BIND began as a D&D-reaction. “Mathematically, these rules stand some serious improvement”. After that, I only wanted some generic fantasy monsters to make an example game.

Unfortunately, art costs money, which I didn’t have. The first RPG I’d made lost me a lot of time wandering through cheap stock-art, with a licence stating the buyer can use the image (but of course, not own an actual image for €3.75). Every one showed a plethora of weird creatures some artist had made for an existing campaign, or some cobble-together creature. One collection had a couple of weird octopus-creatures, another a smooth-skinned giant humanoid with an orb for a head.

I don’t have the reading time for RPGs I once did (or for anything). I’d like to chalk if up to being an adult with a job now, but perhaps the truth is just ‘internet’.

Whatever the reason, I want to write better for GMs. Here are the principles I’ve picked up from reading/ writing (no credits given - I can’t even remember which ideas are mine, and which I found, never mind where I found them).

(a story about spreadsheet failure)

I’ve considered changing BIND’s ’to-hit’ system to let players ‘go for the eyes’ (or a headshot, or otherwise decide to attempt a vitals shot), and decided against it. My reasons sit below, but expect lots of boring numbers. You have been warned. (or just skip to the conclusions)

Quick Recap

Consider someone with a shortsword with +2 Strength - they deal 1D6 + 2 Damage, or 5.5 on average (this could also be 1D8 +1 or whatever). Let’s also assume that the opponent has the same stats, making the Tie Number (TN) ‘7’.

BIND’s maps have their numbers and comments applied by its writing tool, LaTeX. This makes handouts really easy, because the same map can present different layers to different people.

Here’s the plan so far (it’s untested, none of my players have seen this):

The fallen temple to Eldren (god of death and pensions) has an alternative from when it was still standing (both maps made by Dyson Logos).

This means that if the PCs research at the local library, they can find a map of the original:

The A,D&D core book stated that wizards could only memorize spells in the morning, and also only after eight hours of complete rest. The bigger dungeons occasionally demanded that people sleep in the dungeon in some safe corner.

These two aspects never sat well with me. I kept picturing the party’s fighter lecturing some poor mage:

Rest well! Don’t worry about the monsters, or worry about nightmares. We’re gonna need your spells in the morning, so have sweet dreams, or we’re going to be down a party member, and we need everyone we can get. We’re off soon, so don’t spend too long getting to sleep. If you don’t fall sleep now, no spells, and you’ll end up being eaten by some monster without that wizard-shield, and likely the rest of us will too without your fireball spell.

Read More…

The dungeon ecosystem doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think Tolkien has a fix.

Wandering Monsters Don’t Make Sense

I love the formula. In the cold depths, something approaches, and it wants to eat you.

Deep underground, you tread carefully, then stop as you hear heavy footsteps. Or perhaps those aren’t feet?

Add this to an existing dungeon, and elements quickly tie together. Perhaps player lure the monster into that death-gaze statue. Or perhaps they flee from a giant umberhulk, and stop just before a pit-trap and have to think quickly!

It’s been commented that BIND has no introduction, saying ‘what is a roleplaying game?’, and I don’t think it needs one.

Of course, nobody’s picking this thing up in a 90’s game store, et c., but I feel we have a deeper problem. I think that no RPG - including D&D - really needs an explanation of ‘how to do roleplaying’ or whatever.

I started out with a confused kid, who mixed in actions with a computer game (most likely the original Baldur’s Gate). It was a mess, but I could see how the game should have played, and immediately wanted the books. My father bought me a basic set, and some more splat-books every time I visited him. Soon after I had quite a pile.

Tiny rulebooks are all the rage, and it’s great. The game of go has (arguably) 3 rules. Chess has a dozen rules. Monopoly has that little booklet-thing which nobody reads. RPGs often have 400 pages of rules without counting an adventure module, and often lack proper indexing. This hobby is mad, and the backlash against that madness feels refreshing.

But some of those refreshments cut out so much that they can’t satisfy a game’s requirements. Time for the terminology…¹

Software engineers regularly jump into others’ open source, and help out, but the RPG community do not do the same, because they do not have the right tools.

Look throughout the history of any number of software projects and you’ll find a slew of apparently random people, unknown to the software’s creator, jumping in to lend a hand. Look at calcure (the open source calendar) and you’ll see healthy discussion on the board, about fixes and features people want to see.

RPGs where nobody dies really irk me, because they have rules for dying. If you want an RPG where nobody ever dies (or runs out of food, or whatever), then I won’t complain…until the rulebook states ’these are the conditions for death'.

We have two problems.

Problem 1: Fudging GMs

Everyone writes up some dramatic backstory, in a loopy font in MS word, and about the 0.5 Megabytes mark hands it to them GM. The GM then feels that killing the character wouldn’t fair, and I can understand that, given the investment.