The Making of Crawl! no.13: Part 2

 

Fake news. Although I actually tried. 

Oh man. In April 2019, over a year and a half later I made this enthusiastic post. Boy did I fail. I never really apologized for it either. It's really embarrassing reading it now, but when you read it I go into a little bit of the life difficulties I was having at the time. And believe it or not, I was on a roll. Even though I started from scratch, I was feeling confident. I fully intended on finishing this issue. I wrote a lot. But it took way longer than I expected. I tried. I really tried. Before I knew it, COVID happened. What? Exactly.

I played a lot of Quake. Research!

In August 2020, over a year later, I posted this image and an equally cryptic message. The post was simply to announce it was going into playtesting. I actually finished the zine, pretty much the complete draft. At this point it was almost a total departure from the first one, some story elements remained, but I changed its focus completely. It was really ambitious, I wrote a lot of new rules and adopted (stole) a bunch of others. Here's the contents, and a bit of the Introduction:

Intro to Crawl! Deathmatch

Prepare To Fight

Sequence of Rounds

New Action Rules

New Movement Rules

Cosmic Encounters

Hazard die

Pressure

Cosmic Terror

Arenas

Point Crawl

Hazards

Artifacts

Weapons

Power Ups

Variant Rules

Acknowledgement

Maps

INTRO TO CRAWL! DEATHMATCH

You have been summoned by an unimaginable cosmic force into a supernatural plane of existence. The demands are simple, survive. But are you ready... to fight?

This issue of Crawl! is about running a deathmatch. A deathmatch is typically a free-for-all fight-to-the-death in an arena, or in this case, a series of arenas. These rules focus on the basic player vs player, everyone for themselves battle royales. These rules could allow your players to finally resolve who would win in a fight. But also they allow for different play styles, ideas of which can be found in the Additional Rules chapter. Tips for adding deathmatches to your ongoing campaign can also be found there—in fact, the sample deathmatch dungeon provided is designed to quickly get straight to the action.

You’re probably thinking that anyone can draw up an arena and the characters can just fight. All that is true, and in reality most of you don’t need this zine, many of the rules found within can be found in a lot of other places. None of these concepts are original, or new. But, it hasn’t been done in this way before, especially with DCC RPG.

You can probably see what I was going for. I was still keeping the "toolkit" aspect, but also wrote a bunch of new rules. I wanted to make a fast-paced action-focus game for DCC RPG, and one of the ways I tried to do this was elaborate on the action side of things by introducing new Actions and Movement rules. I attempted this by making one of the biggest mistakes when trying to "streamline" things, I actually made things more complicated. I created a Movement check. The movement check combined two different "skill" or ability checks, Jump and Climb, into one simple check. This complemented a map design element that I was also introducing, which I'll go into deeper later. But I wanted to simplify hazards and traps, and other obstacles to a simple movement check. Basically by giving each of these obstacles a simple hazard DC. I also wrote or elaborated on some procedures, rules clarifications, and a new action I called Strafe. Here are some excerpts from the original draft: 

NEW ACTION RULES 

Combat actions and movement play out per standard rules. There are a handful of new rules to establish a fast-paced and hectic gaming mode, some changes to the standard rules, and some clarification regarding the interaction between new and standard rules.

Strafe Attack: A character can attack and move up to their speed as an action, but with a -1d penalty. A strafe attack can be combined with a charge, multiple attacks, etc. When used in combination with a special move action (e.g. strafe jumping, clearing obstacles, or avoiding hazards), the movement check is also at a -1d penalty. All other standard rules still apply.

The Strafe action was the only real new rule (for this chapter), in this same section there were clarifications on existing rules, and how they worked with any of the new rules.  

NEW MOVEMENT RULES

Understanding movement within the map will prove to be the most important skill to have as a player. These new rules will help their characters move faster and further.

Normal movement up to the PCs movement speed brings no risk, so no roll is needed. But strafing, fancy maneuvers, and tricky jumps risk falling, slipping off edges, and fumbles. These moves need checks and thus can fumble like an attack. Also note when when performing a strafing attack, the movement check suffers the same -1d penalty. Combining a strafe jump and strafe attack in the same round is allowed and explicitly encouraged! 

//Movement checks. A movement check is a d20 based skill check that's modified by a move modifier, which is based on the corresponding ability modifier, their PC's speed, and any armor check penalties.  

Hahah. There's this table in here that I'm not going to share. It had to do with a new stat called the Movement modifier, The "Move mod" was based on the PC's speed (in feet) and modified by a combination of Strength and Agility modifiers, and any AC check penalties. This modifier would be listed on the PC sheet right next to their movement speed. So PC sheet would have something like this: Speed 20' (+2). I still think there are good ideas with this, I just don't think it really added anything overall. All these rules tied into the system of movement checks and hazard DCs I designed for the action I wanted. I wanted obstacles, hazards, and traps handled quickly. 

Strafe Attack: Usually -1d. See New Action Rules above. 

Strafe Jump: A character can extend their move by incorporating a jump as part of the move. This jump is a Strength check, modified by any encumbrance or AC check penalties, and the distance is half the total roll. The strafe jump must proceed at least 5’ of movement, but it can be part of the total move. It can’t extend a standard long jump, it’s more of the skip in an olympic triple-jump. Yes, you can attempt a Strafe Jump after each move action. Gravity is strange here, this is a feature not a bug. 

I was really excited for my strafe action rules. I wanted a lot of action, so I tried to come up with a way to encourage attacks while moving. I might consider it an optional rule for competitive tournament style gaming.

Here's where I get weird. One of the biggest departures from standard DCC rules and one I cribbed from my favorite game at the time, the Stay Frosty hack, Slipgate Chokepoint. (These games are all vibes, btw. I'm a huge fan of Quake, and I can talk about how Quake and D&D® have very similar histories, and how I love them for the same reasons, but I digress.) They have a Danger Die and rules for Tension. The Danger die is basically a loaded "encounter" die. The concept of a loaded encounter die comes from the Hazard System by Necropraxis, combined into a Stress system from a game called Peridition by Courtney Campbell (!, legend designer, and this game is nuts). I decided that I wanted this in my deathmatch. I like the concept of the building Stress, which is similar to systems found in CoC or Mothership. Cosmic horror fits the theme on many, MANY, levels. Here are some excerpts from the this draft:

COSMIC PRESSURE

Gods are real, kind-of. Just not the way we think they are. There are cosmic powers that are so obscene and so arcane that mortal minds would never understand. For the feeble mind, even slightest sliver of knowledge would drive them insane. So imagine being a simple farmer minding your business, and suddenly appearing in a realm where the sky cries blood and screams sing through your ears. And the first person you see is trying to kill you--everything is trying to kill you. 

HAZARD DIE

Crawl! Deathmatch uses the concept of a loaded encounter roll that adds pressure, triggers hazards, manages time, and keeps the action moving (see acknowledgments for more info on the Hazard System, Stress, and Tension). A Hazard die is rolled for each character upon entering a different area, or if spending too much time in a dangerous one. Every roll is a d6 on the Hazard Die Result table. Note that some areas will have specific results or events that may override or replace “standard” Hazard die results, especially results of 5+. Some “illogical” results can be ignored if necessary, or if something similar makes more sense. 

 

There isn't an easy way of posting the table:

Hazard Die Result

1. Cosmic Terror; Surprised if entering combat.
2. Tension; gain +1 Pressure
3. Area Event; gain +1 Pressure; traps, hazards, encounters, trigger or activate.
4. Expiration; runes, temp power-ups, temp hp, etc. fade or expire.
5. Cosmic Edge; minor artifact, extra action, move, or spoor. 
6. Cosmic Influence; major artifact, gain surprise if entering combat, or clue to secret.

Pressure, almost completely cribbed from Stay Frosty, was a chart that showed the benefits of building pressure. It's one of the core rules of Stay Frosty, and what gave the game its namesake. Your PC got better as you gained "pressure", or "staying frosty": 

PRESSURE

Pressure is the accumulation of stress and tension in this dangerous environment. It also represents cosmic pressure from the unknown powers that brought them here. It results in the embodiment of control over “Fight or Flight”, it’s the “Zone” of a top athlete, or a “runner’s high” by making them sharper and focused. These benefits stack.

Pressure Level Benefits

1. Nothing
2. +1d to Damage rolls
3. +1d to Saving throws
4. +1d to Initiative checks
5. +1d to Ability checks vs hazards, obstacles and traps.
6. +5’ to Movement speed

At some point Cosmic Terror changed to Existential Terror. I'm sure it would have been fixed or ironed out by some editing. My editor eyes are seeing all kinds of problems while I read this thing. 

EXISTENTIAL TERROR

Once overwhelmed with the stress and cosmic horror. They regain half their hit points and roll 1d6 on the following effects table. Unless otherwise noted, these effects last until the character is fully rested, or they die. 

Existential Terror Effects

1. Can’t Take It Anymore: Drop all weapons and armor, and face their enemies head on, with only their bare hands. Will not pick up any items. 
2. Screw This, Outta Here: Immediately flee using all their movement and the best of their abilities to leave. Make DC 10 Willpower save every round to shake out of it, or keep running and jumping to get as far away from everyone possible. Cannot pick up any items.
3. Jelly Legs: Suffer a -1d to all movement based checks (including hazards and obstacles) and reduce movement speed by -10’. 
4. Muttering to Themselves: They start talking to themselves, they’re easily distracted and unfocused. Reduce their Hazard die, and Intelligence or Personality based skill and Ability checks by -1d. 
5. Let’s Do This: They are oddly, if not irrationally, in it to win it. +1 to attacks.
6. Rage: Until the end of this or the next combat, all damage is increased by +1d, but any ammo is used at twice its normal rate.  

I don't hate these rules, to be honest. I just think they're a bit too much or too ambitious. During playtesting I found that managing Pressure actually slowed things down, and that the Terror effects happened more frequently than expected. Can't say enough about playtesting, playtest, play-test, PLAY. TEST. I am keeping elements of the Hazard die. It's something I now use in all my games. And it adds something special to the "Arenas", the maps. This I'm most proud of, and it deserves its own chapter. Remember how I said, at the time of this writing, I'm at the start of the 4th draft? I'm still talking about the 2nd draft. I'll see you in Part 3.