Month: March 2025

The Challenge System

I didn’t really do much this week, so let’s talk about something I’ve had almost finished for years now: the resolution system for my great work-in-progress, Monstrous Mishaps. I call it the Challenge System, for lack of a better name.

The thing that stands out with the Challenge System is that it’s entirely free from randomisers – not just “diceless” (a term people keep applying to games that rely on alternate randomisers, like card draws or coin flips, to my constant annoyance) but completely deterministic, with no randomness except the GM’s whimsy and the players’ refusal to stick to the plot. Because let’s be honest, those two are more than enough!

The Challenge System gives each character a set of Abilities, twelve Primary Abilities that are bought and raised individually, and twelve Derived Abilities that are each calculated as the average between two Primary Abilities. For example, your Score in Bullshitting (telling lies) is the average between your Score in Schmoozing (charm and charisma) and your Score in Mindgames (psychology).

Each Ability has a Score that usually goes from 1 to 15. The Score translates into a Level, as such:

Score 1: Minimal Level, the sort of thing anyone can do just by being a healthy adult.

Score 2-3: Limited Level, the equivalent of a natural talent or passing interest.

Score 4-7: Basic Level, the equivalent of professional skill; the I-do-this-for-a-living sort of competence.

Score 8-15: Advanced Level, the peak of consistent human performance.

There are three more Levels: Heroic (Score 16-31, anything Batman could do), Epic (Score 32-63, anything Superman could do), and Godlike (Score 64+, anything no one could possibly do), but Player Characters can’t have those in their Abilities. So why do I bring them up? Stay tuned, I’ll get to it.

When the players try to do something, the GM assigns it a Challenge Score (and associated Challenge Level) equal to the Ability Score it would reasonably take to accomplish it. So anything a seasoned professional might do within an Ability would be a Basic Challenge for that Ability. Advantages come in categories of +1, +3, +5, +10 and so on. They matter the most in Contests (where one character matches one of their Abilities against one of another character’s) since for regular Challenges you can just set the Challenge Score to anything you want to start with.

Finally, you can apply Upshifts and Downshifts. Those can come from any source that dramatically change the parameters of the Challenge, such as drastically extending or shortening the time the character has to work in, but the most common source of Upshifts is from paying Grit Points (of which a character has a fixed amounts). Paying 1 Grit Points gives one Upshift, while paying 3 Grit Points gives two Upshifts. An Upshift multiplies the Ability Score (after adding Advantages) by 2, and thus also increasing the Ability Level by one step. Downshifts do the same to Challenge Scores.

If, after all this, the Ability Score is equal to or higher than the Challenge Score, the character succeeded. Otherwise they failed.

I’ve playtested the system extensively, and it’s actually really smooth once you get used to it. When it comes right down to it, it’s just about deciding whether it would make sense for a character to succeed at something. And it’s nice, sometimes, to always get a result that fits the scene, instead of having come up with ways to justify the swinginess that comes from die rolls.

The ghost of the ferry

This week, our dauntless mummies crossed the River Nile and approached the spectre fortress, where they were promptly ambushed. Nothing much else happened, it was a fairly slow session – partly because I’ve been to tired, demoralised and tooth-achey this week to really do much preparation.

At least the players liked the wraith NPC I created on the spot, Sabriyah the anal-retentive ferrywoman. Having some quick categories to mash together is really helpful for making NPCs. For wraiths, I have one list of traits based on cause of death, and one list of traits based on their main supernatural powers, so for a ferrywoman I lumped together death by drowning (meaning her cause of death was Happenstance) and the main abilities of Usury and Argos (meaning she can transfer spiritual energy between people, all the better to collect her fee, and travel instantly between spots, suitable for if the ferry capsises).

Physically, that meant that Sabriyah had pitch-black unblinking eyes, a slack and bloated face, and an overly precise way of talking… which instantly gave me an impression of someone who seemed deeply autistic, who fussed over every detail while having very little grasp of the big picture. I decided that, having died from being insufficiently mindful of safety while out on a boat, she had emerged into the Underworld hyper-focused on always minding her Ps and Qs. She’d been sitting in her boathouse down by the Nile for years when the players found her, waiting for instructions from a Hierarchy that no longer existed in any meaningful way, because she couldn’t bring herself to act improperly. Tragic, romantic, and a bit creepy – precisely the right mix for a wraith.

I doubt I’ll get to use her for much in the future, but it’s nice to know that I can still improvise, at least with the right tools.

Starlight Dreams

So this week I actually ended up working on an original game, just not the one I meant to work on. Oh well.

The game in question has the working name Auturge, though I have never been entirely satisfied with it – other ones I’ve toyed with are Self-Created or Ex Nihilo, and right now I am leaning towards Starlight Dreams. By any name, it’s about being a genderless self-created god (your pronouns are yt/yts, and someone please shoot me for uttering that sentence) in a young and innocent cosmos called the Sublime that is under attack by evil Nazi goblins called the Sordid. You battle faceless hordes of enemies, treacherous ex-allies, and creations gone bad.

I guess the game is what you might call an affectionate parody. It came about after I had read one too many threads at the Something Awful forums where people were screeching about every game being deeply problematic because it had sexual themes, or because it wasn’t high-powered enough, or because it depicted the bad guys as anything short of completely irredeemably evil. I started sarcastically planning out the sort of game that these perpetually offended people would actually want… and then, after I got into it, I realised that what I’d come up with actually sounded like a lot of fun.

So basically, it’s a game that makes fun of wokeness, but it’s also a game that revels in wokeness, that takes its worst excesses and runs with them. That might make it a game that pleases absolutely no one, but it’s one that thoroughly captured my imagination. And I’ll say for it, there is very little on the market like it.

I’ve previously written up a playtesting version, but then I put it away to consider it. This week, I started writing up the basic rules from scratch again. So far, this is what I have. The next thing I need to work out is Miracles, the way that players can make things happen through sheer divine will rather than just superheroic action.

CHARACTER CREATION

When creating a character, first choose your Virtues. The four Virtues are Outrage (used for aggressive and forceful action and zeal), Nurture (used to care for and empathise with others), Elegance (used to perform nimble feats and eloquent rhetoric) and Self-Love (used to protect yourself and be mindful of your surroundings). You start with two of them at 1, a third at 2, and the last at 3.

Choose your Identity:

  • Ganesha, a god of animals and the flesh. Increase any one Virtue by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Body.
  • Mimer, a god of thought and ideal. Increase Elegance by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Abstract.
  • Persephone, a god of plant life and mysticism. Increase Nurture by 1 and start with the Harmony of Growth.
  • Raiden, a god of natural forces. Increase Outrage by 1 and start with the Harmony of Forces.
  • Terra, a god of the inanimate. Increase Self-Love by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Inanimate.

Choose your Calling:

  • Creatrix, a maker of beauty. Increase Elegance by 1.
  • Kindness, a gentle carer for those who suffer. Increase Nurture by 1.
  • Mourner, one of who remembers what has been lost. Increase Self-Love by 1.
  • Strident, a warrior for justice. Increase Outrage by 1.
  • Wisdom, an arbiter of disputes. Increase any Virtue by 1.

TASK RESOLUTION

When performing an action that might conceivably fail, a player must build a dice pool.

1) The player picks up 5 Hope Dice (green).
2) The player replaces as many Hope Dice with Faith Dice (yellow) as they have points in the relevant Virtue.
3) For every established Fancy the player invokes by describing how it aids their action, they may replace a Hope Die with a Faith Die or a Faith Die with a Love Die (red).
4) For every point of the relevant sort of Esteem the player spends on the roll, they may replace a Hope Die with a Faith Die or a Faith Die with a Love Die.
5) For every established Fancy the Guide invokes by describing how it hinders the action, the Guide may replace one Love Die with a Faith Die or one Faith Die with a Hope Die.
6) The player rolls the dice. Count one success for every Hope Die that shows a 6, one success for every Faith Die that shows a result of 4+, and one success for every Love Die that shows a result of 2+. The total number of successes is the Result.

The Guide compares the Result with the task’s Difficulty. Difficulty is set as follows:

  • Difficulty 0: anything a regular human being could reasonably do. This does not even require a roll.
  • Difficulty 1: the absolute peak of mortal effort; a once-in-a-million achievement.
  • Difficulty 2: something that could be done by an animal of the right type (e.g., staying under water indefinitely, flying to the opposite side of a mountain).
  • Difficulty 3: something that could be accomplished by means of a handheld modern implement or tool.
  • Difficulty 4: something that could be accomplished by an advanced human civilisation. Note that this is rarely instantaneous.
  • Difficulty 5: something that absolutely couldn’t be done without magic or divine intervention; effectively, this allows the player to perform a Miracle without needing either to spend Esteem or to possess the right Harmonies.

If the Result equals or exceeds the Difficulty, the action succeeds and the player gains Esteem of the appropriate form equal to the Difficulty. Acts of Outrage generate Righteousness Esteem, acts of Nurture generate Charity Esteem, acts of Elegance generate Beauty Esteem and acts of Self-Love generate Serenity Esteem.

If the Result is lower than the Difficulty, the action fails, and there is some kind of consequence. The consequence is never simply that nothing happens, the situation always deteriorates in some way.

When opposing another self-moving entity (another auturge, demiurge, sordite, Whim, Wicked, Urge, or Gloom) the Difficulty for the action is the entity’s relevant Virtue. Thus, taking cover from sordite’s laser beam is an Elegance roll against the sordite’s Outrage, seeing through the lies of a Gloom is a Nurture roll against the Gloom’s Elegance, and resisting an Urge’s poisonous bile is a Self-Love roll against the Urge’s Outrage.

FANCIES

Fancies are facts of the immediate situation that have been established. “The golden palace shines with a blinding light” is a Fancy, as is “we stand on rocks floating in the middle of an endless void,” and “the Crustacean Sultan is greatly wroth.” When a player attempts an action, both the player and the Guide may describe how some number of Fancies help (for the player) or hinder (for the Guide) the action. This is called invoking a Fancy. A Fancy can only be invoked once for a given action. This also means that if a player has invoked a Fancy to help the action, the Guide may not invoke the same Fancy to hinder the action.

The Guide can introduce Fancies at any time by describing them, either as an introduction to a scene, because something changed in it, or just because the players noticed something for the first time. The Guide can also alter or remove Fancies at will, in accordance to what makes sense in terms of the changing situation. Fancies arise from what is happening within the game world, not the other way around.

The players can create, alter or remove Fancies by taking actions that change the situation. The Difficulty is set as normal, depending on how difficult the Guide judges it to be. If the action is successful, the local Fancies change accordingly. Failing a roll may also affect Fancies, just not in the way that the player intended.

Some Fancies are Passing Fancies, which disappear once they are invoked. Such Fancies usually describe some temporary advantage or setback that can easily change. For example, the Fancy “the Emerald Giant is distracted by Xia’s song” disappears once one of Xia’s friends invoke it to strike the Emerald Giant in the back – after that, yts attention is definitely no longer on Xia’s song! While the Guide can always create, remove or change a Fancy for any reason at all, declaring a Fancy to be a Passing one is mostly just a way to remind everyone not to get used to it. Fancies that aren’t Passing Fancies are Persistent Fancies, and can be invoked any number of times. If nothing else is mentioned, assume that a Fancy is a Persistent Fancy.

Injuries are a pain

I had reason to fiddle with my Blue Rose port this week. It’s one I’m particularly fond of, since it’s more experimental than the others – and a lot more divorced from the original rules, for that matter. Blue Rose, in both its editions, is really just D&D “but without, you know, the problematic stuff.” This is not to say that that’s without its appeal – hey, I may not be refined enough to be acceptable to the woke, but I’m not crude enough to be acceptable to the lowbrow roll-around-in-sewage crowd either! I have my own craving for prettiness and cuddliness. So sometimes I enjoy slaying monsters but in a nice, genteel, socially acceptable sort of way.

That said, there is a considerable mismatch between the rules and the stated intent of the game. If it’s all about teh feelz, then there shouldn’t be hundreds of pages of combat rules. D&D has hundreds of pages of combat rules because it really is mostly about making other living creatures go SPLAT (and keeping them from SPLATing you first). If you want to create a game of noble brightness, cute talking animals and refined tea parties, you shouldn’t take the D&D rules and then add a few stern instructions about not using them too much. You should make a game that is about the thing you mean for the game to be about.

So when I sat down to port Blue Rose, I made personality and disposition central to the rules. More specifically, I took the mostly-irrelevant-except-as-a-roleplaying-aid Tarot motif of the original game and put it first. Every character has three Traits: one card of the Major Arcana that represents their overall goals and ideals, one card of the Minor Arcana that represents their greatest virtue, and one reversed card of the Minor Arcana that represents their greatest personal failing. When you roll to do anything, you try to involve your Traits, and each one you can invoke gives you a bonus. It’s working out pretty well so far.

Which brings me to the damage system. Damage systems are almost invariably the hardest part for me in making a game, because they’re so hard to keep from being fun-spoilers. The risk of getting hurt has to be omnipresent, because that’s always going to be a stake in any sort of action scene (and even Blue Rose should have action scenes). But if characters get hurt too easily, and particularly if it takes too long for them to heal up, then they can end up sidelining players for absolute ages. No fun.

Part of the problem is of course that in real life, injury is incredibly serious. Even a strained muscle is going to cramp your style for days. A serious injury, like you can easily get in mortal combat? That’s going to leave you bedridden for months. A game where there is easy access to magical healing can get around that, but of course a game like that is high fantasy almost per definition; a world where someone can unbreak your leg with a wave of their hand is a world that is very, very far away from our own.

I almost invariably start out making the injury rules too punishing, and then have to scale them back (while grumbling about how I am having to compromise my artistic vision just because those darn players can’t keep themselves out of harm’s way…). In this case, the way I handled injury in the game was by making players “lock” their Traits to indicate emotional distress. A locked Trait still gives a bonus when it’s invoked, but it also gives a penalty to any roll where it’s not invoked. The idea being that the more stress a character is under, the more she defaults to her fundamental convictions and has trouble seeing how anything that is unrelated to them could be important.

So far so good. Now, the rules for healing has been rewritten to the following:

When you give yourself time to heal, roll +Conviction. If you are in some way aided by an NPC who has Touch on you, take +1 forward to the roll. 6-, you unlocked a Trait, but your introspection allows something new to sneak up on you; the Narrator makes a move. 7-9, you unlock up to two Traits. If an NPC aided in your recovery, they put Touch on you. 10+, the same, and if you want you may also either clear Corruption or remove one person’s Touch on you (which can be the NPC who aided in your recovery, if any).

Note: While give yourself time to heal is a fairly passive move and can seem difficult to apply Traits to, the Narrator should encourage the player to describe what she is ruminating on over her convalescence, and what lessons she has learned from the pain. As long as her description is broadly in line with a Trait, it should apply. Thus, it should actually be fairly easy to at least roll with +2 for recovering.

Examples: Bandaging your own wounds, having a drink with your friends, enjoying some me time.

That means that even if the roll fails, you still unlock at least one Trait, and you can potentially unlock more with a success. Hopefully that’ll make players a little sturdier and less likely to spend all their time neurotic and sulking – it’s still suppose to be a nice game, after all…

Gear Porn

I ended up spending this week working on the Dark Heresy port, particularly on the gear section.

I have to admit, I’m not really a fan of gear in roleplaying games. It just feels anal-retentive to have to list every fiddly little implement your character carries around, and to have creative ideas that you can’t implement because you just didn’t bring the right tool. I’m more about the skills and inherent properties, the things that are always true about your character. But of course this is Warhammer 40,000, and running Warhammer 40,000 without drooling over the badass toys is just making a complete mockery of the whole thing.

I did try to streamline it a bit, though. I assigned every weapon, armour and doodad a Req value between 1 and 10, and then assigned every Career a starting amount of Req. In between every mission, your Req refills and you can spend it on requisitioning new equipment. And the effects of different items have been simplified to the point where it’s hopefully easier to remember – a lot of things just give a +1 bonus to some particular move.

I note, not for the first time, that it’s very unclear who this port is even for. I mean, I’m pretty sure that anyone who likes Powered by the Apocalypse games is going to think it misses the point entirely by having so many over-specific rules, and anyone who likes Dark Heresy the way it is is of course not going to see the point of my converting it to an entirely different format. I guess in the end, it’s just for me, to make it possible to at some point run games in the Warhammer 40,000 universe that don’t feel quite so painful.

Of course, disliking pain might also be missing the whole point of Warhammer 40,000…