Lodoss Companion free link and thoughts

In the early days of RPGs in Japan, some nerds translated D&D and did a replay of it in a computer programming magazine (you can read it in English here!). Then it turned into a really, really good looking anime. But the replay could not be monetized further, for the rules were (c) some TSR dudes. Thus, Lodoss Companion rules were made. And they aren't bad. I translated them for you to read. I've still got like 40 monsters to get through some day, but still, it's a playable RPG--free until AI gets to the point where it can read Google Docs and terminate you--and I translated most of the adventures for it too. 

Me and the boys, we played through it for about a year and a half, and I've got thoughts on how I would run it now, for while it was a fine system, it wasn't as fast as I'd like. 

Since you have to roll a % die at or under your chance to hit minus the enemy's defense number,  which is a bit of a pause to calculate, I think these days, as simple lizard brain likes adding more, I'd rather go,

GM: What's your roll?
PL: 43 under [the] 60 [I need to hit] for 5 dmg [cuz all good players roll damage at the same time].
GM: Sees that the monster has a Defense of 10, and 53 is not gonna go over 60. Your blow connects.

Simple. And the defense number of the monster stays secret. I think it will still work when FS or DE scores go beyond 100. The tricky part will be tempering player's expectations to crit on rolling 10% or less sometimes (if your chance to hit would be 0, you can still roll and a 10 or less on the die is a hit, and a 1 is a crit).

Armor has soak in Lodoss C, which can be a bit slower to deal with, but at this point I'm used to it from years of LC, FAGE RPG, and another game I translated for you, Double Moon. If I get sick of it though, I will probably just change the soak rule to a bonus hit points rule instead.

I hate keeping track of the Lodoss buff spells that last 10 rounds. So instead I'm thinking that each round the caster wants to maintain the buff, they have to pay 1MP, and the initial casting can be cheaper.

 

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Share good posts with good goblins. Claytonian at the gmails.

Why Vancian is Better Than Spell Points (and what to do about it)

First, let me lay out my credentials for my click-bait title.

Over on our Discord, (mail me if you want in on chances to play elf-games online), we have been playing a lot of Lodoss Companion, a game I translated from Japanese. It uses a stat called MP (magic points) to cast spells from. If you run out of MP, you faint.

About a couple years back I was in another RPG that uses spell points (run by Fear of a Black Dragon's Tom), Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 1e. We played through the Enemy Within adventure path thing.

On the Discord, we also spent a few months going through my other big fanslation project, Double Moon. Dubmoon, being from the same publisher as Lodoss, shares a lot of its DNA, including the MP system, using Psychic Points called PPs, much to our amusement.

Finally, also on the Discord, we messed around with my hack of Arduin for a while. Uncle Dave "Killmepleasedaddy" Hargrave used a hybrid between Vancian and spell points back in the day. He also gave levels to spells because he was basically using 0DnD. I opted to just have spell points spent just be the level of the spell, let PCs cast any level of spell, and kicked Vancian restrictions out of there.

So all of these systems used points is my point. What is the problem I've noticed time and again? You are extremely incentivized to cast the same spells each combat. It was really bad in WHFRP. Once I learned Lightning Bolt, I would try to cast it each round. We could point out here that RAW material components would have ameliorated the problem, but like most groups we ditched those rules.

In Lodoss it's usually the same routine. Cast buffs on the fighter. Summon a spirit to fight. There is a bit of deja-vu each combat. My players do like the system though. One said they really dig not having to choose spells that they might use each game morning.

The Arudin games were a bit better, probably because of the sheer amount of gonzo spells the players wanted to try out. Also, without level restrictions, they could consider casting powerful, yet expensive spells.

 So, what's my solution to keep a game with spell points interesting? Well, I have a few.

• Spell points are still a thing, but whenever a player casts a spell, it is gone for the day (sneaky Vance). 
• Spell points are still a thing, but each additional time you cast a certain spell in a day costs one extra point per level of the spell (Vance tax).
  
• Use DCC-style Mercurial Magic, which may make the player prefer to cast different spells for different situations. You don't need DCC tho; I got a d60 list of crazy spell requirements and effects.
• Incentivize spell prep with Memorization Side Effects (using a Vancian hybrid or pure Vancian).
• Use those material components up. Boo. Hey, maybe have all your spell-casting based on material components to make it better?
• Seed a whole lot of situations that will require spells as tools. This one is hard to do, because utility spells are usually taken care of by equipment or the thief's abilities. 
• Spells are free-form, but you can never cast the same spell twice (the Barony/Conrad's Game method).
  

Got more ideas? That's what comments are for!

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Share good posts with good goblins. Claytonian at the gmails.

TRPGs in Japan! Exploring Double Moon TRPG (Part 1 of many)

So, let me share Double Moon with you. I've been fanslating it for a while now (link), and our Sunday group has been using it to explore Stonehell.

 Double Moon was a few play by post games and TRPG systems. I'll talk about the main one that came out in book for here. The Double moon system was published as part of the CompRPG magazine's Comp/Collection series. The series was kicked off with the first iteration of Record of Lodoss's RPG rules. Record of Lodoss's history is an epic in its own right, but we're talking Dub Moon today, which has more in common with D&D than the percentile beast that Lodoss was at that time.

Double Moon is the one on the bottom right

 The production value is great. This could have been a very short book, because the rules aren't that complex and most of the text would have been spell descriptions, but it is chock full of commentary, advice, characters describing how things work, comics, and scads of art by Hotspace, a group that seems to have also designed video-game books like this one (link), a book which has a lot of the hallmarks in DubMoon (these came out the same year), but Hotspace did way better when they worked on Comp/collection series of books. Comp/collection are all video game related. Double Moon started as a game book series of articles, became a Famicom game, then finally this RPG. The other comp/collection books kinda have this graphic design style in common.

One of the super charming things about this book is that the sample adventurers all have well developed personalities, and these characters talk a lot throughout the book, star in comics, &ct. They are also all from the Nintendo game, but preceded it. In the optional classes section, we will meet some new characters.

A very zoomed out view of the world. We have places likeLancaster, the Misty Forest, and the White Desert (the reason why it is white has a lot to do with an ancient basilisk). The world is divided into two continents by the Raidis straight. This map says the Double Moon of the title refers to the forces of swords and magic. The southern continent is the abode of the dark godess Lorefiel. Other places feel the influence of more gods, benign and beneficent.

Title: The Battle with Samoiren the Demonic

Samoiren leads the Five Evil Stars, a group that worships the dark and terrible god Damon. He heads the 13 Black Magicians and schemes to rule the world of Double Moon. However, even terrible evil must pass in its time, and Samoiren found his downfall at the hands of Mueller and the magic sword Wintia. One stroke felled him. "Don't think this is the end," Samoiren's decapitated head warned with a grin. "I have many backup vessels"

Challenging the new foe, Solomon

Solomon the black mage is the head of Lucifion, a dark and mysterious organization. Safis donned the magical armor Black Dome and confronted Solomon with his party. "This is the destruction I desire!" said Solomon. "I will be refined in the fires of hell." Perhaps Solomon intended to resurrect the legendary beast called Dark Dragon. This story will be played out in days to come.

Caption: And endless adventure awaits.

Why were the continents of Double Moon really created?

Yeah, I figure this stuff is all a bit clearer if you play the Nintendo game or have access to the magazines where play by post happened...

The table of contents

Next time we'll tackle chapter 1: What's an RPG?
It'll be good, I promise.