Friday, March 29, 2024

Friday Book Recommendations (Mar 29)

I didn't so much miss last week as not finish any books I considered worth recommending. Which is why this week I was up from 2 am -5 am finishing this, which I have been savoring my way through for the last 9 months. Don't say I never do anything for you. 

The Best of Catherynne M. Valente, Volume One by Catherynne M. Valente: This book is a delight from start to finish. Her prose style is so distinctive that every story feels like meeting an old friend with a spectacular new saga, and her sense of compassion for humanity and sense of humor makes every such saga a reason to linger over coffee all afternoon to hear it. I can't recommend this highly enough. 

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

On the Origin of Mutations

Jumping between the 1E (1978) and 4E (1992) editions of Gamma World and the 1E (1979) and 2E (1982) editions of Villains and Vigilantes and you can see some interesting changes in the depiction of character powers - the earlier 

 

Look at how much more detailed Mental Control is in 4th edition than it is in 1st, and so many of those are further limits on the power. Who it can and can't attack, how far away they can be, how long it lasts, what they can do with the controlled body, are all seriously diminished in 4E from 1E. But the concept of this being a dominance/possession where the PC can only control one body at a time and if the controlled body dies the controller also dies, are consistent. 

Between 1978 and 1992 there are so many more RULES in place for how to handle this thorny power, but they are all still diegetic: you can go either way on whether you get to use the controlled body's muscle memory, but there's a logic to it; the rules don't get anything into the player experience of what happens to the player if their PC is under Mental Control, how to handle that at the table, the strength of the PCs will or the Players desires. 1992 didn't have the language for that. 

As an aside, so many things in Gamma World feel, well, controlled. Like yes, you can be a mutated human, animal or plant, you can have any number of strange abilities, but Mental Control works like this no matter what, by god. It's strangely reminiscent of the Gumshoe game Mutant City Blues where the mutant powers are so consistent that they can be forensically tracked and used for crime solving (which is the whole premise of Mutant City Blues, a sort of CSI Super Heroes setting). 

When you take a look at the two editions of V&V, separated by a much shorter period of time, it is both similar and different 


It's hard to tell from the formatting of the two editions but the length looks roughly the same, with 2E being a little longer. But 2E is also more elegant. It has rules for fatigued elsewhere in the book it can reference rather than lay them out here (but they are the same concept of the controlled character being at half ability because of fighting against the control. Rather than a set deadline, the player has routine chances to escape the control based on their characters established personality; not great from today's design standards but also not as bad the the total lack of escape opportunity and rules for how the other characters in the scene can try to free the character. The power also becomes more rather than less open ended in its implementation: there's no discussion of whether the target remembers the mind control, it says that it may require communication, and doesn't discuss range once established. While the 1E power was open ended, the 2E is more so. 

The power becoming more open ended and clearer makes it more comic book: here's the rough set of rules for how mind control works, but the specifics and chrome will change from character to character. Gamma World remains, for all it's crazy, a place where rules still apply, if you can learn them, and therefore manipulate them. 

The V&V 1E to 2E is clearly a clean up edit. Gamma World 1E to 4E is laying down new rules and restrictions. 

I don't normally refer to Mighty Protectors, which is the V&V 3E, because the system is just so different, but this is an interesting case


Please forgive the choppiness of the cut and paste there but I needed to skip the point cost table. But look at what the change between 1982 and 2017 produced. The mechanics and terminology are much more technical and precise. The absence of an attack/defense table in MP means a lot of rules around how to calculate a successful hit, with specific rules on if the attacker can tell the mind control worked: this would be depending on the specific character chrome in 1E/2E, but here is designed to set up the exact scene of pretending to be controlled even if that doesn't necessarily follow the character intent. Being able to silently control someone is a paid for ability rather than something determined as part of the character idea/ general power weighting. The mind control lasts even after the mind controller is knocked out, which again might or might not make sense and used to be up to the GM and Player to design for the character

Controlled targets get a chance to save every round, as well as when ordered to act against their nature or when allies try to help them; Mind Control as a way to remove player agency is just so much easier to escape. Except there's a save involved and the GM can say "Oh this villain spent eleventy-skillion imaginary points so your save penalty is enormous" so the chance to escape may be illusionary. Still, stochasticity says a 5% chance is gonna come up sooner or later. 

All told the decisions around how the power works across the 5 examples are interesting to me in terms of time and design and GM/Player Design at Start agency. Likely more on these topics later.

Gamma World's Hopeless Character

I kinda love that this guy is in both the '78 and '92 versions of Gamma World as the prototypical Hopeless Character 

In my head cannon he is now an incredibly powerful psychic who keeps mind controlling players to leave him alone, mot take him on adventures, and just let him mind control fish into his mouth. 





Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Combat Charts and Gamma World Mutations

In my last post on this Joshua Kronengold posted the question of how Gamma World's combat chart handled mutations: since the combat chart had weapon class 7 as "Robotic tentacles", was there any mutation that said "the mutants tail/hair/tentacles attack as weapon class 7", or similar things for say, laser rifles and mutant laser generation. 

The answer is "no", because mutant powers that attack people apparently just do damage, no attack roll needed. How this squares with Power Armor giving you some defense against Black Ray Pistols but not Radiating Eyes is left as an exercise to the reader. Mutations are generally limited in how often they can be used, but when they're used they hit and do damage, at least somewhat. 

That's interesting in that it puts Gamma World in a space between D&D (which doesn't have energy attacks on its combat chart but does allow saving throws against them, which are swapping attack and defense rolls), and V&V, which compresses all of melee into one entry on the chart and then gives each energy attack and defense its own line. 

I'm trying really hard to not homebrew the Gamma World 4E that I had the kids roll up characters in for the library game, but if i did (when I do) it will include putting in something like a combat chart. GW 4E doesn't have one, devolving to an utterly bizarre mish mash of ascending armor class with the term THAC being the to hit bonus*, so it loses all the inherent physics/this part of the how technology works is consistent model of the original Gamma World that makes exploration easier, and replaces it with something deeply confusing when you think about it but more familar kinda.

*That's right. you take the THAC0 that's needed to make descending armor class rational, then replace the descending armor class to ascending armor class so you can just see the number you need to hit - and remove the concept of the Armor's Class having any meaning against the Weapon Class for the 2E AD&D model - so that the modifier just needs to be a bonus, but you still give it the term "To Hit Armor Class".... <facepalm> 

This does get to the core of Joshua's complaint: "What's fascinating but frustrating here is how the "weapon classes" are really just damage types.... but with the number in between as an extra/confusing factor." Yes. There are a lot of extra confusing factors in every edition of Gamma World. Anywhere that there was new ground to be broken the game designers came up with various new models to do it, but eveything is just kinda half-assed. It's maddening. 

Wednesday we're going to look at how Gamma World 1E and 4E compare to V&V 1E and 2E in terms of power/mutation description and design.

Monday, March 25, 2024

The Battle For Vulture Point Act I Scene IV

Shortly after the noon hour, with the waxing sliver of the sun providing limited illumination on the roads, our four nobles reached the Blue Stone in. There, in no particular order they bathed in the inn's famous hot springs (the act of which the Lady Floriane deemed 'Heavenly'), had a restorative meal and wine to aid the healing of the wounded among their number, listened to Hiram recount one of the many "Pedro and Pierre Go Crypt Robbing" farces performed in the cities that are apparently more true to the dungeoneering life than he had thought (Brian: Imagine Harold and Kumar got to Undermountain and you have the right idea), counted out the treasure from the Tor (which, by imperial law, is considered both free for the taking and tax free as a means of denying funding to the chaos cults who might use the crypt), and were separated from some of that 800 silver and 75 gold by the 2.5 gold a person fee charged to them by the Blue Stone's gnomish proprietors. (Tom: lovely place, but we're being bent over a barrel by the uppity peasants. Brian: You could always. . . Haggle. [Shocked looks around table] Melas: Haggle? Don't be absurd. It's bad enough we have to handle our own coin!)

They also found some time to further explore their magical items - the quill pen ring, the leather belt, the pearl from the spider's room and the officer's circlet on the skull they found in the stone chest - and discuss what they should do with them. Of them only the belt's function is known: it marginally enhances the wearer's strength, and is as such given for the moment to Melas as he recovers from the spider's enervating venom. They decide to further investigate the first three items in the city, but to offer the circlet to the Paladins when they hand over the rescued skulls and offer an accounting of recent events to those bastions of the imperial justice. While they might have the legal right to claim the circlet, that is a far distance from the honorable right to wear such a badge of office. Which of these items, if any, might be the key to the beast men's return mentioned in the wall carvings is unclear - perhaps that masked tomb robber had made off with something?

Or perhaps it was someone else? The shaft into the Tor appears to have been dug some months previous, so either the beast men have been slipping in there since well before winter or they just made use of the concealed entry. Puzzles upon puzzles to be explored once they reach the Chaotic City. By this time in the conversation the Blue Stone was well behind them and they were approaching both mid afternoon and the next day's in, their path made smoother by the dwarf-fitted stones of the road. The age of their next inn was made obvious by the shingle proclaiming it to be the Dusty Road Tavern, when this road had not been dusty even in the heat of summer for nearly two centuries.

The four retired inside and accepted the tavern keepers bottle of wine, with Melas checking both the label and the cork (with a brief discourse on the origins of cork checking as a defense against inferior wines being placed in better bottles; oh, and the times that poisons were placed in superior wines in such bottles as well, and the technological revolutions of the last century that make such cork marking possible). Dietrich, ever practical, kept the innkeeper from making the same 'mistake' as their previous house in laying out an elaborate, but unnecessary and repast which might added to their tab, and Hiram offered to entertain the room with a song on his magnificent hurdy-gurdy.

Before the music could begin, Melas and Cybele's half-elven ears picked up the sound of a horse approaching at a gallop. Looking out the window to see what was the concern Cybele spied someone near collapsing in the saddle and raised the alarm. The innkeeper and his wife escorted the exhausted and concussed man into the common room, identifying him as a servant of the Lord Ambleer, whose manor was not a hour away - indeed they had passed his drive in their carriage. Hiram and Melas looked the man over and the young actor, not liking the looks of the servant's head wound, performed a complex bit of dramaturgy in which the wound was drawn from the man's flesh into a handkerchief, shifting the cotton from bleached white to blood red.

The servant awoke with a start and graciously thanked them for their assistance. He then informed them that he must return to his Lord Ambleer with all speed. Our four nobles of course understood, and Dietrich asked that the servant also convey their best wishes to his noble lord. Given what both Melas and Hiram recalled of the Lord Roland Ambleer it was more than likely that they would be dining with him this evening, so Dietrich took a moment before retiring and making ready to speak again with the innkeeper about their meal for the evening - common enough courtesy, but what was uncommon was him offering to cover an upgrade to their worthy coachman's room and board for the evening, so that neither that fellow nor the Dusty Road Inn's proprietors would feel financial sting from the events Dietrich felt sure would soon overtake them.

As expected, the Lord Ambleer invited our four nobles to his manor house for dinner that evening. The house was large and tastefully appointed, with parts rebuilt by dwarvish labor in the last century. The quartet entered via mahogany doors and handed their blades over to one of the servants, as per the custom of not wearing ones’ weapon inside a nobleman's house without freely given permission. They were soon escorted into the presence of Roland Ambleer, who looked the worse for his years. The lord invited all of them to sit and enjoy some coffee (a new experience for Hiram and Cybele, who did their best to hide their shock at the bitter taste), but Roland did not drink from the same pot - Melas surreptitiously craned his neck to see that their host was drinking a tisane of reddish herbs instead of the potent cafe. As the quartet introduced themselves Roland took their measure, with the encyclopedic memory behind his keen yes placing names to families. At Hiram's introduction he gave an almost imperceptible nod and the briefest of thin smiles, but the young actor thought the moment wrong to press the issue, so he merely nodded in the affirmative when their host asked if he was a musician.

The Lord Ambleer thanked them again for their assistance with his servant and after some small talk explained his circumstances: beset with a persistent condition he has developed a mixture of herbs that offers him some relief, but his servants were attacked on their trip back from Emirikol with his latest shipment. The account from his servant was lucid enough thanks to Hiram's curing of the man's concussion, but it seems clear that bandits have again invested Vulture Point. This time they have somehow trained the place's eponymous avians to attack, as the riders were ambushed by vultures that dropped stones on them from a great height while the gnomes kept their diminutive forms half hidden in the rock. Three of the four men, two of the horses and both mules were lost, and the surviving servant, Murthas, barely escaped with his life. Hiram manages to stifle the anecdote that came to mind: how the repeated infestations of gnomish and halfling bandits at Vulture Point are often used as a satirical device in the south to mock the ill-organized northerners, and instead forced down some more coffee with a look he hoped indicated great experience with the noble brew. While he could arrange a party to attack the place, Ambleer continued, his own condition prevents him from participating. In any event it would take several days to prepare, and his supply of the herbs runs short....

Melas fills the hanging silence quickly enough, exulting "A birding party? Capital! We can leave before first light I expect." The rest of the evening is spent in pleasant conversation, dining and making plans over Rolland's maps of Vulture Point, which does indeed resemble a vulture head. "What sort of force causes a mountain shaped like a vulture to be named after a vulture and populated by vultures?" Melas wondered aloud, and while Dietrich argued that it was the presence of the vultures that makes us see the oddly shaped rock in a certain light and name it for their presence, the Lord Ambleer supported the doctrine of signatures - that such a mountain would have to have vultures, summoned by its very shape and the order of the universe. Amidst the rustling of maps and the clatter of weapons and armor being laid out for those who lacked them for the morning a fine time was had by all, but given their early start even the full vigor of youth would be taxed by too late an hour, and Melas limited himself to splitting a bottle of wine with the Lady Floriane (who on her own then finished off some rather nice port, and woke the worse for it).