it's also the only spell that can improve healing without building Peril.

The other spells that build Peril either provide substantial buffs that border on Assist talents or create minions. I didn't want to give players an "out" on building Peril from Assists by choosing spells that mimicked them. Minions of any sort can be used to circumvent all sorts of danger, and tend to be unnatural in their manifestations, so they get Peril as a balancing and thematic factor.

All the classes whose resources build Peril are the magical types. Mages are most dangerous because they're basically channeling the dungeon's power directly, breaking space and time. 

I'll go into dungeon cores in another post on magic. Suffice to say for now they're how magic items get made, and the dungeon does not like having them taken.

Now, what do with all that Peril?

Checking Chaos

For every 10 peril, Chaos increases by 1, then Peril resets. Chaos represents the general instability, nascent will, and growing hostility of the Dungeon itself. The Arbiter should roll d6 + Chaos on this table.

Wandering monsters roll their treasure value at -5 their normal value.

1. Treasure. A minor treasure is unveiled.
2. Supplies.
3. Nothing. Perhaps the beams creak, perhaps some dust settles, but nothing happens mechanically.
4. Darkness. 1d4 of the party’s light sources falter and go out.
5. Manifestation. The dungeon provides a disturbing reminder of just what it’s capable of. All hirelings must make a morale check.
6. Weak Wandering Monster. The dungeon will list possibilities.
7. Supplies.
8. Moderate Wandering Monster. The dungeon will list possibilities.
9. Treasure.
10. Strong Wandering Monster. The dungeon will list possibilities.
11. Overpowering Wandering Monster. The dungeon will list possibilities.
12. Catastrophe. The dungeon awakens.

In many ways, the dungeon slowly wakes up the longer and louder the party mucks around in it. There are a few chances for treasure or supplies on here, but those evaporate fairly quickly, and the party is left facing stronger and stronger wandering monsters, or the will of the dungeon itself.

Manifestation is, I think, somewhat insidious if you have a lot of hirelings along. Each that fails their morale check is going to add 1 to the new Peril counter, putting you quickly at the next Chaos check. Similarly with darkness - relighting those sources adds 1 Peril each.

I think some of the options for various "wandering monsters" are also perfectly within their rights to be displays of the dungeon itself. Things like "traps reset" or "entrance closes".

Wayshielders Characters

I originally posted this at http://wayshielders.blogspot.com/2013/09/characters.html but am rolling that blog over to this one.

The structure of characters has fluctuated a lot during design, but I feel like the the current setup captures things properly.

Rules here.

Classes

Originally classes and races were distinct choices. However the stuff I'd come up with for racial abilities felt pretty uninspired and was focused too heavily on skills. I started thinking about switching to an older "races-are-classes" model and a couple ideas jumped out at me immediately. When I brought them up in conversations with friends I got the same excited response from each independently, and that sealed the fate of the races.

So we have our favorites, Fighter, Mage, Cleric, and Rogue, joined by Elf, Dwarf, and Orc. If I get carried away there will also be a Golem. I'm very likely to get carried away.

Abilities

I wrote the first draft of Wayshielders on a weird Saturday, lying on the kitchen floor and just putting down what felt right. A very early decision was to use the "classic" abilities, but leave out Constitution and Charisma.

Hit Points work well but I've never really enjoyed having a whole extra ability score whose primary purpose is to determine them. It's been called to use for other things over the years (system shock, Fortitude, Concentration, etc. etc.) but those always felt like consolation prizes. So let's do HP and all its friends without Constitution.

Charisma always felt out of place in older games, where you're supposed to rely more on your roleplaying in social situations than a number. It works fine in games where you have social skills and checks, but I wanted to discard those for Wayshielders, so it was easy to let go.

That leaves just Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom. These are also abilities I'm fine using with monsters, which is nice. I do like having one system for PCs, NPCs, and monsters.

Strength

• Strength takes on much of Constitution's old role as it's what's used to determine HP.
• It also affects melee attacks and possibly the Armor or Fortitude defenses.
• Strength also sets Load - how much you can carry.

Dexterity

• Armor and Reflex are influenced by Dexterity.
• It's part of the Initiative modifier.
• In sort of a weird role, Dexterity in Wayshielders is also a bit of luck, so a high Dexterity helps your Saving Throws.

Intelligence

• Intelligence can help the Will and Reflex defenses.
• It also determines how many Spells you know, which is independent of class (though Mages and Elves are going to have the highest Intelligence scores).

Wisdom

• This factors into Will, Fortitude, and Initiative.
• It also determines how many languages you know. Languages may sound like a fairly weak benefit, but they do open up social and communication options, and scrolls use is dependent on knowing the language it is written in.

Talents & Focus

Each class has nine talents. You start with four, and over the course of the character's life and career can get up to eight, so there's always one you can't have.

Each talent has a focus, which improves its efficiency or effect - characters start with two and can get up to four, so about half your options are preferable most of the time, but you have others.

Characters have to start with at least one Guard talent and at least one Assist talent. Guard talents do very weak damage, usually d4, but have very high chances to hit and usually cause some additional effect when they do. The defenses they target and the effects they cause are more effective against some enemies than others - a major strategic element of combat is determining who is best able to keep opponents weakened.

Assist talents aren't intended as attacks, but rather benefit and heal allies. Using them builds Peril though. I'll write about Peril in a future post but it's a global counter of all the harm, danger, risk, stupidity, panic, and indecision the party has built up.

Other talents are generally used to hurt things in a manner consistent with the class's style.

Kits

I have a huge, unfinished list of kits. Characters pick two and each gives a nice passive bonus. The Verdant Disciple for example gets +1 damage with wooden weapons because they grow thorns in her hands.

Kits let characters of the same class differentiate themselves from each other. They allow for archetypes to be reconstructed without needing special classes - you can build a perfectly recognizable Ranger out of a Rogue who took some ranged talents and the Archer and Animal Trainer kits. 

Each kit also gives a way to earn bonus XP. These aren't as well fleshed out yet, but are supposed to hearken back to the 5 or 10 percent bonus characters would get for having high ability scores. I wanted to shift this reward to roleplaying, but still tie it to things that happened at character creation.

Kits each have four options which become available as the character levels. These provide some new spell uses, or special attacks, or such and such. The first one is available at second level, to provide some sense of immediate reward and hopefully hook players on their character. They get access to six over the course of their career though so won't ever get to use all eight of them.

Background

There's a list of possible backgrounds, but since their impact is so broad, it's fine for players to take this opportunity to present whatever backstory they want for their character. 

Relation to the Wayshielders

Every player character is a member of the Wayshielders guild, so in addition to the background, this is a chance for them to define their more recent history.