Class mechanics

Before I go into the classes I picked and why, I want to go into the general class mechanics.

In olden times a character's class really defined what their mechanical effects were.  Originally your race was a class, and even in first edition AD&D the class determined how you played and how you advanced.  You had games where this wasn't the case, and what a lot of systems did as an alternative to the class/level model of advancement was use skills.  When 2nd edition AD&D came out it was a lot more skill based and back in the day I thought that this was a good idea.  However when playing it it took up a lot of space on the character sheet and it didn't seem to fit well with the class/level system.  I thought that the problem was too much class and not enough emphasis on the skills and I gravitated towards games with more robust skill systems.  When I made my home brew it was entirely skill based.  I could never figure out why the more work I put into the skill system the less fun the game got.  I haven't played 3rd or 4th edition but they seem to be a whole nother level of skills and feats and daily and weekly powers so much so that I don't even recognize the system (it might be great fun but it's not good ol' d&d IMHO).

Now I think I had it backwards.  I think that bolting all those skills onto a character system rooted in class starts making it harder for players to even try doing things that aren't in their skill list.  The mind set isn't there to think outside the box. This makes it harder to play non-optimized characters and it makes it harder for small groups of characters to have the right combination of skills to succeed.  This leads to more skill spill over, more multi-classing and special blended classes.  I think it can work if a game is built on skills or feats and not class/level progression (e.g. Traveller, Savage Worlds) - but that's not d&d in my mind - it has a different flavour.

Playing Microlite with my family, the rogue player (low on HP from a previous encounter) was asked to check a chest for traps and she refused saying that she didn't want to get hurt.  Some bickering occurred but she stood her ground.  Finally the fighter player (with lots of HP) said give me that chest.  Now the fighter didn't have a good Subterfuge skill but had a decent Mind stat and described how she was looking and what she was looking for so I assigned MIND+Subterfuge as the roll with a DC of 15.  She managed to roll well (17 I think) and find the poison needle.  What this illustrated to me (and the players) was that the rogue wasn't checking for traps because they were the only ones that could do it - they checked because they were good at it (+3 Subterfuge).
I think this is great and it really encourages players to try things or play characters with a different stat combination that they might normally try.  Yay Microlite.

My only problem with Microlite for classes is that they aren't distinct enough after starting bonuses and that some of the benefits or restrictions are based on dogmatic rules rather than mechanics to encourage types of play.  For example aside from the sneak attack once per combat ability what encourages players to choose a rogue over a fighter who takes skill points in Subterfuge?  Not much.

So now the class bonuses are reinforced as you progress - the non-magic classes get a bump to their skills every 3 levels and the magic classes get one every 5 levels (to be fair since they get the a magic bump too).  I tried for simplicity so some more playtesting may show issues with this but it's good enough for now.  This is in addition to the chosen skill bump every level so it is still possibly to develop that sneaky fighter character but (s)he'd have to work really hard to keep up with a rogue as they gain levels.

I also used the minSTR and armour mechanics developed by The Wanderer to encourage players to pick weapons that fit their characters rather than simply make blanket statements about usability.  Your mage can use a great axe but then she's going to have so many penalties to either magic or strength to make it counter productive.   I do cheat a bit on the philosophy by saying that arcane magic is hard to cast when using armour - however it doesn't prevent the player from doing it - it just prevents them from becoming magic tanks in plate mail armour.


As for multi-classing I don't support it.  If the only difference in character ability are these mechanical bonuses then you don't need to allow multi classing.  You can build a burly mage or a sneaky fighter if you want anyway.  Multi classing just breaks things and gets in the way of a good time.

PC Races

I've always disliked having hobbits in my game.  I realize they are called 'halflings' but before DragonLance came out with the Kender race, halflings were hobbits and that was that.  When I ran my custom game no one could play a hobbit or an elf just because I thought players were just picking them for the racial bonuses and playing them like humans anyway.  I allowed many different cultures of  humans and a mono-culture of dwarfs and that was it. If you wanted a decent hobbit or an elf then you could go play MERPs.  I had NPC elves running around but they were an aloof bunch and didn't hang out at the local tavern bragging about being 200 years old and still in short pants.  I was a teenager and I had to have some standards after all.

Well when I started playing Microlite, I described the races and classes and asked my kids what race they wanted their characters to be and they both said "a halfling!".  I am almost certain this is because to them halflings are like "grown up" kids.  Halflings are little and yet they get to play with daggers and hang out in taverns and go exploring old dark holes in the ground that may be full of monsters.  They are little and they are looking up at everything so I can respect that, I'm not a teenager anymore.  I did tell them that they had to wear shoes though.  I also bought some minis for them to use and they were Reaper gnomes - I refuse to buy minis with hairy feet.

I think that it's probably best to leave the iconic races in the game now, however I don't really see the need for making gnomes a unique race or allowing half-elves. Hell I still think that since every single character in the real world and an overwhelming majority of fiction comes from the human race so if you can't work with that then you aren't trying.  Still - this is a fantasy game.  You have the standard elf, dwarf, and little person and that should be enough to satisfy people who don't want to play a human.  If you want to role play you are going to have to put some effort into developing some personality instead of cribbing up a funny voice and printing off some minotaur half-goblin picture you got from Google image.  I figure that if you want to do it, work it into the setting and make it unique, but I'm not going use them or to make any rules for it.

On Armour Class and Hitpoints

Originally when I was thinking of what to house rule with Microlite I wanted to modify AC to include damage resistance for armour.  There was a really good example of this on the Microlite site posted by The Wanderer and in fact I co-opted this (along with strength based equipment mechanics) and worked with it for a while.  I really like the idea of separating AC into Defense (Dodge + Blocking) and Damage Resistance - especially for monsters, since it makes it a lot harder to wound a dragon with an arrow (unless you roll a 20 that is).  It makes perfect sense that a bear is not hard to hit (DEF 9) because it's a big target - BUT it does have a large resistance (DR 4) to both wounds and pain.   I had all the monsters from the purest essence monster lists converted and was gleefully imagining the tough battles my players would have against Orcs with a 4 or 5 damage resist.  However, after playing out the numbers a bit I realized that great as it was mechanically, it would really change the flavour of the fights and drag out combat.  Most non fighters would be rolling and rolling and rolling and hitting and hitting and hitting before they did even a point of damage.  They would be initially happy to be hitting and rolling damage so much - but in the end it would suck hard never dealing out any.  Also it was another barrier to using published resources since you would have to guess at the proper AC to Defense and DR conversion and you could really screw with the difficulty by getting it wrong.

So I changed everything back to AC (I kept the minStrength stuff though).  I resolved instead to make sure that I treated AC as it was originally intended, and reflect that in my game narration.  AC was the abstraction of all the skill, damage, luck, fatigue and psychology in a fight so if your roll was not high enough to match the AC of that barn sized Behemoth - you didn't miss it- your sword skidded off it's poison hide - or you tripped on the rocky ground - or the foul stench drove you back.

The same goes for Hit Points.  Instead of trying to rationalize HP as wounds and seeing high level adventurers bleeding all over the dungeon with enough damage on them to down a whale - I resolved to specifically treat  HP as a combination of skill and fatigue (mental and physical).  Increasing HP every level represents skill at  avoiding real harm and having more reserves of energy and willpower to keep going.  Falcor the rogue is down to 3 HP, he's bruised and tired and he wants to crawl into a hole.  Again it's all in the in game descriptions.  This works well with the Microlite magic system too, since spells are draining that mental reserve and making you tired and easier to take down.  I saved stat damage for actual meaningful physical damage. 

AC and HP always get a bad rap, however I think that this is from years of (mis)interpretation and how the combat is described and not necessarily from the mechanics themselves.  Keeping the status quo wasn't the sexy thing to do but I think it was the right thing.

It also makes it a lot easier to co-opt critters and encounters from all those juicy modules out there.

Why "Beacon"?

Why am I calling it Beacon?  When I play Microlite with the kids we just call it d&d (notice the lowercase) and in my opinion this is just like we use band-aid or frisbee.  My kids don't ask for a Band-Aid brand wound binding (or even for a bandage) or a Frisbee Disc, they ask for a princess band-aid or the blue frisbee.  They don't ask to play Microlite - they ask to play d&d.  I would bet that "d&d" has passed any reasonable test for genericized trademark by now.

Anyway I was thinking of all the "Blank & Blank" names used for rpgs and I knew that another one wouldn't really stand out in peoples minds, I wanted to go with something that would.  I don't want to compete with the likes of Tunnels & Trolls or Castles & Crusades or Swords & Wizardry.  I like Labyrinth Lord because it kind of avoids that problem while still sounding similar.  Also I am not working on a retro-clone - Microlite is firmly in the d20 camp even though it is trying to capture the pre-skill old skool play style.  "Swine-men and Scimitars" wasn't going to cut it.

I considered a Microlite style name or adding a M20 to something, say "MicroPillager" or "Caverns M20" but I didn't want it to appear to be a programming language and I really wanted to represent something 'lite' not something super or micro-lite.

Lite... Light.  Hmmm, maybe "Light Quest" or "Light Spell".  Maybe "Torch Bearer" (yuck).  Maybe Beacon.   Yea...  Beacon.  A shining light in the dark.  A warning of trouble.  I liked that a lot.

As a bonus when I searched to see if it was already being used and went to beacon on Wikipedia there was an awesome illustration by Karl Dahl called Vardetenning* AND it was in the public domain.  Wow. that name and that image seemed to really sum up what I thought the feel of this system should be. I think was a sign that the RPG gods were smiling on me.

But I know that when we play it will still be d&d.


*if you didn't put it together yet it's the illo used for the blog header and on the cover of the Beacon PDF.

Why (not) Microlite?

That's a very good question.
I started playing with AD&D first edition a long time ago and when AD&D 2nd edition came out I tried to like it but quickly came to the conclusion that things just weren't holding together well (not to mention that horrible Monster Manual binder thingy).  There were too many tables to check and every game mechanic was on a different chart.  Not a game went by without something to argue about or something to look up.  I tried to play Role Master and it was great stuff but much too cumbersome for my style of play (loved those critical tables though!).  I eventually built my own system based on percentile dice and a power ranking system somewhat like the Marvel superheroes system "Universal Results Table".  That worked well for a couple years but the largest issue was that i had to convert every thing into this system; every game supplement, every published module, every damn Lizardman.  I played some other games and eventually stopped playing as life intruded and people lost touch.  No more role playing, it was all I could do to get a board game in every now and then.  I did look at 3rd edition when it came out and heard about the OGL and heard about the screwage and the bloat and just shrugged and played me some Puerto Rico.

Well now there's blogs and there's people posting things up that are interesting and fun.  Now I hate me some blogs (I was a WIKI and forum-man from way back and I don't want to hear about your cousin's soup recipe) but dammit I liked reading some of them ones about gaming.

About a year ago I ran across the Microlite site put up by greywulf and I really really liked what he had done.  Here was the core of a system that you could fit on a couple pages and still manage to run a comprehensive game.  And the best part was that it was really simple to modify a whole swath of d20 material to use in the system.  You could do it on the fly!  Well I had missed the d20 train but I hadn't missed the fact that there was a metric fuckton of modules and supplements out there using it.  I printed off a copy and started a game with my kids and it was just great.  I'm still running that game and it's still great.


But maybe it could be greater...

• Microlite changes magic to a point based system and I really like that, however it means if you simply pull spells from the SRD you are going to run into some problems because those lists are based on an interval system and not a points system.
• Microlite has pretty loose combat rounds, I think I'd enjoy a touch more structure.
• Microlite classes are basically the same as SRD classes without skills or feats and with very stripped down mechanics, I think they could be a bit more defined for the system.
• I like a critical table (blame Role Master) but just a little one (blame Role Master).
• Dammit druids should be hedge magey magic users and not clerics!

So that's why I am modding the Microlite even though I think it's great.

Welcome to the Beacon Blog

Hello, this is a new blog created for the development of the Beacon fantasy role playing rules.
Beacon is a fantasy RPG designed to be fairly rules light and quick to play but still have enough meat to be satisfying and to be highly compatible with the vast amount of d20 based fantasy supplements available.
Beacon is largely based on the Microlite d20 system.