The Chronicles of Chronicles

[Daniel36]

Hello everyone,

As some of you may know by now, I recently released my *takes a deep breath* open source tabletop skirmish role playing game *cough* called Chronicles.
You can download the rules here : http://chroniclesgame.wordpress.com/

This brand spanking new plog is going to be a little different. In it I am going to showcase models that I am going to use for the Adventurers and the Enemies. I might show scenery I may build for Chronicles. There are probably going to be in-game shots of us playing at the table with accompanying play reports, and besides that, I am also going to openly blabber about my design philosophies, choices I've made, specific rules, upcoming supplements and other such very intriguing things.

Besides that, this log can also be used to ask any questions to me, or perhaps post ideas and thoughts of your own.

First off, I had this model for a very long time and he is going to be my personal Dwarf Warrior.


The Dwarf Warrior is a power house. His DEF (Defence Value) is not as high as the Human Swordsman, nor is his FS (Fighting Skill) on account of him being short, but he has a higher STR (Strength Value) and I am also personally pretty happy with his Skills.

Chronicles is very different from games such as Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons. The game in itself is mostly a combat system. The combat system is rooted in the use of miniatures, but it's not impossible to play without. There are few rules governing role playing. It was a deliberate choice to keep role playing within the fields of the players' own creativity, instead of putting every little thing into a dice roll. Only things such as the ability to perform for gold is put into a dice roll, as to how much they make with their performance.

Also, characters are not created the same way as in those games. You simply pick a character type of a pre-determined race and class, with a pre-determined skill tree and pre-determined stat progression. However, you CAN give them so-called Defining Features. Things that make them unique from other Adventurers of the same race and class. These can be things that normally belong to other Adventurers (Special Actions), such as the (upcoming) Bard's Perform skill, or the Elf Hunter's hunting skill, or they can be things that make them stronger in combat (a +2 on STR for example) or something that facilitates role play. These can be things such as Adventurers being able to speak to Animals, or being royalty. They are not rules, they are merely flavour and a way to tell the Game Master what you want out of the game. It is up to the GM to use these Defining Features to immerse the players. For example, if one player wants to be a prince, than the campaign should probably start somewhere around the king's court, the other players perhaps even belonging to the retinue of the prince, or another important person within the court of the king. The role play Defining Features are actually most prominent.

Finally, there is no finding new weapons or armour. Those too are pre-determined (making wysiwyg easier). Weapons are (and should be) personal items with emotional value. That doesn't mean you can't give them bonuses to give them a certain power or flavour. Weapons and armour have "Enchant Slots" which are basically there for upgrades, such as doing additional Fire damage, or somesuch. There are, however, other items you can find, such as bracelets, helmets, capes and that kind of stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Next Episode : Something else...

[Brother Muninn]

It's an neat approach.

So if I've read correctly it's kinda like a video game (like Diablo 2), where you start out with a particular class with a skill tree where you can then modify your character? I think some could pause at the term "pre-determined" because RPG players are in love with the idea of creation & customization.

Have you considered making a Kickstarter page? some people could be happy to help fund a new game.

~Muninn

[Daniel36]

Hey Muninn,
It's a free-to-play game. I am not looking to make money off of it. So Kickstarter is not useful. Besides, you can only start something if you live in the US.

I suppose it is a videogame if you take Diablo 2 as a comparison, yes. You choose a class with a skill tree and you upgrade that. Battles are also very fast paced. So yes, in that sense, it is a tabletop version of Diablo, perhaps. Funny you should mention, one of my best friends actually made the same comparison. He said he was playing Diablo 3 and felt like it was somewhat the same. That said, it is still a role playing game in that you have to actively participate with your Adventurer in the game world. It's just very much more free form than most other games are, such as D&D.

As for the term "pre-determined", the thing is... D&D (3 to 4) and Pathfinder gave no more creation and customization than Chronicles does. They gave roll-play. Rolling for stats is not character creation nor customization. What is the difference between a Cleric with STR 14 and one with STR 13? Not much if you ask me. Now what is the difference between a Cleric fighting for a deity in the Water domain or one in the Fire domain? Or one who fights because his family was brutally murdered by a vampire? Now THERE is creation, at least the way I feel it should be implemented. There isn't enough of that in the older games. Customization? Nehh, most of it was about maximization anyways.

Funny note, Wizards of the Coast seems to have caught on to that idea as well, as D&DNext has pretty much the same thing that Chronicles calls "Defining Features" with their "Background Features"... I truly hope that's a funny coincidence, as I would be royally ticked off if they stole the idea from me.

But let's talk about that a bit. The Defining Features.

Like I stated, Adventurers are mostly pre-determined. They have starter stats and level up stats which are pre-determined, but you can give them Defining Features that set them apart from other Adventurers of the same vocation. A couple of examples:

Child of... – You are the child of someone famous or notorious. Many people know who you are.

Fugitive – You are wanted by the authorities, for whatever reason.

Ladies' Man – You know how to impress the ladies, though this gets you into trouble just as often as it gets you a good time.

These are all Defining Features that do absolutely nothing to your stats. They allow you, as the player, to tell your GM what you want out of the game, what you want your Adventurer to live through. For example, if you choose Fugitive, the GM might throw in a story arc where the Adventurer is cornered by those that want him or her dead. It could even be how the Adventurers from other players may get in touch with this particular Adventurer. Again a funny thing, in the new iteration of D&D, there are also these kinds of features that do little to the stats... Hmmm...

Then there are the Defining Features that also allow for role playing but also do something mechanically:

Healing Hand – You can heal anyone in base contact as an Action for 1D3 HP per 1SP. Choosing this feature adds 3 points to your points total. May also be used outside of combat.

Hunter – You know how to hunt game whilst in the wild,. For every day you are outside, you may try to hunt. You find 1D6 rations for every day you choose to hunt. Choosing this feature adds 2 points to your points total.

Performer – You know how to entertain people. In small villages you gain 1D6 X 2 gold coins. In towns and cities you gain 1D6 X 5 gold coins. You can only use this skill in any given residential area once a week. Choosing this feature adds 1 point to your points total.

These are Defining Features that are actually Special Actions for other Adventurers, the Healing Hand for example comes standard for the Human Cleric, the Hunter feature belongs to the Elf Hunter, but this way you can give your other Adventurer the same skill, as if they have picked that up in their younger years or perhaps know how to do as an innate ability. Note that these add points to your Adventurer, which is Chronicles' way of balancing. Enemies also have a points value, so choosing these features means there will be more Enemies as well! The funny thing is, someone playtested Chronicles for me a couple of times, and he gave the feature "Performer", a feature I mostly associated with music and storytelling myself, to the Human Flame Wizard. His note in the playtest was the following:

"Story continues to village of Alden Crossing, where flame wizard rolls 25 gold coins for him with Performer defining trait. I guess the small community hadn't seen much magic lately."

Now THAT is, in my mind, where a game mechanic brings role playing, as apparently in his mind the Flame Wizard wasn't singing a song, but was using the Performer feat as if he was giving the crowd a flame throwing show. Pretty awesome if you ask me!

Now, for the last type of Defining Features, we go to combative features:

Resistant – You are “Strong against” one of the following types of damage: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Ice, Lightning, Holy, Darkness or Poison. Damage of this type is halved. Choosing this feature adds 1 points to your points total.

Very Lucky – You are just extremely lucky sometimes. You gain a permanent +3 SP. Choosing this feature adds 3 points to your points total.

Very Strong – You are much stronger than average. You gain a permanent +2 to your STR roll. Choosing this feature adds 3 points to your points total.

So, if you want your Dwarf Warrior to be really, REALLY strong, you can also give him the Very Strong feature... No need to get lucky rolling 18 on a 3D6, right?

So, still worried you can't customize your Adventurer?

Also, even in-game, there is further customization in the form of Enchants. You can attach a number of Enchants to your weapon and armour. These can be things such as dealing additional Fire damage (for a Fire Swordsman or something) to being able to heal yourself when successfully dealing damage. I haven't begun yet on creating very many Enchants besides these ones, so if you have any good ideas, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for the interest.

[juicytomatoes]

hey Daniel!

love the title of the plog.

Will be following this.

[Daniel36]

Thank you!

While I will be away for a week starting tomorrow, I couldn't help myself but work on Chronicles some more. Right now, I am proofreading an Adventure Book written by someone who has helped me immensely with play-testing, even though we don't even know each other. Pretty cool!

I am not going to talk about it, but it will be something rather exciting and grim. Also, he wrote a new Adventurer which we *MIGHT* release tonight. It's not a standard character (though we will eventually release Adventurers such as Rogues and Paladins as well), but it does have some similarities with a well loved archetype.

I still need to write a lot for the first Encounter Book, which will detail Undead Enemies and those commonly found amongst them, but time is never on our side, is it?

[HereBeDragons]

Great work on the dwarf! The eyes are great, I really struggle with them. Congratulations on your chronicles game. Im not a D&D gamer and I've never played any roleplaying type games so I'll be no use on advice but I can still wish you the very best of luck! You're clearly putting in a lot of effort into this and I hope it all goes well!

[Daniel36]

Hey HereBeDragons,

You should give Chronicles a try, honestly. It's a role playing game, but nothing like the well-known ones. The game itself is mostly just combat mechanics, which will be very familiar to anyone who has played wargames or skirmish games. The role playing element is really just how battles A and B are connected, if pure role playing isn't your thing. There aren't any rules you are forced to use to "immerse" yourself. The role playing will come naturally, even if you have zero experience. It caters to every type of role player in that there are no rules to tell you how you should or should not role play, except for the Defining Features, which are ultimately only suggestions in themselves.

Let me know if you are going to try it out.

Best wishes,
Daniel

[Daniel36]

Today saw the release of two new Adventurer Sheets, that of the Human Geomancer and Human Zweihander.

The Geomancer is basically a combat-minded Druid of sorts, using elemental magic to do some serious damage. He also has some fun rules that makes him stronger against certain elements as he gets stronger.

The Zweihander is a much stronger Swordsman, with its Defence being very weak. With the Skill list, you can turn him into a Barbarian, thematically, but I chose to stay away from that term, as you don't HAVE to be a Barbarian.

Try them out, and let me know what you think.

[Daniel36]

So yesterday saw another big update. I hadn't expected another one so big to hit, but it did.

Before, you upgraded base stats, weapon stats, armour stats and skill set all seperately. Now, leveling your base stats gives you a free skill. It's less of a hassle (and less expensive for your Adventurer) and it makes the game flow just a small tad nicer. Not only that, they now get to choose 2 skills instead of 1 at the start of the game, which gives them more fun options when they begin.

The other change is for the Injury Table. Turns out 3D6 has a bell curve. Who knew? (Everyone but me, ha!)
I hadn't taken that into account when I wrote the Injury Table, so it kind of sucked. Now, death is a very, very real possibility. And those bandages are suddenly very, very imoprtant. Which reminds me, I could've updated the Cleric with an additional rule. *scribbles down on to do list*

On the painting side of things, I have come to the conclusion that I need to do something very drastic. It's actually really silly but I am going to keep it under wraps for now, just to be silly!

[Daniel36]

So Chronicles now has its own forum, where those interested can discuss the rules, come up with new things to add, and other such things.
Feel free to drop by. Hope to see you there!

http://chroniclesgame.boards.net/

[Daniel36]

Update time!!

I need your help!
Hey everone. I need your guys' and gals' help. The recent resurgence of love for Warhammer Quest has rekindled my enthusiasm for classic, no-nonsense dungeon delving.
I had always planned an Adventure Book playable without a GM and this is it.

I want to write a supplement for dungeon delving with levels of increasing difficulty. But what Enemies am I going to put in? Tell me what kind of monsters you want to see! The first level will be giant spiders, giant rats and acidic oozes and all that fun stuff, but what are we going to find walking down those stairs to the next level?

I would love to hear your suggestions.
All the best,
Daniel

[Daniel36]

It's a good thing I got no suggestions, as Chronicles is, once again, heading into a slightly different direction.

I am constantly thinking about what to do with Chronicles. I am also constantly taking inspiration from whatever games I am currently playing myself. I wanted Chronicles to be an easy to get into game, and it was, but it required way too much bookkeeping, and I also wanted a game with a minimum amount of in-game bookkeeping. HP on both characters and enemies meant they all had to be written down and such, and I hated that. I also felt it was very unrealistic to even have HP. When it comes down to it, no matter how much muscle mass a man has, a bullet in the face is most likely going to kill him just as much as it would a wimpy man. HP is one of those things we have come to expect and accept in RPG products. I didn't want it, it wasn't realistic enough. I recently played a couple of games of Mordheim, and the combat resolution system (with stunned, knocked down and out of action type resolutions) really struck me as really, really cool. It would need some work to actually make sense in Chronicles, but I wanted to go that direction.

Not that realism is the most important thing in Chronicles. It isn't. As I was playing a couple of games of Magic: the Gathering, it also hit me that sinergy (sp?) is a really cool thing to have in RPGs. So I am going to think about how to better integrate that as well into the game.

In the end, I decided I needed to really re-work the combat system, and as such I am currently doing that. It means the Core Book, Adventurer Sheets, the Enemy Sheets and the Adventure Books also need a re-work, and it will take some time, but it will make the game more fast paced, a lot more lethal (which is a good thing in my book) and I am hoping ultimately more fun.

[Tuttivillus]

Update time!!

I need your help!
Hey everone. I need your guys' and gals' help. The recent resurgence of love for Warhammer Quest has rekindled my enthusiasm for classic, no-nonsense dungeon delving.
I had always planned an Adventure Book playable without a GM and this is it.

I want to write a supplement for dungeon delving with levels of increasing difficulty. But what Enemies am I going to put in? Tell me what kind of monsters you want to see! The first level will be giant spiders, giant rats and acidic oozes and all that fun stuff, but what are we going to find walking down those stairs to the next level?

I would love to hear your suggestions.
All the best,
Daniel

Nagash , seriously.