Why I'm Scrapping Armour
Designing Keep the Fire: Part I
I've been playing LRP for a few decades now. That doesn't mean I have all the answers, but it's given me plenty of insights into friction points, cargo cult aspects, and "why do we do it that way?" moments.
This isn't a critique of LRP systems, nor is it trying to build the "perfect" system. There may be nothing more that comes out of this than intellectual onanism. I just prefer designing in the open as it forces me to think things through as I'm documenting them (and personal notes don't cut it).
At the same time, it invites challenge and discussion, which I enjoy.
One of the most potentially controversial (I expect) decisions is about getting rid of armour. This ties into a few of my overall design goals.
- Keep cognitive load in combat to a minimum.
- Do not punish players for their aesthetic choices/costuming budget.
- Enable diverse playstyles.
This started from asking what the calls I've seen of through, crush, impale, and rend added to the game. All of them largely serve the purpose of interacting with armour - when it's either providing damage reduction, or a separate pool of health. They don't really have any other purpose.
So that's multiple calls to support a single mechanic. Next, what does armour add to the system (I'm discounting aesthetics for now)?
- The tanky playstyle (one of my favourites - at least a quarter of my characters have been in heavy armour).
The tanky playstyle (one of my favourites - at least a third of my characters have been full tanks, mostly in heavy armour).
That means those armour-defeating calls are there purely to play rock, paper, scissors with a playstyle. Then the tanks get immune to through, magic armour, etc.
What about the costs?
- Rock, paper, scissors calls introduce complication.
- DR requires in-combat mental arithmetic (and renders weaker characters helpless, one of the cardinal sins in LRP for me).
- Separate armour health pool requires tracking two pools, with separate immunities and effects each.
To me, that added set of complications is a significant cost. Which then opens up, how could we enable "tanky" without all those complications?
- More health.
- Immunities.
If we replace armour with just saying that characters can be built with a lot of health, and immunities can be added, what does that open up, and what does it close down?
- Being able to afford heavy armour physreps no longer has a mechanical benefit (this directly goes to the player agency principle).
- More varied builds come in - you can be incredibly tough and resilient in cloth, or fragile in armour.
- No rock, paper, scissors - so we can remove any calls based purely on armour.
- No separate health pool or mental arithmetic in combat, and no DR also means that dogpiling with hordes of weaker characters is a valid strategy against even the most tanky.
None of this is about claiming that armour systems are “wrong”, or that people who enjoy them are doing LRP badly. I like playing tanks. I like the fantasy of heavy armour and unending endurance.
I just don’t like the mechanical complexity that typically comes bundled with it.
More than anything else, this is a commitment to following my own constraints honestly. Armour, as often implemented, violates several of them at once: it increases cognitive load, introduces tracking and arithmetic, privileges expensive kit, and creates call bloat. So it goes.
That doesn’t mean armour disappears from the world. Players can still wear it. It can still mean something socially, culturally, aesthetically. It just no longer carries a mechanical advantage that shapes who is “allowed” to be effective.
This won’t be the last controversial decision in this project. In the next article I’m after another favourite: weapon proficiencies, and why I’ve decided to drop them entirely.
Constraints so far
- Keep cognitive load in combat to a minimum.
- Do not punish players for their aesthetic choices/costuming budget.
- Enable diverse playstyles.
This is part of the ongoing Designing Keep the Fire series. You can find all entries here.