I have been thinking about two wildly different shows: Mrs. Davis (a stage magician hunting nun / mystic from Reno, Nevada) and Scavengers Reign (space colonists get marooned on a planet with a mysterious and infinitely complex ecology).
What they have in common is a strong sense that something strange is going on deep behind the scenes. This often manifests as a snowballing series of semirelated or ambiguously related encounters. Sister Simone in Mrs. Davis keeps on running to a number of feuding secret societies and their agents who have an intense but unknown interest in her and each other. When you have a run in with the superintelligent AI app, the weird German treasure hunters take notice, which leads to an encounter with yet another faction when they intervene in ways I don’t want to spoil.
Similarly, the survivors in Scavengers Reign stumble across a creature that’s hunting or being hunting, which then kicks off a long series of encounters as predators and prey get involved and entangle/endanger the survivors further.
I’ve modeled how this could work in games in a short encounter table. Basically, you have encounters as normal, but certain reaction roll results either guarantee a certain encounter the next turn or guarantee that the next rolled encounter will be with a certain creature. If you run into a stressed out and Unfriendly prey animal, it means there’s a predator nearby. This means you can have normal encounters, but some make you fall forward into another encounter that demonstrates the relationships between creatures. There’s a little extra bookkeeping, but you just have to make note of what happens next turn and what replaces the next encounter, which isn’t too complex.
1d4 Indigo Steppe Encounter Table
2d100 Carrot Snails
3d6 Humpbacked Oryxes
1 Langouste Leopard
2d4 Big Scarlet Crawler
Carrot Snail
Roll
Result
2
Highly stressed by a nearby predator; will vent harmless but foul-smelling oil out of their eyespots on anyone who enters melee range. Next turn is a guaranteed encounter of humpbacked oryxes in addition to rolled results. Next rolled encounter is replaced with langouste leopards, attracted by the scent of snail oil that humpbacked oryxes are often drenched in.
3-5
Being hunted. Next rolled encounter result is replaced with humpbacked oryxes that are on the snails’ trail
6-9
Photosynthesizing, unbothered.
10-11
Senescent. These snails are at the end of their lifespan and full of seed-larva. They offer themselves up to likely predators in hope they will be eaten, thus spreading their larva (which gestate as they pass harmlessly through the eater’s digestive tract).
12
Will warble and approach with adorable little hops. They are infected with megaplasmodia; their eyespots will erupt into plumes of bacteria-bearing aerosol upon entering melee range of any uninfected creature. Save vs Poison get infected with megaplasmodia.
3d6 Humpbacked Oryx
Roll
Result
2
Moving quickly because a langouste leopard is in the area. Next encounter is replaced with a langouste leopard.
3-5
Protecting their young. 2d6 oryx calves are hidden nearby; the adult oryxes will go berserk if they are approached.
6-9
Grazing. Next rolled encounter is replaced with big scarlet crawlers that want to scavenge their shit.
10-11
Hungry, scavenging. Will nose through pockets and bags looking for food and positively remember anyone who gives them something.
12
Will amble up amicably. They are infected with megaplasmodia; their eyes will explode into plumes of bacteria-bearing aerosol upon entering melee range of any uninfected creature. Save vs Poison get infected with megaplasmodia.
1 Langouste Leopard
Roll
Result
2
Starved, sick. Can’t fail morale checks.
3-5
Hunting. Will attack but retreat if faced with any real violence. Until killed or fully chased off, it will secretly accompany every subsequent encounter, waiting for a chance to ambush.
6-9
Hunting something else.
10-11
Just ate; curious. Will accept bribes and is less likely to hunt anyone who bribes it with snacks.
12
Will act like a big cute cat. It is infected with megaplasmodia; after frolicking for a little while, it will turn to leave just as its tail explodes into a giant plume of bacteria-bearing aerosol. Save vs Poison get infected with megaplasmodia.
2d4 Big Scarlet Crawlers
Roll
Result
2
Confused. They are infected with megaplasmodia and will detonate into a sticky spume of bacteria-bearing purple ichor as soon as they ram into an uninfected creature. Take 3d6 damage, Save vs Breath for half; Save vs Poison or get infected with megaplasmodia.
3-5
Performing a mating ritual. Will attack only if approached.
6-9
Busily sifting through piles of oryx dung.
10-11
By chance unthreatened by the PCs; if offered food, they will trail behind by them until the next time the party rests, effacing all trace of their passage; negates all impending encounters. If there are no impending encounters, players can choose to reroll the encounter die the next time an encounter is rolled.
12
Will trail the PCs, effacing all trace of their passage; negates all impending encounters. If there are no impending encounters, players can choose to reroll the encounter die the next time an encounter is rolled.
Uses
This is probably best for relatively small encounter tables in places that PCs will be spending a lot of time in; if they’re just passing through or there are a lot of different kinds of encounters, I think it could end up as just a bunch of weird stuff happening. PCs have to linger long enough to understand how different behaviors are associated with different outcomes for the interesting part of this mechanic to really kick in.
This example uses animals to model an ecology, but you could model some fun Mrs. Davis / Crying of Lot 49 shenanigans where Neorosicrucians are always encountered on teal Vespas and when they’re Neutral it’s because they’re too busy fleeing from Retrotheosophists to try to throw fake blood on you, and everyone is getting chased around by the local SETI chapter, which is trying to whisk people away in their ice cream truck without getting nabbed by the IRS.
You could also do fun stuff like having certain creatures that aren’t on the encounter table at all and only show up as consequence to a prior encounter. This could be good for rare, especially dangerous predators or especially mysterious NPCs.
Break!! is coming out soon. The draft pdf is very good and I want to run it. Put together a little setting sketch/player brief that remixes the default setting a little. I wanted to do something that made a West Marches-esque game that enables easy drop-in / drop-out but also longer arcs, so I busted the four primary zones in Break up into Spelljammer-esque planes and put a simple pathcrawl on top of them. Players can pick from a list of jobs and missions designed to be finished in 1-2 sessions.
Intro
The Cosmos is broken up into innumerable worlds, all but inaccessible to each other. However, the brave and knowledgeable may voyage between them on the interdimensional Sea of Erebus. It is a vast and jewel-black abyss with a sparse scattering of Stations that permit entry into their respective worlds.
You are the crew of an ancient celestial craft able to traverse the perilous waters of Erebus: a legendary heavenliner. It looks something like an old-fashioned passenger ship and something like an Art Deco cathedral. It is your perilous and lucrative job to ferry passengers and carry cargo from world to world.
Starlines
Starlines are currents of aether that link the Station of every world in Erebus. They are visible as golden threads, just beneath the surface of Erebus’ waters. The starline that links the four Known Worlds is called the Crescent Line. The Halfmoon Line once linked the two farthest worlds, the Blazing Garden and the Wistful Dark, and allowed access to the Worlds Beyond, but it has long since been lost.
Worlds and their Stations
There are four Known Worlds: the Blazing Garden, the Buried Kingdom, the Twilight Meridian, and the Wistful Dark (i.e. the four primary zones in Break!!). They were once one world, but some long-passed cataclysm wrenched them apart and scattered them across Erebus.
Each world has a Station on the Crescent Line. They are enormous, beautiful buildings, constructed lovingly by an unknown hand, and each contains a gateway to their respective world.
Wistful Dark’s Station Lamentorum: An elegant neo-Gothic confection illuminated by indigo lamps and crowned by a clocktower. The worldside Station is a vine-swathed ruin in the Shadowed Lands, meaning that importing goods into and out of the Wistful Dark requires a lengthy caravan journey. A bustling caravanserai has cropped up around the worldside Station, but it faces the bandits and undead that make their home in the Shadowed Lands. Rumor has it that the Erebus-side Station contains a hidden sub-basement where the Unshaped hid some fabulous artifact.
Twilight Meridian’s Station Nubium: An immense pavilion built from fragrant wood of an unknown tree, illuminated with heatless braziers that burn rosy pink and pale purple. The worldside Station is a well-tended, albeit much smaller twin located not far outside the capital of the Seven Holy Isles, guarded (and taxed) by the Shogun’s court. Rumor has it that somewhere in the Pavilion’s mazelike chambers lies a coffin containing an ingenious shipwright imprisoned eternally for defying the gods before their banishment.
Buried Kingdom’s Station Ingenii: A Cyclopean edifice blanketed with moss and lichen, illuminated poorly with fireflies and luminescent fungus. The worldside Station is a totally unmanaged grotto, and all manner of precious goods, illicit or otherwise, spill in and out of the bazaar that has sprung up in its vicinity. Rumor has it that Station Ingenii’s depths contain some hint of the fate of the long-lost giants.
Blazing Garden’s Station Crisium: A palatial monument of red sandstone and embellishments in gold and branching red coral. Its worldside Station is part of an extensive dragonshrine complex in Taaga, which mediates between heavenliner crews and the worldside community of merchants doing brisk business. Rumor has it that the gardens that line the Erebus-side Station bloom with mythological herbs and flowers once every hundred years.
Image by NASA. Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Demimondes
Some worlds are small enough to float on the surface of Erebus without a Station. They might be artificial, constructed by asura, deva, or especially powerful sorcerers, or fragments of ancient worlds eroded down to wandering islands.
The most famous demimonde is the Lantern House, constructed by Sagess Saith as a hotel for affluent travelers of Erebus. Her magic, aligned with shadow, flame, and smoke, maintained the Halfmoon Line. When the Lantern House went dark some centuries ago, the Halfmoon Line vanished with it. Bringing light back to the Lantern House could restore the Line, but voyaging into the gulf between worlds with only dead reckoning and a determined crew would require a surpassingly talented navigator. This is to say nothing of confronting whatever power extinguished the Lantern House to begin with.
Lost Worlds
Through the Halfmoon Line are the Lost Worlds, half-remembered through centuries of isolation.
Malian, the profane cosmopolis built into a fathomless borehole rumored to reach into Hell. Almost anything can be bought here, but almost nothing is ultimately worth the price.
Myrkholt, an archaic land ruled by nobles and knights. It is endlessly endangered by the beasts of the forest depths, and it is haunted by the legacy of its immortal monarch, the Once and Future King.
Carillon, a land of stargazing scholars and fanatical exorcists. At war with beings from beyond the stars, and home to technology that rivals the Old Iron Kingdom in its heyday.
Jobs
I’m incredibly disinterested in simulating arbitrage, so this is going to be a bit simplified. You get paid for worlds traveled and the type of job. You can only take one job at a time. If I accidentally jacked up the math (likely) this may get adjusted.
Standard Deliveries just mean you need to keep the cargo intact and get to the destination at some point. You will get paid unless you really fuck around.
Express Deliveries have a deadline, usually a number of days equal to how many worlds away the destination is. If you don’t reach the destination in time, you don’t get paid, and you might piss off somebody important.
Standard and Express Passengers follow the same rules as Standard and Express Deliveries, except also you need to keep the passenger alive and reasonably comfortable.
VIP Passengers follow the same rules as above except the passenger expects a higher level of accommodation and comfort and more dangerous people want them dead. If you fail an Express VIP job you are in Big Trouble.
Single-world hops generally require some additional work or trouble, like delivering a package or escorting a passenger to a location within the world, not just its Station, or fending off a specific party that wants what you are delivering. If multi-world hops require this, pay is doubled.
Worlds Away
Standard Delivery
Express Delivery
Standard Passenger
Express Passenger
Standard VIP
Express VIP
1
100 coins
200 coins
500 coins
1 gem
2 gems
5 gems
2
200 coins
500 coins
1 gem
2 gems
5 gems
10 gems
3
500 coins
1 gem
2 gems
5 gems
10 gems
20 gems
4+ Worlds
1 gem
2 gems
5 gems
10 gems
20 gems
50 gems
The Heavenliner
You and your followers are the crew. You don’t answer to anyone, but you need to pay your own way in terms of food and fuel.
Decide on a name for the heavenliner.
Right now, you can only access the helm, the main deck, and the cargo hold, but it is more than enough to fit lucrative cargo, yourself, and your possessions. You can hire and artificer to cut a key to open more decks and quarters in the heavenliner, which gives you access to more resources, room for cargo, and facilities. A key costs as much as the facility it unlocks takes to buy (check the Property section of the rulebook). The heavenliner is a demimonde unto itself, so you’ll never run out of space if you’re willing to pay for it.
You can cut keys for workshops. Otherwise you need to rent one worldside.
You need to cut a key for a kitchen and hut-equivalent quarters before you can take on passengers
You need to cut a key for kitchens and townhouse-equivalent quarters before you can take on VIP passengers.
You need to cut a key for a livestock deck (costs as much as a townhouse) before you get mounts or pack animals.
You need to cut a key for a moonpool (costs as much as a townhouse) before you can carry vehicles.
You can increase the heavenliner’s inventory by 20 slots for the cost of a hut.
Travel
Follow Journey Procedure while traveling Erebus. It takes a day to get from one Station to the next (at least on the Crescent Line).
The Heavenliner can carry 40 slots. A job requires 20 in terms of parcels, passengers, and their effects. If you eschew a job and just want to explore, you can carry more supplies.
The heavenliner drinks aether from the Sea of Erebus; you need to keep yourselves fed, watered, and hale, but fuel is not an issue.
When I was a child, my parish paid a sculptor a great deal of money to carve a dying tree into a statue of the Virgin Mary. “God simply shows the artist what was waiting in the wood the whole time,” the pastor said, wisely paraphrasing Michelangelo.
I wondered then what it was like for the Virgin Mary to be inside of a tree for so long, or how she felt before it had grown big enough to fit her body. I wondered what the world would be like, now that she had gotten out.
My buddy Jackson and I put together an itch.io storefront with our backlog of work. You can check it out here if you want. It has A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet, which I wrote WAY back in the G+ days and hasn’t been available for a couple a years, plus the amazing Brushwood Lullabies and PILGRIM by Jackson. Everything is PWYW, and currently we plan to keep it that way.
I really can’t bear to do the promotion game as it probably should be done, but we’ve put a lot of work into these various projects and maybe somebody might like them and also they can be had for free if people so choose, so here we are:
The itch page also has a bundle with two new zine-sized games I’ve been working on a while. I put them together because they’re both playtested-but-experimental and in a form that is complete but not necessarily final (if I have the gas, I want to come back and gussy up the layout and maybe get some more art in them).
One, called Pretender Complex, is an improved version of this PvP PbP Fate game I put together for my friends during (what was for me) some of the roughest times during pandemic isolation. In retrospect, it was an interesting exercise in thinking through what I design towards. It was a profoundly ugly time in my life, both because of personal tragedy and worldwide catastrophe, and what I really wanted was to make a game that fit as comfortably as possible into what was going on in people’s lives. An asynchronous game designed about remote play seemed really appealing because of how hard it seemed to “be on” as a human being (especially on camera), and I think my players liked making requests for historical characters to drop into the game. Accordingly, a lot of the game is much more about how to handle the logistics and juggle the needs of a bunch of people than it is about genre stuff or mechanics per se. I definitely don’t think the game is like a noble exercise in virtue or anything like that, but I did find myself thinking about kindness or respect for people’s time as something to design towards a little more. I’m not sure that it succeeded on any of these counts, and the zine itself is a little rough, but it’s finished and you can read it.
The other, called Descender Complex, started as an actual joke: what if you used a Sudoku board as a representation for character abilities?
Riffing on this turned out to be actually pretty fun, as was making a bunch of overwrought JRPG playbooks. I also stuck in another idea I had been keeping on the back burner, which is a tactics-heavy combat system that focuses on the interesting decisions that arise from B/X’s phased initiative system rather and deprioritizes other conventional tactical elements like granular spacing. The playtest actually went really well, and the phased initiative and simplified movement made pandemic-required online play quite pleasant. There’s a lot more tactics, character customization, and board game vibes than what I normally do, but overall it really seems to work.
These are the first two projects I’ve finished since 2016, which is pretty wild to think about. I hope you like them.
Been reading / thinking about Choujin X and Chainsaw Man, and also Masks (the PbtA superhero game). I had a fun time playing it with my friends, but it felt a little overeager to steer us into the drama stuff and not as interested as I would have liked in the doing cool/gruesome shit (I’m not huge into cape comic stuff, but one of the compelling things to me about it is freakishness, which Masks feels like it shies away from even as it provides it as an option). The thing about mechanizing all of the conflict is that I’m not sure how much the mechanics are actually doing; if somebody is willing to lean into character beats and personal conflict, they’re probably going to do so regardless of how many Moves support it. I do like thespian club high drama bullshit, but I don’t like being led by the nose.
So anyway, I wrote this up with these things in mind: a light mechanical framework for a high-ick superhero-type game in the vein of Choujin X or Chainsaw Man that lets players jump into the genre emulation stuff if they want to. It’s not like…mechanically ingenious, but I suspect it will at least work for a few fun games with my players.
Concept
In the decades after the failed Apocalypse, the broken war machines and defeated soldiers of Heaven and Hell sublimated into the soil and water and air of Earth, leaching even into the bodies and blood of a busily (if miserably) rebuilding humanity. Some lucky few found themselves with influence over the world once reserved for the supernal and infernal: Decrees, the entitlement to govern worldly phenomena dispensed by Heaven to angels before the Fall.
Think: hyperindustrial near-future, an island-metropolis where you can find anything whether your want to or not, superpowered mercenaries who nonetheless have day jobs, the restoration of everyday life after many years of privation and destruction, scientists dissecting angels in government laboratories, smugglers with lead canisters full of demon hearts, old battlefields covered with salt statues of soldiers half-submerged in iridescent slicks of black metal, slowly drifting away from what is familiar and friendly in your life to something dark and unknown but perhaps not entirely undesirable
PCs are once-regular people who found themselves with Decrees living in the Autonomous City San Serafin, built after the Apocalypse and a place where all things converge.
Checks
When you do something difficult, risky, or unpredictable, roll 2d6. If the highest die is a 1-3, you fail. If it’s a 4-5, you succeed at a cost: your goals are only partially achieved, you pay a cost, or suffer a complication. If it’s a 6, you succeed.
You can roll an extra die if on the whole your characteristics and the situation are favorable. You must roll one fewer die if on the whole your characteristics and the situation are unfavorable. If it’s ambiguous, default to 2d6.
Using your Decree is always difficult, risky, or unpredictable.
Characteristics
Pick 2 from each list below. You can’t pick two characteristics in the same row, e.g. being perceptive and oblivious at the same time.
strong
weak
tough
frail
quick
slow
knowledgeable
ignorant
streetwise
naive
perceptive
oblivious
intimidating
wallflower
deceitful
guileless
persuasive
unlikable
reputable
irreputable
wealthy
impoverished
Pick 1 from the list below.
Waiter
construction worker
burglar
student
assassin
bureaucrat
farmer
hacker
actor
poet
journalist
carpenter
welder
doctor
nurse
EMT
painter
Resisting
When you resist something happening to you that you don’t want to happen, make a check like normal.
The GM doesn’t roll; players either avoid adverse situations or make Resist rolls against them.
Damage
By default, you can survive 8 Harm. Default damage you take is 2; it can be reduced to 1 or 0 by resist rolls or increase to 3 or 4 by difficult circumstances and strong enemies.
Similarly, default Harm you cause is 2; it can be reduced to 1 or 0 by tough enemies or increased to 3 or 4 by good plans.
Comebacks
from Choujin X
If reduced to 0 Hits, make a Resist check. If you succeed, say something you found out about the nature of your Decree while you were so close to death, and regain half your hits.
If you fail, you’re taken out until your allies can get you to a safe place. If your whole team gets taken out, you wake up in a worse situation.
Divinity
Your Decree gives you power over…
from Chainsaw Man
Scissor
Mirror
Paper
Ink
Smoke
Dream
Snake
Fox
Octopus
Nightingale
Moth
Flower
Shadow
Ribbon
Needle
Moonlight
Bronze
Clay
Memory
Mirage
Your Decree works by means of…
Touch
Incantations
Gestures
Agonizing exertions of pure willpower
Summoned familiars
Symbols you write
Your body changing its shape
Tools, implements, or weapons
A being that inhabits your body
Your blood
It is your Decree’s nature to be…
(Roll once to determine a positive nature on the left, then pick any two negative natures that don’t share the row of the positive nature. Your power cannot be swift-acting and slow at the same time, for example).
(These don’t have precise mechanical effects but will come up as you use your powers, especially when you roll failures or partial successes).
1
Swift-acting
slow
2
Long-lasting
ephemeral
3
Potent
weak
4
Precise
uncontrollable
5
Mercurial
predictable
6
Sustainable
exhausting
7
Cooperative
malicious
8
Respectable
disturbing
from Choujin X
Unfortunately, your power has complicated your everyday life by…
Permanently altering your body’s shape and/or appearance in some troubling or inconvenient way
Frightening or angering the people in your life or community
Attracting the attention of an organization that wants to use your talents for its own ends
Attracting the special attention of an organization that kills people with your talents
Requiring you to consume an unusual or illicit substance to survive
Killing someone significant, either to you personally or society at large, when it manifested
Example
The assumption is that we’re filling in the spaces a little, so if a Decree is NEEDLE and works by means of incantations and is slow and disturbing but potent, you could say that its owner can create needles that break through nearly anything, but they must clearly and precisely describe what they are trying to pierce. If they are gagged or unable to easily breathe, they can’t do anything out of the ordinary, but they could use their decree if bound or blinded.
Missions
Despite your ordinary day-to-day life, you are beholden to the Divinity School to carry out their dangerous business from time to time.
Location
The Spearyards – industrial district. factories, laboratories, foundries, with substantial abandoned areas
The Churchyards – historical and district, home to the University
Campo Greco – rich residential District
The Old Royal Park – huge park containing a small old-growth forest
Madrugados – working class residential district
The Esplanades – government district, as well as museums, theaters, cultural institutions
Duty
Protect object
Protect VIP
Kidnap enemy
Retrieve object
Retrieve VIP
Assassinate enemy
Destroy object
Surveil VIP
Surveil enemy
Surveil object
Object examples: flash drive of research data, briefcase of cash, demon heart, etc VIP/ Enemy examples: company president, potential Divinity, ambassador, witness, etc
Rival
Killy, whose decree is JAW. Disheveled young man with very sharp teeth in an oversized sweater; wears crime scene tape around his neck like a scarf. He can inflict a bite wounds of nearly any size on whatever he touches, and by tracing a line with his finger on something can make a mouth appear on it that bites what he wants and can speak for him if he wills it to.
Traumerai, whose Decree is NIGHTMARE. Wears ruffled pinafores and big ribbon ties and vents monsters out of the gill slits on her temples, which usually take the form of wolfish stuffed animals with pitbull jaws, bat wings, and button eyes.
Ursula, whose decree is CURSE. Always expressionless, with straight black hair and sensible black clothes. Attended by her familiars, Gog (black-clad, with a white mask) and Magog (white clad, with a black mask). If someone hears a condition stated by Gog and a consequence stated by Magog, it will come true for them and remain true indefinitely or the terms of the curse are met.
Bellamy, whose Decree is NIGHTJAR. A sensible and politely brutal middle-aged man who dresses in suits and ties. Fights with incomprehensible speed and allegedly drinks blood.
Complication
The job involves overcoming inordinately intense security
The job involves infiltrating a high society event
The job must not attract the attention of the general public
The job must be done in a very short amount of time
The job involves some serious law-breaking
Multiple Divinities will be working to stop you
Advancement
When you have encountered three more reasons to become more than what you are such as encountering the true nature of your power while on the cusp of death, eating a demon heart, defeating an enemy who vastly outmatched you, making a true friendship, or radically changing the way you see the world under doubt and duress, you gain a Raise.
from Choujin X
A Raise lets you use your Decree to do something truly marvelous and grotesque: become an unstoppable monster, summon a god-slaying spear from the heavens, banish a city block to the Moon, whatever. You don’t need to roll to make it happen or do what you want, but it does have to be an outrageous display of power. You can use a Raise at any time, though doing so wantonly may attract hostile attention.
When you use a Raise, at the end of the session, talk with the GM and the other players about how your character has changed, and how they can use their Decree in ways they previously did not know were possible.
After the first Raise, it takes four reasons, after the second it takes five, and so on.
Saw Sean and Chris and Richard talking about incorporating setting details into player-facing components of the game that actually matter. Like, how do you do that thing that Dark Souls does that everybody loves so much but in a tabletop game? It’s easy to think of examples (there were three genius blacksmiths with unique styles and all magic swords worth anything visibly conform to one of the three, and each of a particular affinity for an alignment or whatever; in some dungeon there’s a bas relief of the Nightingale Demon being stabbed by the Rowan Angel and now players can guess that nightingale monsters take extra damage from rowan weapons etc etc), but I think grabbing it’s very easy to spit out these examples en masse but harder to relate them to each other in a meaningful way or to build a setting from the ground up around the player being able to form compelling interpretations of the world.
I think situational game design is actually a handy tool for solving this problem. Situational game design is a generally useful framework that is very useful for thinking about games in general and tabletop games in particular. It’s informed a lot of the game prep and writing I’ve been doing recently, and I think it would be very helpful for tabletop game designers at large. It’s not necessarily a perfectly total ideology of play, but it has helped me ask interesting questions and generate useful answers. The rundown I am going to give is extremely brief, and if you can get your hands on the book I’d really recommend it. Anyway.
Situational Game Design In Brief
Situational Game Design is a book by Brian Upton that proposes a methodology for designing and understanding games. Brian Upton is a video game developer, but the book addresses games of all kinds, and I think it can be usefully applied to tabletop roleplaying games.
Situational design centers the player and pays special attention to play that takes place when the player isn’t interacting with the game or isn’t trying to win the game. To be clear, situational game design takes non-interaction and non-pursuit of victory into account, but it does not ignore other aspects or forms of play. This more expansive attitude towards play is useful when thinking about rpgs. Most popular rpgs don’t have game-terminating win conditions, and a lot of enjoyment players derive from them aren’t strictly manipulating figures on the board, or even agents in a narrative. As Upton says,
In situational design, the nexus of play lies not in the interface between the player and the game, but inside the player’s mind (Figure 1.2). Some of the moves the player makes will affect the external state of the game, but others will affect their internal understanding of the game, or even their understanding of themselves and the world at large.
pg 6
I have miserably reproduced figure 1.2 below
Things encapsulated by this definition of play that might escape our intuition or other formal definitions: making notes on character sheets about in-game events, naming an adopted pet, deciding you don’t like the Baron’s mustachioed butler, realizing that the Baron has been replaced by a simulacrum, perversely selecting Stone to Flesh instead of Flesh to Stone as your spell for this level, choosing on how to deal with your rebellious retainer after everyone has packed up and you’re driving home from game night.
Vitally, these are just as much play, and just as important to the situational designer, as deciding which kobold to attack or electing to do something in the fiction that triggers a PbtA move. Situational design doesn’t really elevate certain kinds of play over others.
To full understand play in the sense of situational design, we need to look at three concepts Upton lays out: situations, constraints, and moves.
We will start with situations. Upton’s definition is simple.
A situation is an interval of play that contains a choice.
pg 11
This is any interval of play and any choice, as suggested by my examples of play above. Situations can happen rapidly or continuously; deciding to fire a rifle at the alien soldier with an ice gun vs the alien soldier with a flamethrower and then immediately being faced with a choice between fighting the survivor or ducking for cover, with a series of choices after that, is the sort of the think you might expect in a typical video game. Situations can also happen in clear sequence as in chess, where you might decide which piece of yours to move or which piece of your opponent’s to capture, and then face a new situation once they have taken their turn.
Upton has a lot more to say about situations (naturally enough, in a book titled Situational Game Design) but this is a brief gloss, so we’ll stop here.
The next element is constraints. Upton explains them as follows.
When we’re within a situation we’re offered a range of moves to choose from. The constraints that structure a situation determine which moves we’re allowed to make, and therefore what choices it offers us.
pg 12
Upton offers rules as the most obvious kinds of constraints: in baseball, you can’t keep swinging after your third strike; in chess, you win if you take your opponents king and pawns can’t move four spaces diagonally. They can also be physics (balls move a certain way through the air when struck) or simulations of such (you want to lead your shots against a fast target in an FPS, or you can’t move through representations of solid objects in a platformer). There are also “soft constraints”, things players won’t or shouldn’t do. I can move my king out into the open in chess as soon as possible in chess, but soft strategic constraints will generally prevent an experienced player from doing so. In tabletop games, you might theoretically be able to kick a puppy or steal from your party members, but many players have constraints around how they want to express themselves in the game.
A key distinction is active constraints and potential constraints. While it’s true that you get to walk to first base after your fourth ball, that doesn’t matter to a player on third, and it matters even less to a player sitting in the dugout (I know very little about baseball, so I’m not sure why I’m leaning on it so hard for examples here). Constraints switch from potential and active all of the time, which leads us to the final core piece of situational game design:
Moves, which Upton mentions in his explanation of constraints.
A move is anything that the player does to change the game’s active constraints.
pg 15
This is a big deal, because Upton means anything. One of the examples of a move that he provides is doing nothing in a video game; if the game continues to proceed and your active constraints change, then doing nothing is a move. It can of course mean moving 30 feet closer to the kobold or running to second base, but it can also include “coming to like the Duke’s imperious secretary”, or “beginning to suspect the King is a simulacra” or “discovering the Church of Light’s god is actually a huge bug”. As long as it changes the constraints on the players’ behavior (maybe we don’t trust the Photonic Pope anymore on account of that bug thing), it’s a move.
Upton calls these “interpretive moves” and elaborates on them below
When we make an interpretive move, we’re not changing the state of the game, we’re changing our attitude toward it.
What this means is that play is not limited to situations that offer choices between competing actions; it also occurs in situations that offer competing interpretations. “What should I do?” is a playful choice, but so are “What’s happening?” and, “What does this mean?” These interpretive moves may be directed towards the past (“What caused this?” or towards the future (“What’s going to happen?”). They can even be directed towards ourselves (“Who am I?” or “Why am I doing this?”). If properly structured, these internal interpretive choices can be just as playful as choices that change the game’s external state.
pg 22
This also means that play (as Upton defines it) is happening in all kinds of places–the aforementioned car ride home from a D&D game, during character creation, while you’re standing in the shower thinking about how to solve a puzzle. It also means that there’s not a clean delineation between the crispy crunchy mechanical parts of the game that traditionally get a lot of attention (Reaction rolls, combat, skill check) and the more ephemeral parts less traditionally mechanized in the old school scene (setting, lore, building relations with NPCs). It’s just moves, constraints, and situations structuring and flowing into one another; the move of determining the God of Light is a bug leads to the situations in which you fight him; once he extends his glistening ovipositor, you’re likely making interpretive moves about him even in the heat of combat.
Okay, so that was a lot of preamble, and a lot of it I think is a really exciting way to think about games, but this blog post is titled Situational Narrative Design in Tabletop Games, so let’s move on to that part.
The Narrative / Setting Stuff
So if we’re thinking about that initial problem: how do you write a setting that is well suited for players interpreting and thinking about? How do you write a setting that provides them information they can act on? I think a possible way is to structure it around interpretive moves.
The way that I did this is sketch out a setting in terms of brief clauses and phrases linked with one of the following conjunctions:
but: for two facts that exist in conflict with each other, either conceptually (The king said he did this BUT actually did this instead.) or in terms of actual forces (The Good Guy Army marched into the desert BUT the Bad Guy Army stopped them)
so: for facts that have a causal relationship (The hunter killed the dragon SO it would stop preying on his people
and: for facts that occur concurrently (He founded a Kingdom AND gave gifts to his new supports)
I included the rough Situation Map of this below. This isn’t complete and is a proof of concept; it’s also a setting I only had a rough idea about before I started. Each fact should be pretty interesting and important to the setting at large; you don’t have to be too granular about it. Also if I were to do this again, I would probably include arrows to show which direction the “so”s and “but”s are going but it’s fine I guess.
wordpress absolutely refuses to let me make this image big enough to comfortably read
You’ll note that there are letters associated with each fact. I used these to cross-reference the facts with details in the setting; for each fact I tried to come up with a handful of ways that fact impacted the actual world in terms that players would notice, like so:
A The hero Luin slayed a great Dragon in his old age
Everyone knows: Orma Luin, the divine Dragon King, founded the empire whose ruins we all live in.
Many dungeons are his fortresses and palaces, which depict his victory over the monstrous and gluttonous Dragon
B So he could stop its predations on his people
Even know, there are tracts of desert and scrub winding their way through forest and meadow, wastes where the dragon’s fiery breathe scorched even the fertility from the soil.
C The dragon’s death voided the pacts it had made with the Courts of demons and the dead, allowing them to enter the Lands of the Living
Everyone believes: WIth its dying breath, the Dragon spitefully unleashed all manner of wicked spirit into the Lands of the Living
Many dungeons are the haunts and shrines of the Demons and the Dead
Many people out in the hinterlands swear fealty to a Greater Corpse or Demon rather than a human lord
D He secretly drank its blood, in violation of the great taboo
Everyone knows: sorcerers drinking an animal’s blood is forbidden, as is magic that lets one assume their shape
Most mayors or elders will offer significant bounties for the heads of nearby witches who violate the taboo
Hunter Knights will go to great lengths to capture or kill witches
E He could live eternally, with the might and vigor of a dragon
Everyone believes: The gods blessed Orma Luin with his youth and divinity for slaying the wicked Dragon.
Orma Luin still nominally rules the ruins of his empire from his Isle Palace.
Orma Luin is and was an army unto himself
F All manner of dangerous spirit began preying on humanity once again
Hunter Knights and Clerics do the constant work of keeping humanity safe from Demons and the Dead
Many dungeons are the haunts and shrines of the Demons and the Dead
Many people out in the hinterlands swear fealty to a Greater Corpse or Demon rather than a human lord
If you learn the lawful tongue of the Dead or the chaotic speech of the Demons, they will tell you all manner of things about Orma Luin that the Hunter Knights would kill you for repeating.
The full situation map key isn’t complete, but you get the idea (probably, I hope).
The next step is to go through the key and pull out things you need to put in your setting. What we have here includes
Multiple dungeons that depict Orma Luin defeating a dragon
Narrow, geographically improbable stretches of wasteland, scrub, and desert in otherwise fertile areas of the map
Multiple dungeons themed around demons or the undead
Remote settlements governed by demons or the dead
Settlements that offer bounties for shapeshifting witches
The ability for players to become shapeshifting witches (if they don’t mind the scrutiny of witch-hunters)
Hunter Knights on encounter tables
A really nasty dungeon with a really nasty Dragon King inside
A couple locations that are old battlefields where the Dragon King wasted an army by himself
Possible Hunter Knight class
NPCs expecting clerics to help them hunt undead and demons
Alignment languages let you learn things from the Dead and Demons
Rumors, secrets, and lies Demons and the Dead will tell you, including and especially things that contradict the “everybody believes” entries in the key.
And so on and so on.
That’s a pretty good list to go off of considering I’m working off of a half-finished proof of concept based on a setting I didn’t know much about when I started. The blacksmith entry would be the impetus for magic weapons in the setting, and their rarity would be tied to the fact that one demidivine blacksmith had to make them; they might all have her maker’s mark and be illegal to own and technically property of the Dragon King. The node about Seti (I believe item G) could give you insight into Clerics and Magic-users and how they’re trained and treated.
This process ensures that most things the players encounter tie back to the core narrative we mapped out at the start, while also not forcing them to think about it too much if they don’t want to. Since the conjunctions that link the nodes are implicit or unstated, players are allowed to use their own interpretations to interrelate pieces of information. For example, Node M (He sired many demi-divine heirs, who varied greatly in their character and cruelty) could yield grotesque pleasure-palaces belonging to princes and princesses as dungeons in setting. If players only encountered setting details associated with Orma Luin being a great king, they could decide if he was a noble person who had bad kids or if the apples didn’t fall very far from the tree.
Each node is sort of the foundation of an interpretive situation. The situation will vary player to player, and even playgroup to playgroup (assuming multiple people are playing the setting) because individual players bring their own assumptions and preferences, and different tables will naturally encounter the information in different orders.
Anyway, this has been a little meandering, but that’s all about I have for today– a possible way to make settings with capital letter Lore tie into player-facing elements of the game. If you can, read Situational Game Design; it’s great and Brian Upton explains it way better than I do here.
OSE Advanced Genre Rules Illusionist spells are great, but the class itself leaves me a little cold; while I can conceptually wrap my head around the difference between a crunchy Cleric and a Druid, there’s not a lot of daylight between a tricksy MU and an Illusionist–what’s the in-setting difference between what they’re learning and doing?
I also often try to work in classes that are explicitly about dealing with other NPCs, so this was another opportunity; having patrons and followers from the start is a good way to ground players in the setting and drive them into fun situations.
I started reading The Hidden World of Foxes and have been thinking about the animal a lot. They scream and laugh unnervingly like humans, they thrive in environments where we have destroyed most other living things, they can develop almost doglike relationships with people (though I really don’t like the idea of taming wild animals). Reynard’s Maleperduis is an ideal megadungeon: a fox’s castle-labyrinth in which he hides from the consequences of his actions; the Teumessian fox is an divinely uncapturable monster. Most also have associated rival-victims; Renard has Ysengrim (along with a bunch of other characters including Hirsent the she-wolf), the fox Kuma Lisa has Kumcho Volcho, Laelaps the hound hunts the Teumessian fox. There is of course the kitsune and Tamamo-no-Mae, but I am much less famiilar.
So, foxes are: scream-laughing in the dark; offering you a cursed spear of holly if you kill the noble hunting them for sport; sitting in a ring around a bloodslicked meadow with something you’d rather not see in the center; batting at your window begging for help because the Wolf is coming for them; disguising themselves as a reclusive noble family to eat up whatever traveler takes up their hospitality; telling a joke that will knock history off its axis; Lord Renarte laughing from the highest tower of his hidden castle; Vulpecula in the sky singing lies to the stars; helping and hurting and hunting and begging forever and ever.
Fox Royalty
Requirements: None, but being Lawful may put you at odds with your familiars XP to level 1: 2,500 (as MU overall) Prime Requisite: We don’t really do that here. Charisma if you gotta Hit Dice: 1d4 Saves: as MU Armor: None, no shields Weapons: any one-handed melee Language: Alignment, Common, the Nameless Language of Foxes
“Yum!” by Peter Trimming, available here and distributed under CC BY 2.0
Court of Foxes
Once in a great while, a human is born beloved, for whatever reason, to foxes–not just the beasts in the woods, but their gods and ghosts and demons. With this dubious blessing and certain burden, they are often cut loose by superstitious families and neighbors, left to their own (capacious) devices.
Phantom Fox Familiar
As Fox Royalty grow in power and precedence, they are attended by increasingly powerful fox Familiars. These Familiars are venerated criminals, divine tricksters, and related demons. They spend most of their time lurking invisibly or at least insubstantially about the person of the Fox Royalty they are pledged to, unless commanded.
At level 1, and every odd level thereafter until level 11, Fox Royalty gain an additional Familiar. The Familiar’s Rank is equal to ½ the Fox Royalty’s level (rounded up) at the time they acquire it; the first Familiar a member of Fox Royalty acquires is always Rank 1, no matter how many character levels they gain. For example, Fox Royalty at level 3 have a single Rank 1 Familiar and a single Rank 2 Familiar.
from Shin Megami Tensei IV
Spellcasting
Fox Royalty can draw on their Familiars’ power to cast Illusionist spells. A Fox Familiar can be used to cast any Illusionist spell known it its Royalty and equal to or less than its rank once per day. Thus, level 5 Fox Royalty can cast three Illusionist spells per day–one at Level 1, one at Level 2 or lower, and one at Level 3 or lower.
Fox Royalty start knowing three Level 1 Illusionist spells. Every time they level up, they learn one spell of each level of their choice from all Illusionist spells they can cast.
Optional Rule: If a Familiar eats a druid, their Royalty can add spells they had prepared or cast for that day to their spell list.
Familiars in Combat
Fox Royalty can also implore their Familiars to manifest and fight for them. This can be done at the top of the round using phased initiative, and requires an Applicant Reaction check and negotiation / payment every time it is done–foxes, even loyal familiars, are lazy and fickle. If they refuse an offer, they cannot be entreated to manifest for the rest of the day, and if the Reaction table turns up “ill will”, they run off to make mischief for the rest of the day and cannot be used to cast spells. If Fox Royalty has a standing debt to a particular Familiar, it will not appear for their Royalty or allow them to cast its spells.
Summoned Familiars
Fox familiars have stats according to their rank, listed below. They typically serve their Royalty for a number of Turns equal to the Royalty’s level. A manifested Familiar can cast Illusionist spells of their Rank or lower, but this counts against their Fox Royalty’s spells per day. A Familiar that is reduced to 0 HP vanishes for a time, and cannot communicate or give the Royalty spells until the day has passed.
Class Level
Rank/Max Spell Level
Statistics
1
1
HD 2 AC 13 MV 150’ (50’) SV +2 ML 7 AL C
3
2
HD 4 AC 14 MV 150’ (50’) SV +4 ML 6 AL C
5
3
HD 6 AC 14 MV 150’ (50’) SV +6 ML 5 AL C
7
4
HD 8 AC 15 MV 150’ (50’) SV +8 ML 4 AL C
9
5
HD 10 AC 16 MV 150’ (50’) SV +10 ML 3 AL C
11
6
HD 12 AC 18 MV 150’ (50’) SV +12 ML 2 AL C
I ues d20+HD >= 16 for saving throws, but you can just use their HD and the Monster Save chart in the system of your choice to figure out their saves.
Special Cases
If Fox Royalty want to summon their Familiars en masse or set them to a long-term or complex task pertaining to espionage, mischief, or nature, they may do so, but this is treated as “Other Magical Research” in terms of time and cost.
Dealing With Familiars
Familiars appear increasingly impressive or frightening with Rank.
A Rank 1 Familiar might appear as a scrawny juvenile fox.
A Rank 3 Familiar might appear as a wolf-sized fox barded in gold and silk
A Rank 6 Familiar might appear as a seething apparition of shadow and red-gold fire.
While unmanifested, foxes might possess their Royalty’s shadow to speak or appear as clots of foxfire.
All fox familiars are arrogant, cruel, and mischievous, with a soft spot for underdogs and fellow tricksters. Low rank familiars are younger, cruder in their malice, and more beholden to their animal temperament. Higher ranked familiars are older, more circumspect and patient, but also more creative in their cruelty and elaborate in their plots. The highest ranked familiars are demigods in their own right.
Fox familiars obey orders to the letter and spirit that don’t offend their sensibilities, even if they have low Morale/Loyalty. They don’t make Morale checks out of fear–they are unbothered by danger, but require checks when subject to indignity, disrespect, or significant pain, or when asked to pass up the opportunity to do something cruel, funny, or both. In terms of payment, they don’t care for treasure or gold, but do enjoy shrines being constructed in their name, incense, offerings of live chickens (and larger, bloodier animals).
“Fox with meat, again…” by Tambako the Jaguar, available here and distributed by CC BY-ND 2.0
Restrictions and Diplomacy
Foxes and foxlike beings are at worst Talkative with Fox Royalty, though they may not be so well disposed towards their traveling companions. Fox Royalty must never directly harm a fox (fortunately, foxes will never willingly harm them, unless it’s very funny), lest their familiars abandon them until they perform some task of great mischief to make it up to foxdom. Tricking a fox, even to the point of harm, is a whole other story, though–all cruelties are allowable to a fox if they’re amusing enough.
Strongholds
At level 11, Fox Royalty are demidivinities in their own right and may raise a bower or construct wilderness shrine. They will attract 2d4 Clerics of levels 1-3 and can bestow Illusionist spells on them, and all foxes in the region will accord them great, if grudging, respect.
Once while traveling through the deep valley south of here, I saw a man sitting on the edge of an overgrown orchard, slicing one of its pomegranates with great delicacy and concentration. There were mounds of pomegranates all around him, all cut perfectly in two, all untasted but for the flies buzzing noisomely around them in great numbers. The arils, scattered in pulpy mounds across the dirt, gleamed in a way that reminded me of both rubies and fresh wounds.
“Friend,” I said, “Whatever are you doing?”
Up close, I could see that he had a curious technique. He removed neither the crown nor the bottom (as any seasoned eater of pomegranates would) but made a single, shallow cut all the way around the rind before gently prising the fruit open like an oyster.
“Searching.” said the man. He was young, but worry and weather had worked silver into his black hair and seamed his face with fine lines. He did not look up at me.
We waited in silence for some time, I in the dust of the road and he in the flyblown edge of the orchard. I was in no hurry to reach my destination and feeling terribly nosy. Finally, he threw his latest pomegranate aside and wiped its juices off on the hem of his shirt.
“My grandmother lived in the village that stood here long ago,” he said. “She said that once a season, a single, miraculous pomegranate grew in this orchard. She said that it contained an unformed child, curled up in the rind like an infant in the womb. Most died, mangled by a careless knife. A terrible omen. But some…”
The man rubbed each of his swollen knuckles. “Wealthy donors sometimes take in children left to the church on the other side of the valley.” His palms were calloused and stained deep red. “We are not wealthy.”
He rose and walked into the orchard proper, crushing fruit underfoot. “You’ll want to be past here before dark,” he said. “The old village is not safe at night.”
Some years later, when passing through the town that overlooked that valley, I gave a half loaf of bread to a young beggar with the most striking eyes—the color of pomegranates in their season.
Had this marinating in drafts for forever and finally had the energy to finish it. I’ve been thinking about mechanics that are grounded as much as possible in the consensus and intuition of the play group and encoded as little as possible in the written rules themselves (related the FKR principles that have been bouncing around lately). These are magic rules for a game in the vein of Runequest or Earthsea I’ve been thinking about running lately.
They really only work in a pretty technologically limited setting (the game is Bronze Age-ish), since they’re keyed off of “things within human capacity” which gets really thorny when you have much past that.
Sorcery
Sorcery is an art that provides supernatural means to mundane ends–with their magic, a sorcerer can perform any feat within human capacity, but nothing more. Raising the dead, inspiring true love, lifting castles into the sky, and other ancient acts of magic are entirely beyond latter-day sorcerers. Within this limitation, however, sorcerers can still achieve much–forging a blade without a hammer or fire, transporting themselves great distances without a cart or mount, persuading people without speaking a word, performing dangerous labor from great distances, auguring long-lost secrets without cracking open a book.
Sorcerers are not equally learned in all forms of sorcery, however. The practice is divided into Lores, each a domain of sorcery that focuses on a single field of human endeavor. The Lore of Stone allows a sorcerer to cleave and shape rock like a mason; the Lore of the Forge allows them to stoke small flames into roaring fires and shape raw metal into smithed goods like a blacksmith. Lores are still constrained by the limits of sorcery; a Stone-sorcerer could raise a tower from living rock, but not create one from thin air; a Forge-sorcerer could turn iron ingots into a sword but could not magic up a blade from nothing.
Although sorcery can wholly replace the time, equipment, and labor necessary to achieve something, the more a sorcerer leans on their own power, the more difficult and dangerous the magic is. To safely, effectively, and reliably cast a spell, a sorcerer needs occult equipment, components, and time roughly equal to what would be needed to perform the act though mundane means. A dearth of resources can be overcome with talent and experience, but always brings some level of risk.
Lores
Stone: magic of masons. Cleave rocks, raise stone structures, etc.
Yoke: magic of animal husbandry. Train, soothe, command, care for animals, etc.
Path: magic of travelers. Travel great distances, move at great speeds, scale walls and mountains, etc
Bough: magic of hunters. Camouflage, track, kill at a distance, etc.
Forge: magic of blacksmiths. Stoke flames, shape metal, smith objects, etc
Bone: magic of doctors. Augur diagnoses, clean and treat wounds, etc.
Examples:
A Stone-sorcerer destroying a boulder might bring a staff to shape their magic the way that someone else might use a sledgehammer to direct their strength. In a pinch, they could try to crush the boulder with no gear, but this could exhaust them, injure them, or end in a botched or incomplete job.
A Yoke-sorcerer ensorcelling a dog to obey their commands might prepare a series of ritually treated meals for the dog to take the place of the food someone else would use to reward it during training. They could try to fall back on their own power and will, but this could sicken or injure them or the dog, or lead to the dog becoming aggressive and feral instead.
A Path-sorcerer could construct a ritual palanquin to carry them to a neighboring town the way someone else would use a cart. Carrying themselves with their own sorcery could injure them or lead them to the wrong place.
Procedure:
The player declares what they are trying to achieve with the spell and how it is going to happen. It must be within human capacity and it must pertain to their Lore.
If their PC has the time and resources equivalent to what the task would take normally, it just works.
If they do not have or are not willing to dedicate the time and resources, the Referee tells them how many dice to roll. If they are well-equipped, they roll 3d6. If they are moderately prepared, they roll 2d6. If they are unprepared, they roll 1d6. Sorcerers who go through brutal training, bathe in moonlight on auspicious nights, complete pilgrimages to locations of great power, wield relics of great power, etc, roll an extra regardless of level of preparation.
If the player’s highest die is 5+, the spell works. If the highest die is 3-4, the spell simply fails. If the highest die is 1-2, the spell fails and there is some backlash: the sorcerer is exhausted or injured, the spell causes an undesirable effect, etc.
Taboo Sorcery
Wisdom of the Beasts
Greedy sorcerers may reach for powers beyond what has been allotted to humans by consuming the lifeblood of an animal. This is a grave taboo–to be one thing and not another is the lot of all mortal life, and the mingling of kinds recalls the dark and formless Chaos that preceded the world as it is known today. A sorcerer who has attained the Wisdom of a beast may achieve anything that it could, just as a Lore affords the powers of human effort. A beast, more than anything, is capable of being itself, and so Wisdom-stealing sorcerers may also assume the form of animals they have consumed.
The Wisdom of the Bear allows a sorcerer to exert immense force, tear apart obstacles and enemies, and scale trees and walls.
The Wisdom of the Crow allows a sorcerer to fly, to stand on slender tree branches, and communicate with flocks of other crows.
The Wisdom of the Eel allows a sorcerer to breathe underwater and swim at great speed.
The Wisdom of the Asp allows a sorcerer to inflict venomous wounds and travel through the narrowest of spaces.
The most terrible heights a sorcerer may ascend are by consuming the lifeblood of a divine beast: dragons, sea-serpents, great-wolves, corpse-eagles.
Forbidden Knowledge
There are Lores that are persecuted at every opportunity by right-thinking people: The Lore of the Rack, perfected by torturers, the Lore of Belladonna, devised by poisoners, and the Lore of the Throne, invented by tyrants. The books that contain them have been burned, the people who learned them have been ground into dust and buried in secret places. The smallest hint that someone has recovered even a part of these Lores will bring down terrible reprisal from regular people, town governments, empires.
There are also Lores that are treated with suspicion or banned in some jurisdictions, but do not necessarily carry a universal taboo. Anything that impinges on the mind of another, allows secrets of others to be augured, or inflicts grievous injury causes too much trouble to be trusted, even if they can only induce a person to do something within the boundaries of their nature and morals.
Heart: magic of courtesans. Persuade, mislead, and seduce.
Jaw: magic of gossips. Divine rumors, start whisper campaigns, stir up mobs.
Tome: magic of scholars. Augur any information that has been written or remembered.
Scale: magic of merchants. Augur the value of objects, divine what people want, reveal the composition of coins, ingots, and other things.
Blade: magic of warriors, Cut, gouge, crush, pierce, but also ward off blows.
In March, I ran a brief Player vs Player play-by-post game on Discord based on Fate and inspired my Patrick’s play by mail game (I’m Ysbryda Holyworm and didn’t actually do very much). It’s not a bad socially distant way to have low-impact but steady social interaction.
Aside – Fate is a part of a sprawling intellectual property that includes visual novels, several anime series, multiple video games, a small empire of backstory wikis, and more fan fiction any single mind can comprehend. Fate itself is about people teaming up with the ghosts of historical figures in an extremely dangerous competition to win a powerful and morally ambiguous MacGuffin. Think Pokemon by way of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen played out in White Wolf Mage: the Ascension with high budget animation and Alexander the Great is trying to cut Gilles de Rais in half and everyone has soap opera tangled backstories and some guy got his hands on the Platonic Ideal of Swords and half the cast is trying to punch a hole through reality to talk to and/or replace God.
from the exceedingly titled Fate/stay night
Anyway, it was a PbP PvP battle royale where everyone was a Level 0 B/X character with a medium-loyalty level 10 retainer and they got dropped into a big city with a general idea of what they needed to do. It went well! There were murder attempts, hypnotized detectives, faked deaths, and tenuous alliances. It fell apart because out out-of-game stuff, but I found myself wanting to revisit the concept.
The main issue is that B/X has a lot of dungeon crawling cruft. I only picked it because I was lazy and thought it would be funny. This is a vastly simplified set of rules designed to cut down on the sort of back-and-forth that’s onerous in a PbP game and elevate the Rube Goldberg hijinks.
There are plenty of rough edges, but I want to get things going and fix things as we go.
It is affectedly unbalanced–a common theme in the source material and also sets up players for clever play and surprising reversals.
A lot of abilities are basically nascent doomsday scenarios, which is also common in Fate and also allows for interesting all-or-nothing plays
It’s pretty open to interpretation. There’s too much stuff going on to make a system to adjudicate the way everything is going to interact, so I tried to write enough to communicate the players the kinds of things they can do and then trust myself and them to figure out what happens when things get weird.
I tried to pick a lot of medium-obscurity figures from history and mythology and solicited my players for ones they really wanted to see. I have a to-add list including Lu Bu, Marco Polo, Semiramis, Olympe de Gouges, Simon de Bolivar, Bendigeidfran, Branwen, Leda, Daedalus, Atalanta, Orlando (as in Woolf), Orlando (as in Furioso), Arianrhod, Prosperina, Ptolemy, Hypatia, Atlantes, Melisse, Oberon, Titania, Tam Lin
There’s a central Discord channel where I let everyone know when the next round is happening and provide in-setting news reports about what’s going on that is publicly known. All of the players have a channel that’s just them and me where we adjudicate their turns. If they come into conflict or communicate with another player, we adjudicate it through group DMs. (Communication between players isn’t as important but it’s useful for me to be able to see or look up what’s happening across the board).
Everyone has 1 turn per 24 hour period, and I resolve all turns by 9 pm.
Resolution
When a PC or a spirit attempts something difficult or high stakes, the Referee tells them how many d6s to roll based on the difficulty. If they are opposed by another player, they succeed if they get higher than their opponent’s roll. If they are opposed by the environment or an NPC, they succeed if they get 6 or higher.
The number of d6s depends on how well-suited they are for the task, factoring in their talents, traits, the situation, and the effectiveness of their tactics.
Excellent: 3d6
Risky: 2d6
Poor: 1d6
Combat
In combat, characters deal damage equal to their ATK and reduce all incoming damage by their DEF. To determine turn order, make a check to see which side goes first. PCs and spirits on a side can go in any order, but a spirit attacking an enemy PC is always reported to the other side and pushes you to the end of initiative. When you attack someone, you each roll, and whoever loses takes damage according to their attributes.
All PCs and Spirits have a pool of Stamina and a pool of Health. Stamina represents dodging, reducing direct blows to glancing ones, blocking attacks. Health represents suffering direct blows, wounds, etc. When a character suffers Harm, they reduce their Stamina by an equal amount; if they don’t have any Stamina left, they begin deducting from their Health. Stamina is much easier to recover than Health.
Turns / Rounds / Doing Stuff
You can make 1 action per day. An action might be:
Investigating or tracking the competition (You can always ask: Was a competitor active in a [named district] within the last turn?
Buying or stealing something useful
Resting, which restores all powers and spells, as well as 1 Health OR all Stamina. You can’t recover Stamina unless you are at full Health.
Anything else that is generally time-consuming and advantageous
Asking for clarifications about what your PC knows, sending communications to other PCs, and talking to your hero does not take a turn.
Actions count as resolved simultaneously. If you come into conflict with another player’s team, the conflict will be resolved after all other players have gone that round.
Things to Remember
This game is way more fun when you are bold, ambitious, decisive, and make decisions based on role-playing as much as strategy. If you’re timid or slow, you will probably lose and may end up bored. If you don’t feel like your team is suited for combat, try surveillance, sabotage, bribing local authorities, making alliances with other players–stir the pot. Running away and regrouping is usually an option.
You are in a city full of dangerous and eccentric people trying to kill you. Many spirits have the ability to restrain, grievously injure, or even kill unprepared enemies. Doing things that draw public attention, such as law enforcement or news broadcasts, could very well get you killed if you don’t do it thoughtfully. Every conflict could lead to you dying.
Your spirit is not necessarily loyal to you, and may find ways to sideline you without killing you and banishing themselves.
The Setting
Modern setting. Sator is an island nation. Its capital, New Madruga, is big enough to have at least one of everything and almost certainly more. It’s threaded through with canals and bridges, famous for its jacaranda trees and beaches, has a significant amount of organized crime
Quatresain Cathedral, an ancient hilltop cathedral where the Philosopher’s Stone allegedly appeared 1000 years ago.
Gran Burguesa, best burger joint in town
Plaza del Mar, lined with restaurants and cafes, the Times Square of Sator City
City Hall
Byzantium Hospital
The Royal Palace
The King’s Park, a huge wooded, walled park, that winds through the city.
The Business District
Character Creation
Player Characters
PCs are regular people drawn into the Grand Alkahest Royale by cosmic whim and the dictates of fate. They are the only characters players have direct control over–they work closely with PC’s spirits, but they don’t have complete say over what they do. To generate your PC
Give your PC one trait: strong, tough, quick, clever, perceptive, rich, or charismatic
Give your PC a career, like cashier or office worker or security guard
Write down that they have 4 Stamina and 4 Health
Also, answer these leading questions for your character
What will you wish for if you win?
What’s one thing you admire and one thing you resent about your spirit?
What do you stand to lose in this contest other than your life?
Spirits
Spirits are figures drawn from myth and legend by the rules of the Grand Alkahest Royale. Participants never choose the spirit they fight with–it’s always random. To generate your PC
Write down that they have 8 Stamina and 6 Health
Roll randomly on the table of spirits below
Record their attributes, talents, abilities, and weaknesses
Spirits come in one of four classes: Banner, Crown, Mantle, and Scepter, each of which have different advantages and disadvantages. Remember to capitalize them when you formulate your plan.
Spirit List
Bonnie and Clyde
Ching Shih
Don Quixote
Echo
El Cid
Ferdiad
Hammurabi
Ishtar
Joshua
Judah Macabee
King Midas
Kublai Khan
La Voisin
Lilith
Lord Ruthven
Lucifer
Morgan le Fay
Napoleon
Paracelsus
Queen Medb
Spirit Classes
All classes know when they are within a one-block radius of another spirit unless there’s something concealing them.
Mantle class spirits are legendary tricksters, thieves, and tempters. They are powerful, if frail combatants, and tend to have deceitful or confusing abilities. A Mantle class hero is much stronger than a regular person–if an Olympic athlete can do it, so can a Mantle class hero without much trouble.
Crown-class spirits are monarchs and generals of legend. They are resistant to physical harm and the effects of magic, and their abilities tend to revolve around charisma and resources. A Crown class hero is much stronger than a regular person–if an Olympic athlete can do it, so can a Crown class hero without much trouble.
Banner-class spirits are warriors and heroes exceptionally suited to combat and feats of strength. They are supernaturally coordinated and athletic–they can do things outside of normal human physical ability (like jumping from rooftop to rooftop or lifting a four door sedan) without a check.
Scepter-class spirits are talented magicians of legend, but generally unsuited for combat or physical feats. They aren’t much different from a normal person–around the range of a dedicated hobbyist athlete.
Spirit Attributes and Statistics
If you’re playing in my game, don’t read below this line.
Bonnie and Clyde
Mantle-class, a twinned spirit of love and transgression
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: Driving, Shooting, Larceny, Speed
Weapon: Revolver and Shotgun
Weakness: Requires Loyalty checks to not help or rescue their partner when they are in pain or danger
Only Lovers Left Alive: Bonnie cannot be reduced below 1 HP while Clyde is still alive, and Clyde cannot be reduced below 1 HP while Bonnie is alive. They can only be killed simultaneously. They each have 8 Stamina, but only 3 Health.
Bullet Model Getaway: If they are together, Bonnie and Clyde can conjure a spacious, tough, and high-speed getaway car.
Ching Shih
Mantle-class, a tyrannical spirit of theft and subversion
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: Combat, Command, Larceny, Speed
Weapon: Cutlass and pistol
Law of the Sea: Just as she did in life, Ching Shih can subvert legitimate authority with her own. Any law enforcement official or politician she encounters treats her as a superior and will accept her instructions as long as they would follow similar ones from their actual superior. Once she gives an order, she must rest before she can use this ability again.
Legion of the Lady: Ching Shih can spend a turn to raise her massive personal ship from any body of water large enough to contain it (lakes, rivers, seas, maybe a very large pond if you don’t need it to move around too much). It’s fast, as tough as modern construction, and can make four ATK 4 cannon attacks on a turn, and is crewed by the spirits of her most loyal and competent pirates.
Don Quixote
Mantle-class, an ephemeral spirit of delusion and invention
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: None
Weapon: Sword and shield
Chivalric Adventure: Don Quixote is exceeded by everything and defeated by nothing. He makes risky rolls regardless of the situation–never excellent and never poor.
Friends in Low Places. Don Quixote can summon Rocinante, a knock-kneed and mangy plough-horse and Sancho Panza, his clever but ineffectual squire, at will.
Cide Hamete Benengeli: Don Quixote is a dream within a dream, a legend created by a myth. The true hero summoned is Cide Hamete Benengeli, the un-hero and fictional author of Don Quixote. Cide is completely nondescript and cannot be detected or identified as a hero unless he chooses to reveal himself. If Don Quixote dies, Hamete can spend a turn rewriting Don Quixote’s story so that he implausibly survives. His attributes are ATK 1 DEF 1 and his talents are Stealth, Disguise, and Persuasion. Rewriting Don Quixote’s story is a powerful magical act that can be perceived by any fellow spirit.
Echo
Banner-class, a divine spirit of mountain and stone
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 2
Talents: Combat, Athletics, Lore
Weapon: Martial arts
Oread, Princess of the Mount: Echo can manipulate concrete, stone, and earth to take whichever shape she wishes within shouting distance. This allows her to make ranged attacks with piercing spires or crushing pillars of earth, propel herself on waves of stone, or damage or destabilize buildings.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to harm a man she thinks is pretty. She can only repeat the last sentence that was said in her presence, though she is not compelled to speak.
El Cid
Banner-class, a fearsome warrior spirit of steel and fire
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 2
Talents: Combat, Athletics, Riding, Command
Weapon: Sword
La Tizona: El Cid’s fiery sword. El Cid can raise great waves of flames when he swings it, allowing him to start fires and make ranged attacks. He can also quench all nearby fires by sheathing it. El Cid can only fight with one of his swords drawn at a time.
La Colada: El Cid’s fearsome sword. When he draws it for the first time in combat, he has an excellent chance of paralyzing all humans in line of sight for as long as he remains in their presence and a poor chance of paralyzing fellow heroic spirits for a turn. He can remove this effects by sheathing La Colada sword. El Cid can only fight with one of his swords drawn at a time.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to retreat or pursue a retreating enemy.
Ferdiad
Banner-class, an tragic spirit of warfare and friendship betrayed
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 2
Talents: Combat, Athletics, Command
Weapon: Spear
Flesh of Horn: Ferdiad cannot suffer harm from an attack he sees coming. He can still be restrained, drowned, dropped from a high place, struck by a surprise attack, etc.
Broken Bonds of Brotherhood: Ferdiad enjoys a +1d6 bonus to rolls when operating alone.
Weakness: Requires a loyalty check to break a promise or allow his summoner to break a promise.
Hammurabi
Crown-class, a kingly spirit of law and justice
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: Command, Persuasion, Resisting Magic
Weapon: Mace
Tupsimati, the Whole of the Law: Normal humans obey Hammurabi’s commands, as long as they are legal and non-suicidal. He has a risky chance of making non-monarch fellow spirits obey his commands, though they can only be one word. If he fails the roll to use this ability on a fellow spirit, they are immune to it permanently.
Eye for an Eye: When someone harms Hammurabi, they suffer 1 harm, unreduced by DEF.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to flagrantly violate the law in a way that does not pertain to the Royale (robbing a bank, jaywalking).
The Bull of Heaven: Spend a turn to summon a colossal winged bull with 4 ATK, 4 DEF, 10 Stamina and 10 HP, and recovers 1 Health or Stamina per turn. Gugulanna cannot be dismissed and cannot be summoned again if it dies.
Love and War: If Ishtar spends more than a few minutes speaking with someone, she has an excellent chance of making them infatuated with her. She deals +1 damage against those infatuated with her.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to work with or not exact revenge upon someone who has wronged her in any way.
Joshua
Banner-class, a holy spirit of war and piety
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 2
Talents: Command, Combat, Athletics
Weapon: Spear
Jericho’s Tribulation: By blowing on his horn, Joshua can attack all creatures in a 50’ cone in front of him. This deals +1 damage to unholy creatures and causes catastrophic structural damage if he so chooses.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to perform impious or dishonorable acts
Judah Macabee
Banner-class, a divine spirit of rebellion and purity
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 2
Talents: Command, Combat, Athletics
Weapon: Spear
Iconoclast: Judah rolls an extra die when making opposed rolls against pagan or unholy gods and spirits, and deals +1 damage when attacking them.
Divine Revolt: When Judah takes damage, he can make a risky roll to instantly retreat with his summoner to a location within a 1 block radius. He must rest before he can use this ability again.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to perform impious acts
Resplendent Kingdom of Desolation: King Midas can turn anything he touches into gold. This ability transfers through objects and surfaces he has transformed, so if he turns the floor into gold, he can also transform the people standing on it. Transformation of living things count as attacks (so transformation is partial, recoverable, and cosmetic before it reduces a creature to 0 Health). King Midas has an 6-clock called Golden Ruin. It counts down a tick every time he uses his ability and counts up a tick every turn. If it counts all the way down, he turns into a lifeless statue of gold that uses this ability until everything in the world is gold or the statue is destroyed.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to not act on his immense greed and ambition.
Khan’s Holy Ground: Kublai Khan has a 12-clock called Xanadu. He can transform the interior of any building he is inside into the interior of his Xanadu palace, which confers him +1 ATK, +1 DEF, and access to his weak but limitless troops. Each turn spent in Xanadu costs 1 tick. Once it counts down, he can’t use this ability until it counts up again. Resting restores 2 ticks of the clock.
La Voisin
Mantle-class, an unholy spirit of poison and deceit
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: Stealth, Larceny
Weapon: Knife
L’affaire des poisons. La Voisin can poison any food or drink she has seen, regardless of distance, as long as it has not already been consumed. The poison deals 10 damage on consumption, though a check can be made to halve it. Regular humans have a poor chance, while the check is only risky for fellow spirits.
La mauvais voisin. La Voisin can possess any regular human whose face and name she knows. They do not remember what they do while under her control. She cannot be identified or sensed as a heroic spirit while doing so.
Weakness: Divine beings have an excellent chance of withstanding any of La Voisin’s magic or poisons, and can identify her poison as being supernatural.
Lilith
Scepter-class, an unholy spirit of disease and monstrosity
Attributes: ATK 3, DEF 0
Talents: Sorcery, Lore
Weapon: Beastly familiars
First Mother of the Garden. Lilith can cast any spell from the Vivimancy list five times. When she rests, she recovers all uses of her spells.
Abyssal Parade of Unsightly Beasts. With a cumulative three turns of effort, Lilith can conjure forth her innumerable monstrous children from the forgotten places of the world. They do not harm Lilith or her summoner, and are individually of little danger to a heroic spirit, but otherwise rampage indiscriminately in ever-growing numbers until the gate from which they issue is destroyed.
Weakness: When she makes a roll opposed by a child or someone whose mother she knows, her odds are always poor.
Lord Ruthven
Scepter-class, an unholy spirit of death and darkness
Attributes: ATK 3, DEF 0
Talents: Sorcery, Stealth, Lore
Weapon: claws and spears of darkness
Lord of the Dead. Lord Ruthven can cast any spell from the Necromancy list five times. When he rests, he recovers all uses of his spells. Anyone who makes a promise to Lord Ruthven cannot break the word of it, though they may violate its intent.
Immortal. While attacks can reduce Lord Ruthven’s Stamina normally, only attacks from divine beings, stakes through the heart, or attacks while he is in direct sunlight can reduce his Health.
Weakness: Lord Ruthven must follow the word of every promise he makes. He cannot tread on holy ground or enter holy buildings.
Lucifer, the Morningstar
Mantle-class, an angelic spirit of light and evil
Attributes: ATK 4, DEF 1
Talents: Combat, Persuasion, Athletics, Command
Weapon: Blades and javelins of light
Felix Culpa. Lucifer has a 6-clock called Temptation, which he can count down to grant a wish to anyone other than his summoner. The means are supernatural, but the ends must be within normal human capacity (true love and raising the dead are out, for example). A single tick would be something like a fancy car or getting a coworker to become infatuated, while six ticks would be fabulous wealth for a lifetime or the death of a major world leader. In return, the beneficiary is bound to fulfill a single request from Lucifer to the letter at any time. He can rest to recover 2 ticks. When Temptation counts down to zero, word of Lucifer’s escapades reaches High Heaven and an archangel descends to purify the city.
Divine Provenance. Lucifer counts as both a divine and unholy being when determining the effects of abilities.
Weakness: Requires a loyalty check to take direct commands or orders (rather than suggestions or requests).
Morgan Le Fey
Scepter-class, a wicked fairy spirit of guile and subjugation
Attributes: ATK 3, DEF 0
Talents: Sorcery, Seduction, Lore
Weapon: Windborne clouds of razor-sharp flower petals
Fairy Queen. Morgan Le Fey can cast any spell from the Psychomancy list five times. When she rests, she recovers all uses of her spells.
Road to Broceliande. When Morgan Le Fey rests, she and any willing or subdued creatures with her may retreat to her hidden grove-world, Broceliande. No one may leave without her permission or powerful magic.
Weakness: If her roll is opposed by someone acting out of kindness, charity, or some other virtue, her odds are poor.
Napoleon
Crown-class, an ingenious spirit of ambition and war
Vive L’Empereur. Napoleon has an 8-clock called Conquest. She can count it down to call on the help of her army, who manifest as contemporary, fiercely loyal, moderately competent, and extremely French soldiers. The more she counts down the clock, the more followers she can call on. She can clear 2 wedges of the clock by resting. Each wedge calls in more people based on this scale (1-2-5-10-20-50-100-200)
Weakness: Requires a Loyalty check to act on plans that hedge her bets or bide her time in any way.
Paracelsus
Scepter-class, a sagacious spirit of transformation and transcendence
Attributes: ATK 3, DEF 0
Talents: Sorcery, Lore
Weapon: Swarms of conjured elementals
Fairy Queen. Paracelsus can cast any spell from the Elementalism list five times. When he rests, he recovers all uses of his spells.
Hermetic Rite. If Paracelsus spends a turn performing a ritual in four auspicious locations at each of the cardinal directions of the city, he can touch the Pleroma and become immensely powerful (4 ATK, 4 DEF, cast spells at will)
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to take the humble, patient, or simple route.
Queen Medb
Crown-class, a warrior spirit of excellence and greed
Ostentation of the High Court. Queen Medb has infinite money, can spend a turn to acquire any single good or service up to $100,00 in value or make a batch purchase of up to $1,000,000 that prevents this ability from being used again until the Queen rests.
Weakness: Requires a risky loyalty check to retreat or back down.
