Elthos ODS Skills System

Just a few words about the Elthos  'One Die System' (ODS)  Skill Learning Points system.  The basic idea of the system is that as Characters go up in Levels they gain Skill Learning Points at each level, which they can either save or spend.  If they spend them they can learn new skills, or beef up their level at already learned skills.

Currently the Elthos ODS Rules Book states:

Skills are learned by spending SLP, which are granted when the Character achieves each new Level. At each new Level the Character gets:

SLP = (# Of Sub Classes) + 1.

SLP can be saved up between Levels for a costly Skill.

For example, an Outlaw (Fighter-Thief), at 3rd Level gets this number of new SLP: (2 Sub Classes) + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3 SLP (and has a cumulative Total of 9).

Note: Higher Level Characters get more SLP.  Multi-Class Characters must spend their SLP on each of the Classes to which they belong.  So if a Spell Chanter + Fighter  at 3rd Level he gets new 3 SLP, of which he must spend 1 SLP on Spell Chanter Skills, and 1 SLP on Fighter Skills, or he can choose to learn Elective Skills.

Primary Skills (“Y” on the Skills Chart) are Class-Specific, always used at the current Level of the Character, and earn “Prime Experience” when used successfully.  Class-Prohibited Skills (“N”) can not be learned if the Character is a Member of that Class, unless he is a Multi-Class Character where one of his Classes has the Skill as Primary Skill (“Y”), or he is a Freeman.  Elective Skills (“E”) can be learned by the Class but using it does not gain Prime Experience.

Freemen  do not join the Adventurers’ Guild, but instead purchase Skill lessons from the Guild ad-hoc at twice the monetary cost of Guild Members.   They, however, can learn any Skills, and all of their Class-Skills (“Y”) give them Prime Experience.  If a Freeman has Requisites below what the normal Guild Class requires for a “Y” Skill, then learning that Skill costs +1 SLP for each point below the required Requisite.  Freemen get 3 SLP per Level.

Players can add Bonus SLP when learning any Skill or Mystic Power in multiples of the SLP cost for the Skill, to gain additional Skill Levels for that Skill.  For example, a 2nd Level Fighter adds +1 SLP for Medium Weapon (which normally costs 1 SLP to learn) would use Medium Weapons at 3rd Level, instead of 2nd Level, and it would cost him 2 SLP.

To determine how many SLP a Character has at a particular Level use this formula:

Total SLP at any Level = (Level * # of Classes) + 1

The Skills chart is this:

Skill Name              SLP     Thief   Fighter  MU   Cleric  Gold 
Light Weapons           1        Y       Y*      E      E b      1
Medium Weapons          1        N       Y*      N      E b      1
Heavy Weapons           2        N       Y*      N      N        2
Pick Pockets            1        Y*      N       N      N        1
Stealth                 3        Y*      N       N      N        3
Horse Riding            3        E       Y*      E      E        3
Reading Writing         1        E       E       Y      Y*       1
Archery                 2        Y*      Y       E      N        3
Rhetoric                2        N       N       Y*     Y        2
Gambling                2        Y*      E       E      N        2
Swimming                1        Y       Y*      E      E        1
Spell Casting         1 / L      N       N       Y*     N      1 / L
Miracle Invocation    1 / L      N       N       N      Y*     1 / L

Note that the chart is a small sample of skills. The Spells (and Invocations) cost 1 SLP / Spell Level. * means that the Skill is taught by the particular Guild in whose column the * appears. b means blunt weapons only.

We've experimented lately with a number of alternative formulas, my current favorite being this one:

CharacterLevel * NumberOfClasses * NumSkillsOfLevelAtLevel

The current system as a whole is a work in progress. There are issues with it which are being ironed out during the Elthos play testing. So far though, I am liking the system. I'm wondering if anyone cares to offer any thoughts or suggestions on the system as it is here.

Classic Beginner GM Mistakes

Gamesmastering Style

- Railroading.
- Author Appeal - "what I think is cool must be cool"
- Focused only on combat to the exclusion of role playing: weak narrative - numbers focused.
- Excessive cheating.
- GM plays all NPCs with the same personality and mannerisms.
- GM does not narrate well (stilted descriptions).

Player Interaction

- Not understanding player preferences.
- GM Rules lawyering (niddling over rules with players in-game).
- GM allowing rules lawyering during the game.
- GM fails to establish reasonable player expectations (what kind of game are we playing?)
- GM Egotism - playing the game to Beat the Players and WIN THE GAME (bad, bad, bad).
-- Abusive GM Fiat.
-- GM-PC - another symptom of GM Egoism. Falling in love with one's own NPC.
-- Player Favoritism - the GM's Girlfriend, or best friend.

Game Prep

- Not knowing the rules well enough.
- Being under-prepared for the game.
- Overstacking the odds against the player characters (accidentally or otherwise).
- Understacking the odds against the player characters.
- Rules Tunnel Vision - being locked in by the rules making the world limited, technical and predictable.
- Mediocre story.
- Too much control over Players.
- Creating overly complicated scenarios (and then losing track and creating internal contradictions).
- Creating overly simplistic scenarios (uninteresting).
- Monty Hall Dungeons (can work, sometimes, but not often).
- GM failing to establish party unity in the back story or setting.
- GM does not know their world well enough (the "um um um" syndrom).
- Pampering Players.
-- Giving out too much stuff too fast (treasure, info, etc).
-- Never letting PCs die.

The list was gleaned from discussions at one of our Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester Meetings not too long ago.  I thought it was a good enough list to share.  Perhaps it will save some Newbie Gamesmasters from some of the common pitfalls of the beginning GM.   Best wishes!

Elthos Web Application Progress

Ok, things are moving along slowly but surely.  I was very happily working on the next set of enhancements to the Elthos Web Application when I found that my hosting company, Arvixe, has been updating their database system.  So I ran into a big fat hairball when I tried to deploy my changes to the production system.  Oh joy.  That took about a week of communications, research, trial and error to resolve, but finally - the site has been updated.  The new feature is to allow Gamesmasters to select one of a number of Skill Learning Point Advancement Rate formulas from the World Configuration page and apply them to their World.  It's probably something of a senseless feature that I will eventually remove, but for now, while still in the testing phase I think it will be handy to use to compare the different formulas.  I may keep it anyway.  Depends on whether or not Gamesmasters actually wind up needing it.  My guess is that they will use the default.  But then again - maybe not!  Time will tell.  In the meantime, I'm pretty happy with the functionality so far as my own purposes as concerned.  :)

The Hero's Journey

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth (Hero With A Thousand Faces)

The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation--initiation--return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.





Stages of the hero’s journey:

1. Birth: Fabulous circumstances surrounding conception, birth, and childhood establish the hero’s pedigree, and often constitute their own monomyth cycle.

2. Call to Adventure: The hero is called to adventure by some external event or messenger. The Hero may accept the call willingly or reluctantly.

3. Helpers/Amulet: During the early stages of the journey, the hero will often receive aid from a protective figure. This supernatural helper can take a wide variety of forms, such as a wizard, and old man, a dwarf, a crone, or a fairy godmother. The helper commonly gives the hero a protective amulet or weapon for the journey.

4. Crossing the Threshold: Upon reaching the threshold of adventure, the hero must undergo some sort of ordeal in order to pass from the everyday world into the world of adventure. This trial may be as painless as entering a dark cave or as violent as being swallowed up by a whale. The
important feature is the contrast between the familiar world of light and the dark, unknown world of adventure.

5. Tests: The hero travels through the dream-like world of adventure where he must undergo a series of tests. These trials are often violent encounters with monsters, sorcerers, warriors, or forces of nature. Each successful test further proves the hero's ability and advances the journey toward its climax.

6. Helpers: The hero is often accompanied on the journey by a helper who assists in the series of tests and generally serves as a loyal companion. Alternately, the hero may encounter a supernatural helper in the world of adventure who fulfills this function.

7. Climax/The Final Battle: This is the critical moment in the hero's journey in which there is often a final battle with a monster, wizard, or warrior which facilitates the particular resolution of the adventure.

8. Flight: After accomplishing the mission, the hero must return to the threshold of adventure and prepare for a return to the everyday world. If the hero has angered the opposing forces by stealing the elixir or killing a powerful monster, the return may take the form of a hasty flight. If the hero has been given the elixir freely, the flight may be a benign stage of the journey.

9. Return: The hero again crosses the threshold of adventure and returns to the everyday world of daylight. The return usually takes the form of an awakening, rebirth, resurrection, or a simple emergence from a cave or forest. Sometimes the hero is pulled out of the adventure world by a force from the daylight world.

10. Elixer: The object, knowledge, or blessing that the hero acquired during the adventure is now put to use in the everyday world. Often it has a restorative or healing function, but it also serves to define the hero's role in the society.

11. Home: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on
his fellow man.



Gamesmasters and World Weavers may find the Cambell's delineation of Hero's Journey helpful in understanding some of the dimensions beneath the classic Quest and Hero stories of yesteryear.  May it help in your Mythopoea and give you insights and inspiration in the coming years!

Happy New Years!

Comment: Fast Forwarding Combat?

I'm writing in response to this article: http://thedumpstat.blogspot.com/2010/12/fast-forwarding-combat-part-1.html whose basic point is that D&D 4th Edition is designed in a way that makes anything but Big Boss combats a drag on the game.  So he recommends a solution where you basically skip all the low level and intermediate combats and just run the Big Boss combat in the normal 4e mode.  Everything else becomes a Skill Challenge.   Some of the comments point out the difficulty of the solution, but I'd rather discuss the heart of the problem itself.

I wrote the following reply to Blog's comment (the one above mine):

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of later editions of D&D because of just this sort of thing. Instead of making the system simple and easy to use, so that combat can be done efficiently and in a fun way, each new edition seems to add complexity and force a lot of niddling rules. In the latest release the designers appear to be trying to appeal to Gamists who are currently running around in WoW, not playing D&D. They figure that you can't compete against MMORPGs with table top RPGs because everyone will naturally play the former not the latter and over time table top RPGs will go the way of the Dodo bird if they don't compete. So they made D&D more like WoW to compete and try steal their players with the idea that D&D is now more like WoW in design. Players don't like to die? Fine! No Problem, we make it almost impossible to die in 4e. Etc.

This, in my opinion, was a pretty bone headed decision because table top RPGing is inherently different than computer RPGing. There's overlap, sure, but the overlap is not where they seem to think it is. So we wind up with yet another edition of D&D that's off the mark. Table top RPGing is a fantastic idea, and really fun, when done with a system that makes it easy instead of hard. I tend to go with light-weight or medium-weight homebrew systems that we designed to keep combat and the mechanics from bogging down the story and the fun of the game. 4e seems to me to do anything but that, and so the result is, as you say, ... what?

Sandbox And Spiral Methods Discussion on LRPGSW

I thought this was turning into a useful and interesting discussion on the Sandbox and Spiral Methods of Gamesmastering over on the Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester Yahoo Group, and so I am sharing the link to that discussion here.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LRPGSW/message/4098

Please feel free to participate either on the LRPGSW, or here in the Blog.  To participate on the LRPGSW Yahoo Group you merely need to join the group.  Its free.

The Eight Animals of Bagua

The Eight Animals of Bagua are, in order around the circle:

• Monkey
• Dragon
• Unicorn
• Hawk
• Bear
• Lion
• Snake
• Phoenix

Three are enchanted creatures.  The others are normal animals, but each with very distinctive characteristics.  The monkey is fast and light on it's feet, yet very powerful (do not get attacked by a monkey - it's bad).  The Hawk is fast and strikes from out of the blue, and with it's deadly beak and talons, a very serious adversary.  The Bear rolls and has enormous power in his blows.  The Lion, of course is both fast and powerful. The Snake is subtle, strikes suddenly, and can be poisonous.   

In the Elthos World I have the Eight Animals of Bagua associated to eight of the twelve Elkron (the cosmological  and Celestial Powers of my world).  They form a nucleus of Animal Powers, and as such are the Lords of Eight Animal Kingdoms.  There is one King of each of the Eight, forming the Eight Kings of Bagua.  Each one rules his own Kingdom in a fashion that is aligned to it's nature.  The King of Serpents is subtle, quick witted, and poisonous.  The Monkey King is light, carefree, and jovial - but very powerful, and a trickster who defies even the Greater Powers in the Higher Dimensions simply because he happens to be like that.  He is fun loving, and very loyal to his own people, and his friends.  And so on.   

I am trying to build out the Elthos World on the foundations of classical mythology, and so I use things like the Eight Bagua Animals to enhance and extend my world.  It's fun.   And in this way I try to make the various elements of my world work together and coordinate internally.  Thus forming a cohesive whole to the cosmology that hither to could not help but be fragmented.  Now it is much less so.  And I'm quite glad about that.  Keeping the mythological background of Elthos coherent has been one of the most difficult aspects of my endeavor as a World Weaver.  Finally, after much effort and research, I feel the fruit is beginning to ripen.  

On a side note, I have been studying Wudan (Chinese Internal Martial Art - Sword School) for several years now.  The curriculum covers Tai Chi, Hsing-Yi, and Bagua.  The above drawing is one that I created this morning for my Sifu as a Christmas gift.