Kobold Press's Tales of the Valiant Announcement

Yesterday, Kobold Press announced the name of the roleplaying game they will release within the next year. There is a detailed announcement on the Kobold Press blog.

When Kobold Press announced last week that they would reveal the name of the new game, I was a little surprised. I thought they had settled on the uninspiring Core Fantasy Roleplaying as the name of the product. It turns out that it's more complicated than that. 

And if you’re just joining us, Kobold Press is committed to releasing Core Fantasy Roleplaying to everyone under an open, perpetual, and irrevocable license. It’s sort of like the SRD, but more thorough.

So "Core Fantasy Roleplaying" will be the name of the mechanics they release in their System Reference Document, while "Tales of the Valiant" will be the name of the game they release as books, presumably with extra lore and GM advice. The phrase "but more thorough" seems to indicate that the Core Fantasy Roleplaying SRD will be more like the SRDs released for other games: at minimum, all the game mechanics text of the core rules (not just one archetype per class), and possibly more such material from supplements as they are published. 

Why call the SRD text by a different name than the game itself? I am not a lawyer, but I suspect one of the reasons may have to do with legal issues. One of the justifications Wizards of the Coast gave for trying to revoke the old OGL earlier this year was to prevent third-party publishers from sullying the Dungeons & Dragons trademark with racist content or other offensive OGL material. Releasing the open content of their game under a different name allows Kobold Press to avoid the possibility that an offensive product using the Core Fantasy Roleplaying rules, with the Core Fantasy Roleplaying logo, would bring ill repute to the separate Tales of the Valiant Game. By the way, this measure demonstrates that there are plenty of ways for WotC to address the issue of offensive content without revoking the original OGL.

Meanwhile, a fuller SRD could be a competitive advantage for Kobold Press against the better funded next edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Both games will use the same core mechanics, so the one that allows players to access more information more conveniently online (especially for VTT use) may have a point in its favor.

Overall, I think this is a smart move by Kobold Press that can position Tales of the Valiant well going forward.

Canongate

In which a current controversy that nobody outside of Twitter cares about prompts the author to resurrect a two-years-dead blog.

The latest temporary tempest in a teapot in the D&D world is a declaration by Jeremy Crawford, the lead D&D rules designer at Wizards of the Coast, that Forgotten Realms novels and  FR game books from older editions are not considered "canon" by the current D&D designers.

The D&D community's reaction was swift, passionate, and unencumbered by actually reading the article in which the statement was quoted. Here's the article: 

Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game -- Comicbook.com

Of course, what Crawford actually said was that DMs and groups should not feel bound by all these years of setting books and ancillary products, not that those products were invalid. Actual quote from Crawford in the article:

The moment you are at the game table, it’s no longer "our” Dragonlance or "our" Forgotten Realms, it’s your Forgotten Realms, it’s your Dragonlance.... You’re not bound to the stories in the novels, as wonderful as they might be. We hope you take as much inspiration from them as it gives you joy to do so. The same goes for D&D video games or for D&D comics.

This approach actually mirrors WotC's decades-old stance on older material. I remember way back when, on the WotC forums circa 2003, there was an annoying poster on the Forgotten Realms boards who would constantly argue that all of the old 2nd Edition FR box sets were still canon. Eventually, they emailed WotC's customer support staff about the issue and posted the response. The answer they got was that the old books were still "useful" and that DMs should use as much or as little as they wanted. That particular poster pretended that "useful" meant "canon" and continued their haranguing of other posters for doing FR wrong, but the actual reply mirrored what Crawford is saying now.

This approach to "canon" also liberates younger DMs. Should a 16-year-old DM running their first-ever RPG campaign in FR feel that they must read an extensive collection of box sets and novels to run the game "properly"? Should they be haunted by the specter of being constantly corrected by a player who scored a trove of old FR novels from a used bookstore?

There seem to be two groups of people freaking out about this article: grognards and sheep. The grognards feel that WotC is invalidating their childhoods and declaring their favorite modules and box sets obsolete. The sheep feel rudderless without an extensive set of canon to guide their games. One even asked how you were supposed to play in FR without information from the novels. One group fears the dreaded knock of the mythical Canon Police on their door, while the other seems to want to keep a canon lawyer on retainer to give them ideas of how to game.

However, I suspect that this whole thing will blow over within a few days, if not sooner. But I had too many thoughts to get off my chest in a tweet or two, thus this post.

Movie Review: Black Panther

I got the chance to see the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, Black Panther, Saturday night, and I thought I would write out my thoughts. First, I'll give the spoiler-light overall impression. Then I'll move on to the spoiler-filled, detailed examination.

Overall, the movie was well-written and acted. This isn't surprising, given the sheer number of veteran actors involved. Chadwick Boseman, who plays the title character, has played starring roles in three different movies since 2013, and he is joined by the likes of Michael B. Jordan (best known for playing the title role in Creed), Alfre Woodard, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis (whom I didn't recognize with a beard and without CGI), and Martin Freeman.

The script by director Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole is deeper than the average Marvel movie script, raising the kind of issues that have only been addressed by the Captain America movies The Winter Soldier and Civil War (the latter of which introduced Black Panther to the MCU). Questions like "What is the responsibility of an advanced nation to the rest of the world?" and "What is the nature of authentic patriotism?" Coogler and Cole are also willing to raise the stakes through the roof at the end of the second act and beginning of the third. The characterizations are marked by nuance. There is not a single perfect character in the movie, at least among the characters who get enough screen time to be looked at in depth. Even the villain has an understandable motive and a sympathetic backstory.

Overall, Black Panther is an enjoyable and thoughtful action movie that will probably be enjoyed by anyone whose politics aren't too right-wing, for reasons detailed in the spoiler-filled section below.

And now, without further ado.....

SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS

The Script

Coogler and Cole are constrained by the conventions of an action movie, but they manage to include little moments that show who the characters really are. This is best shown in their treatment of Erik Killmonger. This is a character who can give a museum director informed lectures on the history of colonialism just prior to a heist, in a scene that shows both his education and his motives. However, this early establishment of a sympathetic goal is tempered by other aspects of his personality that are shown later. First, in a climactic confrontation with his partner Ulysses Klaue, he shoots his girlfriend without a second thought to kill Klaue and secure Klaue's plane for travel to Wakanda. This demonstrates that he is a sociopath who only values other people to the extent that they're useful to him. Then we find out this trait applies on a larger scale, too. After drinking the heart-shaped herb and visiting the ancestral plane, he orders the priests to burn the rest of the herb. This demonstrates that he doesn't value Wakandan culture or traditions, but sees his ancestral homeland as just a means to an end. Of course, it probably didn't help that his vision showed him how much of an outsider he is, with vertical blind slats in an LA apartment separating him from the supernatural African savanna that T'Challa experiences during his visits to the ancestors. These incidents show that Killmonger was a danger to himself, Wakanda, and the planet even though he shows signs of genuine humanity in defeat. It seems that he only comes to love Wakanda moments before his death, and that may be the most tragic thing about this film.

The script follows a lot of the conventions of screenwriting. The three-act structure is clearly visible, and everything that is invoked in the second or third act is introduced early on. Coogler and Cole could be accused of creating a boring, paint-by-numbers Chekhov's Armory if many of the later references didn't have a twist (like the differences between T'Challa's and Killmonger's visions in the ancestral plane, having a different virtual pilot the second time that technology is used). The writers' willingness to play with expectations is another of the script's strengths.

My only real quibble with the script is the sudden appearance of the mountain tribe in the final battle. I know we all love the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope my ass), but in that film, Han Solo had developed relationships with Luke and Leia throughout the movie. In this case, there's no plausible reason for the mountain chieftain to change his mind, kid. Nor is there any indication that this character is meant to experience character growth in this story. I don't know, maybe there will be a Black Panther 2 that will prove me wrong. But that's one minor flaw in an otherwise very good script.

Politics

Much has been written about the political implications of this movie. Most of this has been about the idea of Wakanda as alternate vision of an African nation with lots of technology that was never colonized, but I think this movie addresses political issues in other ways.

First of all, there is the debate the characters constantly have about what role Wakanda should play in the world, particularly regarding the African diaspora of black people throughout the world. Should it share its technology with the world -- particularly people of African descent? Or should it continue its policy of isolation and carefully hide its secrets? If you take out the advanced technology and the racial component, this debate mirrors the history of the United States in the 20th Century (and arguably the early 21st). It plays like a critique of American history disguised by setting it in another culture. The film's answer is the question is that an advanced country has a duty to the rest of the world, but that duty is not to overthrow governments and impose its own idea of justice on the world. Rather, such a country should improve the world through cultural outreach. Honestly, given these themes, I'm shocked I haven't heard about even more conservative and racist resentment on the internet than I have. I mean, the movie ends (in the first easter egg) with a black African country declaring its intention to be an example to the rest of the world. This should be enough to give proponents of American exceptionalism and white supremacists a stroke. 

I suspect the reason we haven't seen maximum apoplexy among conservatives who aren't blatantly racist is the way the film couches its anti-imperialism. The only country that is ever explicitly identified with the imperialism both T'Challa and Killmonger despise is the United Kingdom, not the United States. I assume this gives some people a fig leaf they can use to ignore the United States' role in perpetuating the legacy of imperialism in the late 20th  Century. However, Killmonger grew up in and was shaped by inner-city Los Angeles, and that experience clearly shaped his ideas about the predicament of black people around the world. Also, it was his time in the United States that radicalized Killmonger's father. It doesn't take a lot of deep thought to realize that America is implicitly part of the problem the characters see in the world. It's amazing to see such a position even being hinted at in a mainstream blockbuster action movie.

Kickstarter Tea Leaves -- Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny

(Note: This post assumes that you are familiar with the basic rules terms used in Numenera and other Cypher System products and that you know a little about Numenera's setting. If you don't have this background knowledge, the post may be confusing.)

Today, Monte Cook Games launched a Kickstarter called Numenera 2: Discovery and Destiny. The project is billed as "two new corebooks for Numenera." However, the description says that the mechanics of the game will change only marginally and that virtually all current supplements will be compatible with the new books. However, these new core books -- Numenera Discovery and Numenera Destiny -- will each be roughly the size of the current corebook, simply called Numenera. This means that there will be twice as much material in the new Numenera core rules as in the current ones. What will this new material be? I'm willing to hazard a couple of guesses, based on the description of the new books in the Kickstarter.

The first fodder for speculation comes from the two supplements that are listed as not entirely compatible with the new core: Numenera Character Options and Numenera Character Options 2. Specifically, MCG says they "will retire these titles" because they "will become substantially less relevant following the improvements in Numenera Discovery." Since those two titles contained -- among other things -- descriptors for prototypical citizens of regions of the Ninth World, we can surmise that more mechanics tied into the cultures of the setting will be moved to the core rules. This may herald a movement to tie the rules of Numenera more closely to the setting. Such a change could potentially benefit the game, since the Ninth World is the star of the game but has never been intertwined with the mechanics the way, say, Rokugan is tied into the rules of Legend of the Five Rings. Furthermore, there is little incentive to keep the Numenera rules generic now that a generic version of the underlying system is available in The Cypher System Rulebook. However, too much integration may change the rules too much to maintain the backward compatability MCG is promising, so the finished product probably will not have every mechanical aspect of the character tied to the setting the way L5R does. I do expect to see the descriptors from the Steadfast nations in Numenera Discovery. There may also be foci specifically tied to nations or regions of the Ninth World.

The second thing that struck me was the entire premise of the second new corebook, Numenera Destiny. The description makes it sound like a GM's guide with a detailed emphasis on a specific type of campaign. The stated idea behind this book is to support a kind of campaign in which the PCs use the treasures they find in ruins to make the Ninth World a better place, perhaps more like the wondrous civilizations on whose ruins it rests. Despite MCG's statement in the Kickstarter description that this kind of campaign was one of the original goals of the game, this strikes me as a bit of a retcon. Chapter 23 of the original corebook gives four different "flavors" a GM can put on the Ninth World, but most of the writing in the book seems to support the "post-apocolyptic" spin as the default flavor. In this take on the setting, the PCs use the Numenera they find to help themselves and their communities survive. The description of Numenera Destiny lines up with the "hopeful new world" flavor, which seems much less supported by the text as a whole. Given this shift in focus, I wonder if there will be multiple slants on the setting in the new core books or if everything will be presented through the lens of a hopeful new world.

In short, I expect a consistently brighter setting (for better or worse), with more mechanics that tie into elements of the setting.

The New Alternity

(Note: If you are playing the Alternity playtest materials, this post contains minor spoilers for Escape From the Institute.)

Now that the Alternity 2017 Kickstarter has long funded (though you basically have the opportunity to get in at certain pledge levels through Sasquatch Game Studio's online store), I've decided to review what I can glean of the new version's mechanics through the beta test quickstart PDF (available for free at DriveThruRPG through the link) and the materials included with it, especially the three adventures. Specifically, Escape From the Institute, the tutorial adventure, provided much information for reverse engineering.

What is Alternity?

Alternity was a science fiction roleplaying game released by TSR in the late 1990s, just before it was acquired by Wizards of the Coast. It was a novel product for TSR. It used a unified set of mechanics to resolve all tasks, but without using a color chart. Its extensive skill system allowed character customization while only using four broad classes. Furthermore, it included a lot of advice for how to customize the system for different subgenres of science fiction, or even for superhero games.

Alternity was supported mostly through two settings: the default StarDrive setting and Dark Matter. The latter was probably the more famous of the two, since StarDrive was a fairly generic space opera setting and Dark Matter had a distinct tone. However, the StarDrive setting book introduced a bunch of new mechanics for citizens of its universe, including cultural traits for humans from different sectors of the galaxy.

I have no personal experience of Dark Matter, but the Wikipedia page says that the setting book introduced expanded rules for FX (especially magic). This makes sense because Dark Matter was a transparent attempt to cash in on the popularity of The X-Files by creating a conspiracy-oriented present-day setting. Dark Matter is also notable for its two writers: Wolfgang Bauer and Monte Cook, who both now own prolific RPG companies.

Task resolution in the original Alternity game was handled with a d20 roll-under system, in which you tried to roll equal to or under the character's skill or attribute score. You rolled a d20 and then subtacted or added a "situation die." Situational factors that made a task easier or harder moved the roll down or up a series of "die steps," each of which changed the situation die. An easy skill check could move the second die from "+d0" (meaning no situation die) to –d4, –d6, –d8, –d12, –d20, or minus multiple d20s, depending on how easy circumstances made the check. Difficult checks had the same sequence of situation dice added to the roll, and the sequence was open-ended on both sides. Having a huge negative or positive situation die affected more than your chance of success, since there were multiple degrees of success and failure.

The game had four classes, called professions: combat spec, diplomat, free agent, and tech op. Combat specs were the soldiers, mercenaries, and other people who armed themselves to the teeth. Diplomats were mediators and leaders. Free agents were the equivalent of D&D rogues/thieves, people who specialized in stealth, infiltration, and deceit. Tech ops specialized in advanced applications of science and technology. Each class gave you a special ability and a list of "professional skills" which you could buy cheaper than members of other classes. Diplomats had the unusual special ability to treat another class's skill list as class skills. Thus, a military officer was built as a diplomat with access to combat spec skills.

The original Alternity copied D&D by having a set of a few standard races in the core book, some of them representing common sci-fi alien tropes and others which appeared to be created for the Star Drive setting. The fraal were the Communion aliens, who came to Earth in the 20th Century and abducted and studied many humans. The cybernetic mechalus are obviously inspired by the Star Trek franchise's Borg (though the mechalus didn't have a hive mind). The T'sa are your standard issue lizard people. Finally, the seshayans are a low-tech race of flying squirrels (though possibly reptilian) who appear to have no antecedents in literature.

The most notable feature of Alternity, at least to me as I read it back in the '90s, was that it took great pains to make the system flexible. While its TSR contemporary, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, sported published settings as diverse as Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer, the rules for these different spins on fantasy were contained in the setting books, and that kind of flexibility wasn't really hinted at in the core rulebooks.

Alternity, on the other hand, allowed you to play anything from space opera to a gritty near-future setting by playing around with the tech level and the kind of FX allowed in the campaign, as well as the kind of stats you allowed the PCs to have. The GM's book gave the system a quality I call "transparent hackability," and it influenced my ideas about how all rulebooks should be written.

So I was really excited at the news that a new version of Alternity was being Kickstarted. Now on to my evaluation of what I know about the new game.

The New Alternity

Sasquatch Game Studio has aquired the Alternity IP from WotC, and they have successfully funded a new version of the game through Kickstarter. The full rulebook will not be released until later this year, so the only material available is the quickstart PDF of the beta rules and a couple of adventures. This scarcity means that we lack certain things.

First, we have no idea what alien races (if any) will be featured in the new game. Sasquatch has clearly acquired the Alternity trademark, based on the title pages of its materials. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they own the rights to races like the fraal, mechalus, etc. WotC has used some of the old Alternity setting material in D20 Modern supplements, so they may be holding on to those materials.

Second, as with most quickstart rule packages, there are no explicit character creation rules. However, one of the released adventures, Escape From the Institute, allows players to create their characters during the adventure using a simplified system. We can extrapolate some idea of how character creation is going to work from that information.

Without further ado, here is my evaluation of the new rules, to the extent that we can know them at this point.

Task Resolution

Fortunately, the quickstart PDF details the new task resolution system in detail, since these rules are necessary to play the game at all. The new game still uses the same d20 ± situation die mechanic as the old one. Even the die steps are the same. The major difference is that, in an adaptation to the post-d20-System era, you now try to roll equal to or over, instead of under, your skill score. This means there is more math involved, since you have to subtract your skill score from 20 to find the target number to roll against for each skill. However, much of this work can be done during character creation and advancement, leaving the final result on the character sheet to look up during play. It also seems, based on the tables in the quickstart pdf, that the situation die can never be greater than plus or minus 1d20.

Of course, the new system inherits the most problematic trait of the old one: that darn d6. It's a bizarre hiccup in the math. To explain why, here's a list of the average rolls of each die used as a situation die:

• d4 = 2.5 average
• d6 = 3.5      "
• d8 = 4.5      "
• d12 = 6.5    "
• d20 = 10.5  "

The jump from a situation die of +d0 to +d4 adds an average of 2.5 to the d20 roll. Then each subsequent roll adds an average of one to the bonus of the previous die until the leap from +d8 to +d12, which adds two to the average. Obviously the last two steps steeply increase the average bonus, but that isn't as big a problem as the decrease in utility built into the beginning of the scale. It looks like the dice in the scale were chosen just because they are all Platonic solids (no d10 for you!) and not out of any solid mathematical foundation.

The obvious fixes for this problem are to either add a d2 at the beginning of the scale or eliminate the d6. You could also have fun eliminating the d6 and adding Zocchi dice to smooth out the curve. However, d2's and Zocchi dice* are unfamiliar to most gamers, and the designers must have felt that the d6 was a familiar element that must be part of any game sold to the general public.

However, I still like the idea of the die step system. While D20 System games often rely on the player to keep track of an extensive list of modifiers of different types which may or may not apply to the current situation, figuring out which situation die to roll involves a back-and-forth with the GM. Thus the GM will end up helping the player figure out the appropriate situation die. More eyes on the calculation increases the probability of an accurate outcome and decreases the likelihood of situations like this.

Combat

Combat may have changed more than any other aspect of the system. Alternity 2017 makes innovations both to both initiative and damage.

First, the initiative system is cyclical. Every round is divided into eight phases (called impulses). Combatants first act in either the first or second impulse of the first round, depending on whether they succeed or fail on their initiative check. From that point on, when a character acts again depends on the action they took on their turn. Every action has a speed, and a character who takes a given action must wait a number of impulses equal to the action's speed before acting again. Thus, a character who acts in Impulse 1 of Round 1 and chooses to attack (a 3-impulse action) acts again in Impulse 4. Another innovation is that initiative is not reset at the beginning of each round. A combatant who takes a 3-impulse action in Impulse 8 acts in Impulse 3 of the next round even if they took their first action in the combat during Impulse 1 of Round 1.

This system is more complicated than initiative is in an average RPG. However, it may be part of a well-considered tradeoff. Alternity 2017 has much less stringent spatial positioning rules than D20 System RPGs, and the designers may have decided to move the tactical complexity from space (in the form of miniatures combat) to time (in the form of calculations of the effectiveness of an action vs. time taken). In fact, instead of a battlemat, the major visual aid for the Alternity 2017 rules is an initiative tracker to remind people when characters are due to act next.

Second, damage is calculated in a unique way. Characters have a "durability track," which has a number of check boxes for multiple wound severity bands labeled from "Minor Wound" to "Mortal Wound." When damage dice are rolled, the result determines which severity band gets a box checked off. If all the boxes in a severity band are checked off, further "hits" in that band result in checking a box in the next highest band. A character suffers penalties to his or her actions depending on the highest band that has a box checked. The quickstart rules give the following "Typical Hero Durability Track" (format simplified for this post with penalties but without labels:

Band          Wds.           Effects
1-3         [2 boxes]        No ill effects
4-6         [2 boxes]        No ill effects
7-9         [2 boxes]        1-step penalty to all checks
10-12     [2 boxes]        2-step penalty to all checks
13-15     [2 boxes]        3-step penalty to all checks
16          [1 box]            Incapacitated

However, the pregens in the adventures have different durability tracks, and EFtI gives three durability tracks for Vitality scores from 3 to 5. The "typical durability track" is the one for a Vitality score of 4, a key bit of information for the next section.

As for monsters and NPCs, they appear to get custom damage tracks based on their roles in the story or encounter.

Character Creation

Honestly, I don't remember much about character creation in the old Alternity, since I never got to create a character for it. However, I do remember that it was point-based. The new version appears to also use point-based character creation, and I'll try to infer some of the mechanics from information in the quickstart and adventures.

First, "Escape From the Institute" has the players distribute 2 5's, 2 4's, and 2 3's among their six attributes. I think it's safe to assume that this is the standard default array for quickly creating Alternity characters.

Some of the pregenerated characters in the adventures have that array of attributes, but others don't. The most common variation is a set of 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 2. Since the "typical" durability track given in the quickstart rules is for Vitality 4, we can infer that an Alternity PC is supposed to have an average attribute score of 4. An average score of 4 in 6 attributes would add up to 24 points, assuming increasing an attribute score by one costs 1 point. The "standard" array given in EFtI adds up to 24. However, the arrays with a 6 and a 2 add up to 23. From that I infer that a 6 costs more.

These deductions lead me to conclude that characters get 24 points to buy attribute scores. Scores from 0 to 5 cost a number of points equal to the score, while a 6 costs 7 points. While the quickstart rules say that attribute scores range from 0 to 10, there's nothing to indicate whether human PCs can have scores above 6. It's possible that such scores are reserved for extremely high-powered campaigns or nonhuman PCs (who are not covered in the quickstart).

It's hard to determine the procedure for buying skills. EFtI has the players assign scores to three combat skills and five non-combat skills (not including Athletics, in which everyone is given a 4 in one of the scenes). However, the pregens in the other two adventures don't seem to have a set number of trained combat and noncombat skills.

Likewise, we can't determine the rules for buying equipment, since EFtI allows the characters to basically 3-D print any equipment they want (within reason) for free.

The last major mechanical feature is archetypes. The major mechanical function of archetypes is to give a character talents, special abilities analogous to modern D&D feats. The pregens in "The Wreck of the Magellan" and "Thunder Run" have preselected talents, and EFtI doesn't give the characters any talents, so we have no clue how talents are chosen, though a 1st-level character seems to start with four.

The four archetypes in Alternity 2017 don't have any relation to the character's job, unlike the professions of classic Alternity. Instead, the archetypes appear to be more like the roles of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: an indicator of what you do in battle. The four roles are Battler, Survivor, Striker, and Leader. The Battler, Striker, and Leader seem analogous to the Defender, Striker, and Leader from D&D 4e, while the Survivor is like a Defender who defends himself (or herself) instead of allies.

My Impression

I look forward to seeing how this system fleshes out. It would probably be a better fit than the Cypher System for a campaign set in the Babylon 5 universe, the sci-fi setting I've most wanted to explore in a game, now that the proprietary B5 games are out of print.

I also really want to see how the initiative and damage systems play out in actual combat, especially the pace of combat with cyclical initiative. I look forward to the release of the full rules to find out how to create aliens and how the rules handle FTL travel.

I'm also still tempted to smooth out the die-step progression with those Zocchi dice.

*Except for the d10, the original Zocchi die