Theory

BIND's Attack Style

Jan 11, 2023 · 3 min read · RPG BIND Theory

BIND is changing how attacks work, and I can't believe I didn't think of this trick before. Very Bad Attacks The worst way to perform attacks must be GURPS Alice and Bob roll for Initiative Alice rolls to attack Bob rolls to dodge Bob rolls to attack Alice rolls to dodge That's 1 roll for the Initiative (both roll at …

Always Say the Target Number

Jan 8, 2023 · 3 min read · RPG Blorb Theory

A player rolls the dice, and the table watches the result, like a roulette ball bouncing about. Rothgar has a +4 to make the jump, but the chasm demands a Target Number (TN) of 12. The player rolls 2D6... 1 (( _______ 2 _______ /\O O\ 3 /O /\ / \ \ 4 / O /O \ / O \O____O\ )) 5((/_____O/ \ /O / 6 \O O\ / \ / O / 7 \O …

White Wolf Devlog 6: Changeling

Dec 6, 2022 · 5 min read · RPG White Wolf Theory

My favourite WoD RPG will always be Changeling. I've run one campaign, and I wish I had time to run more. I don't know if I'll ever have time to re-write it, like I did with Vampire, but I have plenty of concrete plans for changes. Seelie vs Unseelie The book began by saying 'Seelie' does not mean 'good', and …

RPG Faff Metric

Dec 4, 2022 · 10 min read · RPG Theory

Some RPG systems are obviously more of a faff than they need to be, and some take more time than others. This feels obvious, but I want a better way to measure it than using my gut. I want to give a little flesh, with a Maths-flavoured guesstimate, similar to 'Big-O notation' (a method for guessing how fast a sorting …

Dualism in a World of Darkness

Nov 28, 2022 · 3 min read · RPG Theory Philosophy White Wolf

So there you are, storytelling a twisted tale of modern horror about a coterie of vampires, when an odd ability crops up. One of your players has focused on controlling people so much with the Dominate Discipline that she can now enter other people's bodies, taking them over as if they were her own. So we know that the …

Representing Star Trek Babble in an RPG

Nov 23, 2022 · 5 min read · RPG Theory

A response to Antolius' post, Star Trek Adventures TTRPG has a fatal flaw . 3D Chess When Star Trek fans wanted to make a Star Trek (ST) chess-board, there were two schools of thought - one reconstructed the rules from actors who were moving pieces randomly, and another created a game from the same board, but with …

Real Time Passing Between Games

Nov 21, 2022 · 7 min read · RPG Theory Blorb

RPG Vloggers chatting about Gygax note on real-world time-synchronization have got me thinking about really using this rule. In case you haven't heard the idea - Gygax demanded that every day which passes in the real-world, one day passes in the game. The troupe starts and ends their games somewhere safe, like a tavern …

White Wolf Devlog 5: The Umbra

Nov 3, 2022 · 8 min read · RPG White Wolf Theory

I feel the World of Darkness could have done better by having the various spirit worlds accessible only through some trance, where someone enters that world in spirit-alone, and leaves their body behind. Unintended Teleportation Garou traversing the umbral planes, Giovanni vampires wandering into the land of the dead, …

White Wolf Devlog 4: The Arena

Oct 16, 2022 · 5 min read · RPG White Wolf Theory

In the new Contest System for the Storyteller system books, both players roll the same Attribute + Ability combination for 'Extended and Resisted', so Subterfuge is used to lie and spot lies, and Investigation allows someone to uncover crime as well as hide it. This has made a number of people online strangely irate, …

White Wolf Devlog 3: Attributes

Oct 11, 2022 · 2 min read · RPG Theory

White Wolf's Attributes were surprisingly revolutionary, as D&D had set such a strong precedent with 'S,D,C,I,W,Cha'. The deviation's great, but they retained some bizarre ideas from D&D. Dexterity 'Dexterity' should really refer to coordination, but it was soon used as a 'speed' stat, showing how fast someone …