How to Make a Wanderer - Ability Scores

Okay. There are 6 different ability scores, each rated from 3 to 18.

One of my biggest priorities designing these rules was that I wanted all six abilities to be useful and meaningful to all characters, regardless of their species or class. In most class-based games, each class has prescribed ability scores that you need to focus on. So a fighter’s highest score should always be Strength, maybe Dexterity if they’re an archer. Similarly, there are usually “dump stats” — abilities that are just not useful for certain classes, or sometimes not useful to anyone.

So I started over and tried to reframe the function of ability scores in the game. No dump stats. Every ability is good. You want to play a very smart warrior? Do it! It’s not just a quirky choice. It’s useful and different from playing a strong character or a tough character.

Every ability is rated from 3 to 18, always. Ability ratings of 8 to 11 are considered average, and they provide no special benefits. Ratings of 12 or more grant you a special bonus, while ratings of 7 or less give special restrictions or penalties.

This applies to all creatures. 10 is considered an average rating for an ettin or a gnome; an elephant or a mouse. Your ratings aren’t shifted based on species, because it’s all relative. For example, Ettins are naturally very big and tough. So, an ettin with Constitution 5 is frail for an ettin. They still pretty tough compared to most humans.

Importantly, each ability provides you with a singular, meaningful effect — not a bunch of things that you need to keep looking up, and not some vague, abstract “ability modifier”.

Here are the abilities:

Strength — High strength grants you a bonus to damage rolls — all damage rolls. Swords, bows, magic spells, traps that you set, whatever. Strong characters are good at efficiently exerting force. So strong warriors are probably exactly like you think, but you could also imagine a strong magician channeling their magic through their body to boost its power. Having a low strength doesn’t give you a penalty to damage, but it restricts the kinds of weapons you can use.

Agility — High agility makes you hard to hit, improving your Armor Class. Functionally, this is a penalty to enemy attack rolls. You get your agility bonus even when wearing armor, because quick reflexes are still helpful to turn to the side and make attacks glance off. Low agility penalizes your AC, making you easier to hit.

Constitution — High constitution increases the number of hit points you gain, of course, but it also increases the amount of armor you can wear. Armor is acquired in pieces, and characters can by default wear two armor pieces. High constitution can let you wear as many as four. Low constitution reduces your access to armor and shields.

Intellect — Intellect represents your talent for learning. Characters with high intellect get to select extra options from their character class(es). For example, an intellectual magician studies additional magical sciences, letting them use different kinds of spells, while a warrior would get to master additional weapons, gaining bonuses when using each weapon under the right conditions. Low intellect just means your character takes a bit longer to learn, so it gives you an extra cost to pay when hiring a trainer to level up.

Wisdom — Luck, instinct, alertness or faith, whatever it is, it keeps you safe. Wisdom is a bonus to all saving rolls. So when a trap triggers, you get poisoned, a spell is cast at you or whatever else, a high wisdom gives you a bonus to your saving roll to reduce the effect. Low wisdom means you’re a little too reckless or unlucky, and you get a penalty to those rolls.

Charisma — The most famous dump stat! Well, not here. In this game, charisma is good for everyone. If you have a high charisma, you get a number of free followers (“henchmen”, if you’re old school). And if they die or leave your service, a new follower will join. Everyone can hire followers for an upfront cost, but charismatic characters get a few without that cost. Your followers are your responsibility, though, and you’ll have to pay for it if you want to level them up. Low charisma, on the other hand, means that folks are a little less eager to join you, and you have to pay an extra fee to hire followers.

One last thing, and I think this is probably the most controversial thing in this post: I’m going with random rolls for stats. The way we’re doing it is this: Roll 3D6 for each ability and note the results. (None of that 4D6-drop-the-lowest stuff; it’s more fun if people have low stats sometimes.) If you don’t roll at least two values of 12 or more, reroll everything until you do. (I’m not going to make you play without some bonuses.) You can then rearrange your results if you want. Or leave the rolls straight! I’m not your dad.

I don’t plan to have a point-buy option at all; I know that this is something that some people insist on, but I really don’t feel that it fits the game. I’m considering creating a standard array for folks who really can’t get with rolling the dice. The standard array (if I decide to have it) would ensure that you have two low stats with penalties, two high stats with bonuses, and two average stats.

Playtest Campaign Part 0: Our Heroes, such as they are

I’ve been running a weekly campaign of this game with a few friends. I intend to start writing a postmortem post after each session, but first I need to go over how we started and what’s happened since.

At the very beginning, I didn’t have most of the rules written. I had enough for character creation (though many things would change later) and a rough outline of the rest.

The background story I gave them is as follows: The Empire colonized and dominated this land for a couple hundred years, until the people of the Land united in rebellion. Twenty years ago, the Empire retreated, leaving behind outposts, fortresses and settlements, many of which are still unexplored. The people of the Land are rebuilding. Your characters are all desperate enough to seek your fortune exploring perilous old Imperial ruins.

Below is a brief overview of each player character and some of the basic options they selected. One thing you’ll notice is that each one has a Goal. This is something I had each player come up with as the reason they got into “adventuring”. They had to pick a specific thing they need money for and a specific amount of money they need. Because the game is meant to be played in a “sandbox-style”, they each need something to motivate them, to push them toward adventure. In concept, once they have that much money, they can retire and accomplish their goal.

The best part about the Goal, to me, is that because money also serves as the currency for character advancement, the characters will find themselves getting a bunch of treasure that they could save for their goal, then instead spending that money on gear and training, so that they can maybe score even more treasure later. I like that little bit of tension in their decision-making. Most importantly, though, it ensures that every character has a concrete, in-fiction reason to be involved in these frankly reckless endeavors.

Here’s the cast of characters:

Forram: Species: Ettin / Culture: The Tribes / Class: Magician / Goal: Build a farm: 2500 gold.

Forram is from an animistic tribe on the outer edges of the Land. He is a magician who studies Travel (movement and teleportation) and Medicine (healing). He’s an 8-foot tall troll who fights with his fists when he needs to.

(Note: I’m not really satisfied with the concept that I originally wrote up for the culture of the Tribes. I will either rewrite it substantially or replace it with something else. Currently, the Tribes are just shamanistic cliches. Forram’s player does not play him as a “native tribesman” stereotype, thankfully.)

Agorak: Species: Orc / Culture: The Hordes / Class: Pilgrim / Goal: Acquire supplies for ritual to empower his chieftain: 7000 gold.

Agorak is from a nomadic, communalist warrior clan. He is a pilgrim, a person who gains power from their mystical and religious practices. He is a holy person with the power bless others (Sanctifier skill), and he can protect people by creating mystic shields (Protector skill). He is a shaman who believes his power comes from the favor of powerful spirits. He is not very strong, but keenly intelligent and wise.

(Note: His player chose to play an orc from a barbarian horde, which is a totally valid choice, but it is by no means expected of orc characters. All of the cultures in the game contain members of all species, and the characters encounter orcs from all sorts of backgrounds. All of the sapient species in this world — the “folks” — have free will. None of them are inherently evil or driven to violence.)

Lendel: Species: Gnome / Culture: The Spire / Class: Magician / Goal: Create a cure to his curse: 3000 gold.

Lendel is a gnome — a 3-foot tall troll made of stone — from the nearby wealthy, metropolitan nation of the Spire. He was a very bright student at a Spire academy studying magical sciences, when an alchemy accident cursed him by draining his intellect and enhancing his strength. He is now very strong, but dim-witted. He has lost much of his mastery of magic outside of alchemy.

Anthony “Tony” Rockbone: Species: Dwarf / Culture: The Ancients / Class: Vagabond / Goal: Re-establish the Rockbone “family business”: 4000 gold.

Tony is a dwarf — a 5-foot tall fairy who can see and speak to ghosts, and see in the dark — from an Ancient settlement. The Ancients live among the old ruins of their culture, fixating on the past and striving not to change things, for fear of losing history. Tony, on the other hand, wants to rebuild his family’s business empire, which fell centuries ago. He is a vagabond — a wanderer with great survival skills. Tony doesn’t pay for food. He can always stir something up with a little bit of hunting and foraging.

I'm designing a role-playing game and it doesn't have a name yet

The Empire left this place a mess when they retreated. They destroyed the things they left behind. The Land and its people were scarred by the Empire. 

But the war has been over for years now. The young ones know the war only in stories. The trolls, humans and fairy-folk of the Land are rebuilding, side-by-side. The rolling hills are dotted with small farms. Ruined settlements are fixed up by new residents. The Empire’s trash is a valuable material to be repurposed.

Some of those valuables are still locked away. Abandoned Imperial forts and outposts are said to hold great hoarded wealth and resources, but they are perilous places. They were sabotaged by the fleeing colonizers, and many are now claimed by frightening beasts. The treasure that may lie within these places is simply not worth the danger.

So they say.

Okay. That’s the pitch. Let’s talk about what kind of RPG I’m actually writing.

It’s a fantasy adventure game. There are “dungeons” and magic and monsters. The core rules will seem familiar if you’ve played any D20-based game (but not the same). Players take on the roles of “adventurers” or “delvers”: brave folks who go to dangerous places looking for lost treasure.

That all sounds familiar. But this game isn’t meant to just be a stand-in for D&D or whatever. This game isn’t meant to do everything. It’s being designed for a particular sort of experience, and everything about it is meant to make that type of experience more fun. So here are my design goals:

• Easy to learn: This sounds vague, but I mean something specific. RPGs can be daunting. I want you to be able to bring in a new player and have them playing in 20 minutes. Spend no more than a few minutes explaining rules, roll up a character in 10 to 15 minutes, then start playing. New players should not need to have “homework” reading the rulebook, and they shouldn’t feel lost the moment the other players start talking about the rules. Partly, I’ll accomplish this by keeping the core rules simple, allowing the GM to introduce complexity with optional elements, slowly brought out during play. Nothing should get more complicated for a player than they want. The GM will also be responsible for more of the “crunchy” elements than the players, in the interest of minimizing the burden on new folks. This does make the GM’s job a bit more challenging than the players’, so I’m also working on tools to help the GM keep track of everything, and to help the GM improvise when need be.

• Treasure is fun: I want players to enjoy the part at the end of the adventure where the characters find a big treasure. These are pulp adventure stories. In many fantasy rpgs, the fights and other conflicts are fun, but once you’ve won, finding gold or equivalent things is dull, because the stuff you can do with that treasure isn’t especially interesting. In this game, gold is exciting to find, because it gets you fun things, and it’s also what you need to level up. Not all treasure has to be money, but it needs to be fun even when it is. Also, even mundane items have interesting qualities, making non-monetary treasure interesting even when you don’t get a magic item or artifact.

• Shopping is fun: This is really a continuation of the above. I want the players to have fun having their characters buy things. I’ll accomplish this by creating a deck of unique merchant/shop cards for the GM, each with their own menu of items and services for sale. This will make it easy for the GM to quickly design marketplaces, villages, merchant caravans, etc. Every time the characters go to a new shop, they’ll find something new and unique, whether it’s a weapon, armor, tool, spell, service or special training. It shouldn’t be boring or feel like a waste of time if the players decide to spend a while shopping. The cards will also serve as prompts for roleplaying as the merchants, making it easier for the GM to turn any transaction into a fun scene.

• No sub-optimal characters: You should be able to play the character you want. A brainy orc vagabond? Sure. How about a gnome magician with big beefy arms? Sounds pretty cool. A suave, charming hobgoblin pilgrim? I want to see that. In this game, character classes don’t have “primary ability scores”. You don’t need to be strong to be a good warrior, or wise to be a good pilgrim. You don’t need to pick the ideal species to boost your primary ability. Instead, all ability scores are useful to all characters, regardless of species or class, and all species have unique advantages that are useful regardless of class or ability scores. There are certainly synergies that will be rewarding to use, but no one should ever feel that they are missing out or failing to contribute just because they chose a unique combination of characteristics.

• Dungeon crawl sandbox: This game is meant to be played as a somewhat open campaign, where the players get to proceed at their own pace, sending their characters to ever more dangerous places for greater and greater rewards. It is meant to be player-driven and character-focused. It’s not about epic plotlines and world-shattering tales. It’s about ambition, exploration and discovery.

• Diversity and inclusion: I’m trying to avoid the racism, sexism and colonialism common in fantasy fiction. These ideas are not necessary for a fun or interesting fantasy world, and they actually make the experience worse for a lot of people. I’ve chosen to portray a recently decolonized land that is being reclaimed by its native residents. This land is fully integrated, with people of all sentient species living side-by-side. Each species has individuals from a variety of cultures, ethnicities or races. For example, some elves are Black. They’re still elves. They have the same capabilities as other elves. There are other things to be done, of course. Making the fiction inclusive is only part of it. I will have to educate myself on how to better make the experience more welcoming to different players, as well.

This is just the beginning. For the foreseeable future, I plan to post at least once a week. I have a group playing the game right now, once a week, so I’m going to write a weekly postmortem after each session, going over what happened, what went well, what went wrong. These sessions are invaluable for developing the rules. I’ll also write up a few other posts here and there, discussing game elements in more detail.

And hopefully, we’ll come up with a name for this thing soon.