After a long pause, during which time I have written, designed and laid out an entire supplement for Doctor Who; wrote, recorded and engineered a 45 minute science fiction audio-play; created an alpha prototype for a Sword & Sorcery boardgame; experimented with publishing tabel-top RPGs as fully functional apps and have generally been kept hopping by my graduate degree *DEEP BREATH* I am back at work on Barbarians of Heavy Metal. And about time, too.

The game will be designed specifically for the Gameslate format, with a cheap text only version of the rules going up for distribution after the full app is finished. It is part of my experimental game design class, so the player’s version of the app should be ready by Summer, to be quickly followed up by the full game.

Now that I’ve had a year to digest the idea, I’ve started realizing the mechanics. The core mechanic of Barbarians of Lemuria is intact, but modified in a number of ways to fit the genre:

Roll 2D6+D8, Base Difficulty 13

The D8 is called ‘the Rocktohedron’ and it is something special for BoHM. First, it adds a 3rd die to the roll to extend the spread between character ability and difficulty and prevent characters from becoming too powerful too quickly. But more importantly, it ties into your School of Rock, your school of musical martial arts.

By rolling your school’s sacred number on the Rocktohedron, you activate a Harmonic effect. By rolling the sacred number of your opposing school, the one opposite yours on the Rocktagon, you instead generate Discord, or some sort of penalty. These will be described in further detail in the next post.

Mighty Successes, Legendary Successes and Critical Failures still exist, and are generated on the 2D6 part of the roll, as normal, but are now called Hardcore Success, Thrashing Success and Bollocks. They work pretty much the same way except now they are organized into a ‘Results Ladder’ that goes Bollocks-Failure-Success-Hardcore-Thrashing. The reason for this will be explained when we talk about Harmonics and Discord, but suffice to say, striking certain Harmonics or Discords can move a result up and down the ladder without need for Hero Points.

Another change comes in the area of Opposed Rolls. In BoHM all opposed rolls will involve bidding wars, similar to the system used in the old James Bond RPG chase system, with both sides gradually increasing their risk to borderline ridiculous levels to outperform their opponents.

Another possible change, one which I need to see in action to judge the effectiveness of, is to add in three factors to the characters roll, instead of the two normally allowed in BoL. So, instead of Celerity+Fire being used for ranged combat, I might allow Celerity+Fire +Appropriate Career. This allows for a wider spread of difficulties, a wider range of character ability and a whole lot more variety in the mix of Attributes, Combat Abilities, Careers, Styles and Instruments. A virtuoso guitar performance would use Celerity+Yngwie+Guitar, for instance, a crushing drum solo would use Might+Deadite+Percussion and firing a Titan’s weapons would use Celerity+Fire+Titan Rider.

Regular Career use would add an appropriate Style, assuming that certain Schools of Rock are more adept at certain tasks. So trying to fly an aerospace fighter through an asteroid field, which requires precision and virtuoso piloting, would be rolled using Celerity+Yngwie+Flyboy.

So as you can see, in BoHM, your School of Rock is more than just a musical style. It is a way of life that affects every aspect of the game and helps to further define your character and their place in the Metalsphere.

Now that you understand the basic mechanical modifications, the next post will discuss the ins and outs of BoHM characters…

Hi folks, Nathaniel here again for my weekly BoHM update. The conceptual design is moving along quite swimmingly and I’d like to thank TVP again for letting me host this Diary on his blog. It has been very useful for gathering my thoughts and getting feedback on them. Now onto…

THE GM SECTION

Any GM section must do three things:

1. Instruct GMs in their duties and provide examples of running the game.

This is pretty standard stuff and doesn’t require a lot in the way of explanation. Tell them their role, show a few examples of play, etc. What a lot of modern games fail to do, however, is to emphasize the total freedom the GM really has to make stuff up on the fly and how to play fast and loose with the rules. I plan to approach this discussion from the old school ‘Rulings, Not Rules’ approach, and provide ample examples of that as well.

2. Provide tools for managing the game.

Those of you who are familiar with Barbarians of the Aftermath will know that I favor utility and love to automate the GM’s duties wherever and whenever possible so the contents of this section should be of little surprise to you.

The Force Generator: A series of charts to generate anything form small groups of bandits to full on military forces, PC and NPC alike.

The Mission Generator: An adventure generator for creating missions, their objectives and a random event table that will spice up any mission.

The Stellar Generator: For developing a Star System, it’s planets and their resources. For those who have seen my Planet and Alien generators in the DW:AiTaS Aliens & Creatures supplement, you’ll have some idea of what it will look like (only more Metal of course).

The Petty Kingdom Generator: For creating a feudal empire, including it’s political resources, for both PCs and NPCs. The Stellar Generator can then be used to flesh out the individual systems.

3. Provide ideas on adventure design and adventures to get them started.

Discussion of creating an adventure will be approached from the ‘less is more’ school of thought, with outlines and brief write-ups being the basic building block of BoHM adventure design. This will encourage GMs to approach the game from the ‘Rulings, not Rules’ perspective I mentioned earlier.

Along with that, I will be introducing the ‘Campaign Album’ approach to adventure design for BoHM. Basically, I’ll show how to take any record and turn it into a short campaign with the song titles being used as the basis for short adventures within the campaign. To illustrate, I plan on using the Warp Riders album by The Sword as an example, providing a general outline and adventure seeds for a campaign set on Acheron (assuming I can get The Sword’s blessing to do so). Of course, it’s easy to make a campaign out of a concept album like Warp Riders, but it also is the best example of a BoHM style campaign that I can think of.

To sum up: the GM section is about providing GMs not only with the right tools to run a game, but the right attitude as well: BoHM isn’t about endlessly poring over rules and details, its about grabbing the game by the balls and using it to rock & roll…

Up Next: Warp Ships (no, really, I mean it this time)…

Editor’s Note: The following post is from Nathaniel, he of Barbarians of the Aftermath and Barbarians of Heavy Metal fame. It should indicate that right up there below the title. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew he wrote this, not me 🙂

THE RULES (PART 2) – EQUIPMENT

Ok, so I promised info on Warp Ships and interstellar travel. Unfortunately (on fortunately from my point of view) Aaron Smith has pointed out a number of good additions to my basic concepts and pointed out a few flaws as well, and as our conversation on the subject is still ongoing, I’m going to give that a miss for now and talk on the equipment of the setting instead.

Equipment in the 31st century will fall into the same four categories as BotA: Common, Uncommon, Rare and Unique. This is to not only keep them inline with the alchemy structure set forth in BoL but to make the ability to exchange equipment between the three games easier. So if you want a Stratoblaster in your BotA setting or a plasma gun to turn up in Lemuria, you’re set.

The biggest difference will be that the various categories also describe what knowledge has been lost to the people’s of the future after the widespread destruction of the 1000 Psychic Wars that tore the galaxy apart and reduced the once great Earth Empire into a collection of petty kingdoms and warring factions. The categories are:

Common: Items that are easily reproduced using the common level of technology available to those in the Dark Ages. This is the highest level of availability on barbarian worlds for the most part, although the occasional ‘hero’ finds, or is given a ‘weapon’ of the gods which might be of any tech level.

Uncommon: Items that are easily reproduced using the common level of technology available to the 21st century. This is the highest level of tech on most common worlds.

Rare: These items can only be reproduced with knowledge possessed only by Monks or the Sisterhood and are typically only available to the extremely wealthy or well-connected individual. Although basic maintenance can be carried out by highly skilled Roadies, repairs and replacement can only be done through a representative of the Church. This includes basic Titan Parts and most advanced equipment of the 22nd or later centuries.

Unique: These knowledge behind these items was lost in the 1000 Psychic Wars. There are still automated factories (AIFacs) that produce these items in limited quantities and these factories are highly prized targets for raids and invasions, although no one dares to harm them for fear of Excommunication by the Church (which means no technical assistance, no warp flight and no high tech goodies). Only the most skilled Monks and Sisters can do basic repairs on these items, but they are so advanced that even the Church holds them in awe as relics of  religious significance. This includes key parts of Titan function, high energy weapons, the Harmonic Forks that power sonic technology and, of course, Singularity Generators.

Technology can vary from world to world, with the main worlds of the Great Houses having modern 21st century style cities with a smattering of Rare tech to feudal worlds where the slave-peasants have cell phones and heavy equipment for farming but are only permitted primitive pre-gunpowder weaponry and live in primitive huts with no electricity. Barbaric worlds on the fringes of the metalsphere might not even know there is a universe outside their world and still carry on like a bunch of Dark Age savages, occasionally visited by ‘gods’ in ‘sky chariots’ who trade ‘magic weapons’ to them for raw resources (like Acheron).

One of the signature pieces of BoHM equipment is the Harmonic Fork. It makes everything from musical weapons to communications gear to  Warp Ships possible. They are incredibly tough, surviving the destruction of their host technology many times, and are highly sought after as, even though each fork has a specific tuning that gives it a specific functional specialty, they can be used interchangeably in almost any piece of sonic equipment and can even give primitive equipment special abilities (like the Vibrosword or the Harmonic Arrow) with a little work.

The other signature piece of equipment is the Titan. While many of the systems are within the scope of skilled Roadies to maintain, some of them can only be attended to by Monks and the critical systems like the neural net gear, artificial musculature and high energy weaponry cannot be recreated and must be scavenged or purchased from one of the remaining AIFacs at incredible cost. Titans were covered in the previous Design Diary, but just think about giant fighting robots pimped out by metalheads and you’ll get the general idea.

Another signature piece of equipment, and one that is essential to the central thematic thrust of the game, is the sonic weapon. Each weapon is a work of art, hand crafted by the monks of the Great Church and is a highly cherished heirloom of great power. They function as normal instruments in most cases, but by taking the safeties off and engaging their internal Harmonic Forks, they can create vibrations in reality that can alter moods, cause unreasoning terror, give unique abilities like flight to the user or just blast away at one’s mortal enemies. I’ll talk more on these in the Diary on Musical Duelling.

BoHM will use the firearms rules from BotA, including ammo checks, Penetration and all the rules for explosive ordinance. This will make it easy to transfer weapons back and forth from one game to the next. Vehicle construction and vehicle equipment will be different in BoHM to fit into the new vehicle combat rules for Titans in this game, but there should be minimal work needed to convert for use with either system.

Purchasing Equipment will be handled differently to BoTA, with your careers determining what you are likely to start out with at character creation. Almost everyone will receive some sort of close combat weapon, for instance, but only Titan Riders will have access to Titans, and their rank will determine the size and functionality of that Titan. Every PC will have the option of taking a Sonic Weapon, of course, because not allowing them to would make me incredibly un-metal in the eyes of the Inquisition, who would see me reduced to the rank of slave, as death would be too good for me.

The rules for purchasing equipment will only really concern really useful manufactured stuff and weapons, as it is assumed that everyone has a ‘Credit Pick’ that will allow them to eat, drink and otherwise supply themselves at a particular level based on their highest career. So Nobles will always be able to spend the night in the swankiest joints a planet has to offer, but the Barbarians will likely end up sleeping outside and Scavengers will be eating out of dumpsters. Of course, if you are out on a mission and stuck far outside your supply line, you’ll be thanking your Patron Saint that you have a Barbarian or Scavenger along for the ride…

Next Up: The GM Section…

Editor’s Note: We’re trying a different approach here. Nathaniel sent me his content and I’m posting it up as a proper blog entry rather than as comments following on. Hopefully this makes things easier for everyone. The comments section below is open as usual, though. And remember, what follows is from Nathaniel, not me 🙂 -tvp-

PART 5: THE RULES (PART 1) – THE CORE RULES & HEAVY METALCOMBAT

Coming up for air from my work on the DW:AiTaS core revision layout, I thought I’d share a few notes on the main rules section. I won’t be laboring to do these in any order, preferring to hit on subjects as they coalesce in my head.

In addition, the focus here is more about what I plan to accomplish thematically and mechanically, so this is more of a look behind my conceptual goals rather than a list of hard and fast rules that you could play by using this diary alone.

That said, today’s topic concerns the Core Rules and the rules for Titan and vehicle combat.

The Core Rules
As I mentioned earlier, this book will be different from my previous BotA by having the basic rules for play included in the book so you can play without needing to buy another book beforehand. As I also mentioned, this will not be a complete set, but an expurgated set that provides you with everything you need for this setting. Including the rules for adjudicating actions, combat and so on, but not sorcery, alchemy or priests.

Of particular note, I will be using the armor rules from the Legendary Edition. I think the ‘variable armor’ rule is superior to the old set armor values. I will, however, have a couple of extra notches on the scale to account for high-tech armors and the like.

Combat will remain pretty much the same, but I will be adding a few things to make it different enough to provide something new for those who have bought the other books including: variation on Dodge and Parry that makes them more interesting/useful options; an optional Death & Dismemberment Chart (a cool idea I’ve used in my B/X D&D games) which will allow for scarring, missing limbs in combat, and other results that can occur after you hit 0 LB; and provide optional rules for map based combat based around the same system used for Titans and vehicles.

An interesting idea came up when I was thinking about Languages in BoHM. Instead of the usual languages, I thought that there would be three basic categories: Lingua Metallica, the universal language; Classical, covering all the languages spoken on Earth and now only known to the Monks, like English, Chinese, German and even Latin; and finally and most interestingly, the Tongues of Rock (with all the imagery that implies) which are specific dialects of Lingua Metallica spoken by the specific schools and which relies on a shared knowledge of the style to understand. The more knowledgeable you are in a Style, the better you understand that language that goes with it (you know your primary school’s tongue fluently, of course).

Other than these wrinkles, the basic rules remain largely the same.

Heavy Metal
BoHM will have different vehicle rules from BotA for two reason. The first is that giant robot combat requires more tactical detail than the average vehicle system in order to really get across the feel of fighting in a 60 foot walking tank that can jump, punch climb, etc. as opposed to fighting in just any old heavy vehicle.

The second is that I hate to repeat myself, and while it would be incredibly easy to just steal my own system from BotA and tweak it for giant robots, it wouldn’t be as thematic, fun, or as good a deal for the purchaser. After all, if you have two different systems in two different books, that adds value, IMO, as you now have twice the choices and don’t feel you are repurchasing the same material. Use the one you like or even combine the two (an option I will present in BoHM with appropriate rules tweaks) at your leisure.

The system won’t be as detailed as, say, BT, but it won’t be as abstract as my previous vehicle rules. Here are some basic details:

1. Hex movement is in, but the hexes are larger (we’re talking the scale of a Battleforce map rather than BT one) and represent the terrain and moving about in it on a more strategic scale, where long range fire and maneuver are important. Once Titans are in the same hex, the basic BoX combat rules will apply, shifting from a wargaming feel back to the close in mayhem only an RPG with a GM could allow without a massive tome of rules, like making strategic use of the terrain, jumping down on opponents from on high, etc.

I’m also going with a slightly different method of adjudicating movement through terrain, inspired in part by WFB 8th edition: terrain doesn’t slow down movement, it forces piloting checks instead with terrain density adding difficulty to the roll. I always thought that an elite giant robot pilot should be able to move faster through different terrains rather than be hobbled by the same penalty as the green guy in a tank, and in this case, that can happen, with the ace pilot being more likely to take the risk (i.e. make the piloting rolls) to move through dense terrain at full speed.

The style of movement I’m going with has a number of advantages. First and foremost, the ‘board’ will fit on an standard sheet of paper, not fill up a whole table. Second, the larger, more abstract scale reduces the fiddly bookkeeping for movement and allows you to have aircraft interact on the same map effortlessly. Third, you get the best of both worlds in wargame and RPG style action.

2. Titans will have enough detail to allow customization but not so much that every fiddly thing has to be kept track of. Basically, a Titan will have attributes, combat abilities that represent the various weapons systems, ‘careers’ that represent specialist equipment, a simplified damage system with similar armor rules to the main game and a Death and Dismemberment chart for their use, a simple heat scale and ammo checks ala BotA . Basically, they will be very similar to regular characters. Non-Titan vehicles will be even simpler.

By cutting down on the record keeping I hope to reduce the amount of time it takes to play a single battle between two bands of Titans, with a number of vehicles and infantry units, from the 4+ hour marathon it normally takes to 30 – 60 minutes, cut back on the amount of scribbling and erasing you’ll have to do and allow the GM to control a large number of enemies with a single sheet of paper and minimal fuss.

3. As for combat, we’re talking the same combat rules as the generic BoX system with a few tweaks to cover combat on Battlefield scales including strategic movement, weapons and vehicle/Titan damage.

Think of a level of detail between the Classic BT game and the BT Clicky game and you can see where I’m aiming for in the detail and difficulty department. Everything should be able to be handled with the sheet, a bead and the occasional recording of critical damage by checking a single box per result, but still provide enough options to make combat interesting in a strategic sense, especially for the GM who should be able to run massive conflicts in an hour or so with a single NPC record sheet and a couple of dice. That’s the goal, at any rate.

Summary
My main goal is to cleave as close to the simplicity of the BoX rules as possible, while adding crunch to them to provide variety and value in the product. I think I did a pretty good job of that with BotA and can achieve a similar result here.

In particular, I want the move from PC action to Titan action to be as seamless as possible, with few new rules to have to remember but still retaining the thematic variety the two experiences offer. By using, essentially, the same system with tweaks for a larger scale of conflict, I think this will happen. Only time and play-testing will tell…

Up Next: Warp Ships…

Continuing on from the first volume, Nathaniel has some more to tell us about Barbarians of Heavy Metal, his design process for the same, and Ozzy only knows what else. Check the comments for the real meat!