Nurturing an Octopus in Your Sandbox

A few readers asked for more explanation of the Top Secret-derived, character-based sandbox from Wednesday's post. As you might remember, that kind of sandbox was essentially a campaign scenario based around non-linear, player-centered exploration--and elimination or infiltration--of an “Octopus”, the Cold War jargon used by the game to describe a complicated espionage network.

Rather than bore you with a long, abstracted exposition of the various symbolic quiggles and layers of such a beast, I am just going to go ahead and build up over two an example as applied to our fantasy rpg flavor of choice. Let's put on our imagination caps and imagine that we are wanting to introduce a Dark and Sinister Conspiracy into your campaign—and that the players have chomped down on your hooks and are set to battle such a force.

Let's return to the Archsyndocracy of Outer Kutalika. This wee, modest realm is newly threatened by the machinations of Rebekah the Black, a young and ambitious songstress, who has organized a far-reaching network of ne'er do wells.

The ultimate goal of Rebekah's octopus is to install magical amplifying devices in every city plaza, town square, village green, and mole-man burrow in Outer Kutalika. The devices will broadcast her flat, nasally-sung ballad “It's Freyday”--a song so insipid that it boils the brains of all who hear into a stinking, malleable pile of goo--at an appointed time when the two moons converge.

TS's campaign rules set out four hierarchical layers of NPCs for an octopus: Administrators (A), Operators (O), Spies (S), and Cut-outs (C) . Each letter tended to be matched by a number on a roster list, so for the main administrator you'd have a designation of A1 for instance. Each layer will have more power and knowledge of how the octopus runs and for what ends.

Let's translate the lingo into something more appropriately, fantasy-like for our example. At the top you have the Masters/Mistresses (M). Like the shadowy bureaucrats of TS this layer is peopled by either a single, lofty individual or a small, tight cabal. These are the key leaders, if eliminated the network crumbles. In our example Rebekah the Black is the sole diva. Her designation is M1.

Below her are the Lieutenants (L), the stand-ins for the Operators. This is middle management, mostly out of the field directly, but involved with the day-to-day running of the agents. Rebekah has only two lieutenants: One-Armed Jiri (L1) who is in charge of the operations in inner Outer Kutalika and Mogg the Mendicant (L2) who is in charge of outer Outer Kutalika.

Jiri and Mogg both run a crew of three Agents (A) (it's been a long week, if you can think of a more evocative piece of nomenclature, I am game). These dudes do all the dirty work: planting the devices, lacing the town militia's soup with black lotus powder, kicking cats, etc. Mogg's team is made up of the Black Ratter (A1), Carlos the Dwarf (A2), and Sister Anya (A3). Jiri's team is Trellis (A4), Makkabbe he Hammer (A5), and Kugel the Not-Lucky (A6).

At the bottom of the heap are the Flunkies (F). These are expendable servants of all three layers. Flunkies are useful as go-betweens inside the network or for throw-away actions (a one-off and risky assassination, for instance). Their knowledge of the structure and goals of the network will be little to known. They are so likely to end up skewered on the business end of a blade that we won't even bother to give them names: F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, and F6. F1 and F2 are go-betweens to help Mogg and Jiri communicate ; F3 and F4 are used by Rebekah for odd jobs; F5 is a contact for Carlos the Dwarf; and F6 is used by Jiri to keep tabs on Mogg, who he mistrusts.

Our little cabal is complete. 

Here's how it looks on our symbolic network map below before we fill it in further. You will note that I put Rebekah the Black (M1) at the center of the web with her two lieutenants, Jiri (L1) and Mogg (L2) close by. I then divide the network by the Lieutenants sub-networks (conveniently two different geographic regions) with their agents arrayed. I then fill in the flunkies close to the people they serve.

My next post will deal with filling in the rest of that map with the communication links, timetables, and other bells and whistles that make that give this kind of character-based sandbox game its real zing. Stay tuned...

Character-Based Sandbox Campaigns

On the face of it, Top Secret is an odd place to keep digging for experimental bits. Back in the day it was—as most of the historically-themed second-generation games—an awkward cousin of the TSR family. Nowadays with little to no current following, we can safely and sadly say it's in the dustbin of gaming history.

Still Top Secret, in it's pre-TSR publication days as Spy World, had it's roots in the mid-70s creative explosion of experimentation with rpgs and as such you can still mine curious bits from it that may either shine a light on alternative paths not taken or be of use for classical play campaigns here and now. ( I pointed out a few months back on this blog TS had trace elements of early concepts that mostly dropped out of the fabric of rpgs: competition and GM-player role blur.)

Another interesting coulda, shoulda,woulda-been TS concept was the idea of a character-based sandbox campaign (as opposed to the mostly location-based sandboxes that we many of us know and love in classic-play D&D or Traveller). I say coulda-been because while the idea of a game based on the non-linear unraveling and exploration of a character-based espionage network was explicitly laid-out in the campaign section of the original rules, game-play and the published modules became quickly centered around the commando raid-like clearing of Bad Guy facilities.

Which is a shame because an interesting space between the old location sandboxes and the heavily-plotted nightmares that marked each successive edition of D&D was lost. Let me back up and break down that forgotten piece.

TS's campaign rules provided several ways to portray a network of NPCs. (For ease of reference I present the page in its entirety on the right here, click to embiggen). There were several layers of the network from the Administrators at the top (which in Spy World were originally playable characters) .

More interestingly there was the use of six different types of communications links inside the network complete with symbolic notations for each: a line with arrows pointing in both directions for a direct connection or a broken line pointing in one direction to signify a dead drop.

In theory, this would be used to make a symbolic map. Instead of hex or area location maps linked by roads, tracks, and rivers you had nodes based on the various agents linked by how they are interfacing with the rest of the network. Play presumably would revolve around eliminating, duping, tracking, spying seducing, etc. each personage along that network in an attempt to break or infiltrate it.

You saw the attempt to use this model in the introductory module, the infamous Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle. Its implementation was a muddle though; the scenario taking place in a fictional spy-ridden Cold War neutral town nestled between East and West typically ran as a locale-based town and dungeon crawl with an awkward attempt to graft the network rules on top.

It wasn't until the release of the Top Secret Companion with its sample campaign scenario Operation Meltdown did you get the full effect of Merle Rasmussen's, the game's creator, intentions. In that scenario, you had a timeline for a conspiracy by a globe-trotting network of baddies spanning the fence from ninjas to South American Nazis.

But the timeline wasn't a plot railroad as much as it was a timetable of events that would happen if the players didn't intervene through their romping around in a non-linear. The focus of play was the team of players jetting around the world, figuring out which person fit where and how to muck up the plans. They could fly anywhere with the help of their various spy agencies, adventuring was completely independent of both the box cars of an adventure path and the restrictions of locale-based sandboxes. Interesting stuff.

To give you a graphic representation here is the comm links diagram for the adventure:

The style of campaign play has an intriguing amount of potential for a fantasy campaign too. 

Say you set a hook, the players uncover a vast conspiracy of forces in the Archsyndocracy of Outer Kutalika to awaken the cosmic horror of long, dead elder gods. They chose to follow this hook and you draw up a network like above for a network scattered around the locales of your campaign world (you could seed it with agents living or visiting dungeons or other traditional adventuring locales to pad out play).

Or take something smaller and more confined, but filled with NPC intrigue: the Golden Khandive's  royal pleasure barge; a drafty, snowed-in fortress; the gizzards of a sleeping god; or what have you.

Food for thought in the sandbox.

Further Adventures in Humanspace

I continue to try and put at least a few bucks where my mouth is regarding playing in Tekumel-derived settings, albeit mostly in the non-canonical mutant offspring, Humanspace Empires.

The Drune generously gave me the thumbs up on my tardy request to join one of his two playtest play-by-post campaigns, Spaceswords & Glory, the story of an Imperial Navy crew of a 1000-ton spherical space xebec, Deeds of Glory (Májikhajiyel). A related blog is now online for folks wanting a ringside seat here.

My own ridiculous addition to the crew is a Pygmy Folk navigator nicknamed Lil' Chompy. His backstory (likely to the meet the fine guiding editorial hand of the Gamemaster):

Khompskpsk is the closest transliteration for the formal name of the Nininyal nicknamed “Lil' Chompy” by fans of its series of trashy vid-novellas. Growing up a sheltered and privileged hermaphrodite of a 31^st Credit Rank Trade Collective (Vermillion sub-shade) on Alpharetz, he left the comfy confines of the clan burrow in early adulthood after failing spectacularly in the clan business of administering nanosecond financial transactions on the trans-dimensional derivatives market. Lil' Chompy has showed extraordinary verve and romanticism for one of its species swinging from career path of derring-do to another (or so his tall tales claim)—fighting moisture bandits on Planet X and rustling Gacháya on the Shen outer rim—before settling on the ultimate adventure: the Humanspace Imperial Navy.Some claim that his series of Serganent Rokk Clone vid-novellas such as I Serve the Autocrator and It Came From Marb IV are derivative and stolen straight from the pages of real life characters he knows, but Lil' Chompy keeps his beak tight on such matters.

I still have an open offer for those wanting to play a Humanspace pick me-up at North Texas RPG Con, contact me off or on-site if interested. (I also hear rumors that there might be a Jakalla underworld game going on premise, but we will see how that develops.)

The Fantasy Game

You might have heard this question once or twice (or countless times): do we have too many sets of old school rules being produced? My own head swings indecisively back in forth between “yes, please by all that's unholy stop the madness” and “let a hundred flowers bloom” positions.

Sifting through the massed ranks of posts from the cutting room floor (discussed yesterday), it surprised me--given that ambivalence--to remember that six months back I was thinking of synthesizing a number of the subsystems I had been jacking around with on this blog into an unholy beast of my own.

Like the Domain Game, the Fantasy Game (yes, as Jim the Wampus noticed yesterday the tongue-in-cheek working title was based on the likely apocryphal story about D&D's own working title) was supposed to be less about being a complete system—that likely no one would ever play—but a collection of variant sections that could be plopped piece by piece into someone's campaign.

After yesterday's round of input, I had thought I would clean it up and post as something fully digestable. Memory, though, is a funny thing. Not only do I not remember where some of the ideas were going, truth be told, I didn't even remember typing this out when I rediscovered yesterday.

So instead of a bang-you-over-the-head complete vision, here's a gamble and experiment on my part that can be taken in two ways by a reader: 1. a window into how game design ideas can develop in different tracks over time on a blog (you'll see my bracketed comments from this morning interspersed); or 2. an “open source” outline of a project which you can feel free to add, subtract, modify, riff, comment, or (more likely) ignore completely.

Alternative character generation system

1. Quasi-Traveller, background and event-oriented though, not adult career. Childhood and young adulthood events determine dice pool for attributes. [This system was realized here]
2. Players have choice of background (urban, rural, barbarian, demi-human, exotic) [Brad of Skull Crushing for Justice has been developing something along these lines.]
3. Random equipment table option [modified from my LotFP one]
4. All characters with INT 15 or over start with one cantrip (0-level Magic-User spell)
5. All characters with WIS 15 or over start with one orison (0-level Cleric spell) [I had helped develop some old school-feeling 0-level spells for Basic Fantasy RPG around this time.]

Alternative class advancement

1. Characters start at 0-level. Neutral alignment, chain armor max, only weapons that do d6 max, d6 hit points.
2. First level obtained at 200 experience points. In consultation with GM (based on performance), player picks class and alignment.
3. First level characters can only be picked from the standard Basic or OD&D classes.
4. At 4^th level player can choose to continue in standard class or pick a new sub-class that the PC qualifies for [Thinking on split classes progressed here.]
5. At 5^th level the PC can choose to start a career in a “leader set” class.

Sub-classes

Each sub-class would add a certain amount of exp to level advancement. Maybe same for all classes or each parent class. Each subclass would have new abilities and some restrictions.

Fighter

Hunter

Archer

Beserker

Champion/Noble Warrior

Beast Master

Cleric

Druid

Monk

Rune Caster

Mystic

Witch Hunter

Magic User

Elemental College (Fire, Earth, Water, or Air)

Witch

White mage 

Black mage

Necromancer

Illusionist

Sage

Alchemist

Psionicist

Thief

Assassin

Mountebank 

Scout

Bard/Skald

Delver/Dungeoneer

Leader Set Class

War Lord

Noble

Spy Master

High Priest

Merchant Prince

Guild Master

Court Mage

Optional game play mode in which campaign can be played between two different sets of PCs in alternating sessions.

Typical adventurer set. Played as normal D&D. Footloose characters who will occasionally work for the second set

Leader set. PCs start as leader level class: military, noble, religious, wizard, guildmaster, gang leader, merchant prince, barbarian leader etc. PCs create missions and design/build locales that the other set can play in. Gameplay more similar to Birthright, but with less abstraction [Domain Game grew up out of this germinal].

“Pendragon D&D” epic campaign time 

1. Adventures limited to one season per year.
2. Charts or mini-games for: Matters of the Heart, Wee Ones and Family Relations, Business Investments, Research and Training, Religious and Arcane Affairs.

The Cutting Room Floor

I hit 500 posts last week—not published posts mind you, those only stand at half that number—but 500 hundred drafts that have not seen the light of day because I gave up on them before I hit that shiny, red post button. Some are outright rants brimming with whatever flavor of the month passion, some flit from thought to thought, some are painfully long with slow expositions, and some are just painful.

Every once in a while I resurrect one—the Dad and Vietnam story from last week for example—polish it up and put it out there. Those posts are invariably missing one key element to make them work: a good hook into something larger or broader of interest to readers; a solid lede to give it punch; an observation to push it out of being trite or overdone; and so on.

To date I haven't run out of something to say—just ways sometimes to express it in a way that my worst critic—myself--can stand.

Want a window into my jumble? Here we go. Here are the headers and ledes from four cutting floor posts (all over three months old).

Outtake 1:

Character-Based Sandbox Campaigns

On the face of it, Top Secret is an odd place to keep digging for experimental bits. Back in the day it was—as most of the historically-themed second-generation games—an awkward cousin of the TSR family. Nowadays with little to no current following, we can safely and sadly say it's in the dustbin of gaming history. Still Top Secret, in it's pre-TSR publication days as Spy World, had it's roots in the mid-70s creative explosion of experimentation with rpgs and as such you can still mine curious bits from it that may either shine a light on alternative paths not taken or be of use for classical play campaigns here and now...

Outtake 2:

House Rules: Learning As You Go

One learns many things experientially while in the GM hot seat. In the heat of (simulated) battle, you quickly learn that many of your best-laid plans work in ways you never intended positively or negatively—or just plain don't work. In fact, it's often the oh-so clever ideas that you so proudly clap yourself on the back on that often are the biggest offenders...

Outtake 3:

The Fantasy Game, D&D Variant Game

[No pithy lede, mostly a long outline]

Alternative character generation system (slightly more detailed version of website system)

1. Quasi-Traveller, background and event-oriented though, not adult career. Childhood and young adulthood events determine dice pool for attributes.
2. Players have choice of background (urban, rural, barbarian, demi-human, exotic)
3. Random equipment table option (modified from my LotFP one)
4. All characters with INT 15 or over start with one cantrip (0 level MU spell)
5. All characters with WIS 15 or over start with one orison (0 level Cleric spell)...

Outtake 4:

Spellcaster Demographics

How many spellcasters live in yon town? It's something we don't often think about on a deep level--or at least admittedly its something I rarely think about--but it is a demographic yardstick with profound implications. Campaign thinking in D&D seems to hang on the magical consumer economy for player characters. The distinction between low and high fantasy settings thus revolving around the frequency of magic items, the relative likelihood of a magic “store”, the availability of magical services from NPCs, etc...

Why post them, you conveniently ask?

Simple, all four of these are candidates for Lazarus treatment. Which ones deserve it? (If any, after all a good friend is one who tells you have a big dollop of toothpaste dangling on your chin.) 

Black Hobbits: Variant Classic D&D Class

A variant class inspired by posts by two of my favorite bloggers here and here.

Black Hobbits

Requirements: DEX 9, CON 9

Prime Requisite: STR and DEX

Hit Dice: 1d6

Maximum Level: 8

From Monsters! Monsters!:

“[Black Hobbits] does not refer to their skin tone, but rather to their political affiliations. They are physically the same as other hobbits, but are not nice people...Unlike normal hobbits, black hobbits hair is black and wiry, and they are fully bearded (like dwarves).”

Black hobbits are outwardly plain, ordinary halflings--who have secretly devoted their dark little hearts to the cause of Chaos. Indeed their devotion to the cause runs so deep that all black hobbits are required to join the local branch of the Chaos Party (though the inherent divisiveness of such an organization has lead to a vast confusing array of splinter groups, internal tendencies, factions, and rump groups.)

Black hobbits share the same abilities and limitations as their comfort and law-loving brethren, though they possess a few special abilties particular to their class. At second level a black hobbit learns the ability of Agitation, a skill in which they can temporarily raise their Charisma score to 18 once a day when exhorting others to perform acts of mischief and mayhem. At 4^th level they can do this twice a day, at 8^th three times.

They also gain the ability at third level to manufacture little round black bombs, a small hand-held explosive device that deals out 1d8+1 damage in a 10-foot range. They can make one such bomb per week and 30 gp worth of material. At sixth level they can begin to make two bombs a week.

Black Hobbit Level Progression
Experience	Level	Hit Dice (1d6)
0	1	1
2,100	2	2
4,200	3	3
8,400	4	4
16,800	5	5
33,600	6	6
67,200	7	7
134,000	8	8