This substack has proven to be an absolute goldmine -- I'm looking to hack the various _WN systems and your takes usually pull me into the more "practical" side of GMing. I'll be looking into the system, even if to take inspiration from the wiki-style formatting.
Why, if you mind me asking, did you pick the WWN system as a base? I understand you've mostly been running OSE, so it was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Could we trouble you for one of these fancy deep dives on a Crawford system?
> This substack has proven to be an absolute goldmine [...] your takes usually pull me into the more "practical" side of GMing.
Awesome; that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Create evergreen content that people can use as reference material, very hyperlinked. I love it when someone goes to ask for advice on how to run brandonsford and someone else just links them to my brandonsford review.
> Why did you pick the WWN system as a base?
- The SRD being public eased a lot of burden
- My players (and myself) enjoy build craft
- I wanted to play WWN originally over OSE, but conversion and layout were blockers
Expanding, if I had to write everything myself in an attempt to avoid some sort of weird copyright thing, I probably wouldn't have ever actually tried to write a game. WWN's SRD being CC0 is massively helpful. It let me import huge chunks of the game easily, and then the work largely became editing and pruning instead of creation (which I think I'm much better at).
For buildcraft, it was a lot of fun putting together GURPS characters (even if the game didn't play well), and we came from *years* of PF2e. Myself and another guy at my table are very competitive WoW players, and most of the other folks have pretty long histories of RPGs/strategy games/board games/etc. There's a lot of fun to be had *between* sessions as you research and think about different ways to build a character. It's not fun for everyone, but it doesn't have to be! Folks that don't like buildcraft have a bunch of other OSR games they can play instead, or if they're stuck playing Sovereign then I include sample builds in the character creation section.
For WWN, I found the book *very hard* to navigate. The spell names are impossible, there's a lot of mechanics, and the information is spread out in a whole lot of places. My day job is in software where we have IDEs, language servers, and great fuzzy searching, so I've always wanted to have my TTRPG reference have the same features. I figured if I could put together a highly performant, searchable SRD (typing `/` auto-focuses search, hitting enter takes you to the first entry) then I could have the WWN system but without the pain points.
If I was going to do that, then I may as well make the other changes. Moving to a silver standard was... a choice? It really hurts OSR module compatibility and for extremely little gain, so I put it back on the BX gold economy. I reverted the spell names. I took out a huge number of the really weird skills (like adminster and connect) that felt like trap options.
The biggest thing was the GM section. I go to great lengths to describe a specific and opinionated style of play, and how other folks who are *completely new* can replicate this style, which isn't something I've seen before. I like it a lot (but I'm biased). The GM section is, more or less, system neutral, so useful reading no matter if you're playing Sovereign or not.
> Could we trouble you for one of these fancy deep dives on a Crawford system?
Yeah! I think it'll happen eventually. I want a lot more experience with the system before I weigh in, and I'm also filling up a backlog of modules to review as my table playtests Sovereign.
My current thoughts in extremely brief form:
- Supports buildcraft without getting too crazy
- I'm not sold on the skill system. It's tedious to decide on the stat, skill, and DC, communicate those to the player, have them cross reference two places on their sheet. Lots of skills seem like traps.
- the 15 minute adventuring day is *serious* (wizards can cast even less spells that are even more powerful than in OSE)
- It's very easy to have so much AC that basically nothing shocks players (impervious defense or plate puts players out of short sword shock range at level 1), making shock mostly a PC buff
- module conversion is annoying. instinct and shock values need to be figured, spells aren't 1 to 1, economy is very different
- I like how surprise works
- I don't know why we separate out a "Scene" from a "Turn"
- There are *way* more melee feats than ranged feats. armsmaster, close combatant, shocking assault, valiant defender, whirlwind assault vs deadeye and sniper's eye
- the XP system is bad
- encumbrance works really well
- grappling is lackluster (usually you want to have zombies grapple plate-wearers, but here you have to hit with an attack which is very low% and then win an opposed str/punch check which is low%)
- total defense is awkward. it slows the game down and incentivizes attackers to spend their action on 'delay an attack', wait to see if their opponent hits them by just 1 or 2, use total defense to negate it, and if not pop their action to get their hit in
- mortal wounds being curable by any amount of magic healing makes characters way too durable
- system strain hasn't come close to ever kicking in during any of our tests
- overland travel rules are miles/hr based which really needs to be burned to the ground
I find his books pleasantly readable but strangely unwieldy when it comes time to run, prep, or hack. I blame the prose-forward style blended with setting fiction -- its evocative, readable, and fascinating, but it doesn't fit in the head until I've boiled it down into cheat sheets. This may just be a "me and TTRPGS" problem, though.
I'll be honest, I didn't expect the search bar on your site to work half as well as it does! Very fast.
> module conversion bad because of (things like) weapon shock
I think this would be a lot easier if Shock were a simple damage scalar keyword that applied when the attacker missed by 5 AC or less, instead of a (damage scalar + variable AC ceiling). So instead of (1point shock/AC 18), or (2/AC14), you'd have:
axe bandit, +0 1d6, Shock-2, Thrown-10|30...
OR
basilisk charge, +4 1d12+2, Shock-5, stun...
Here you'd just need to know the target's AC and the roll itself, then apply the Shock. Fits in the brain a little better, and you could still keep weapon mods and feats for player Shock values. I expect the trick is just getting the math right.
I am with you on skills, and I have too much to say. I love this compressed list for OSR style adventuring, and I've soured on "generic skill lists" that try to cover every mode of play. I think it should be more normalized to write "here is a sample skill list built around dungeoneering, ask your GM what skills are available in this campaign".
I want skills in theory, and I want an Expert class, particularly in campaign play, but I've found the base skills and equipment surprisingly clunky to use in oneshots to players new to any kind of gaming (my local player pool). Those same players tend to work alright with their class features and feats.
I'm considering converting skill bonuses to an Expert-class-only feature, so that the complexity is a little more opt-in. Maybe swapping the WWN predefined skill list for a Fact/background-based system like Godbound.
> I find his books pleasantly readable but strangely unwieldy when it comes time to run, prep, or hack.
I think you're spot on with the prose being mechanics + fluff + setting all mushed together being part of the problem. Games like MTG are great about separating out the mechanics from the flavor text and I frequently most ttrpgs took the same approach (and then had a separate document with *just* the mechanics as a reference).
> I'll be honest, I didn't expect the search bar on your site to work half as well as it does! Very fast.
Thanks! A handful of tricks are being employed to make it as snappy as it is (pre-caching, pre-indexing, direct dom manipulation, etc). I wanted to be able to type and hit enter before I see the result and have it work, and I got there.
> I think this would be a lot easier if Shock were a simple damage scalar keyword that applied when the attacker missed by 5 AC or less, instead of a (damage scalar + variable AC ceiling).
Yeah, having one less number helps a lot! In the Converting Monsters section, https://sovereign-game.xyz/running-the-game#converting-monsters I suggest having 13/15/18 (spear/axe/mace) for piercing/slashing/bludgeoning monster attacks, with predators getting half their HD as shock damage and anything at least as big as an ogre moving up a category (so a polar bear's claws would shock 18 AC characters for 4 damage). I don't think it's fully reflective, but seems good enough and makes conversion easy.
> I am with you on skills, and I have too much to say.
I'm definitely down to hear it if/when you want to elaborate. And yeah, one of the things that focusing the game on delving did was let me trim a bunch of the distracting stuff. The giant skill list is also one of the harder parts about making a call of cthulhu character (or gurps character). Not too long ago, I finished (as a player) a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign; we rolled *maybe* 1/4th of the skill list, and rolled a few skills at least 10x more than the average. It's so hard to know which ones *actually matter* when you're making a character.
> I want skills in theory, and I want an Expert class, particularly in campaign play
I heavily considered just getting rid of the expert. My initial pool of 7 characters for the playtest had 0 experts. Instead, they had 4 warriors, an elementalist, a necro/healer, and a warrior/accursed. But! Now they have an expert, just in time for them to start running into locked doors.
> I've found the base skills and equipment surprisingly clunky to use in oneshots to players new to any kind of gaming (my local player pool).
Yeah, no clue what you're supposed to do with adminster, connect, perform, and work. I prefer Lead and convince to be roleplayed or replaced with reaction rolls, and sail is so niche.
Having a big list of adventuring equipment with no explanation or guidance about what any of it does is a such a funny thing to do. The default WWN equipment list has some odd stuff: 3 different lines for clothes, "boots" as a separate item, 10 sheets of paper (which is separate from a writing kit).
Meanwhile, there's are missing staples: acid flasks, blankets (hitchhiker's guide), earplugs, hand drills, magnets, string, whistles, fish hooks. We want items that let us interact with objects from afar (fishing hooks, grappling hooks 10ft poles) or get around/through obstacles (10ft poles, saws, hammers, pickaxes, shovels, rope, acid). Having an explicit callout for some uses is always nice.
Honestly, I think this "what to do with skills" question is burning such a hole in my brain. I think the appropriate next step is to make some usable alternative ruleset for a "skills module" that can be grafted onto the otherwise class-based rules. An alternate hack of the *WN system, if you will. I'll link to it later once I've got something usable, if you're interested.
> I considered getting rid of the Expert
This feels strangely. . . right? (your class archetypes would be Warrior, spellcasting Mage, Artful Adept) -- but it leaves a Thief-shaped hole in my heart. Then again, maybe a Thief is just a Warrior|Vowed with those fancy leap powers and the Aware focus. 6 attribute modifiers, HP, AC, system strain, and the saves... Seems easier to prep character sheets for.
== skillless / skill-lite WWN
I feel like maybe skills are just an Expert's class feature that got accidentally baked into the default action resolution mechanic. Produces the need for skill taxes like stab, craft, magic, and it really ties the GM's hands on tuning the action resolution mechanic without engaging in at least a partial system rewrite.
== experimental solutions
* Extract the skill taxes / skill points for non-experts out of character creation and advancement -- backgrounds, classes, foci, level-ups ... ( blegh ;-; )
* Rebalance action resolution around making (dice roll + attribute mod + circumstance bonus) checks. Now you're making a flat STR check to jump a ravine. The Expert adds his Exert-1 and rerolls when he doesn't like the result.
* rebrand skill points as an Expert subsystem you can class/half-class/foci into.
Thoughts welcome. I think the big change is just isolating skill checks so that the mechanic can be tuned a little easier. I'll see if I can throw something together once my semester ends.
> Extract the skill taxes / skill points for non-experts out of character creation and advancement -- backgrounds, classes, foci, level-ups ... ( blegh ;-; )
I started down this path, with the idea of swapping in LotFP's take on adventuring adjudication (1-in-6 for basically everything for everyone, thief spends points when leveling up to improve over baseline). I gave up because of how deeply interconnected it is, but I think if you can rebalance advancement points you can get the rest of the way there.
> Rebalance action resolution around making (dice roll + attribute mod + circumstance bonus) checks. Now you're making a flat STR check to jump a ravine. The Expert adds his Exert-1 and rerolls when he doesn't like the result.
All the skill checks in Sovereign are against a flat 10 rather than negotiating DCs; I hate coming up with DCs. I'm willing to let players ask for bonuses or advantage or to bypass rolls, or have better success outcomes or less-bad failure outcomes but I find it really annoying having implied pressure to keep my DCs internally consistent
Hey Adam - I'm not planning on making a printable version. I wanted something with a lot of hyperlinks (both internally and to external sources), and I'd structure the info a lot differently with print (as well as having to start thinking about spreads and layout vs infinite scroll).
That said, it's been built to work well with mobile, which is how my table uses the rules. I've got an iOS shortcut to the website and it's snappy as heck.
Finally, everything is totally CC0, so if someone enterprising wants to turn it into a printable work, and sell it (or release it for free) with our without my permission, with or without crediting me, that would be awesome
Thank you the fast answer! I totally get it - system works great in mobile version, I just hoped that maybe you were thinking about printable version, too. For me physical copies of books are just easier to understand and to learn. However, I will try to look at possibility of doing it by myself.
This substack has proven to be an absolute goldmine -- I'm looking to hack the various _WN systems and your takes usually pull me into the more "practical" side of GMing. I'll be looking into the system, even if to take inspiration from the wiki-style formatting.
Why, if you mind me asking, did you pick the WWN system as a base? I understand you've mostly been running OSE, so it was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Could we trouble you for one of these fancy deep dives on a Crawford system?
> This substack has proven to be an absolute goldmine [...] your takes usually pull me into the more "practical" side of GMing.
Awesome; that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Create evergreen content that people can use as reference material, very hyperlinked. I love it when someone goes to ask for advice on how to run brandonsford and someone else just links them to my brandonsford review.
> Why did you pick the WWN system as a base?
- The SRD being public eased a lot of burden
- My players (and myself) enjoy build craft
- I wanted to play WWN originally over OSE, but conversion and layout were blockers
Expanding, if I had to write everything myself in an attempt to avoid some sort of weird copyright thing, I probably wouldn't have ever actually tried to write a game. WWN's SRD being CC0 is massively helpful. It let me import huge chunks of the game easily, and then the work largely became editing and pruning instead of creation (which I think I'm much better at).
For buildcraft, it was a lot of fun putting together GURPS characters (even if the game didn't play well), and we came from *years* of PF2e. Myself and another guy at my table are very competitive WoW players, and most of the other folks have pretty long histories of RPGs/strategy games/board games/etc. There's a lot of fun to be had *between* sessions as you research and think about different ways to build a character. It's not fun for everyone, but it doesn't have to be! Folks that don't like buildcraft have a bunch of other OSR games they can play instead, or if they're stuck playing Sovereign then I include sample builds in the character creation section.
For WWN, I found the book *very hard* to navigate. The spell names are impossible, there's a lot of mechanics, and the information is spread out in a whole lot of places. My day job is in software where we have IDEs, language servers, and great fuzzy searching, so I've always wanted to have my TTRPG reference have the same features. I figured if I could put together a highly performant, searchable SRD (typing `/` auto-focuses search, hitting enter takes you to the first entry) then I could have the WWN system but without the pain points.
If I was going to do that, then I may as well make the other changes. Moving to a silver standard was... a choice? It really hurts OSR module compatibility and for extremely little gain, so I put it back on the BX gold economy. I reverted the spell names. I took out a huge number of the really weird skills (like adminster and connect) that felt like trap options.
The biggest thing was the GM section. I go to great lengths to describe a specific and opinionated style of play, and how other folks who are *completely new* can replicate this style, which isn't something I've seen before. I like it a lot (but I'm biased). The GM section is, more or less, system neutral, so useful reading no matter if you're playing Sovereign or not.
> Could we trouble you for one of these fancy deep dives on a Crawford system?
Yeah! I think it'll happen eventually. I want a lot more experience with the system before I weigh in, and I'm also filling up a backlog of modules to review as my table playtests Sovereign.
My current thoughts in extremely brief form:
- Supports buildcraft without getting too crazy
- I'm not sold on the skill system. It's tedious to decide on the stat, skill, and DC, communicate those to the player, have them cross reference two places on their sheet. Lots of skills seem like traps.
- the 15 minute adventuring day is *serious* (wizards can cast even less spells that are even more powerful than in OSE)
- It's very easy to have so much AC that basically nothing shocks players (impervious defense or plate puts players out of short sword shock range at level 1), making shock mostly a PC buff
- module conversion is annoying. instinct and shock values need to be figured, spells aren't 1 to 1, economy is very different
- I like how surprise works
- I don't know why we separate out a "Scene" from a "Turn"
- There are *way* more melee feats than ranged feats. armsmaster, close combatant, shocking assault, valiant defender, whirlwind assault vs deadeye and sniper's eye
- the XP system is bad
- encumbrance works really well
- grappling is lackluster (usually you want to have zombies grapple plate-wearers, but here you have to hit with an attack which is very low% and then win an opposed str/punch check which is low%)
- total defense is awkward. it slows the game down and incentivizes attackers to spend their action on 'delay an attack', wait to see if their opponent hits them by just 1 or 2, use total defense to negate it, and if not pop their action to get their hit in
- mortal wounds being curable by any amount of magic healing makes characters way too durable
- system strain hasn't come close to ever kicking in during any of our tests
- overland travel rules are miles/hr based which really needs to be burned to the ground
Very much in agreement with this. I'm a super fan of his work, but his systems have odd holes. A few notes (if you'll indulge me)
> the book is very hard to navigate
---------------------------------------------------------
I find his books pleasantly readable but strangely unwieldy when it comes time to run, prep, or hack. I blame the prose-forward style blended with setting fiction -- its evocative, readable, and fascinating, but it doesn't fit in the head until I've boiled it down into cheat sheets. This may just be a "me and TTRPGS" problem, though.
I'll be honest, I didn't expect the search bar on your site to work half as well as it does! Very fast.
> module conversion bad because of (things like) weapon shock
---------------------------------------------------------
I think this would be a lot easier if Shock were a simple damage scalar keyword that applied when the attacker missed by 5 AC or less, instead of a (damage scalar + variable AC ceiling). So instead of (1point shock/AC 18), or (2/AC14), you'd have:
axe bandit, +0 1d6, Shock-2, Thrown-10|30...
OR
basilisk charge, +4 1d12+2, Shock-5, stun...
Here you'd just need to know the target's AC and the roll itself, then apply the Shock. Fits in the brain a little better, and you could still keep weapon mods and feats for player Shock values. I expect the trick is just getting the math right.
> Skills
---------------------------------------------------------
I am with you on skills, and I have too much to say. I love this compressed list for OSR style adventuring, and I've soured on "generic skill lists" that try to cover every mode of play. I think it should be more normalized to write "here is a sample skill list built around dungeoneering, ask your GM what skills are available in this campaign".
I want skills in theory, and I want an Expert class, particularly in campaign play, but I've found the base skills and equipment surprisingly clunky to use in oneshots to players new to any kind of gaming (my local player pool). Those same players tend to work alright with their class features and feats.
I'm considering converting skill bonuses to an Expert-class-only feature, so that the complexity is a little more opt-in. Maybe swapping the WWN predefined skill list for a Fact/background-based system like Godbound.
> I find his books pleasantly readable but strangely unwieldy when it comes time to run, prep, or hack.
I think you're spot on with the prose being mechanics + fluff + setting all mushed together being part of the problem. Games like MTG are great about separating out the mechanics from the flavor text and I frequently most ttrpgs took the same approach (and then had a separate document with *just* the mechanics as a reference).
---------------------------------------------------------
> I'll be honest, I didn't expect the search bar on your site to work half as well as it does! Very fast.
Thanks! A handful of tricks are being employed to make it as snappy as it is (pre-caching, pre-indexing, direct dom manipulation, etc). I wanted to be able to type and hit enter before I see the result and have it work, and I got there.
---------------------------------------------------------
> I think this would be a lot easier if Shock were a simple damage scalar keyword that applied when the attacker missed by 5 AC or less, instead of a (damage scalar + variable AC ceiling).
Yeah, having one less number helps a lot! In the Converting Monsters section, https://sovereign-game.xyz/running-the-game#converting-monsters I suggest having 13/15/18 (spear/axe/mace) for piercing/slashing/bludgeoning monster attacks, with predators getting half their HD as shock damage and anything at least as big as an ogre moving up a category (so a polar bear's claws would shock 18 AC characters for 4 damage). I don't think it's fully reflective, but seems good enough and makes conversion easy.
---------------------------------------------------------
> I am with you on skills, and I have too much to say.
I'm definitely down to hear it if/when you want to elaborate. And yeah, one of the things that focusing the game on delving did was let me trim a bunch of the distracting stuff. The giant skill list is also one of the harder parts about making a call of cthulhu character (or gurps character). Not too long ago, I finished (as a player) a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign; we rolled *maybe* 1/4th of the skill list, and rolled a few skills at least 10x more than the average. It's so hard to know which ones *actually matter* when you're making a character.
---------------------------------------------------------
> I want skills in theory, and I want an Expert class, particularly in campaign play
I heavily considered just getting rid of the expert. My initial pool of 7 characters for the playtest had 0 experts. Instead, they had 4 warriors, an elementalist, a necro/healer, and a warrior/accursed. But! Now they have an expert, just in time for them to start running into locked doors.
> I've found the base skills and equipment surprisingly clunky to use in oneshots to players new to any kind of gaming (my local player pool).
Yeah, no clue what you're supposed to do with adminster, connect, perform, and work. I prefer Lead and convince to be roleplayed or replaced with reaction rolls, and sail is so niche.
Having a big list of adventuring equipment with no explanation or guidance about what any of it does is a such a funny thing to do. The default WWN equipment list has some odd stuff: 3 different lines for clothes, "boots" as a separate item, 10 sheets of paper (which is separate from a writing kit).
Meanwhile, there's are missing staples: acid flasks, blankets (hitchhiker's guide), earplugs, hand drills, magnets, string, whistles, fish hooks. We want items that let us interact with objects from afar (fishing hooks, grappling hooks 10ft poles) or get around/through obstacles (10ft poles, saws, hammers, pickaxes, shovels, rope, acid). Having an explicit callout for some uses is always nice.
Honestly, I think this "what to do with skills" question is burning such a hole in my brain. I think the appropriate next step is to make some usable alternative ruleset for a "skills module" that can be grafted onto the otherwise class-based rules. An alternate hack of the *WN system, if you will. I'll link to it later once I've got something usable, if you're interested.
> I considered getting rid of the Expert
This feels strangely. . . right? (your class archetypes would be Warrior, spellcasting Mage, Artful Adept) -- but it leaves a Thief-shaped hole in my heart. Then again, maybe a Thief is just a Warrior|Vowed with those fancy leap powers and the Aware focus. 6 attribute modifiers, HP, AC, system strain, and the saves... Seems easier to prep character sheets for.
== skillless / skill-lite WWN
I feel like maybe skills are just an Expert's class feature that got accidentally baked into the default action resolution mechanic. Produces the need for skill taxes like stab, craft, magic, and it really ties the GM's hands on tuning the action resolution mechanic without engaging in at least a partial system rewrite.
== experimental solutions
* Extract the skill taxes / skill points for non-experts out of character creation and advancement -- backgrounds, classes, foci, level-ups ... ( blegh ;-; )
* Rebalance action resolution around making (dice roll + attribute mod + circumstance bonus) checks. Now you're making a flat STR check to jump a ravine. The Expert adds his Exert-1 and rerolls when he doesn't like the result.
* rebrand skill points as an Expert subsystem you can class/half-class/foci into.
Thoughts welcome. I think the big change is just isolating skill checks so that the mechanic can be tuned a little easier. I'll see if I can throw something together once my semester ends.
> Extract the skill taxes / skill points for non-experts out of character creation and advancement -- backgrounds, classes, foci, level-ups ... ( blegh ;-; )
I started down this path, with the idea of swapping in LotFP's take on adventuring adjudication (1-in-6 for basically everything for everyone, thief spends points when leveling up to improve over baseline). I gave up because of how deeply interconnected it is, but I think if you can rebalance advancement points you can get the rest of the way there.
----------------------------------------------------------------
> Rebalance action resolution around making (dice roll + attribute mod + circumstance bonus) checks. Now you're making a flat STR check to jump a ravine. The Expert adds his Exert-1 and rerolls when he doesn't like the result.
All the skill checks in Sovereign are against a flat 10 rather than negotiating DCs; I hate coming up with DCs. I'm willing to let players ask for bonuses or advantage or to bypass rolls, or have better success outcomes or less-bad failure outcomes but I find it really annoying having implied pressure to keep my DCs internally consistent
---------------------------------------------------------
> I'll link to it later once I've got something usable, if you're interested.
deal!
Hey, do you have plan to prepare printable version of the system?
Hey Adam - I'm not planning on making a printable version. I wanted something with a lot of hyperlinks (both internally and to external sources), and I'd structure the info a lot differently with print (as well as having to start thinking about spreads and layout vs infinite scroll).
That said, it's been built to work well with mobile, which is how my table uses the rules. I've got an iOS shortcut to the website and it's snappy as heck.
Finally, everything is totally CC0, so if someone enterprising wants to turn it into a printable work, and sell it (or release it for free) with our without my permission, with or without crediting me, that would be awesome
Thank you the fast answer! I totally get it - system works great in mobile version, I just hoped that maybe you were thinking about printable version, too. For me physical copies of books are just easier to understand and to learn. However, I will try to look at possibility of doing it by myself.
Is the text CC0, or just the code? (Really like what you're doing here - thanks for your in depth analyses!)
The whole project is CC0. Do whatever you want!