Sagatafl FAQ

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Revision as of 09:19, 28 October 2011

About Sagatafl

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What is Sagatafl

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Confusions about and criticisms of Sagatafl

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Seemingly extreme claims

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Sagatafl and other systems

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Q: The two other designs by Peter Knutsen, Multiclass RPG and Modern Action RPG, both appear to be (or are outright defined as) pre-existing system X done right. AD&D for Multiclass RPG, and Feng Shui (tenously) for Modern Action RPG. Is the same the case for Sagatafl? If yes, which system is Sagatafl then an attempt to do right?
A: Yes. Sagatafl's primary memetic ancestors are GURPS (mainly 3rd Edition, but nothing really changed in 4th) and Quest FRP v2.1 (and v2.0), but Quest FRP in itself is clearly an attempt at AD&D done right, and in terms of focus and subject matter, Sagatafl is not much like Quest FRP. It is quite fair, however, to describe Sagatafl as GURPS done right. GURPS the way it ought to have been, with the inflexibilities and oversights and errors fixed.

Memetic ancestors

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Q: In which way is Sagatafl related to Quest FRP, by Mike Greenholdt, Gene Masters and Todd Richmond?
A: Quest FRP was hugely inspirational, because of the spell list-based magic system, permanent magic items having charges per time unit (instead of infintie charges, or chargse that run out and are then lost forever, or charges that can only be used if the item's wielder expends some kind of energy), the fairly large list of (primary) attributes (including having a Magic Talent attribute entirely distinct from Intellect, and splitting Agility from Dexterity), the fact that attributes affect skill learning speed (and thus skill cost) instead of adding to skills as in many other systems (e.g. GURPS, Hero System, Ars Magica, indirectly in in BESM). The last was a serious eye-opener, as was the non-gamelable experience point system. That there were rules for creating magic items, rather than having these come into existence solely due to GM fiat or worldbuilder fiat, was also worthwhile although that was not a first for the designer.

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Q: In which way is Sagatafl related to GURPS, the Generic Universal RolePlaying System by Steve Jackson?
A: First and foremost, Sagatafl is a point-based character creation system, with the player being given one currency and freedom to use it (the difference here is that GURPS gives theoretical freedom whereas Sagatafl gives real freedom). This is directly inspired by GURPS. Also when the chief designer first bought the GURPS 3rd Edition Revised core books (Basic Set, and the two Compendia, the first of which deals with character creation), he was very intrigued to see an expansive character creation system dealing with what's inside of human variety (as well as that which is outside of it although that interests him much less), for instance various mental traits, photographic memory, talents for languages or music, and so forth. A year or two previously the chief designer had built a future history universe populated with a lot of interesting human characters, interesting chiefly in the ways they deviated from the human norm, often in terms of individual intellectual potentails. So in this regard he found GURPS to be much in tune with his way of thinking characters, although not completely so. But it was a serious eye-opener, and a big step towards realizing that player characters should not be forced to be capabilitistically normal.

A key component of point-based character creation, using the term in its meaningful sense, is that the player is rewarded (bribed) for putting undesirable traits onto his character sheet. This is very present in Sagatafl.

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Q: In which way is Sagatafl related to Ars Magica?
A: It isn't, really, nor is Ars Magica's Mythic Europe setting significantly related to what one might call Sagatafl's primary setting (although the chief designer likes to think of it as a test setting or system challenge setting), Ärth. The chief inspiration from Ars Magica was, believe it or not, the magic item writeups in the supplement "A Medieval Tapestry". At least the talisman item of the maga who could shapechange into a mist. It was fairly detailed in terms of abilities, which was fascinating. It occured to the chief designer, in a gradual and tacit fashion, that one way a character can express his individuality is in the magic item(s) that he creates for his own use, according to his personal needs and priorities.

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Q: In which way is Sagatafl related to Hero System?
A: It isn't related, really. The concept of disadvantages was first popularized in Hero System, having been invented by Wayne Shaw for use in an older superhero system, but the chief designer of Sagatafl was not exposed to Hero System until quite late in Sagatafl's conception phase, and he learned of and came to appreciate the concept of disadvantages via GURPS.

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Q: In which way is Sagatafl related to Dungeons & Dragons?
A: Sagatafl is not related to D&D, or AD&D, at all, except in that Sagatafl is a roleplaying gamign rules system, and so is Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. If one is charitably inclined, one might also regard AD&D and D&D 4th Edition as pseudo-RPG systems.

In one indirect way, AD&D provided crucially important inspiration, though. Via Drager og Dæmoner Expert (see next FAQ entry), the chief designer was exposed to the notion of attribute loss as a world-affecting "brake" on the creation of permanent magical items, but the model used in EDD was flawed, in that there were fairly accessible ways to recover from this attribute loss. One day in the early 1990s the chief desginer was reading the "Forum" letters section of TSR's Dragon Magazine, at that time mainly a house organ for AD&D, and one of the letters suggested a concept called Life Energy Levels, as a more elegant method of handling the concept of level drain, an important and dangerous attack form that some AD&D undead, such as ghouls, could use. This set the chief designer thinking along somewhat different lines, and seeing a potential solution for the problem of needing a world-affecting "brake" on the creation of permanent magical items. If characters were born with some amount of energy that was meant to use only for this purpose and not as some kind of attribute that also did other things and which it was crippling or semi-crippling to lose, then that could be the "brake". The concept of Life Force (LF) was born, later renamed to Essence thanks to Bradd S. from the RPG-Create mailing list.

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Q: Which other RPG rules systems have been an inspiration for creating Sagatafl?
A: The chief designer first encountered the Fighting Fantasy books by the other Steve Jackson and by Ian Livingstone, and from this developped numerous primitive roleplaying games. Over the next few years he came upon a few more RPG systems, thus expanding his horizons in terms of knowledge of the variety of the art. Encountering the advanced version of the Swedish RPG Draker och Dæmoner, in Danish translation caleld Drager og Dæmoner Expert, was a serious eye-opener, in terms of rules that tried to be realistic, to mimic reality and have things have the same "shape" as in reality. The presence of rules for making permanent magical items, that is as a rules-driven process that player character can choose to engage in, was important. Having an attribute for magic talent distinct from Intelligence did not do much in DoD and EDD, since PSY also functioned as instinct and willpower and so forth. It was much more specific and visible and had a much greater effect, in Quest FRP.

Growing beyond it's roots

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Q: Seeing as Quest FRP v2.1 is a major inspiration for Sagatafl, in which ways do the two systems differ?
A: They differ in many ways. A great many ways.

The attribute list is one place where they do not differ much, although Strength has been seperated out to be a trainable stat whereas the others are defined as being gentic and thus fixed. Frame will also be an attribute, bought with points, in contrast to the randomly rolled Height and Frame of Quest FRP. Some attributes also have sub-attributes.

The creation of permanent magical items does not take months and years, but instead costs Essence, and takes only hours or days (maybe weeks for items with Artifact level Enchantments), which leaves the process much less amenable to covert GM disruption. Also the "brake" of Essence acts equally upon every character in the entire world, whereas the "brake" of time does not really act upon societies and large organizations, and powerful patron individuals. A Duke or High Priest could hire a group of Enchanters full-time to mass-produce permanent magic items for his own use and those of his unerlings, in Quest FRP, whereas that is simply not possible in Sagatafl.

Mage or "Arcane" Spells are not forcibly learned in sequential spell lists, but are still divided into Realms, very analogous to Quest's Disciplines, often with direct analogues. The lack of spell list space restrictions means that the overall number of Spells in each Realm can be (and often is) much greater, compared to the 10-or-so spells per Discipline in Quest FRP. There is no Mystic Theory skill that aids spellcasting, rather each Realm is a skill of its own, and each Spell is a binary skill.

Religious magic is handled via an entirely different system, or rather several systems, all handed as inborn Powers, or rituals of Demon-worship, or subtle magics that anyone can perform.

Permanent magic item creation is restricted by Essence expenditure and does not take very long, often hours or days.

There's much more focus on and rules infrastructure for non-violent conflicts, such as social skills, and for creating characters that excel at those, or fit into the social framework of the setting in unusual ways. Also there's a big selection of inborn and social Avantages and DisAdvantages (the social ones are called Perks and negPerks) to define and individualize one's character.

Combat is in some ways shaped like Quest FRP, in the overall theme, with the two choices of fighting in heav armour or fighting lightly and quickly being distinctive but hopefully (playtesting will tell) functional. The specifics differ enormously, however, and the use of Action Points is thought to be much superior to Quest FRP's combat time system with weapon-specific Blows.

The overall process of character creation is much more truly point-based, with the player being given one pool of points (Goodie Points) and the freedom to distribute them between categories of creation points (DP, SP, PP). This means there are no dice rolls, and Sagatafl works fluidly for a huge variety of power levels, rather than the one starting power level that Quest FRP is intended for.

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Q: Likewise, and actually even more so since Sagatafl is GURPS done right, in which ways does Sagatafl differ from GURPS?
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Omnia

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Q: What is the relationship between Sagatafl and Omnia?
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Q: Is Omnia legal, or is it a rights violation?
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Q: In which ways does Omnia differ from Sagatafl?
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The magic systems

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Q: The jargon pertaining to magic items is confusing. Sometimes it's called Enchanting, other times Endowing. What's going on?
A: This pertains specifically to permanent magical items. An Enchantment is a magical property of an item, usually permanent or else lasting for a fairly long time. Endowing is a learnable method of putting Enchantments into items, but there are other ways to put Enchantments into items than Endowing. One can use the term Enchanting about any process of rendering an item permanently (or semi-permanently) magical, but from a game-mechanical point of view, one must always know the method used, which can be Endowing or can be something else.

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Q: Spellcasting seems like it would be slow, with all those rolls to accumulate Progress. Is it really playable?
A: It was a concern of the chief designer initially, that peraps the Progress amount required to cast Spells were too high, not necessarily for 1st Level Spells (which require 2 points of Progress) but possibly the Progress progression escalated too rapidly (doubling every Spell Level). However, extensive analysis, in the form of literally millions of computer-generated dice rolls, showed that as long as the caster's Realm Skill level is reasonable relative to the Roll Diffculty of the Spellcasting attempt (keeping in mind that almost all Spellcasting is aided by a Focus item which lowers the RD), a Spell can usually be completed in a number of cycles that does not exceed its Spell Level by much. For instance casting a 5th Level Spell, a very powerful and thus dramatic magical endavour, will almost always be completed in 6-8 cycles.

More desperate casting attempts, where the RD is higher relative to the caster's Realm Skill level, create a process where the caster frequently gets a Minor Fumble and thus loses his Progress and must start over. That's a precarious process, because with the higher RD the risk of all kinds of Fumbles is much higher, including Abortive Fumbles (F-3 and worse), and the general advice to spellcaster characters is to not attempt these castings except in circumstnaces of dire need. Which, not incidentally, is the outcome that was desired from the get go, since the primary brake on Spellcasting is the character's fear of Fumbling.

Spell attacks, primarily the various Bolt Spells, Fire Bolt I, Fire Bolt II, Lighting Bolts and Ice Bolts, will also be attempted balanced in such a way that their Range Increment and damage output is reasonable in light of the fact that they take an average of several Rounds to cast each (and several more rounds for the Grade II versions) but can be cast many times before the caster runs out of Spell Energy Points. In short, they must be better than bows and similar weapons, although part of that benefit should reside in the psychological simulation performed by the GM (with some aid of various rules), in that attack Spells are intrinsically scarier than being attacked by mundane weapons.

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Q: Where are the rules for creating non-permanent magic items, such as potions and scrolls?
A: Such ruless have proven difficult to create. The nice thing about the Essence system for permanent magic (including but not limited to permanent items) is that it acts as a "brake" on the entire world, not just on those very few world denizens who are player characters.

It has so far not been possible to device a functional rules shape that produce a brake effect acting upon NPCs as well as on PCs. One can of course disregard that problem, and just propose a couple of Skills called something like Potion Brewing and Scroll Scribing, and simple rules for how they are used, and for what they can produce, but that is not a priority at all, since such items are largely undesirable in the Ärth setting, as NPCs would realistically mass-produce and stockpile them (as should PCs) which would serve to thoroughly de-medievalize the setting.

One simple model for both potions and scrolls is to take inspiration from Quest FRP v2.1, where scrolls simply reproduce Spells, and where potions reproduce only those Spells that have an internal effect, so that e.g. one cannot have a Potion of Fire Bolt II.

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