History of z20 and Zludge

As the last couple posts have hinted, my z20 project has been quietly resurrected, despite earlier posts suggesting this is a doomed endeavor. I started wondering at this--where did z20 come from? How did I get here, and where do I think I'm going?

However, in digging for the answer, I found that z20 is intricately tied to the history of Zludge. Pouring through my archive of Sent email messages to S. and B., I was able to reconstruct the following chronology:

Jun 2007: I become intrigued by Fudge and Fate 2.0 (effectively a specific flavor of Fudge). Fudge in particular is filled with good ideas, but in a very "...and here's another good idea" style, leaving the GM to roll these ideas into his own perfect system. I start my own Fudge derivative named Zludge: a mixture of Fudge, Fate, d20, and GURPS ideas.

Jul 2007: I finish an early version of Zludge largely shaped for a sci-fi campaign (including psi rules, for example), though still intending to be a largely universal system.

Dec 2007: After repeatedly being frustrated by the slow rate of D&D combat--particularly the modifier tracking and rule details--I consider a possible simplification project. Zludge comes to mind as a base, and so I begin a document to blend Zludge and d20.

Feb 2008: The Zludge-d20 project grows beyond a simple hack document and becomes its own system: Drudge.

Mar 2008: After playing around with Animal Ball's Instant Game, one day S. and I just sit down and play a rules-lite system I come up with in an hour based on bare-bones Zludge. Originally named Fluff, this soon becomes Fluffy.

There are now three flavors of Zludge going: the lite Fluffy, the original Zludge (which I start calling Zludge Prime), and the relatively rules-heavy Drudge. The idea comes to make Zludge a roll-your-own system. However, instead of just being a jumble of ideas, it would be a system of clearly-defined, compatible modules. GMs could define a "zenome" document for their particular instance of Zludge that would specify which rule modules they are using. Thus, the rules could be lite or heavy depending on GM preference or the particular campaign. Furthermore, when I found a good mechanic idea in another system, I could port that single idea into the framework of Zludge, thus being able to experiment with small pieces here and there while still keeping the bulk of my gaming system constant.

I begin surfing more and more RPG test drive rules and indie RPG system for neat ideas.

Apr 2008: I start this blog, whose name is even inspired by Zludge.

Jul 2008: Fluffy (and its basically synonymous incarnation Huffy) sees some action on a long car trip with B. in a Heavy Metal Atomic Wasteland campaign setting. (Sadly, this never got documented properly here on SludgePit.)

May 2009: After 18 months of work (not 15), I call an end to Drudge. Essentially, Drudge had wandered too far from d20 to be at all useful. It would have been easier and faster to just completely reimagine the d20 content in a Zludge system. Intrigued by True20, I instead consider a d20-True20 blending named z20.

Jun 2009: I essentially realize the differences between True20 and d20 are too minor to be bothering with a synthesis. In short, I'm simply bastardizing d20 without significant advantage. I decide to end z20 in favor of d20house, which is just a handful of house rules for d20 and an digital DM's screen to speed play.

Aug 2009: I discover Microlite20. This is d20 streamlined! I think my own strength is streamlining--making simpler rules that are still effectively equivalent to the source. But I suck at actually trimming and drastically cutting away the fat (and even some of the meat, if necessary). Microlite provides the core I've been looking for.

However, there are a number of things I don't like. For instance, the core rules are so lite and streamlined, but the equipment lists are so long and detailed, spells are still straight from d20 (and so too detail-oriented), translated monsters have no special abilities at all--essentially just attack bonuses, AC, and hit points. In short, it feels like a hodge-podge.

I start pulling Microlite20 into a single document and tweaking what I don't like. Of course, I find myself adding a lot of old Drudge ideas, etc. It grows beyond the Microlite core, so I call it mini20.

Sept 2009: mini20 has stopped being even "mini". But it seems to also be close to my original goal way back with Drudge: a lite version of d20. In short, its the d20 that I always wanted to play. I resurrect the name z20.


So that's how I got here. As to where I'm going... maybe in another post soon I'll talk about some of the things I proud of in z20, and see if I can ever answer that still-haunting question: "Why convert or change d20 in the first place? Why not just play d20 as is, or else start a new system from scratch?"

Huffy: Testing notes

Huffy is a hiking version of Fluff(y), and served about as well. We only had a couple rolls for the combat scene.

The supplies needed include: a pen and scrap of paper (which got a little damp in a light shower), 3dF (small) in a transparent (medicine) bottle, 5 blue chips (plot points), 2 white chips (to mark light injury), and 3 red chips (for heavy injury). All this fits in a few pockets without much trouble.

Our hiking path didn't include too many road crossings, which is good. Your Huffy player party should include someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time to keep an eye on everyone, especially at intersections. S. does this well.

I found that combining hiking and gaming means the gaming goes a little slow as there are pauses to enjoy the scenery, and some of scenery is a bit of a blur because I was deep in thought on gaming. But I tend to think of gaming whenever I hike, so it wasn't that much different! By combining the two activities, you can focus more on one whenever the other hits a bit of a boring lull.


I felt that the biggest problem we encountered--which is larger than just some broken Huffy mechanic--is how to steer the story when we're making it up as we go. I'm still used to D&D, where time seems to divide roughly into 50% combat/strategy, 30% adventuring/dungeon crawling/narration, and 20% town/roleplay/interaction. (Well, that's recently in my Omri campaign. In Dragon Wars, it's probably closer to 65/20/15. In another campaign I play in, it's closer to 80/15/5.) In this context, the main challenge is to come up with dramatic battles and tricky dungeons puzzles (though, yes, it should all still be in the pursuit of some interesting goal).

But lately I'm trying to shift this time division to about 10% combat, 50% narration, and 40% interaction. But this means there needs to be a lot more story ready to go! Yet at the same time, I'm trying to play short, lite-weight campaigns that don't require more than 20 minutes advanced planning.

So what are some possible mechanisms to use here? I still think Instant Game does a great job of quickly giving you a campaign setting--the world and the basic conflict of the story. What I was missing yesterday was more of the story details that then flesh out that conflict.

I did include S. in more explicit story planning at the outset. This means we spent as much time planning as actually playing though. But S. seemed to enjoy being able to shape the world and the story as well as just her character. But once we were into the playing, I felt that the pressure is really on the GM to come up with the next encounter.

Another idea I had was to make a list of story elements before we started that we could then try to work in. Again, S. contributed to the list, which included things such as: feral hordes, a high speed chase, a fight on a narrow archway, a knife fight, spitting in someone's face in defiance, slippin' someone a micky, a foretelling. This did help a bit. I'm already foreshadowing the feral hordes. The knife fight didn't quite come through, but it did suggest the fight between the 3 men. We did a bit of foretelling too (though it's hard to prophesy when you have no clear plan beyond the next encounter!)

All of three of these--Instant Game's setting and opposition, player contribution to the world, and a list of potential story elements--helped. But all three of them require pre-game prep. Is there any generative thing we could do to foster play-time plot generation? And I'm not talking just rolling up another combat encounter here--though the idea of a random table could be used (which the story element list already hints at). In the spirit of Zludge, it'd be nice to stay away from reference tables during play-time.

Hmm... something to ponder more. It's also nice to see my RPG interests coming back around to my IN work!

Huffy: Liza Jaeger

Date: 11 Apr 2008
Player: S.

This was our first attempt at Huffy. We played for about an hour, I'd say, as we walked from Kahala Mall, along the coast at the foot of Diamond Head, to my house. We were playing an Instant Game with the following details:

Setting: Fallen Civilization
Tone: Action/Adventure
Thing: Neutral Ground
Thing: Epic Heroes
Tech: Lost Technology (Now: Wheel. Then: Automobiles)
Place: Camping Out
Population: >10 million

Opposition: (Cruel) Kingpin
Action-Thing: Rescue (Giant) Secret Society
Action-OtherThing: Survive (Strong) Soldier


The population of this corner of the world is spread out in little woodland villages, living a primitive but comfortable existence. S.'s character, Elizabeth "Liza" Jaeger is the greatest hunter in the region. But it seems her family is in debt to the local Godfather figure, who calls in the debt by giving Liza a choice: go on a little "errand" for him, or else he'll marry her young, innocent sister Amelia.

The errand is to travel east over the mountains to find more "sigiled meshal". The kingpin shows her the piece of meshal he already has--a hard, silvery sheet bearing a strange sigil: a circle surrounded by three triangles [a chunk of metal bearing the radioactive symbol, in other words]. The man who brought this to the kingpin suffered sores and internal bleeding. Before he died he explained that the sigil is significant as an indication of the meshal's power to cause disease. The meshal is now stored in the kingpin's shed, a fair distance from any living area.

Liza seeks prophesy before she leaves on such a long journey. The local wise woman reads her tea leaves and says to beware the mountains and the Green Bear.

A couple days journey later, Liza reaches the foothills of the mountains. Ancient myth tells that giants live on the far side, and heroes of old fended them off so that the Villages could live in peace here in the forest.

Liza hears a scuffle nearby and interrupts a fight between three men. One is a warrior dressed like her, but the other two are large, bald, blubbery, and dressed in loincloths and war paint. One of the savages--already wounded--roars and charges Liza when she calls out, and she sinks him with an arrow. The warrior slays the other savage with a well-placed blow of his macuahuitl; he then brutally dispatches the other fallen savage. Liza notices the savages bear weapons crudely fashioned from chunks of meshal, though they lack sigils.

Introductions are exchanged. The warrior is named Albert, and is a member of the Order of Holy Redoubt, a martial monastic order that serve as sentinels and guardians of the mountains. Though they have not seen any giants in known memory, lately small groups of these savages have been coming across the desert wastelands beyond the mountains. They do not seem to speak, but violently attack other humans and, occasionally, each other.

Albert offers that Liza come to the monastery for the night. It proves to be under-staffed with only a handful of warriors who come in from their diverse posts and watches for dinner. Albert explains that the Villages very rarely tithe their sons to the Redoubt as they once did, and the order itself has largely been forgotten here in the wilderness. Liza overhears a hushed discussion of "the rogue" further down the table...

[Liza's details: Fighting +1, Strength +0, Grace +1, Knowledge +1, Perception +1, Social -1, Survival +3. Quirks: Blunt/Tactless; Honorable.]

Fluff: Testing notes

Based on the Rye adventure, here were a few conclusions regarding Fluff:

• For such a lite-weight system, skills should default to Okay. New characters should get maybe two +1s to spend, though they could still drop one skill to up another.
  
• The death spiral is too deadly. That is, after a first hit, further hits become more likely. And because, without magical healing, it takes so long to heal from wounds, the game either stalls while the character lays up for a couple weeks, or else death becomes increasingly more likely. It'd be better to tone back the "realism" in the interest of keeping gameplay moving.
  
• The 3dF (though we were faking it with 3d6) and skill granularity were fine.
  
• The plot points were nice, and should be used more for player story control, especially for things like filling out character equipment/details on the fly.
  
• The combat system needs to be clarified. I described the damage levels and the combat mechanic, but left it largely to GM fiat on how the two related. It'd ease gameplay if this was properly defined.
  
• The player was skeptical about having her wounds "reopen" on a bad roll, especially when they didn't seem that bad the first time around.
  

I'm currently working these changes into the rules. The system has been renamed to Fluffy.

We're also thinking about a similar play-while-hiking version (Huffy), an RPG play context inspired partly by Sherpa. Huffy would probably have a scene-based form of combat, to focus even more on story over mechanics.