So I got 4th edition a few days ago, and have been reading it.

I dig it. It's got some flaws, but they're all flaws shared to an equal or greater extent. Yes, it's combat-focused almost to the point of being boardgamey, but the stunt system (described in the DMG) helps encourage players to improvise cool shit in combat, and the skill challenges bit is loads better for adding strategic depth to noncombat encounters (although evidently the difficulty math may be wonky, according to some forums, but that something easily enough house-ruled if it can't be fixed by the aid-another and GM's-Best-Friend rules, because it's not like team work and creative thinking are important in combat encounters at all. And all the GM advice for setting up combat encounters seems pretty boss in theory.

But there's a lot of stuff that I'd need to see in actual practice to form a strong opinion on, and it's looking like at least a few players in my group are pretty set on disliking the game for what are, to be fair, entirely understandable reasons, even if I don't personally agree with them.

Reading the MM totally has given me a case of "Man, I want to throw some of those into an encoutner!" Especially the ochre jellies. Mmmmm, split.

"I'm going to need some bubble soap," said Landon.

"No problem." Aha, I thought. He's going to make a simulacrum to fool that witch that wants to kill him.

When I got back with the bubble soap, he had procured from somewhere a bottle of lighter fluid. "Wait," I said. "What spell are you planning on casting?"

So I've just spent a bit of time thinking about relationship triangles in gaming, and come up with the following idea:

Come up with two friends of your character, who are enemies of each other.
OR
Come up with an enemy and a friend of your character, who are friends with each other.
OR
Come up with two enemies of your character, who are enemies of each other.

The idea being that you get more drama out of these relationships than you would get out of the alternatives because the relationship between the two other people will put your relationships with them into question (Do you turn your back on your friends because they're friends with your friend, or do you accept your enemy, instead? Which of your friends do you chose when they get into a fight? Which of your enemies do you choose when they get into a fight?)

If I do ever make a big fiddly relationship-map based game, this would probably have to go in it.

(And it actually occurs to me, if you include organizations as well as individuals, this is a superset of the thing I used for my In Nomine game of "Come up with an angel you dislike and a demon you like", in "you like most angels, that angel likes most angels, but you two are enemies" and so on.)

In Nomine, according to the back of the book in the oft-disregarded GM advice section, and in a few supplements I've read, advocates four basic "styles of play": realistic, dark, humorous, and mythic. And I was thinking about this, and realizing that you could actually make a pretty decent game by making those four things your core stats. Roll against your Realistic trait when you're doing something in a realistic manner, roll against dark when you're doing something darkly or with dark consequences, etc.

An idea that sprang from this is stealing a page from DRYH. In DRYH, you have your discipline dice, which are nice and safe, but you also have madness and exhaustion dice. You can tap into those dice, but if the highest-rolling dice was one of those things, then madness or exhaustion dominates the roll, which will have appropriate consequences in addition to normal success or failure. It's not hard to see "realistic" as normal "discipline", and dark as meaning something dark happens, humorous as meaning something humorous happens, and mythic as meaning something mythic happens (not exactly good when you're trying for subtle).

Hmmmm.

Bid a certain amount of either rock, paper, or scissors. (Change the names of the elements to taste.) Bidding more than the other guy gives you the advantage, bidding the type that beats the other's guy's type gives you the advantage. If you get advantage both ways, you win the fight. If you get advantage one way, and tie the other way, you're halfway to winning the fight (another half-win will win the fight) or cancel the other guy's half-win, if they have one. If you get advantage one way, and the other guy gets advantage the other way, or if you tie both ways, nothing happens. Resources of each type are limited, and all bids are expended regardless of outcome. (Start each fight, with, say, five of each type? Playtesting would be needed to see if that's too many or two few. Ideally, you would tie in number-bid about one third of the time, I think.)

So recently I ran an In Nomine game. What I think of as the "first season" is over: we reached a fairly dramatic conclusion and are taking a break to let watermelontail playtest his Passport system. I find myself reflecting on a few things.

At the start of play, guided by formless instincts that were, in hindsight, inspired by certain aspects of Polaris's experience system, I had each player come up with a demon they liked, and an angel they disliked. (Everyone was playing angels). Now I realize this was all about creating conflicts of loyalties, which is cool, but it probably would have been helpful to explicate this in the beginning. Also, a few of the demons so made were kind of weak sauce: the "I respect them as worthy opponents, but will still kill them dead if we meet." Which unpacked in my head into something about how relationships and goals are only meaningful insomuch as they actually influence a character's actions. Now I'm toying with ideas in my head about how to better support a game that's all about conflicts between a character's goals, and fitting that latter bit into it will probably be important.

Another thing that kind of crystallized in my head was the distinction between what I now think of as "What Do You Do?" games versus "Can I Do It?" games. Really, the difference is obvious from the names: "What Do You Do?" games involve setting up a complex situation with no obvious solution, and then seeing what the characters do in response. Whereas "Can I Do It?" games, there is an obvious path that the characters are "supposed" to be taking, and the real question is if the characters can follow through with it. It might be a broad path, or even a set of multiple possible paths all leading to the same destination, but the ultimate specific goal of the situation is clear.

Hmmmm.

A while back, somebody on one of the RPG forums I frequent posted an entertaining challenge: stat up a character in every system you own. For most die-hard gamers, that can be more than a little "yikes", even before you consider if pdfs and homebrews count or not. But, you know, it's tempting. It's a great excuse to crack open all those old books you haven't looked at in years and monkey around with the systems again.

I was tempted back then, but ultimately never got seriously started. I found myself tinkering with a character idea in In Nomine recently, though, and thought to myself "You know, I should just do it."

So here's #1 of what may be Many. Or may be, like 3 or so. I dunno.

( Illuminating Breath, know-it-all angel (In Nomine) )

A weatherwane on a rooftop, creaking in the wind.

Fiddling with a few different ideas, in my head. Inspired by reverse-engineering the Quickstart rules for Exalted into a hack, cross-referencing the Koch hack, and applying it to L5R.

Draw a 3x3 grid on your character sheet.

Along the top, write "With Weapons", "With Words", and "With Spirits" in any order. The leftmost column will be your strongest one, the rightmost column your weakest one.

Along the side, write "For Honor", "For Glory", and "For Status", also in any order. The top row will be your strongest, and bottom your weakest.

Then write numbers in your grid like this:

d20	d12	d8
d12	d8	d6
d8	d6	d4

"With Weapons", in addition to the obvious fighty stuff, also covers use of physical force and motor skills in general, as well as knowing stuff about bushi and warlords and whatnot.

"With Words" covers the obvious talky stuff, and also knowing stuff about politics and courtiers and nobles and geography and stuff like that.

"With Spirits" is for explicitly calling upon spirits and getting them to perform favors or grant you wisdom, but also covers resisting the influence of spirits, luck (the favor of the spirits), and various nifty esoteric lore, as well as knowing stuff about shugenja and other related scholarly things.

"For Honor" covers doing something somebody of higher status told you to do. Or doing something because it's the right thing to do. Or doing something that's obviously not For Glory or For Status.

"For Glory" covers doing something really impressive, especially if there are others watching. Or something that's obviously not For Honor or For Status.

"For Status" covers doing something that leaves you better off than you were when you started. (Handy if you want a strong self-preservation instinct) And of course, if something obviously isn't For Honor or For Glory.

Everything's opposed rolls, high roll wins. If the obstacle you are facing isn't a person, the GM will just pick a dice size arbitrarily based on difficulty. (I suggest d12 as a baseline: most of the time, if you're busting out the dice and it's not contested, it's because you think something is fairly difficult, and that'll challenge someone playing to their strengths, but not be unbeatable by an average-sized die.)

Bonus! To come with your character's clan, answer three questions. What animal is your clan named after, and why? What clan do the members of your clan usually get along with, and why? What clan do the members of your clan usually not get along with, and why?

In a discussion about systems with which to play Exalted (because, honestly, the original system has a lot going against it) someone mentioned that the original Quickstart rules were actually pretty awesome, in and of themselves.

And dude, they totally are! They cut away all the cruft and get right to the heart of what the game is about. I would totally play or run this, in a heartbeat.

So I'll just add it to the list with Burning Wheel and Polaris and Nobilis, right now. And the, er, In Nomine game that I actually am running. Cough.