Championship Match & Unbelievable Odds [TPK]

I have to admit, no idea why I'm using this infamous D&D pic.
Until I can draft up a TPK logo, it's a good visual for the game
whenever I post updates or related material. 

I am the Warden!!

Fun time last night. We had a couple of friends over, including one of my fiancee's cousins, for a bunch of games and beverages that would make it unwise to drive. For Chris and I, it was a chance to finish up our initial match of TPK.

On Thursday, I talked about this work-in-progress skirmish game and provided a download to the first draft PDF. The day before, Chris and I ran a match in the Arena for 60 minutes before he had to go running back to school. Unfortunately, we weren't finished because of something I expected to be a rare event in the game: we had a tie.

To refresh, the goal of TPK is to end a 60-minute match with a single combatant holding the highest number of Damage points declared the Victor. In the event of a tie between two or more combatants, a special match is declared with both combatants entering a new Arena and fighting to the death. These matches differ in that every combatant starts with an amount of Health equal to their previous Damage score, thereby putting everyone off on a stronger and equal footing.

If a combatant is still alive at the end of a regular match and has the highest number of Damage points, that character is instead declared the Champion and is permanently added to the deck of combatants. The concept behind Champions is to reward such a rare occurrence, seeing as the theme behind the game is death (hence the name TPK).

In the case of our first match, when the timer sounded the end of the match, we had two standing combatants with a tie for the highest Damage (9 points). That's right, our first time ever playing this game and we have to go to a tie-breaking match to determine who would be declared the Champion and be added to the deck.

I'm not one for probability calculation, but I know my expectation of this happening was incredibly rare. We'll have to see if that's the case and as excited as I am for it to have happened out first time out, if it's actually a frequent event, I'm torn. On one hand, the original concept of the game was for everyone to die... a lot. That was part of the fun. If it's regularly possible for multiple Champion candidates in a single game, do I still want to call it TPK? Or do I want to play around with the gears and make it less frequent?

We shall see. As I've said before, this game is very much a side project run on my spare time (I know, that actually sounds ludicrous as I'm technically not employed and freelancers aren't supposed to have spare time) and I'm not sure when I'll be able to run another test or get to any of the revisions noted so far. I will say this... it was a lot of fucking fun. My hopes are high on this one.


You can download the first draft of TPK here. No charge, it's on me. 

TPK

I am the Warden!!

Last week, I teased my Twitter followers about a quick game drafted up over New Year's Eve called TPK and it's been sitting on my desk ever since. We finally had a chance to take it for a test spin this morning and I'm pleased to report it's held up very well to my expectations.

TPK does indeed stand for "Total Party Kill" and the objective of this fantasy miniatures skirmish game is to die with honour in the Arena. Each player controls a single combatant - either a Warrior or a Monster - drawn from a deck to challenge every other combatant in sight. Starting with only 1 Health, you gain additional Health by successfully attacking your opponents. When a combatant is reduced to 0 Health, the player randomly chooses a new one and returns to the Arena. Every time you hit an opponent, you gain 1 Damage and the combatant with the highest Damage at the end of a 60-minute match is declared the winner. If the winning combatant is still alive at the end of the match, they can rise to become a Champion and be permanently added to the deck.

As each combatant increases their Damage and/or Health, they can unlock additional Abilities, but they have special tools at their disposal from the beginning. Warriors come with a Starting Item (including weapons) and a Racial Ability, while Monsters start with a Natural Item and an Extraordinary Ability.

This 8-page PDF allows everyone to use their existing minis and battlemaps to run an endless cavalcade of matches and is intended as a pick-up game running up to 60 minutes at a time. While there is a lot of additional work and text revisions to make, I'm very pleased with how it went this morning and so was the other player. Additional rules for movement and Obstacles (or at least fleshing them out in greater detail rather than adding to them) are at the top of the list and I'll have to consider addendums to various combatants' abilities, such as the Mage and Psionicist. On that note, here's a list of the combatant available in TPK at the moment and basic rundown of their strengths.

Conflicting Morality

I am the Warden!!

There's an interesting combination of films releasing this weekend and they're a prime example of how morality is not only subjective, but adaptable. Zero Dark Thirty, the complete account of Bin Laden's assassination (with details provided by the CIA) and Gangster Squad, a fictional story of cops bringing their own brand of justice to the mob in the 1940s. On the surface, they're two completely different films, yet their standpoint on morality creates an interesting social conflict.

The big controversy regarding Zero Dark Thirty is the interrogation scene and it's causing such a stir in American political circles, there's an upcoming congressional hearing to determine how much information was provided to the filmmakers and whether or not the CIA offered up a red herring to promote their view on the effectiveness of torture. Going solely off The Daily Show, mind you, the emphasis of the debacle appears to be the merits of torture in counterterrorism and intelligence operations. The truth about first world countries using torture to gain access to essential information can be almost as divisive as abortion and gun control, all of which comes down to the people's belief in being "better" than your enemies.

Yet Gangster Squad is specifically about good cops breaking the law to enforce it by shooting up unarmed gangsters and probably all sorts of vicious beatings. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a scene where someone's being viciously interrogated. In a sense, it takes the dilemma of Zero Dark Thirty and says "Yeah, so what?" while beating the shit out of a guy strapped to a chair.

C'est irony, no?

A Sporting Decision

I am the Warden!!

Over the weekend, monumental news greeted professional hockey fans as the NHL and its players' union finally reached an agreement, thereby allowing the league to start playing almost five months late and with less than half of the season available. Don't worry, I'm not going to really talk about the NHL, hockey, or even sports, but it is a serious metaphor for something all adults must face several times in their lifetime.

Sooner or later, we all have to stop enjoying the things we used to love.

There was a NHL strike less than ten years ago and I swore off watching the NHL as soon as the strike started, infuriated over the players' union prohibiting their players from "representing their teams" in any fashion during the strike, including charitable events. There was a major charity golf tournament in Ottawa with half the roster unable to show and help raise needed funds for sick kids. My anger overwhelmed any possible enjoyment of the game and I stopped watching for a couple of years.

When I started dating my now-fiance, I got back into hockey because she played and was a huge NHL fan. What can I say? The limit to anyone's anger is getting laid. Now that the NHL is looking to come back from yet a second strike in a single decade, I'm faced with the same desire to stop watching the league. This time, however, the reasons are different. This time, I think it's a problem with professional sports altogether.

Under the Hood Climbs to the Top

I am the Warden!!

Señor Aaron at Roleplayers Chronicle posted the traffic report for his site yesterday and it seems Under the Hood, my weekly RPG mechanics/publishing column, has risen to become its most popular series. I've only seen some of the actual numbers for UTH columns and can only speculate on the remainder from there, but the mere fact that it pops up in many of the lists is very gratifying and I hope all of you enjoy everyone of them.

It's been a challenge keeping this up on a nearly weekly basis (all told, I only missed 6 weeks in 2012, including the entire month of August), but I plan to keep this sucker going for at least another year. It's been incredibly helpful in my own work as a kind of second blog with a stricter deadline to self-analyze RPG mechanics from around the industry and break down how I want them to apply in my own work. Many of the topics I wrote about during the early weeks were very influential in Killshot's designs. The trick now is pumping out new columns without stumbling over old ones.

However, that's enough time to pat myself on the back. Ironically enough, I have this week's column to finish up. (Hint: I'm talking about race mechanics this week, particularly the impoverished humans.)

What If... WotC Brought Back 3e?

I am the Warden!!

Playing with my D&D group yesterday (and doing so in person for once... always a nice touch), we were having a blast. I have to admit, though I'm not entirely sure why, this latest incarnation has me excited about D&D again. While every new playtest draft features tweaks and revisions hinting at any number of possibilities, it feels familiar and refreshingly different at the same time. I'm still in love with the advantage/disadvantage mechanic.

Then a thought occurred to me: what if Wizards of the Coast decided to go back to D&D 3rd edition? My first follow-up question wonders if it was even a consideration during those initial meetings to discuss the possibility of a new edition, but let's assume all those involved in making that call took a look at the situation and felt the best recourse was to return to what brought them so much glory in the previous decade. What if D&D and Pathfinder literally went head to head?

It's a trick question when you think about it. The idea of WotC actually re-launching 3e could create far more consequences and bad PR than anything as many would see it as "giving up" and "caving in." So there would have to be something about this effort to make it a revised edition while staying damn close to the original design of 3e. In a sense, it would be the same as Pathfinder: stick with the basics and tweak the classes, races, and such with your own personal touches. Would WotC reprint the previous rulebooks or redesign them with some minor revisions? If they were to reprint, it would likely be the whole 3.5 mess all over again and based on the fact that they seem to have learned from past mistakes (hence the whole reason for D&D Next), let's assume they simply turn back to supporting 3e again without new rulebooks or supplements for simplicity's sake.

2013: The Year of Reality

I am the Warden!!

That's right, kids. It's time for yet another blog to recognize the end of 2012 and talk about everything he wants to accomplish in 2013, AKA New Year's resolutions. My mind is flooded with them at the moment and, as I always do in times of uncertainty, I turn to my blog for guidance like a purse snatching victim turns to Batman as the scumbag runs away with her bag.

As much as I could spend time going over the good and bad of 2012 (with much of it awesome, despite the numerous difficulties still going on in my personal life), my focus remains on the coming year. There's great doom ahead; I can feel it. Based on how certain events have closed out this year, I can tell the early months of 2013 will be incredibly challenging and what kicks me in the balls hardest is that I can't talk about them in any detail online or in any public forum. Hell, even being vague is probably not a smart move, but a writer expresses himself through his craft because he knows no other way. The ongoing lawsuit for my accident makes it incredibly difficult and unwise to freely share my views and comments on such matters because it's incredibly easy for such posts to be taken out of context. Don't believe me? There's a giant stack of papers bound in volumes as thick as Senate committee reports for my online posts alone, including my Kickstarter project for Killshot, my Twitter account, Facebook, and everything else. So while I would love nothing more than to include these details as part of my own healing process, it's not a smart thing to do right now. As always, you'll just have to trust me on a few matters and allow the topic to move on without explanation.