[Swordbearer] Characteristics, Fate Points and Experience

[Lev Lafayette]

Hi people,

Over the past couple of months I've been using the Swordbearer rules to
run my fortnightly Friday-night group through the old classic AD&D
module "The Hiddene Shrin of Tamoachan". With a bit of hacking for the
game world I'm using (as previously mentioned, based on Greg Costikyan's
'Barbarian Kings' boardgame) it turned out to be quite a success,
especially for a group which is usually more into contemporary
narrativist-style play. A classic survival dungeon-crawl was not
something that was usual fare for them and even less so for the female
players (we're about 50/50 in our group, wonder of wonders).

Whilst I don't want to go into enormous detail about that particular
scenario (which I leave for a review on rpg.net one day) or conversion
issues, I do want to discuss some things which the players (all
newcomers to Swordbearer, except myself) raised about the game in the
interests of some rules modifications where necessary. This will a short
series of articles relating to Swordbearer design which I slowly bring
out over the next few weeks. Most of the proposed changes to the system
are, in effect, quite modest and no change will introduced unless it (a)
makes the game easier and more fun to play or (b) is more realistic and
preferably both!

Something that really struck everyone who played with the influence of
the Nodes and Spirits in the game. The other night I came up with
something which really struck home: Swordbearer could also be called,
more accurately, "SPIRITBEARER"! After all, not everyone in the world
bears a sword, but all sapients do have Spirits - and there is something
very unique and cool about how the game does that. I believe it is
important to strongly include a thematic title to a game.

(You should have seen the rants I went into during the early days of
playtesting of the latest edition of RuneQuest... When everyone else was
going on about rules for the new combat system or task resolution I kept
harping on about how the game title should be reflected in the system.
"The game is called RuneQuest; it should be *about* questing for
Runes!". It seems that this was listened to, albeit not exactly in the
subtle manner I had in mind. There was also an excellent side discussion
with a certain Steve Perrin about "ElfQuest" (quests by and for Elves),
DragonQuest (the dragons are the toughest opponent in the game) and,
although it wasn't mentioned "Call of Cthulhu", which really is a call
to madness - and of course, "Paranoia" ... as for Dungeons & Dragons,
well, from the published material it would probably be better called
"Dungeons & Orcs" but that wouldn't have sold as well. At least "Bunnies
& Burrows" was accurately named!)

Anyway, on to some Swordbearer tweaking..


1.0 Character Generation

1.1 Characteristics

If I had made my players engage in random rolling in order as was the
fashion twenty-five years ago there would have been instant rebellion.
Whilst this intent of accurate simulation of statistical distribution
was a feature of many RPGs of the time, it would seem that contemporary
gamers actually want to choose the characters they want to play (bloody
actors). As an immediate compromise I allowed a roll of 3d10 drop 1 for
Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Social Status and Age and gave the
player the option of distributing these as they desired for their
character. 

Whilst I certainly believe the human Strength roll of 1d10+1d6+2 is
easily converted to the normal Swordbearer range, it does make me wonder
whether the relatively flat bell-curve of 2d10 is entirely desirable -
it especially leads to characters of vastly different abilities and
experience. Perhaps there is something to be said about 3d6 after all!

Proposal: Starting human characteristics are determined on 3d6 for
Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Social Status and Age (*2+10, range 16
to 46). See also 1.2 Fate Points

1.2 Fate Points

As you may have noticed I effectively introduced a 'Fate Point' system
for the development of characteristics. I quite like these as a bias
towards PCs that does not damage an accurate simulation model in general
in the same way that allowing players to distribute their rolls among
characteristics doesn't harm the overall simulation model either.

Fate Points are an effective narrative tool for PCs. The player can take
on a 'author' role in the game universe in some way temporarily
influencing the reality where their character would have no control. For
example, when the player describes a scene as "OK, so Henri searches
through the chest. Along with the necklace you [the GM] has described,
he also finds a rat carcass". Now the GM hadn't planned for a rat
carcass to be in the chest and there's no "contents of chest table". But
what the hell, if the player wants a rat carcass go ahead and let them
have it. It's their story too. They probably have a cunning plan which
will be entertaining..

There's a nice rule of thumb of giving players some author role in the
aphorism "Say yes or roll the dice".

Now Fate Points are like this, but for things which are a bit bigger.
Fate Points are things like Boromir turning all those Orc arrows in Lord
of the Rings to minor hits through dice re-rolls. Fate Points are the
guide in The Mummy just so happening to have a Star of David talisman
when confronted by the the undead Pharoah. The sort of thing which saves
the character's skin not by their innate ability but rather with
plausible but dramatic luck.

I'm very found of Fate Points being awarded for dramatic roleplaying and
being spent only on such environmental circumstances. Indeed, unless I
am utterly mistaken I might even be the person who had such an idea
first published (Rolemaster Companion VI, 1992 - the first option was a
hat-tip to existing games which awarded XP for roleplaying e.g., GURPS
and the Hero System).

Awarding players 1-3 Fate Points per game session for their characters
tends to keep them 'in character' which is interesting and them to spend
it on environmental luck (and such as dice re-rolls). Starting PCs with
5 Fate Points is enough to give them some re-rolls on their starting
characteristics.

Proposal: Award players 1-3 Fate Points per session. Starting characters
have 5 Fate Points which may be spent on character generation.


1.3 Experience

Ah, a much vexed question. They didn't like this one. Not only was it
random which led to a very flat bell curve with a wide range at young
ages, the Intelligence modifier was for the total modifier rather than
per die. Also there was a general feeling that there wasn't enough
experience to develop a "fully-rounded" character, even for those who
rolled quite high for their age. It was also the beginning of concerns
of how much dice-rolling there was in character generation. 

I considered the argument that indeed experience is at least a somewhat
random process, given opportunities and so forth, but it was pointed out
to me that background experience was relatively stable compared to
'adventuring experience' where one risks life and limb.

One important facet that came to mind is a general design principle of
not developing detail which have no further influences in the game
system. In Swordbearer this is currently the case with Age. It is not
Age itself which determines the quantity of background Experience Points
but the Age Category (Youthful, Young Adult, Mature Adult, Older Adult).
Now either the game should abstract age into categories like this (for
example, Shakespeare's "Seven Stages of Man") which would be more like
what was done with Social Status or the characteristic Age should have a
direct influence on play.

If the later is chosen, Experience can be directly tied to Age. Given
that the current rate (average roll plus average Intelligence modifier
(assume per die, rather than total) equals 4.5 experience per ten years
post-adolescence, it is not terribly difficult to develop a system which
roughly correlates Age with Background Experience.

Proposal: Background Experience is a function of Age. Use the following
table to determine Experience Points for each year above 14. See also
Skills (2.0).

Intelligence Score              Experience Points
1-3                             1 XP per 4.0 years
4-5                             1 XP per 3.5 years
6-7                             1 XP per 3.0 years
8-9                             1 XP per 2.5 years
10-11                           1 XP per 2 years
12-13                           1.5 XP per 2 years
14-15                           2.0 XP per 2 years (1 per year)
16-17                           2.5 XP per 2 years
18-19                           3.0 XP per 2 years
etc                             etc


Anyway that's all for now. Should give everyone something to chew on, so
to speak.

All the best,



Lev