UDOM

UDOM is the presumptive name of my 'small press' RPG. UDOM stands for 'Unnamed Dungeons of Mystery", which is a bit of joke for a draft system by friend Jake and I were working on, but could not be bothered to name.

UDOM uses the Middie System. Middie can be thought an an ancestor to Mayhem (Midnight Campaign), and is the game Mayhem is descended from. It is far less cool than Mayhem. It was originally designed by a math major (Jake) as an alternate to D20. You can think of UDOM as a cousin to Mayhem, as they both share roots in Middie. But...then it gets a bits incestuous, as it would be prevarication to say UDOM isn't influenced by Mayhem (since I worked on both). UDOM is less pretty than Mayhem, because, well, no art and no graphic design. It is also cheaper (free).

Two big differences: There is no skillcap in UDOM. Gaining ranks works differently. And uh, a bunch of other stuff.

SETTING
UDOM is a game about dungeons. The most fun parts of any adventure take place in the dungeon, and so the whole world is basically made up of dungeons. In UDOM, pretty much everyone lives in a cave of some sort. Caves are plentiful. And not living in a cave is dangerous. UDOM is set in a World of Goo. It's so called, because, well, it tends to 'rain' goo. Intermittantly large gobs of goo fall from the sky. The goo is alive, and it feeds on any organic matter it touches. It's mobile, voracious, and grows as it eats. Goo would probably take over the whole planet, except for that it dessicates pretty quickly. The heat of a summers day is typically fatal. But it does making living (unprotected) on the surface crazily dangerous. Anything made of organic matter tends to get eaten--only wood and stone are immune.

Goo both flammable and exothermic. Once you start it burning, it releases heat. The dryer the goo, the faster it burns. Dried goo has a consistency something like cooked chicken. Some regions specialize harvesting goo: Using large sheets of slate-like materials, goo is collected, let dry in the sun, tinned and shipped. Suitable processed, it provides a gel not unlike petroleum.

Travel accross the surface is very dangerous. Anyplace water collects, or which doesn't get regularly dried out may hold lurking goo. Habitually damp places (swamps, wetlands, tidal areas, river banks) are especially dangerous. There are different kinds of goo in different places, in different conditions. Skyfall goo is similar, but not the same; it varies in color and sizes.

While a full suit of plate might protect from the effects of a direct hit of goo, the resulting splatter would climb up and over edges, and inside the suit. Slowly, but surely.  Goo doesn't move particularly fast on the ground (meters per minute, not meters per second), but being struck by a falling gob tends to be harmful. Most surface life is adapted to either avoiding the goo or surviving it. Trees have dry thick bark, or fronds that break. Most animals are small, and burrow. Larger animals take shelter in caves. And so does all of civilization. All structures are mix of excavation and stone construction.  Any structure of organic material tends to get eaten by goo.

GAME
UDOM is mostly played in dungeons. The world is full of cave systems of various sizes. Many of them have been excavated and expanded over time. Most of them aren't connected to one another, and so the only way to go from cave to cave is over-ground, which is dangerous. There are five types of challenges a player can be expected to face: Social, Combat, Stealth, Chase, and Hardship.  UDOM is not all about stabbing people.

GAME

Core Mechanic
The Middie roll is the core mechanic. Anytime you need to make a check, you roll three dice, and choose the middle (not the high, not the low, but the middle die), and compare it to an opposed middie role. You will never roll more than 3 dice (although you may roll less). Sometimes, you will have a fixed number, rather than a die. Treat that number as if it was the die result. What determines which dice you use will vary. Typically, die will be determined by attributes, skills, gear or magic.

Primary Attributes
UDOM has 8 primary attributes: Strength, Agility, Endurance, Willpower, Intelligence, Intuition, Cunning and Charisma. All 8 attributes will sum to be about 40. (Will talk more about in Character Generation).

Derived Attributes
UDOM has five derived attributes: These are your default saving throws, when you lack the relevant skill. There is one for each of the challenge types (Social, Combat, Stealth, Chase, Hardship). Each of the derived attributes uses 3 dice, one each from 3 different attributes).
They are:
*Social: First Impression
*Combat: Defense
*Stealth: Awareness
*Chase: Athletics
*Hardship: Toughness

Skills
Rather than your character leveling up, your skills level up. Your skills level up when you use them; specifically, when you fail a skill check, you get a skill point. You can use skillpoints to buy ranks in a skill. Each rank costs as many skillpoints as that rank: getting a second rank costs 2 points, getting a third rank costs 3 points, getting a 7th rank cost 7 points, etc. (Keep an account of your used/remaining SP). Double the ranks in a skill to get the die used for middie rolls. A rank 6 would use a d12, for example, while a rank 2 would use a d4. (At rank 7+, either roll a d20 or buy some special dice).

Abilities
You don't have to spent skillpoints to buy ranks. You can use them to buy abilities. (An ability lets you do something you couldn't otherwise do).

Weapons
Middie has a weapons list, but that's not really where the action is. The action is in the fighting styles, which provide a list of abilies you can use in combination with a specific weapon. Each fighting style is a distinct skill. They include things like sword and shield combos, pole-arms, 2 handed swords, and kusurigama and chain. Every weapon has a bonus to hit, a critical number, and a damage die. When comparing middie, if the difference is larger than the margin, you get an additional die of damage. This can happen multiple times; a difference of 6 with a critical number of 3 would result in two extra damage dice. Weapons also have a 'guard' number, which is the amount of defense they provide.

Armor
Armor does two things in UDOM: It acts as bonus HP, and it prevents critical hits.

Bad Defaults

Matt Miller 

When making Mayhem, we mentally defaulted to 20 as a top number, after so many years of DnD. Bonuses we re scaled accordingly. It's one of the things I regret the most. The end result was that all numbers were scaled by 5x, which did nothing but make the mental math harder.The higher numbers made margins larger, and since margins affect total damage, higher HP was required to compensate. So HP gets measured in dozens, not singles. It also made skill mismatches, for different levels of enemies, much much more deadly.

 Keith J Davies 

Heh, as it happen Echelon keeps hit point totals pretty low. The attached (mocked up, lots of text is _wrong_) character sheet shows a 28th-level character (D&D 20th-level equivalient in principle) with 35 hit points. One hit point per level, one more at the top of each tier (so one every four levels, by default). If this characer built up her Fortitude more she'd have more hit points, potentially a total of _49_.(For reference: dice pool mechanism, every die that rolls 5+ is a success, every 1 is a complication, you can spend a success to cancel a complication. She's 7th-tier and thus rolls 7 dice for everything, but you don't have to add them up... adding them up would suck,)

Timing and Initiative

Matt Miller

In Mayhem, in devising round-timing we started with a DnD based 10-count round, then expanded to a 12-count 'combat clock' (with 10+ combatants, players were 'tied' too often. But our actions take 5,6,7 or 8 ticks on the combat clock. Somewhat with the idea that people would not overlap too often. But it happened often, as initial position on the clock was set so that everyone started at a different number. But after several hours staring at number systems, I begin to wonder if was a good idea.

If starting position+action is the formula, 1+8,2+7,3+6 or 4+5 all wind up on the same tick on the combat clock. Yet starting all at 1 would not help: All 'fast' actions would wind up at the same tick-mark. Increasing the magnitude of numbers makes for more mental math, not using single digits, but the biggest problem seems to be the change-over, when 11+7=6

Rob Hicks 

Actually, we started with a 100-point combat clock first. Then went down to 50, then 30, then 10, then 12, assuming my memory serves. 

Matt Miller

That seems...not unreasonable. Why did we ditch 30? It was such a reasonable number. Divisible by 15,10,6,5,3,2,1...60 might actually have been even better.

Matt Miller

Given that the virtues of the Fibonacci sequence are that two numbers in it add up to a third number, I am thinking we'd have been better to use non-Fibbonacci numbers, viz: 4,6,7,9. Rounds take a long time, so I recall estimating HP on the basis that no battle should average longer than 10 rounds.  I tried a number of combinations, and they all overlap to some degree. 56789 just happens to overlap a great deal (20%) in the first two moves, which always bothered me. But alternate numbers are as big a head-ache: Either ratio between the highest and the lowest becomes too big, or the numbers become too big to do mental arithmetic with. 6-10 or 7-11 both have better ratios, but both still have the same 'overlap' problem. (7+11=8+10=9+9). Adding gaps between the numbers (1,3,5,7,9) fixes the overlap problem, but either generates speed ratio problems (9:1) or (using 5,7,9,11,13) mental math problems. The speed ratio was a problem because...players get bored when they take a 9 speed action, and someone else takes 9 1-speed actions. 

This was particularly true because there were a couple of effects in the game that adjusted speed slightly. Even a speed adjustment of 1 was HUGE at the lower ranges. An action at speed 3 becoming a speed of 2 is a massive boost across the combat wheel, where a 5 becoming a 4 was a little more reasonable and easier to plan effects around. Gave a boost without being a relative game-changer. 

Keith J. Davies(?)

...given 7, 9, 11, 13, your fastest is not quite twice as fast as your slowest. I'd probably consider a 1-20 scale for this (which happily aligns with a commonly-available die... not that that's really important)(and is still about twice as big as you're looking for) 

 Matt Miller 

Why is 12 better than 10, or 30?  Even fractions of APR, I guess. 60,30, 20,15,10, 6,5,4,3,2,1. So why not 24 or 18? Both are still 'hex'.

Rob Hicks 

Heuristics. Convenient Mental representations. People who do statistics for fun and profit tend to have no problem with number crunching, and don't understand why people who don't can't wrap their heads around them. 30 is as good as 24 or 18 for them. 10, however, is iconic in human math. Decimal counting system, fingers and toes, very easy. 12 only slightly less easy, but was a little kinder than 10 on the backend, and had the added parallel of the clock, both represented in the fact that it is a time-tracking system, and is something that people could reasonably count around. 18 and 24 have neither advantage.

Keith J. Davies

10 or 12 are good, 24 might be too big (but D&D 3.x-style initiative is d20+Dex mod+stuff and can easily reach that high).Perhaps use prime numbers for your speeds. Not 5, 6, 7, 8. 12-step scale, speeds 2 (really really super fast, probably not seen often), 3, 5, 7, 11 (really really slow, probably not seen often). If you start on phase 12 (*cough* HERO) you end up with everyone using the same speed actions hitting the same points and staying together. If you randomize, even slightly, then you might find that people at the same 'speeds' never overlap (if they didn't in the first place), while those acting at different speeds who overlap do so _once_ before they need to lap the field. That is, speed 3 and speed 11, once they sync, will need to go 33 phases before they sync again (11 actions and 3 actions respectively). These might be too far apart; being able to act so many more times than an opponent is pretty brutal. 30-phase rounds with actions 5*, 7, 9**, 11, 13, 17*** might be a better fit. 

* aligns with round, will always be on the same phases each round. Perhaps not desirable. 

** not prime, but _relatively_ prime 

*** maybe too big, less than two actions per round

Rob Hicks

Makes sense. Didn't think of primes, which is very interesting mathematically. Part of the reason actions varied from 5-9, (very fast, fast, average, slow, very slow,) was because the lower numeric end of the scale was trickier to balance for weapon damage. A weapon with a speed of 3 would be 3x faster than one with a speed of 9, where 5:9, was a little less than half as effective. Made the numbers easier to balance on weapon damage and such, when we were trying to get relative efficacy.

Rob Hicks

In the final release, we left it at 5-9, because ultimately the "tied" locations didn't affect things as much as they were initially thought to do. Everyone started on the same spot, and we broke the initial tie by going in order of Agility scores. When two characters tied, we broke the ties in the same way. When those ties were allies, it didn't usually matter. If one wanted to go first strategically, they lost nothing by letting one go before the other.

Matt Miller

We were also trying to keep it to keep the actions speeds to 'counting numbers' under ten. 

Andy Klosky

What is the purpose of having such a convoluted initiative system?  Does it make the game more fun? More realistic? Simpler for player or GM? Emphasize a type of combat, such as ranged or melee? Balance other game mechanics? 

Matt Miller

Mayhem was designed pre-4E DnD, so we made a lot of the same mistakes as 4E. So it has a very crunchy war-game style of mass combat, focused on melee. It also had a very extensive weapons list, with something like 60+ weapons, all of which had unique stats, yet all of which had to be roughly comparable in the amount of damage they did. 

Rob Hicks

The combat clock allowed an initiative system that was actually very easy to track and intuitive for players to run, but allowed for faster and slower actions in the game that had tactical meaning.  That in turn let us adjust the damage for various weapons, so that daggers fought like daggers. Less damage per hit, but faster attacks and more strategic maneuverability. A maul, by contrast, took ages to swing, but hit like a truck. It really, really improves the cinematics and style of combat, giving different play styles that highlighted different character concepts. In addition, working on a timing-based system, rather than a bonus-based system, meant that where you were on the map and when you were going to act next was strategically important. It gave a great deal of depth in combat for those that like the wargamey tactics style of play, but kept the mechanics still relatively simple and smooth for the people that were more interested in the style and cinematics of the game.

 Rob Hicks 

Ultimately, people were very aware of who had the better agility as combat went by, so ties on the combat clock didn't end up slowing things down at all, and it gave Agility a particularly nice perk for stat balance. Additionally, characters acting at the same spot on the combat clock often had other advantages. Team attacks, for example, getting an extra bonus for simultaneous whelm attacks, or for big cinematic clashes where two characters struck simultaneously, like a classic samurai duel.

Armor and Shields

Matt Miller

Players tend to forget penalties, so all numbers were bonuses, with no "maluses", so rather than -3 to +3, we had 0-7. Given that players could always default to 'bare hands' at +0, all weapons had to provide a better bonus than that, so our range was only +1..+7. But the 'big numbers' made weapon very difficult to balance, so in the final list, the numbers were much compressed, even as it made weapons much more similar to one another than I would have preferred.

Rob Hicks 0 to +3 is what we ended up with for skill bonuses. +3 ended up being rare.Ultimately, for simulation, we ended up doing Jake's method of multiplying the damage of a weapon at a specific die result by the probability that such a result would happen and summing them for average damage. That let us calculate relative bonuses for two opposing dice rolls and two opposing bonuses. (What if your opponent has a shield? For example.)

Keith J Davies Ah, shields are easy. I think. "Shields must be splintered!" rules: sacrifice your shield to prevent a hit. Done.

Or, since armor is a function of coverage (die size: d8 means it applies half the time, d12 means it applies 2/3 the time) and quality (leather is 1 die, steel plate is 3 dice), a shield might simply count as another die of armor (or, more likely, give you new options in the fight; as far as I'm concerned a shield is actually a weapon, specialized to defensive purposes).

Rob Hicks  Matt Miller always pushed for shields as a piece of armor, while I always pushed for shields to be treated as a weapon. My logic to justify my stance was to buy a padded shield and attempt to beat him with it. tongue emoticon

Matt Miller My reply was to build a viking shield, and then Rob attempt to beat me around it....which left only my head and legs uncovered, demonstrating that the Greek hoplite gear (Helmet, shield, greaves) is (1v1) astonishingly effective.

Matt Miller I had forgotten the wrinkle of different defense numbers.

Keith J Davies In previous efforts, I've found that it often is beneficial to treat a shield as weapon specialized for defense...it let me collapse a surprising amount of mechanics.

Matt Miller Yeah, the combination of armor+shield can form a near-wall. Which, while realistic...isn't that enjoyable for gameplay. Armor mechanics are a head-ache all their own.

Clustering Abilities

Rob Hicks

 If I were to do <Mayhem> again, I would have packaged them much differently. Instead of hundreds of minor tricks and abilities, I would have grouped them together in <clusters>. Maybe 4-5 sets of pyromancy  abilities instead of 30-40 spells...but granted more flexibility in what those can do. A player who learns a basic flame spell can also throw a rudimentary fireball, and can also extinguish a fire, without picking 3 different abilities. That way there is more flexibility in what an ability can do, and more creativity in application, and less time selecting and browsing very specific spells.

..Another example might be a fencer...<the>.. ability would teach them how to do a lunge, feint and let them use AGI instead of STR, instead of breaking those into interdependent feats or abilities. An advanced fencer ability might include more tricks and tactics <as another cluster>..

..Some of the best moments that we've seen in our games is when players learn flexible interpretation of the rules, and excitedly ask the GM: "Can I try this?!?" When the answer is. "Absolutely! Throw the dice and find out!" Then the result is both creativity, suspense and excitement, which are the best results I think we can get.....This approach would also let players explore new applications of their current skills, rather than waiting to point-buy new ones...

...Another side-effect of this approach is the chance for players to explore the -kinds- of things that their character can do, and learn about it as they go, rather than trying to agonize over every point spent....Makes for a point system that counts in the 10's instead of the 100's.

Levels for table-top Games

Matt Miller

The JRPG style of 'progression' in RPG's is now largely limited to electronic gaming, where software facilitates the tracking of attributes and ability dependencies. DnD 4E clearly illustrated the dangers of attempting to mimic that. Nobody goes up to lvl 100 for a reason. Arguably, 20 levels may be too many--OD&D only had 14, Dresden Files had (effectively) four. To a certain extent, its a matter of how long you expect to play, and how long it will take you to get bored of playing the same character. In Mayhem, we used 20 tiers (the power of defaults), which I regret.

Rob Hicks

...As far as levels, the game was designed to be functional in the 1-10 range predominantly, and progressed in ranks much more quickly than dnd did....We could have gone 1-10 and been just as effective....it would have made feedback charts easier to manage. 

Weapon Range and Initiative

Matt Miller

Any thoughts on how to deal with weapon range in terms of initiative? Or weapon speed? In Mayhem, weapons had speed, that determined who went next, but it became more of an APR (attacks per round) thing than a 'swinging my hammer leaves me vulnerable' sort of thing. It's a knotty problem, as issues of range, timing, and and counter-attack are all bundled together.

Rob Hicks

The reality of a concept and the concept of the reality are very rarely the same thing....The reality of the spear is a super cheap and very effective way to arm cheap infantry with minimal training. The archetype is of a ranged attack for flashy wushu spins and thrusts. The latter is way more interesting, especially from a roleplaying perspective.... From that perspective, the relationship between range and speed is ... thematically irrelevant. The audience is much bigger for flashy maneuvers than hard realism.

Keith J Davies

...there is remarkably little difference between "weapon speeds" outside certain specific circumstances. You run into physiological limitations before weapon mass limitations.

Matt Miller

That's part of what I want to get at--that a lunge takes longer and leaves you more vulnerable. That and the physiological limitations of using a great axe, vs. using a hand axe. To me, this suggests a system where an action takes time (with the attack speed difference for most weapons being small), an initiative system where you character is 'off their guard' until their initiative count, and ties on initiative counts broken by a weapon reach. And perhaps a 2-weapon rule that says "You can't parry with a weapon you attacked with on your last action". ...I'm designing a simulation that treats every attack swing as a role of the dice.  People often treat a DnD attack as a single swing, so working with that metaphor.

Keith J Davies 

....whoever has won initiative controls the distance. [W]hen closing, bigger weapons get a bonus). If both fighters have the same reach they have no weapon-based modifier, otherwise for each step of reach difference you take a penalty. Dagger vs longsword, advantage is to the longsword initially because of longer reach. Dagger takes a penalty until he wins initiative, at which point he controls distance and stabstabstab... until longsword wins again. (This is part of why two weapon fighters use mismatched weapons, you have advantage in two reach categories)

Paul Goldstone

Runequest dealt with this utilising the Strike Rank system. This was based on the persons Size and Dexterity (character stats) and then modified by the weapon.
Longer weapons having a lower Strike Rank, so a tall and nimble person using a longsword would go before a short and nimble person. In situation of confined space or really close combat the weapons would have a Strike Rank modifier... For missile/thrown weapons, the Size aspect of the Strike Rank was dismissed. This system allowed ...diversity in weapons 

Keith Gatchalian 

...speed of the weapon is less an issue than reach.....from the time the two fighters engage, they are trading blows, parrying, making ripostes etc. The dice roll represents whether any of those blows or counterattacks make it through to cause damage. 

This is one of the weaknesses of the DnD system, that you only get to swing on your turn, even though you may have been fighting the whole turn. ...In a DnD combat, a fighter can engage someone, attack, then take a 5 foot step and then <have> someone else fill the space..... the defender never gets to "swing" back, even though as I point out, the combat is a series of blows, parrys and counterattacks. 

It does make sense for there to be a reach system, because a longer weapon, even if it is slower, will enable the fighter to strike first, as the other combatant maneuvers to get close enough to hit. ....there's no way a daggerman would ever strike before the two handed swordsman got a swing.......as a gamer, even in a fantasy game, you still have to ground the game in real world ...or the game becomes silly).

Paul Goldstone

In game terms a Size 18 Dexterity 20 warrior with a dagger would be quicker than a Size 10, Dexterity 10 warrior with a 2 handed sword .....The only conceivable way that the <dagger-user> went first was if...the wielder was significantly bigger, and exceedingly dexterous.

Rob Hicks

On a hexmap or a grid, how far would you...granulate reach? [C]ategorize it as some kind of initiative stat on the weapon? With Mayhem, we had effectively 3 ranges. 1, 2, and 3.... Is that enough to break ties? Is <granulated reach> worth creating an additional initiative stat? Could the <weapon stat> be used as tie-breakers for matched initiative? Are you comfortable with bows always going first? 

Matt Miller

 I'd actually give bows initiative proportional to their range, for simplicity in breaking ties. If you can't gack the archer before the start of the next tick, you get an arrow to the face. Readied attack goes first, then resolve by weapon range/reach. No 'attacks of opportunity', although the greater reach of weapons provides an opportunity to get the before they get you.

Rob Hicks

...it just doesn't jive with my mental heuristics of how speed and range work....I don't see being worth the application of range as initiative.

Matt Miller

I'll presume that you mental heuristic is that larger weapons are slower to swing, and so should not have as good an initiative as smaller ones. That seems...reasonable for clubs and whatnot, but not for spears. 2 handed weapons in general are kind of ticklish, as are pole-arms, which are both spear/axe and staff.

Keith J Davies 

I have to disagree that bigger means slower, and blunt means slower. _Imbalanced_ weapons are awkward, I could see making exceptions for mauls and the like, but that's because of the imbalance, not the size or bluntness. Quarterstaves go _fast_, man. As do greatswords when properly applied. The mechanical advantage from two hands properly placed makes up for a _lot_ of mass differences.....ith greatswords it wasn't uncommon to hold the blade and beat someone about the head with the 'handle'. The weapon is as much a steel spear as it as a 'sword' 

Multi-mode weapon, still two-handed (hits hard) and in proficient hands 'speed' is largely limited by muscular speed. Life becomes so much easier when you base initiative advantages on who has the advantage of reach. Sometimes daggers are faster, sometimes halberds. If I have a polearm you don't even get to attack me with a dagger unless you ....close with me 

For melee I based it on immediate range (small weapons like daggers, you have to close with your opponent; in a square- or hex-based map like D&D 3.x you're "in the same square"). 'Normal melee weapons' are melee range, which covers everything that isn't immediate range or reach. Long weapons like pikes (and greatswords and other polearms if you know how) have 'reach' and go one unit farther. Whips...consider them 'double reach' and usable only at reach and double reach, useless in melee. 

(and yes, I have 'weapon tricks' -- something like D&D feats -- that let someone overcome these difficulties. I was convinced by a martial artist I know who demonstrated he could hit my body with a (practice) sword while I had a grip on his <shirt>, without moving us apart. "Okay, a 'close combat style' will let you do this", said I).

Robert J. Grady

I know, with simulated weapons, the spear usually gets one get shot against a greatsword fighter. But then the greatsword fighter is inside, and gets a good shot. After that, it comes down to footwork. Dagger vs. sword is more straightforward because they are often used in similar ways; usually reach is an advantage, to a (ahem) point. The epee was designed to optimize reach, but then smallswords came along and changed the game by going smaller and faster again. One thing RPGs often mess up is that, other things being equal, a two-handed weapon is less nimble than a one-handed one, but is FASTER and MORE ACCURATE. Rapier v. katana, the rapier guy is going to look for a vulnerable angle of attack, while the katana is going to look for the right opening and hit fast and hard.

Keith J Davies 

Note that the 'less nimble' is _not_ because of _weight_, it's because you keep both hands on the weapon. This greatly limits the weapon's 'nimbleness'.