Friday, May 18, 2018

Gambling

Since my players now have a strong incentive to visit arenas, theatres, and casinos, I need to price out accessing each block. I'm still working on ticket price rules for performances, but for arenas and casinos, I need gambling rules. Furthermore, arenas and casinos offer very different gambling experiences, and I want gambling at each type of establishment to feel very different.

For casinos, I think blackjack works just fine as a game mechanic. Most know how to play, the casino player runs on autopilot, the betting possibilities are fairly simple, the odds are minimally in the players' favor, and the players are able to collaborate against the casino player. While adapting your favorite casino game is fine, I like that blackjack has fairly simple choices for the player each round and that the players are gambling on the same team.

Arenas offer a very different set of circumstances. I want to offer odds that adjust for multiple fighters with different levels of fighting ability, durability, and equipment that I can quickly output at the table. I do this by converting turning each of these parameters into numbers for a given fighter and then combining fighters' numbers to give the payout for a given type of bet. Right now, this only supports win/lose bets, but with time and player interest I can probably expand it to cover different types of winning conditions.

Fighting Ability: combatant notches * attribute
While I need to post my revised combat rules (since my outline here is legible probably only to me), I'll summarize the relevant aspects as needed. A character's combat ability is represented by their Combatant skill, which comes in three flavors: Strength, Dexterity, and Mindfulness. Each flavor is trained separately, uses the appropriate attribute, and controls a different group of weapons. Skills are ranked descriptively (Novice, Apprentice, Professional, Expert, Master, Sage) based upon the number of notches possessed (0, 1, 3, 6, 10, and 15 respectively). Thus, the product of the character's Combatant notches multiplied by the appropriate attribute (Strength, Dexterity, or Mindfulness) is a rough approximation of their overall fighting ability. This gives me a number ranging from 0 (treat as .5) to 90.

Durability: health * wagered injuries
Also relevant is the character's physical endurance, which I measure in two ways: health and injuries. Health represents the character's level of endurance, while injuries measure their bodily integrity. Damage taken is removed from the character's health total, and when that total reaches 0 they gain an injury and refresh back to full health. Death occurs when taking an injury past their normal bodily maximum. Most creatures have 1 or 2 injuries, and this number can never improve. In a fight to the death, a fighter will wager every injury they can safely take, but in a friendly skin brawl, a fighter will bow out after taking 1. We multiply the number of wagered injuries by the character's health to get a rough estimate of their fighting fitness. This number will reasonably range from 1 to 14.

Equipment: weapon damage / (1+ opponent's DR) * weapon reach / opponent's weapon reach
Lastly, I want to account for what the fighters are wielding. Unlike combat ability or fitness, gear is only beneficial in the context of the other gear on the table. Since armor provides damage reduction, we can divide the base damage of the chosen weapon by 1+ the damage reduction of the opponent's armor to get a baseline for how effective that weapon is. Weapon damage ranges from 0 (treat as .5) to 6, while fighters can have a damage reduction of 0 to 3.

The range of that weapon is also critically important. Clashing occurs whenever the weapons of two opponents overlap. I use 1-yard hexes, so a clash normally happens when fighters are 1 hex removed from each other (as their weapons occupy the hex in between). Long weapons like spears or claymores have a longer range and can engage a foe at a greater distance, possibly 2 or 3 hexes. If the opponent has a shorter weapon, they can't deal damage while clashing, and, since mobility is limited during the clash, it will take them time to get close enough to actually threaten their opponent. I am interested in the comparison, so I divide the reach of the fighter's weapon by the reach of their opponent's. The maximum reach of a melee weapon 3, while some weapons have a reach of 0 (treat as .5).

Combat Number
The product of each of these three terms gives us the combat number, with one modification. Zeroes are no good because I need each of these numbers to be invertible. I don't want to set the value of the whole term to 1, either. Instead, I treat all zeroes as .5 except for damage reduction. The range of these combat numbers is quite large: 0.0834 to 45,360 (although I'd never put someone in an arena with a combat number less than 1). Because of this, take the geometric mean of all three terms (raise the product to the 1/3rd power), which reduces the range considerably: 0.4369 to 36.

If two fighters are on the same side, add their combat numbers together.

For a bet on side A, divide the combat numbers of side A by the combat numbers of side B to get the combat ratio, the numerical representation of the two sides compared against each other. This equals the amount necessary to bet in order to return a payout of 1 gold.

Skin Fighting
Most arena-style fights are just two fighters using only their fists and no armor to the first injury, which obviates a lot of the rules above. This lets us ignore the equipment term entirely and simplifies the durability term to just the character's health.

EDIT - forgot to post arena fight resolution rules
If no player character is fighting, each side will make a Combatant test (both sides rolling), resolving damage as normal. The first side to take an injury loses.
If a player character is fighting, treat as a normal combat.


Thursday, May 17, 2018

Uses for Entertainment Blocks

In Alexis' block model, each block needs to have some benefit for characters who spend the day there. Some of these benefits are fairly straightforward, such as healing faster by the beach. Some are perhaps less so. Entertainment blocks, those centered around arenas, casinos, or theatres, don't obviously provide a function not shared with relaxing blocks like the careenage or a bathhouse. If we combine them with Alexis' rules for art, something pops out rather immediately: spending a day in an entertainment block grants experience of some sort.

As I don't use traditional leveling and experience totals, preferring my own system, I need a little more specificity.

In case you didn't click the link, each skill in Prodigy has its own experience track, measured in notches. Proficiency with a skill increases based upon the number of notches possessed. Characters normally gain notches through training, by they can also gain them in the heat of the moment via a 'Flash of Insight'. Each critical (success or failure) gives the character one tally. When the number of tallies exceeds the number of notches, the character gains a notch (although this cannot be how the character gains their first notch in the skill).

Each skill has at least one descriptor, mental, physical, or social, based upon the way(s) it is used - fighting skills are physical, speechcraft is social, etc. Spending a day in an entertainment block grants a tally in a random skill with the appropriate descriptor. Places like arenas, sporting fields, or the construction sites of large buildings grant physical skill tallies. Casinos grant social skill tallies, while theatres and music venues might grant either social or mental skill tallies. Storytellers and libraries grant mental tallies. Traveling jongleur troop performances (akin to stereotypical Roma shows) offer a flash of insight in any skill.

It is important that the tally gained is random, but I'd allow players to pick the descriptor if more than one is available.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Thinking about Blocks and Neighborhoods

Alexis' recent series of posts on urban game structures has got me all abuzz. I love running games in cities. Since starting to work on my world, I've begun every game in some city that has played a huge part in whatever the players do. I also am aware that I don't do nearly as good a job of creating functioning cities, that is, cities that offer the kind of depth Alexis describes.

The metaphor that has got me all excited is the 'block,' a contiguous area within a town or city that:

  • The block should provide some specific purpose for the players' use.  The beach is a source for transport across the sea; it accumulates fish which can be purchased.  It is a place where boats are repaired.
  • The block's residents should have a character, based on what they do and what they respect.  The people of the beach respect people who can do for themselves; who can fish or sail; who can do a hard day's work; who don't consider themselves superior because they possess wealth, status or intelligence.
  • The block should be a source for adventure.  The beach offers the opportunity for smuggling.  Or to block smuggling.  It is the natural entry point for raiders who come from under the water.
  • The block should provide an advantage for the player's well-being.  The beach is a good place to rest; swimming is a restorative, relaxing activity; so resting there heals hit points faster.
[text from here]

where the beach is Alexis' example of a block, outlined here.

Prior to Alexis' posts, I'd been using the idea of neighborhoods, something from Zak Sabbath's Vornheim game supplement. Boiling the concept down to what I'd actually been using, a neighborhood is a large region of a city with a distinct character. The key difference between neighborhoods and blocks is size. Traditionally, I've been using somewhere between 3 and 6 neighborhoods per large city.

Additionally, each neighborhood is geographically amorphous - what is relevant to me at the table is not how big each neighborhood is but how the neighborhoods connect. If my players antagonize a group of people prevalent in one neighborhood, they need to be careful how they move through that neighborhood and that may restrict access to other parts of the city. Over time, the party needs to cultivate people and places that give them safe access through different parts of the city, something like knowing which house at the edge of town has a cellar that opens beyond the gate checkpoints or having a friend in the guard who will let the party join patrols through a nastier area of town.

My challenge with working with neighborhoods was a question of scale - what exactly should be in each neighborhood, and how do I manage them, a.k.a. how "big" is a neighborhood. Thinking of a neighborhood as a self-sufficient collection of blocks neatly fixes this problem. So, to describe how I want to be thinking about cities going forward, I've adapted Alexis' bullet points from above.

  • Each city is divided into a small number (2-6) of neighborhoods roughly separated by sociopolitical power. A town consists of 1-2 neighborhoods.
  • Each neighborhood is a self-sufficient urban entity, which means that there are places to shop, eat, sleep, and relax in each neighborhood. Typically, only one group of people exerts control over a neighborhood, and if the same organization controls multiple neighborhoods, each neighborhood is run by a separate chapter of that organization.
  • Each neighborhood is comprised of a number of blocks.
  • Each block provides a function that is self-evident to the players, has a distinct type of inhabitant with a defined set of norms and values, offers easy potential for adventure, and affords access to some kind of benefit for the players.
  • While neighborhoods may have similar blocks, each neighborhood has at least one unique block that is only accessible in that neighborhood.
As I look to getting my game back on its feet this coming Monday, I am excited to apply this framework to our current location and see how well it works.