Mexican Standoffs and Quick-Draw Duels in Into the Odd

It occurs to me that making Into the Odd work in the old west basically only requires messing around with the equipment and starter tables. You could argue this is true with almost any setting. However, I've decided to go a step further and create rules for Mexican Standoffs and Duels. I tried to keep them as simple as possible to keep in the spirit of ItO.

Please note, these aren't a replacement for normal combat and shouldn't be used all the time. Standoffs can be a good way to start off a fight, but only when it makes sense. Duels are more involved affairs, and either incredibly deadly or hilariously awkward depending on the skill of the duelists.

Mexican Standoff
Each person involved secretly designates a target. Do this by writing them on an index card or something.

Each combatant then makes a DEX save and records the difference between their roll and their DEX ability score. We'll call this the DRAW. Anyone who fails their DEX save either hesitates or misses their shot.

Starting from the highest DRAW, the player reveals their target and rolls damage as normal. Anyone shot this way forfeits their ability to fire during the standoff, regardless of whether they were rendered unconscious or not.

This continues until everyone has fired or been shot.

Here is an example.

Four gunfighters stand in a circle: Lil Bob, Big Bob, Bobbina, and Dog Horseman. Each of them secretly designates a target, and makes their DEX save. 

Lil Bob fails his DEX save right away, so he hesitates. Big Bob rolls a 4 vs a 10 DEX, so his DRAW is 6 (10 minus 4). Bobbina's DRAW is 8, and Dog Horseman's DRAW is 11.

Starting with Dog Horseman who scored the highest DRAW, he reveals his target which is Bobbina. He rolls damage, and Bobbina is shot. Normally, Bobbina would shoot next since she has the 2nd highest DRAW, but she can't because she was shot. Next, Big Bob reveals his target was Lil Bob and rolls damage. Lil Bob is shot, and never got to fire in the first place because he flinched. 

From here on, combat would continue as it normally would, favoring the party of the person with the highest DRAW. 

Duels
Duels use the concept of DRAW but in a different way. In a duel, two slingers face off until some external force compels them to shoot one another.

We do this in rounds. During the first round, both players simultaneously make a DEX save and record their DRAW. We continue doing this until either player fails their DEX save, recording their DRAW each time they roll.

After the first failed DEX save, both players build a dice pool. For each DRAW value that was recorded, find the closest die value that it exceeds, and add it to the pool. For example, if you have a 5, you would add a d4. If you have an 8, you would add a d8. Anything less than 4 is disregarded, and anything higher than 12 is considered a d12.

Both players roll their dice pool, and the highest scorer wins the duel and deals damage equal to the sum of the dice.

Here is an example. 

Loose McGoose is facing off against Lucky O'Ducky. In three rounds, they get DRAW values as outlined below. 

Loose McGoose: 4, 9, FAIL
Lucky O'Ducky: 2, 8, 7

McGoose's dice pool looks like this: d4, d8. 
O'Ducky's looks like this: d8, d6

One die is missing from O'Ducky, because any DRAW lower than 4 disregarded, since there is (for our purposes) no die smaller than d4. 

Both roll their dice pools. 

McGoose rolls a 7, and O'Ducky rolls a 12. O'Ducky scores fortune's favor and shoots McGoose, dealing 12 damage. 


Typically, a duel ends after the first shot, but a less honorable person may choose to continue firing. I leave that up to you.

FAQ
Q. What happens if both duelists roll the same amount?
A. They both take damage

Q. What happens if neither duelists scores a DRAW higher than 3?
A. They fumble around ineffectually or fire into the air.

Q. What if my character only has 3 DEX?
A. Try shooting people in the back instead.

Not Having Fun Anymore

The other night I ran a game of 5e for a group of almost entirely new players, and for the first time ever had a player get visibly upset and quit the game. I admit I wasn't at the top of my game since I don't play 5e and I find the official material to be virtually unusable at the table, but I was trying my best. I was annoyed mostly because he couldn't explain what I had done wrong. I'm a big boy and I remember sitting through countless critique days and having my paintings/drawings/prints torn apart by my peers. It takes a lot to get to me when it comes to my art, but what really gets under my skin is people not being able to articulate their criticism.

He eventually apologized, and while I think it would totally inappropriate to quote his apology word for word, it came down to expectations. When you watch Critical Role or listen to podcasts, the game appears one way. When you finally play it, it may end up wildly different.

It's something I understand on a personal level. I originally became interested in D&D when I was looking for difficult games to play. Of course there were the Souls games, the Dodonpachis of the world, and countless roguelikes--but what I was looking for was the feeling my father described when recounting D&D games he had played during his time in the Navy. The sense of danger lurking around every corner, poking every goddamn thing with a stick just in case, and going through entire packs of cigarettes out of stress.

When I finally joined a D&D game, of course it was nothing like that. The DM had cooked up pages and pages of plot and theatrics. I was compelled to build my character a certain way or be 'fucked' (his words). I'm not bashing that style in particular because I know some people live for that, but it wasn't what I was about.

Anyway, I'm not excusing said player's shitty behavior. He ruined my fucking night and killed a decently good buzz we had going. This whole thing has just been on my mind for a while. With a lot of people being introduced to roleplaying via streams and podcasts comes a whole new set of attitudes and expectations, and I look forward to more awkward confrontations in the future.

The Forbidden Spell Library

I was reading about Ars Magica and other verb + noun magic systems and I thought wouldn't it be great if there were an impossibly large amount of weirdly specific words to pull from? No? Okay, well I made it anyway.

Forbidden Spell Library 

What the spells do is obviously up to interpretation, but I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Street Fighting Dogs - ItO Hack for Yakuza (Ryu ga Gotoku), Final Fight, or Yankii stuff

Hey.

I've been occupied with the holidays but after playing Yakuza Zero and Kiwami, I really wanted a game that would model street fighting in a simple way. Anyway, I completely failed.

The end product is Street Fighting Dogs, named after a song by my dad's high school rock band about fighting off the Man who would try to pry rock and roll out of his burning teenage fists. The game uses a double blind system like you see in a lot of pseudo-fighting-game style games, and in testing I found it to be completely clunky. However, I thought maybe somebody would find a use for it so I'm sharing it here.

Download Street Fighting Dogs

It is a hack of Into the Odd that introduces a bunch of needless combat mechanics, and an alternative 'task resolution' system based on how good you are at karaoke. It's actually so far removed from Into the Odd that I'm kind of ashamed to call it a hack, thought I guess hack is the correct term for tearing something apart to the point where it's unrecognizable.

Happy new year, everyone.

Tabletop Simulation Stimulation

It is hard to keep up with this stuff, man. To summarize the past few months: I got hit by a hurricane, blew a tire, and played like 100 games of Eldritch Horror. I started NaNoWriMo earlier today, and I thought I would post in the small window I've allowed myself during the World Series. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a pitcher leave your team and then give up 5 runs in 2 innings during the most important game of the year.

I've been playing the Star Wars RPG. The wonky dice are not that bad (and I would imagine you've heard that a lot), and it does capture Star Wars pretty well. I'll be running the Force and Destiny starter box this weekend, but this is mainly to bide time while I plan my next Into the Odd campaign. I'm going through this phase where I feel like eschewing all modern conveniences and doing everything on paper like our forefathers. Despite this, I keep making shit for Tabletop Simulator.

I've made character cards, and blank cards for tracking Arcana/Oddities and other things. These can be stacked in a deck to essentially create random tables. I'm thinking of making a card for all the monsters in the main book, as well as stuff from the ItO blog assuming Chris is cool with it. I also made a much bigger character sheet, but its giant and ugly albeit probably easier to read. I like the cards better, and I think they fit the game's aesthetic a lot more.

 The next campaign will probably be a hex-crawl. This might seem ridiculous, but every time I've run a hex-crawl I never gave the players a map. I assumed it was like with dungeons, where you can map as they go. As a result, they never had any idea where they were in relationship to anything else. I think I'll provide a map with sparse details and giant obviously visible landmarks and let them fill in the rest as they go. I think this is how it works? I have a lot of reading to do, anyway.



 I have this image for a setting but I always hang up when it comes to guns. The Napoleon nerd and American in me want lots of guns, while the Tolkien nerd in me wants short swords and round shields. I recently posted up another thread and HP values were brought up. I prefer lower HP, and I'm thinking of having armor add hit points ala Black Hack (I think?) instead of reducing damage. I would probably have it so a chain shirt adds HP, a shield does as well (at the cost of a free hand), and heavy armor would probably have some kind of bizarre drawback like you have to drink 5 gallons of milk a day or shrink.

Alive

I am alive. I've been out of commission due to illness and our campaign pseudo-ended after we had trouble getting together a few weeks in a row. I've mostly been messing around with Tabletop Simulator making dumb board games and stuff.

Into the Odd lazy character sheets

See screencap for some ITO NPCs. Torah from Heaven, and a Suicide Elf (elves that live recklessly as an affront to the immortality of their fathers).

I think we may be trying FATE pretty soon just to see what it's like, but I really just want Bastionland.

Death by Bureaucracy

Saturday’s session was a city adventure. I’m growing really fond of them. Here are some bullet points.

• Miles and Poco opened up a sandwich shop in the Temple District of Veztm called Sandwich Shrine.
• They battled one of Barnabold’s lieutenants in an abandoned building and nearly managed to beat him before he escaped. He got away with 1 HP.
• Poco, immediately after the previously mentioned battle, was challenged by a bottom-feeding duelist and managed to strangle the guy with a garrote while still bleeding out from his earlier wounds.
• Made enemies of some local monks.
• Escaped from corrupt privatized police-men by causing a massive explosion.
• Poco was brought down to 0 Willpower while setting up a bank account, ending up temporarily brain-dead due to bureaucracy.
• The party established a network of messenger pigeons.

I’ve never had a campaign go on for more than 2 or 3 sessions so this is pretty wild for me. I got the idea of starting a business into their heads, and they became weirdly invested in the shop. At least Sophia did. At one point I thought I had lost her attention completely until she revealed she was making a sandwich menu. This also has the added benefit of servers being able to pick up rumors from customers, which will let me dangle a lot of hooks at once.

Despite so much happening, I don’t have a lot to say. I’m just having a lot of fun.  

Merchant Prince Desideratus