Blazing a Trail: a BETA review of the Spark RPG

This is Calcifer, incredibly dismayed by my terrible pun. That's not important, though! I'm here to conduct a concise review of a roleplaying game called Spark RPG, currently winding up a pretty successful Kickstarter--but there's still time to get in on it. I suppose you'll want some explanation why? Well, let's see...

Hollowpoint: a Dice Bag of Bullets

You know, Hollowpoint is really not a game that I thought I'd consider to be interesting. I'm not generally one for its motif of ultraviolence and devastation. On the other hand, I thought that The Boondock Saints was interesting for the way it portrayed characters who were driven to such extremes, and I can't deny the appeal of an action flick. Oh, and then there's the fact that I've thoroughly enjoyed Bee Train's anime Noir and Madlax, which were totally about people who killed other people (and how they dealt with that). Enter Hollowpoint, the game which gives you a splendid framework to build all sorts of stuff around, if you like.

We Interrupt This Hiatus...

Eventually, I'm gonna get back to posting here. In the meantime...

Go back Fate Core on Kickstarter. We need to see ridiculous pony attacks. And we need to hear +Fred Hicks' evil laugh.

Ninjas, Cyborgs, and Hulked-Out Samurai!

When I saw this Kickstarter, I knew that I had to back it. And, since it only has a few days left to expand its funding base, I figured I'd spread the word as best as I could! I'm talking about Tenra Bansho Zero, a native Japanese RPG that came out in 1997, a full fifteen years ago.

Dark City: When Mafia Met...Cards?

So, folks! Today, I typed up some rules for a game I call Dark City, a live-action variant of Mafia that spans a much larger space and time. Oh, and there's a freelance assassin on the loose, too. Have a look, it's only two pages! I plan to do some fleshing-out in the future, and I'm sure it could use a lot of fun theming...

Download Link


Dark City by Andrew Hauge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

RPGs: Good and Free

Okay, wow! Somehow, I got totally behind on things, and never actually put out a post for the second half of the week. Grar. Okay, give me about five minutes, and I'll come up with something incredibly compelling to write a post on!

*tick tick tick*

Okay, is time really up? Drat. Okay, then. I guess it's up to me to pull a topic completely out of nowhere. Hmm...oh, I know! Time for a really quick roundup. See, one of my little hobbies is finding cool roleplaying games, and some of the coolest roleplaying games are this lovely little thing called "free". So, before your very eyes, here's a round-up of five excellent (and free) roleplaying games.

Vote for Old School Hack!

Vote for Old School Hack!

So, a word about Old School Hack. It's pretty awesome, first and foremost. It's a revisiting of classic D&D, but streamlined and with cool new mechanics. The result is a great fun dungeon romp that's filled with enough crunch to be interesting, and enough streamlining to keep things fun.

Not only that, but it's a fully free product. It's not a quickstart, it's a completely free product! So, vote for Old School Hack to win the Ennie!!

Paper Empires Alpha Release!

Download From Here
Licensed under the Open Gaming License

Well, folks, it's here! I've finally gotten together the Alpha of Dangerous Tides, the initial setting for Paper Empires. You'll notice that it went through some changes since the other posts I've made about it.

Paper Empires: A Sample Dynasty

All right, folks! Time to throw something out there which your own perusal might light upon with some sense of glee. In other words, here's a dynasty for you, in rough alpha form, for you to pick apart and enjoy! And, well, I guess I don't need much more to say than that.

The Dun Crow Donnoleys
The Dun Crow Donnoleys are a terrifying lot of seafaring scallywags, who've sworn to lay claim to the lands of the Ivory Ring Islands. They live to spread their reign of terror far and wide, burning and pillaging, keeping small settlements under duress. They've decided that they're going to do some settling now, making port towns for their own, to rake in more loot and become a major power in the Islands.

Signature Trait: Ruthless (one province per turn gains a +2 military bonus)
Signature Ability: No Quarter--when you use this ability, all provinces gain a +3 military bonus. Each province attacked by you this turn loses 1 population (limit once per province).
The Donnoleys are feared, because they are not known for mercy. It's a miracle, some say, if you survive, though maybe less so depending on your fate afterwards. Slavery under the Donnoleys is not always a pleasant manner, and neither is being held for ransom by them.

Cultural Trait: Clans (all provinces with 2 culture or more gain +1 happiness)
Donnoley blood sticks together, and where the Donnoleys have spread, there is also loyalty to the standard of the Dun Crow. Spread the offspring of the Donnoleys far and wide, and your empire will be much-pleased.

Unique Landmark: The Pale Banshee (all military dice rolled by this province reroll if the result is a 1)
The Pale Banshee is a rumor, some say, a tale to frighten off sailors who stray too near to the bounds of the Donnoley's islands. Others put much faith in its existence: a ship with a wailing crew, whose very sight calls death down upon visiting ships.


You'll notice a couple things about this. First off, there's a "Unique Landmark". This is a major building, legacy, cultural idea, or otherwise noteworthy but somewhat tangible thing which an empire makes. While landmarks can be made by every empire, each dynasty also has its own unique landmark, exclusive to it. The full game will include options and rules for constructing your own dynasty's personal Unique Landmark from scratch, and all settings will include sample Unique Landmarks. Second, of course, there's a major pirate theming to this. That's because this comes from *drumroll* one of the three settings that I'm planning on putting in Paper Empires...

• Dangerous Tides, inspired by the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, mashing together make-believe pirate lore and swashbuckling action, along with a dose of the somewhat "unnerving and highly...unnatural-like".


• Mithril Muskets, a colonial fantasy world...because let's face it--RPG geeks always gotta stick fantasy in there somewhere.


• Imperialism, a somewhat historical recreation of Europe and its encounters with the New World, heavily inspired by the game Sid Meier's Colonization.

So, hang along for the ride! It oughta be fun.

Paper Empires: The Art of Succession

First, an update on my goals. I've run into a roadblock regarding the computer...my Windows partition went down, and I can't figure out how to install Scribus onto my Linux partition. I'll try some stuff, and if we're in luck, I do have an idea of what I can give to all of you. I realize that making a full, 200-page (or so, I don't exactly know) core rulebook in a month is hardly a very achievable goal for something I'm doing on my spare time. However, it's entirely possible to write up a "Quickstart" for the system.

Basically, that'll include empires to play in one specific setting, along with simplified rules for playing the game. From there, we can make sure that the game works, and then expand the rules into the full version, which I'm still releasing for free. So, then....time to talk a bit more about Paper Empires!

Like My Father Before Me...
It doesn't exactly make sense for you to have a single character who spans centuries of play. In Civilization, that's an abstraction at most. I also think that it's a bit rough to track different characters over that time period, when that's only part of the game. Such paperwork is better-suited to Blood Royale and similar games. Besides, so far the empire, not its ruler, has been the primary character. In keeping with that, the main unit of "characterization" is a dynasty.

The dynasty is the "character" of an empire. Whereas the provinces (and associated mechanics) are the fuel of the empire, and its power, the dynasty is the lifeblood of that same empire. It directs your relationships to other empires, gives a distinctive trait to your empire, and also influences the spread of your Culture.

Main Components
A dynasty is described by traits: simple descriptions of its aspects that give it bonuses or penalties. The traits of a dynasty are limited into two categories. You have one signature trait and multiple cultural traits. The cultural traits each give you some sort of small bonus, such as additional population or more dice per province. They also determine how easily your culture spreads to new provinces. Every cultural trait has an opposing cultural trait. If that trait is present in a province, attempts to spread culture to that province are penalized. Obviously, you can't have two opposing traits in the same province. A matching trait, on the other hand, gives a bonus to culture-spreading.

The signature trait, on the other hand, gives every empire their distinct flavor. It's a cultural trait, but it has a special ability attached to it as well. Once per game, you may expend that ability: your empire spends its resources to achieve a wondrous goal. You gain a temporary but powerful benefit. This is the moment where your empire shines; it's what your empire is known for, after all.

Traits, of course, are the backbone of the roleplaying in this game, and they figure heavily into the Diplomacy portion.

Paper Empires: A Little Chit-Chat

Diplomacy can be a funny thing. It's a very important part of empire-building, too. How you get along with your neighbors isn't just important for your international survival. It also shapes the character of your country. This is the other half of the RPG, and it's every bit as important as the empire-management half.

Diplomacy: Yeah, It's Like That (brief mild language)

Why Can't We Just Get Along?
I'm actually looking for some feedback on one part of the diplomacy system. Namely, I'm trying to decide just how much rules space to devote to it. I'm of two minds on this one. One mind says that there's enough rules already in the game. That I don't need to make it so complicated, that I should keep it nice and simple, with roleplaying something that the players are expected to naturally insert in. Another part of me, though, takes a look at games like Fiasco, and sees an interesting model to follow: a game mechanic that builds and fleshes out an elaborate tangled mess of relationships. There's not necessarily anything wrong with an involved, crunchier ruleset. To top it off, if the empire-management is streamlined, that leaves room for the diplomacy half to blossom.

The rules that I'm considering using would mimic Fiasco in part: you roll a pool of dice, and then swap your dice with other players to create relationships. In other words, treaties, hostilities, enmities, bad history, and so forth. After the stage is set, those relationship dice become a currency of sorts. I don't have it all mapped out, but the idea is that you can "cash in" on a relationship in order to get something good, or something of that nature.

Achievement Unlocked!
There is a part of the diplomacy half that I will be using for sure. It has to do with the agreements between countries, and the benefits and penalties therein. It also has to do with my philosophy on roleplaying, on how to encourage it and how to ground it in the rules. Of course, this can take on two forms: enforcement and the "carrot on a stick" method. I'm looking at using a little bit of both, actually. The enforcement method is the simplest: making unpopular diplomatic agreements (treaties with a sworn enemy, for instance) or breaking popular agreements will cost you Happiness in your provinces. That could lead to revolts, which are Bad News. There's another facet to this system, though, which I like even better.

It's inspired by "achievements", which are found in a number of multiplayer games, and also by the experience point system of World of Darkness, which doles out XP based on actions by the players that enhance the storytelling. (Character roleplaying, encounters with the supernatural, etc.) So, here goes. Every agreement between a country is an "achievement", so to speak, waiting to be "unlocked". It stipulates conditions and rewards on each side. When an empire fulfills its half of the bargain, they gain Progress, which can be used like experience points in other systems. You can buy up permanent boosts for your Dynasty, or you can cause world-changing events to happen, such as a research breakthrough or a cultural rebirth in a major province.

There will be rules for how much Progress you can gain, according to an agreement. It's a nice way to get benefits in-game, and to hold your fellow countries to that pact by dangling a nice juicy benefit in front of them. Whether they'll honor it...well, therein lies the turn of history, and of this game.

Paper Empires: The Lowdown and Basics

Well, here it is: a big post with some big answers about the game. Sorry, folks, I was going to put together a rough PDF preview of part of the book, but I left my computer over at a friend's house when I went to play Mahjong. So, no PDF for now. But I'll still talk very extensively about some of the most essential bits of the game, and answer questions as well. Without any further ado, I'll jump into the crux of the game, which is "where do all these stats go?"

A Question of Scale
When envisioning the game, I was immediately faced with the question of scale. I'd considered that I wanted each empire to be composed of different cities. They'd choose what to build in each city, and they'd choose what to do with each city. Unfortunately, this led to a lot of additional rules-related questions, such as "what cities are adjacent to one another?" and "how do you track everything you're doing in all those cities?" Again, these sorts of problems are solved in Civilization by having the computer automatically take care of the record-keeping. In an RPG, though, record-keeping tends to drastically slow things down.

An easy solution presented itself, possibly inspired by Medieval: Total War and the rest of the game series. It's a little thing I call "provinces". Instead of focusing your empire around a large number of cities, you have a small but manageable amount of provinces, groups of land that house cities. It takes the management level up a notch, and makes it easier to roleplay being an empire, instead of being an empire's accountant.

How a Province Works
A province has one major stat: Culture. This represents how much the province holds together, and how much influence the province has on the rest of the world. High-Culture provinces are very, very valuable, because they encourage research in your empire, help famous people to rise to prestige (conferring benefits on your empire), and make it easier for other provinces to come under your control. (Although I won't be implementing direct "culture flip" as in the Civilization games, cultural control of areas will be important to protect them. It's also required to colonize new lands.)

Implicitly contained in a province is its Population stat. Population naturally grows over time, with an end-of-turn roll based on your current population, with penalties for health issues. A province's Population is spread out among its population centers, which is a long term I coined, because I don't have a better one at the moment. Feel free to suggest one. Population centers are the true meat of this system, because they provide the means by which you can do things. Every population center has a size, and every population center provides an extra die with which you can accomplish Military or Trade goals.

That's the crux of the system. A province will make tests with a pool made up of its dice, which can be devoted to Military or Trade (or both), adding in bonus dice from its Dynasty (something I'll get into in a later post).

How Population Centers Work
A population center comes in three sizes: small, medium and large. In game terms, it can be a settlement, town, or city. The rules allow you to customize the spread of population in your province. Essentially, you can have more population centers with lower population, or you can have fewer population centers with higher population.

Population centers can be devoted to the spheres of Military or Trade, when you decide to take actions with them. Military dice wind up adding to your province's Defense at the end of the turn, and Trade dice add to your province's Income at the end of the turn. Before then, you can take actions with your Military and Trade dice pools in a province, such as conquering new lands, putting down a rebellion with your army, or even infiltrating an enemy via your merchant routes.

Answering Questions
So, to answer a couple questions that were posed by Adonies in a comment on my previous post...

Research is a major part of civilization, will you include it in Culture?

Also, food-production (which leads to population growth) is not quite the same as manufactured production.

Research is indeed a part of Culture. At the end of your turn, Culture provides the basis for a Research roll you can make to try and discover the major technology you're pursuing. Or at least to contribute more research towards it. Paper Empires is about discovering major technologies within a specific historical era, so the tech tree will be much simpler. This also means that technologies are much more important and "big" when you discover them.

Food-production isn't so much handled here, except in the terms of bonuses provided by technology and the Traits of a province. As well as by Landmarks, which you'll find about later. Manufactured production is covered by the same things, but it's also simulated by some rules regarding population centers. When you have towns and cities, you get explicit bonuses to either Military or Trade, depending on the center's specializations. The rest of it comes down to how you wish to spread your empire.

Questions?
I'm sure you all have plenty of questions. For my Tuesday post, I'd like to answer them. I'll be taking any questions you have in the comments, and picking ten to answer. The rest will go into the "question bank", to be plucked out for the next Q/A post I do. And so on and so forth.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look at Paper Empires!

Paper Empires: How it Started

Well, folks, here begins what could be the craziest endeavor that I've undertaken. My mission, and I have accepted it, is to deliver to all of you a free RPG called Paper Empires, a game which puts you at the helm of a massive realm that spans nations. It also puts you in the same world as a number of other realms, too. Are they neighbors, pests, or blood enemies? Well, that's up to the players to decide and figure out. Enough about the premise. Let's delve into the history...

Sid Meier: The RPG
I can't exactly say why I decided that Civilization's mechanics lent themselves to an RPG. It possibly had something to do with the fact that I'd been playing the game for such extended amounts of time. The mechanics...well...those were really streamlined and cool...and it was a really different area. Part of it, probably, was the fact that nobody's really touched on this story area in RPGs before, because there aren't generally any stories which feature countries as the main characters. Barring satirical Japanese cartoons, of course.

Somewhere along the line, though (possibly after seeing the Facebook game "City of Wonder", and plans for a social network version of Civ), it struck me that this would be a really, really cool thing to do. From there, I started jotting down ideas on paper (well, more accurately, Google Docs...so, digital paper...) and things began to spiral out. This is what I would call the "dump" stage. A few things immediately bled over, and eventually began to morph into the basic concepts of the game. These were the "core attributes" of your empire.

Back to Basics
Taking very directly from Civilization, I decided that there were four main stats that you could assign to any, well...I called it a "civilization" early on, but "empire" quickly emerged as a far catchier and more distinct term. These four attributes were: Military, Trade, Culture, and Production. Those match up pretty closely to the principal activities of Civilization: conquest, trade (to get money for conquest, and to keep research high), expansion (culture flip!!), and making stuff (armies, buildings, wonders...) So far, so good, except that we're ridiculously close to knockoff territory here.

But then came some mulling-about of the concepts. Production...well...production didn't seem nearly as important as the others. It was more something that...happened. To top it off, it seemed to invite a heavy level of micromanagement. I didn't want micromanagement. (For the short version of this...I think that micromanagement can be one of the biggest enemies to roleplaying. If you're too busy figuring out what all of your minions are doing, or what the repair status of your power armor's different nodes are, it takes you out of the moment. Computers can handle a lot of these things, but when it's in person, that changes.) So, if there was a way to limit and streamline the production aspect...

Well, I had an epiphany there, too. Same thing goes for Culture. I realized some things about culture and its role in a civilization. That let me find a rather easy analogue in traditional RPG terms, and away we went! I'll discuss my approaches to Production and Culture later, when I really go over the attributes. Suffice it to say, Production and Culture have been rather transformed into very core stats, but they've also somewhat dropped out of the picture in terms of being "evaluation stats" like Military and Trade.

But that's okay. In Paper Empires, it's the Military and Trade stats which let you take care of problems and flex your power across the world. Well, it only makes sense. Conquest and money have been two of the strongest influences in the history of the world, and it's no different in this game.

Smells Like...Free RPG!

Well, I've decided it's time for me to stretch my creative muscles and get down to business on something. The best part: you, my readers (supposedly there's about 50 of you out there, so...there oughta be a little feedback), get to help me decide what that something will be. I've got a lot of RPG ideas buzzing around in my head, and I'm ready to develop one of them into a full-fledged RPG. Not to mention, Wyatt's Copper Coins! RPG has me hankering to try something similar.

The best part is, this RPG will be entirely free. Free as in "free beer", and free as in "the land of the free and the home of the brave". I'm intending to use the Open Gaming License to distribute it, but if any of my audience has other thoughts on that, let me know.

That said, I guess you gotta have a list of options to choose from. At the moment, here's how they stand...

Guns and Grit, a simple system designed around d4s and low randomization. It's a resource allocation system, and the main setting is the Wild West, or a version of it.

Bloodline Blades, a high-fantasy action system which features warriors who have innate elemental powers, using a unique dice pool system to model these inherited abilities.

Paper Empires, an RPG where you play out the rise (and maybe fall) of an empire, inspired by the Civilization series.

So, let the votes ring in! I'll close up the poll after a week, and announce (officially) the winning game. Then, I'll be giving status updates on the project, culminating in a downloadable PDF release.

Pen and Paper...and Cardboard?

An interesting pairing of games came together in my head, and sort of fizzled around with all of the ideas that I've already been mulling over. Like an Alka-Seltzer tablet on caffeine or something. You get the picture. Anyhow, those two games were one called Shogun and one called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the most recent edition. The Warhammer RPG has been discredited in the eyes of some for incorporating a large number of physical materials, so much so that some claim that it's truly a board game masquerading as an RPG.

What Role Does Cardboard Have?
At the same time, others claim that, at its core, the game is still an RPG. Regardless of that entire debate, maybe it's better to examine the bigger question: do board games have anything to teach RPGs? I think that, though pen-and-paper RPGs are awesome, the idea of "board RPGs" is unexplored ground that can yield fantastic results. Using boardgame-styled props streamlines many aspects of gaming, especially for more casual RPGers who are more concerned with delving into the story than having granual and predictable control over their RPG.

This is where my observations from Shogun kick in. See, the game is absolutely filled with various mechanics which make good use of the boardgame medium to automatically and intuitively guide the game in certain directions. One interesting example is actions. You may assign one of ten actions to any of your provinces; a province may only perform one action, and each action may only be performed in one province. This is enforced by a board containing a symbol for each of the ten actions. Each player plays a province card, facedown, on the action spaces. Not only that, but the ten actions take place in a random order each turn: ten "indicator cards" (each one has the image of an action) are shuffled and placed facedown in a row. The first five actions are revealed faceup, before the players choose their actions.

Strategic But Interesting
These sorts of mechanics do two things. First, they provide the player with strategic decisions. Second, they steer the game away from a numbers game. They remove the tiny little details which can bog down gameplay, such as grid combat in D&D 4th Edition. It's a certain level of abstraction which removes fiddly little bits, but still leaves in detail enough to provide hooks for strategy.

These two things are geared towards a specific type of roleplayer, at least in my mind. They don't exclude other types, as long as those types are a bit flexible, but they're primarily intended for the storytelling roleplayers. Players who want to have strong control over their characters, who want to maximize character potential...they'll probably not take well to this. Someone who doesn't mind a few twists in the works to advance their character's story, who's interested in cinematic action...they might find something more in this, especially when abstraction enters.

A Few Ideas
This marks the start of a series I'm going to be running for the next few weeks. I'll take a basic mechanic from some boardgame (most likely a Eurogame mechanic; they seem to have the most interesting strategic options), and show you how it can be adapted as a houserule for a common RPG.

A Quick Bloggage Browse

So, I figured that I would fire off a quick note, to showcase something cool I found.

Summerland RPG Review

So I'm reading my blogs, and lo and behold I'm reading Gaming Brouhaha, and I happen upon the review of a really cool little independent RPG. The basic premise has an incredibly strong feel of Faerie to it: a mysterious forest springs up out of nowhere, covering the world, and gives out a mysterious Call to people. Most succumb, vanishing into the forest, while a few are either hardened by a trauma in their history or manage to survive where the Call is weak. There are also fantastical beasts, savage humans a la the Reavers of Firefly...and the rest is silence.

That's another major thing that grabbed me about it. There's a huge amount of freedom in the setting. Beyond the major details, everything else can be filled in. This is quite the beautiful setup, and could allow for some incredibly crazy stories.

Not to mention, I really like the sound of the core mechanic, as well. It sets up your ability to succeed and the difficulty of the task in two different fields, instead of simply being a stack of plus and minus modifiers.

So, hop on over there and check it out, I'm probably going to put an order in for it.

A Modest Proposal, Part I

So, this is going to be a bit of a rule-breaking post, for a Saturday post, but I get the feeling that Saturday will quickly become my "Miscellaneous" day for posting. It all started when I read a little post called The Lost Art of Running Away, which tackles a common issue in classically-styled RPGs: players are far more interested in winning combats than in retreating to fight another day, and so DMs have to constantly tone down the challenge level so that PCs don't feel cheated when they spring an "impossible" encounter upon them. The result? PCs never run from a fight, because they have no reason to.

An Outline of the Problem
The way things run, it all boils down to some simple economics. The cost of a combat is whatever damage you sustain, which in the end is typically negated out of combat. Even in 4th Edition D&D, with healing limitations, characters are assumed to be able to make it through a certain amount of combat encounters before each rest, and it's a fairly regular model. End result: the cost is minimal...almost. The exception is when the players die. At that point, the cost skyrockets. The benefit of a combat is XP and loot, along with any in-game rewards the party may encounter. End result?

You have an event which has only positive rewards for victory, and either no penalties or a prohibitive penalty for loss. In this day and age, that prohibitive penalty of loss is such a dramatic change from the "all healed up" of victory that DMs are hesitant to go there. Now, the "third option" of retreat is never really even considered, then, because DMs don't want to submit characters, very often, to the dreaded TPK, unless they're mean and awful and very lethal DMs. The types of DMs that laugh at Tomb of Horrors, that is. Those DMs. Which means that players never think of running away.

What to Do?
The first, immediate answer is to shift the cost of combat around a little. In the current model, there's a huge cost gap between victory and loss, in some cases an absolute gap, where victory = full heal and loss = death. There's a couple things that can be done here: reduce the cost of loss, and increase the cost of victory. Can it be done? I certainly think it's possible.

First things first, that whole "reduce the cost of loss", because it's quite easy to accomplish. The best solution in this case is, quite simply, to pit PCs against foes who don't fight to kill. As long as the PCs fight sentient beings, the DM can say "you got knocked to 0 HP, and fall unconscious"; a default in D&D now. Those beings then capture the PCs, and try and wring what reward they can out of them. Bandits, for instance, holding them for ransom. Now, the truth is, higher-level characters will find fewer and fewer beings wanting to hold them alive, I'm sure, but there's always that possibility.

Next, a DM should look into making victory a little more painful. Perhaps, in the vein of Dark Sun, you could put a bit of a clamp on healing for characters. Make characters count the cost of victory or defeat, and then let them decide whether to fight. Furthermore, make other characters who depend on the PCs. Sure, they can take on this crazy fight, but if they don't survive...well, there goes the neighborhood. Instill the idea that sometimes living is better than winning.

The Crazy Part...
Now comes the other half of the equation. So far, we've talked about making the cost of defeat spread a little to victory. But what about the reward? Is there reason to change the reward system? This is where things take a crazy turn on their heads...

We've all seen the traditional "loot and XP" reward model, like I've mentioned. What if it didn't always quite work like that, though? I found one place online, a game-in-development called Kenshi, that presented an interesting idea...and it suddenly clicked. The developer of the game has developed an interesting approach: you gain more XP from losing a fight than from winning it. You heard that right...more experience gained from losing a fight than from winning it.

I gave it some thought, and then decided that it made sense. From Batman Begins ("Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.") to The Matrix (Neo being beaten again and again by Morpheus in the simulator), the hero learns by making mistakes and learning from them, again and again. Only in D&D (as far as I know) and similar RPGs do we have heroes who get better by being, well...good. It's really a matter of two paradigms.

The D&D paradigm is an endless cycle: do good, get better and get better stuff so you can do even better and get way better and way better stuff, etc... The other way? It's more like this: mess up, get better to make up for it, mess up again, get better to make up for it, etc., until you finally break out into a Crowning Moment of Awesome. In my mind, that makes for a way cooler story.

A Temporary Conclusion
I'm definitely not done with this topic, but my main purpose here was to lay out the ideas, and present a little bit of crazy brainstorming. Am I merely trying to solve the problem? Not quite. I've got a bit more in mind than merely that. In a way, I'm slowly sculpting out a completely new philosophy to approach RPGs from. You might not agree, and that's definitely fine. Stick around, though. You may find some interesting things in here and the posts to come.