Introducing Moolsh – An Example DMC Stand-In

Moolsh of Lankhmar – a spy/thief of the Guild.

Moolsh is a guilded thief who works, sometimes, alongside Glendawynn. He works the patch/quarter next to Glenda’s and you can read a lot more about Moolsh if you check out the session write up’s number three, and four. He’s a DMC (that’s Dungeon Master’s Character) but he’s also my ‘stand in’ if one of the PC’s die mid-game. One way in which you can keep the player occupied if he dies mid-game, rather than sitting, brooding and watching everyone else survive and perhaps haul off loads of treasure and experience checks, is to give them a DMC/NPC to play. So, have one or two of your DMC’s well rolled out – making them, in my terminology ‘major’ DMC’s, as I consider the minor DMC’s not worthy of a full character sheet – they get a mini-potted version.

Here’s his Hydra character sheet so you can check out how a spy/thief looks in the game-system as it stands at the moment (this is a version 1.1.2 character). If you have a stand in character the player can take part, at the same time take some off the load off of you as DM – one less character to run – just don’t make it too major a character. They can then hand the DMC back to you for the next session, when they introduce the new character you have co-created with them, or it might turn out that they want to stick with your minor-DMC you’ve given them to take over for you in the game. This takes some of the aftermath of the immediate sting out of a character death, and is one way as a DM that you can enable a player to manage the ensuing transition from one character to the next.

A Bit About Hydra Character Generation.

Just to say some points about the differences between Hydra character generation 1.1.2 and 1.0 (not that you know much because all that interesting stuff remains ‘protected’ and I’m still writing it). First some of the attribute names changed. Just in an effort to make them sound more like how they should be, and what they are meant to be representing and capturing. You can see the differences if you look at an earlier 1.0 character sheet. Then work history or occupational development, I’ve just abandoned proscribed occupational skill lists as unnecessary thanks to rolling up Moolsh and leaving my occupational skill list behind. I realised that I had it so flexible anyway, that it is better to negotiate the skill selection based on thinking about ‘what would be reasonable for a Woodsman from the Lakes of Pleea to have developed?’ rather than slavishly following a list. The occupationally based skills was already flexible – you could discard and plug in skills you wanted with little restriction, and now its completely open ended overseen by the DM to maintain sense. The most important thing is how the work history years carves up the categorical increases pool (ooh revealing some mechanics here!), and this is subject to negotiation now rather than being in anyway proscribed. The end result is the same – a spread of skills based around different working histories, varying in depth according to lived experience opportunities, social background, location and length of occupation. Yummy!

Moolsh the Thief Spy of Lankhmar

Glendawynn of Lankhmar – Player Character

Editorial Newsflash – George, the player of the player-character formerly known as Grendowynn, made the decision between roll-up and play-test that he wants to change the name of his character. That’s why the character sheet has Grendowynn on it and not Glendowynn.

So meet Glendowynn, George’s character. I’ve transplanted her into the working v1.1.2 Hydra Character Sheet. You can see from how the sheet is laid out that the initial heading section is meant to give you an overview of the character background, origins, working background and so forth. We then move into the attribute descriptions which hopefully speak for themselves. So in  Hydra you can literally read out your character description from the sheet, and therefore as a DM it’s easy to present DMC’s to your players. In the case of Glendowynn we can describe her as “A slim, beautiful, fairly strong woman, with decent physical stamina. Very beautiful, bright and charismatic”. No need to interpret the attribute numbers because for the PC version of the characters and for the DMC versions too, there are ready-made categorical descriptions. I think also that there is no problem with some rewording of the descriptions either, so long as the meaning is understood to be the same/similar enough. So we could just as well also say “A sleightly built comely well-toned and muscled youthful woman. Able to withstand hardship, sharp of mind and quick to lead others with her words and thoughts”. The latter being a bit more flowery perhaps.

It's that low-down sneaky seductress of a thief, Grendowynn.

The character rolling process aims to be a collaborative PC/DM/Rule experience. The DM guides the process, offers constructive suggestions for the player rolling the character, explicates the rules as needed. He also interprets the PC’s ideas and suggestions for character development, background plotting and so forth. As you roll up the character, as here with Glendowynn, so you start together to shape an idea of how the person is. What their possibilities are, and how to explain their nature and capabilities to yourself. Sometimes this may lead to getting a bit creative with the rules and bending a few – but if it leads to a sound character from which ideas for plots/stories are going to unfold – bend away. Hydra is by nature a flexible bit of kit and designed to be readily ‘bendable’. Most of the rule-set is under the control of the DM, and this makes it amenable to ready adjustment.

Lankhmar addicts will no doubt baulk perhaps at what the character presents. I’m no Lankhmar expert – and so sorry if this isn’t a great representation of a thief in Lankhmar or there are things about it that don’t exactly fit the Leiber mould. To you I’d say – hey – help me out with writing some source material! My e-mail address is on this site somewhere – drop me a line :) And also I’d say – lighten up this is a fantasy interpretation – not the reincarnation of the books in roleplaying form. Also, if you had this system you could readily tune it in to your own sensibilities – that’s your choice, these are ours. Anyway, enough evangelism.

George was enabled to make as many choices as he liked about this character. At times, he had random rolls to make that the dice afforded. For others he picked options based on what he fancied playing and how he wanted to build it/specialise it. Hence Glendowynn’s selection of skills makes her more of a pick-pocket/burglar type. Also it seemed to us that with her outstanding beauty (they were good rolls on appearence!) that she would probably use her feminine charms as part of her thieving repertoire. Added to this a penchant for using a bow, and I embellished George’s selection of martial arts as a skill by fleshing it out more into a specific Lankhmarian thieve’s style of fighting – short fist. So, more of a ‘Wing Chun’ style of combat. Short ranged combination of hand techniques, predominantly punching in the southern kung-fu style. Just seemed to me a nice way of tailoring it. All those who pick the martial arts skill are free to describe it to suit their character’s unarmed-combat style and cultural origins.

I also popped in the languages – and included ‘Thief’s signs’. This may not be true Leiber – dunno, anyone who does know please let me in on it (I’m slowly reading his stuff). I’ve always liked the idea of covert signals – and leaving signs for fellow thieves. So that’s what the Thief Signs is intended to be. Not much use for anyone other than a licensed thief sticking to the rules of his guild. Could prove of use in the game, we shall see.

So that’s a bit about Glendowynn. Next up will be Vincent’s charming character, and then Jordan’s. We have all the party for play-testing rolled up – I’m keeping it to three players so that I have a relatively small party to manage as I grapple with the new rules. Hope to be getting the game underway in the next week or so. At present I’m working on setting and scenarios, painting up figures for the game and getting materials together. All the PC’s are done and I have some further main DMC’s to generate. Looking forward to bringing it on!

New Hydra Character Sheet, Playtesting Update.

I have been working on character sheets, and they are now at version 1.1.2.  I’ve skipped putting up the intervening versions as this would indeed, be pointless! This has taken into account some initial character rolling feedback and reflection on my part. So you will see that there have been some changes to terms used in the character sheet. Fear not these are merely term changes and the mechanics underneath remain as is. Words have merely been changed to protect the innocent and better reflect the meaning of the stat/mechanic. My gratitude to the Hydra playtesters (Jordan, George and Vincent) for letting me try out my mashed up RPG with them. I will make sure my netbook has some power next time I bring the thing along so I don’t have to use ANY brain power or calculators at all. Hope you guys are enjoying designing your characters further. I have had to make some minor corrections where I got things wrong – will let you know what they are next time I catch up with you.

There are .DOC and .PDF versions of the hydrasheet available to download from the fusion site as of, about now. I have some printed off copies available for those who want them and will bring them along this week to WGH. I’m going to be around onWednesday evening when I should be finishing off the rolling of Jordan’s character with him if that works out to be possible. Be there about 8pm ish. Big thanks to WGH for being the ideal place to recruit players, talk RPG, have a laugh and so forth. If you don’t know what WGH is – check the link in the blogroll for wargames heaven. It does what it says on the tin.

All PlayTester’s I’ve asked have agreed for their initial PC character sheets to be published online, so I will have PC versions up in due course, and there will be the DM versions, but I’m afraid not available to public eyes they will be in the DM’s journal. (I’m such a tease :).

Feedback so far – generally well received. Positive comments about the overall character generation – categorical nature of the system, flexibility, and roleplaying within the character creation phase. I like Vincent’s point about re-rolls. I am a re-roll fascist these days – we used to have games where stats were conflated by re-rolls or extra dice and then I thought – why bother having stats less than 12 if that’s the case? Why have 3-18 if no one is ever a 3? Why not just 12-18. Hence – no re-rolls. his suggestion – 1 re-roll and you have to take it even if it is worse then the original. This way it is just another dice-roll. I think this could be a DM’s option. For myself – everybody rolls stats as is, once, and that’s that. Then Hydra let’s you, if you keep them alive, develop them up from their humble roots into a truly heroic figure. At least, that’s the plan and we shall see what happens from play-testing, rules revisions and subsequent Lankhmar campaign.

Now, excuse me I have to get off and do my day job. Science is a harsh mistress.

An Example Hydra Character – Amberrh the Barbarian Princess

This is one of the DMC’s, published in the hydra version 1.0 character sheet. Amberrh is the first character I rolled whilst developing hydra so she’s very dear to me. She’s a little pint-pot northern barbarian princess. Underestimate her at your peril because she’s a demon with her fists and feet. Not to mention she is mega charismatic and a barbarian babe.

This is published as if it were a player character, so in the way PC’s record their characters rather than the guts n all DM version. I’m very happy with my logo btw, the image is a medieval picture of – uh – an hydra!

Here is the first character ever generated with hydra version 1.0 - my DMC Amberrh!

Electronic Character Sheet

I have got an electronic version of the character sheet drafted which lists the system as Hydra v1.0 which I think is probably being a bit generous in terms of version number. It has been through one whole re-write, so I opted for 1.0 rather than 0.5. It’ll probably be at 1.5 after the play-test and maybe a hydra -> chimera transformation.

Settling the character sheet has stabilised some of the mutations to the changes in terms. It’s a one side A4 character sheet at the end of the day.

Hydra is now a 9 attribute (3-18 for humans), percentile based, categorically over-laid system with an occupational driven skill system. It focuses on collaborative character building with role-play in character generation. It emphasizes choice in character creation with optional randomization as long as the character creation fits system/world/plot constraints as guided by the D.M.

I’m happy enough with the first sheet version – Armour/Combat profiles are the smallest. There’s three columns of skill sets – the player can lay them out as is most advantageous to his style of play. It seems pretty clean to me, and I’ve fiddled with the ordering of things improve coherency of character generation/representation on the sheet as well as stabilising some terms.

So roll up is going something like:

roll attributes (record qualitative/categorical description for PC, underlying detail for GM). roll player family/cultural/social background. from there synthesize occupational history. add basic bits and bobs. get a flavour of the background story to the PC from there.

It’s a detailed process but hopefully buys the PC into the character and ownership of the character creation early on rather than minimal investment in the character. This is a co-creative process – not a roll on a table fest, or have it handed to you cop out, or the DM says it all – it’s PC and DM working together for mutual pleasure/satisfaction. Ah stop with the o-er for a minute.

Amazing how getting a char sheet down can make the mutant mash-up seem, umm, more real.

Playing with Spreadsheets Again (etc)

Shockingly, I’m still playing with the GM tools spreadsheet. Have now got it to the point where when the numbers for skills, attributes etc are rolled up the derived statistics also automatically calculate. More excitingly the FUDGE-inspired categorical distinctions are automatically calculated. For both the characteristics/attributes (3d6) and the percentile skills.

As suspected I have gotten rid of the ‘useful tables’ by amalgamating it with the FUDGE sheet.

VLOOKUP() function in open office is a fantastic function. It is enabling me to automate arrays (tables).

I’m now working hard on the character creation element whilst also trimming the excess fat on the character sheet. I’m got a weapons table sorted, taken from RQII and merged to CoC(V) specifications. Not sure if I will use the training rules of RQII yet which is money-based, but think I will as this makes for highly flexible characters – modding attributes, so that players can become heroic (which is a request from my second player in the group – the possibility of becoming an heroic figure).

So potentially you can roll up a PC with just 3d6 (no adjusted, no extra rolls, no swapping attributes) and train attributes to max them up – over time and with money earned from campaigning. And become heroic. Which is a player preference I can have built in with this RQII mechanic.

My algorithm for character creation (using a combo of HM occupations/RQ/CoC mechanics) is developing – mostly CoC inspired, but adjusted for occupational history so that players can be aged and developed with pro’s and con’s for the player to weigh up as they roll their character. Keeping most of this collaborative and trying to keep the table rolling for character creation down as prefer this to be a collaborative GM/P venture. Building the FUDGE Level descriptor interface over the top to keep the details of the mechanics hidden is proving both challenging and fun.

I’m rolling up a character in the character sheet, documenting it in the character creation worksheet as I develop the mashed rules. Lurving it, but really want to get onto the world creation bit – going to custom build my own world, mashed from all bits and pieces I think. That’s what I’m really looking forward to :)

Playing with Open Office Spreadsheets

Given that this rule-system I’m putting together in the mash up is going to contain a lot of ‘hidden’ elements, and I’m making the mechanics as hidden as possible, I’m gonna need help administrating it. So I’m calling in the spreadsheets.

I have open office on my linux netbook and although I haven’t used the software much up until now. I have a spreadsheet in development now that tracks and records the mash-up developments I’m making, and essentially is implementing the mashed rules. So, there’s a character sheet/generator, a master skills list, a fudge sheet, a useful tables sheet (I think that will merge with the fudge sheet), and a character generation flowsheet. I have in mind that there will be a need for a spells sheet/magic guide, equipment list etc but these are a bit further away at the moment.

Have finally sussed how to get the spreadsheet in open office to use other parts as ‘look up’ tables. This makes implementing the FUDGE-esque categorical distinctions of the 3d6/d100 figures so much easier. Type in the characteristic (or generate it), and instantly the sheet looks up the appropriate trait description. Rock and roll! I did do a little whoop! on the train when I got that working. For those who want to know I’m using the VLOOKUP function in open office to achieve this, and the FUDGE sheet has the tables with the numbers and categorical descriptions running in parallel columns to form a simple array for the VLOOKUP to follow. Sweet :)