I have done actual stuff!

I didn’t manage to complete the Aberrant Player’s Guide this week – it’s long and it’s boring, and I’ve been distracted by more interesting things. See, it occurred to me that instead of reading PDFs of an outdated 90s game that I hate… I could read PDFs of outdated 90s games that I might actually like. I know, it’s a crazy idea, but what if I did something to not be miserable?

Still, my Aberrant readthrough will eventually be finished, if it so kills me – I have one and a half book left, surely I can do it. And while I’m at it, I also intend to finish that loathsome piece of smirking, YouTube-spawned zoomer dreck Daggerheartat some point. I refuse to be beaten by self-righteous hacks, be they 90s hipster edgelords or 20s woke snowflakes!

But, just for this week, I figured I’d actually post some work on my own projects for a bit. My attention span hasn’t been the greatest, but I’ve managed to put in some actual work on three different ones.

THE DARK HERESY PORT

My Dark Heresy port… works. That’s about the best you can say for it. It works, it’s not actively painful to use, it’s better (subjective statement, I know!) than the original rules. But it’s still not good. It’s over-complicated. It’s dense. It’s got lots of things that will never get used. It lacks the sort of punch that PbtA games should have, the sense of providing the flavour explicitly instead of trying to make it an emergent property of a hundred fiddly modifiers.

So this week, I started scribbling on a new version. I’m keeping a lot of things from the old, but I’m stripping the basic moves down to one per Characteristic. I’m also renaming the Characteristics to make them represent personal qualities more so than raw talent – for example, I’m renaming Strength to Fierce, and you roll +Fierce to push forward, to advance, to remove obstacles. Like so:

Weapon Skill – Lethal
Ballistic Skill – Precise
Strength – Fierce
Toughness – Unyielding
Agility – Treacherous
Perception – Intuitive
Willpower – Disciplined
Fellowship – Charismatic
Intelligence – Analytical

I’m also merging Insanity and Corruption together into a single pool of “mental hit points.” Keeping track of them both just seems pointless, because honestly, I can’t remember many places in the fiction where anyone went crazy without being implied to be in some way corrupted or under demonic influence. Also, each Career gets three pre-defined conditions that they hit the first, second and third time they exceed their maximum number of Corruption Points. So for instance, the Adept becomes increasingly obsessed with blasphemous lore and ends up summoning daemons, the Arbitrator becomes less and less able to compromise and ends up getting himself killed in a pointless last stand, the Tech-Priest’s bionics take over more and more until he’s a prisoner in a body now wholly run by cogitors… and so on.

Finally, I’m introducing two collective tracks: Exposure and Intel. Whenever the players make a mess, they mark Exposure, and once all the boxes are marked the enemy knows who they are and start seriously gunning for them. Whenever the players discover an important clue or valuable piece of intelligence, they mark Intel, and once all the boxes are marked they become able to call the Inquisition and request backup, or commandeer local Imperial forces in the Inquisition’s name.

It’s still sketchy, and I don’t know how long it will take me to finish, especially with everything else I want to do… but I have a good feeling about this. Of course, I seem to recall saying that about the last two versions, too…

THE MAGE: THE ASCENSION PORT

One of the old PDFs I’m reading is actually the first edition of Mage: the Ascension and… do you realise that Mage used to be fun? Like, there used to be things to do, instead of just being dropped in a dreary world and being told to come up with your own motivation. You could use magick to do actual cool things, instead of the cool things being gated off behind unrealistic numbers of successes. And the Paradox rules actually offered some guidance for what sort of problems might occur at what levels of Paradox, instead of just shrugging and telling you to figure it out. I mean, Mage always fascinated me, but I started writing a port for it largely because I could think of absolutely no way to run it as it was and wanted to invent some workable structure for it. I guess I was reinventing the wheel.

Anyway, that’s a lot of new ideas that I might look at implementing, but this week, what I actually did was sit down and iron out some better guidelines for Avatar Essence. I fear I’ve been frightfully inconsistent with what does and does not qualify a spell for that +1 bonus from a mage’s Essence, and since Arete rolls are locked at +0 for a long time, that bonus is kind of important.

So here’s what I’ve come up with for now, and that I think might work:

• If your Essence is Dynamic, take +1 to any Arete roll meant to radically alter a situation or infuse it with more energy. If it makes a mess, it can be justified as a Dynamic Effect. Creation and destruction are both highly possible, and so is transformation – the frequent problem is going to be making the changes drastic enough to qualify as Dynamic without resorting to vulgar magick. You can’t just shift around a few pieces, the very rules of the game must change in some way. Knowledge spells are almost entirely impossible to claim as Dynamic Effects – understanding the current situation implies a state of mind that assumes it will remain relatively unchanged, and that is against all the Dynamic Avatar stands for.

• If your Essence is Pattern, take +1 to Arete rolls to make use of what already exists, without adding or removing from it. If you are playing off something that is already in the scene, you can probably justify it as a Pattern Effect. It is difficult to use Pattern to create anything whole cloth or to completely destroy, but you can “improve” on what is already there or put their pre-existing flaws into play. Likewise, transformation is possible, but only to make things either sturdier or more complicated, never to both weaken and simplify them (for example, you might sprinkle perfectly symmetrical holes throughout the surface of a door, thus making it more complicated but also more brittle and easier to break. You could not claim Pattern for just making the door rotten, since that would make it more fragile without adding to its complexity). Spells of pure knowledge are the hardest to justify; the Pattern Avatar is jealous of information and considers everything to be on a need-to-know basis, though you can sometimes sneak something through by baking into the spell the idea that you need to better understand something in order to strengthen it or obey its rules.

• If your Essence is Primordial, take +1 to Arete rolls to remove things, especially barriers and restore the original, unconstrained state of things. The Primordial Avatar dislikes forcing anything to be, but you can get a lot of mileage out of removing the reasons for it not to be and then letting nature take its course. Pure knowledge spells are relatively easy to manage as long as you can argue that you are removing something that is “blocking your sight”; for example, you could see through a wall by removing its ability to hide what was behind it. Pattern Effects can also be used quite easily to either heal (by “removing weakness and damage”) or destroy (by “removing strength and wholeness”).

• If your Essence is Questing, take +1 to Arete rolls to experience the world, either by expanding your senses or by introducing yourself into interesting situations. Pure knowledge spells are always allowed as Questing Effects, but spells that actually do something are harder – they generally need to be justified as serving to move yourself into a position where you can learn things. Questing can never be used to keep something at arm’s length or to remain stationary and let the world move around you, only in either affecting or facilitating your own movement through the world.

It is possible to make an Effect draw on an Essence by defining it more tightly than the Spheres actually demand. For instance, a Disciple of Entropy Effect can disable any inanimate system, but this would not be a Questing Effect since most inanimate systems don’t block the mage’s movement (it would work fine as a Primordial Effect, since it would be dissolving artificial structures). However, defining the Effect to only target locks, bolts, and fetters in the mage’s path would let it be cast as a Questing Effect, since it would then be clearly in the service of the Questing Avatar’s goals. Assume that the Avatar is sentient and intent on enforcing its idea of the mage’s destiny; it will “bless” certain spells and not others, depending on whether those spells are in line with how it sees its purpose.

Likewise, it is possible to align an Effect with an Essence by making mundane actions part of its casting. For example, an Apprentice of Entropy Effect to detect a flaw in an enemy’s fighting style can’t be a Primordial Effect, since it can’t be justified as removing a boundary (the flaw, if it exists, is right there – your problem isn’t seeing it, it’s recognising it). However, an Akashic might create an Effect in the form of a “conflict-ending blow” that instantly and non-lethally incapacitated an enemy by unbalancing her at a split instance of weakness. Since the casting of the Effect could only be used to end a fight at least for the time being and could not be used to acquire knowledge without immediately acting on it, it could be justified as a Primordial Effect. The Effects blessed by the Essences can overlap – something could be both a Dynamic Effect and a Questing Effect (such as a personal teleportation spell; both a drastic change and a way for the mage to move into a more advantageous position), or both a Pattern Effect and a Primordial Effect (such as a spell to render poisoned water drinkable; it would at once improve the water for the purposes of being drunk and remove its harmful qualities). However, when codified into a Rote, an Effect always has the Essence chosen by the mage who created the Rote.

Again, it needs more work, but I think this will actually provide the sort of flavour I want.

MONSTROUS MISHAPS (FOR ONCE!)

Finally, I managed to do some actual work on one of my actual original games. Will wonders never cease? I’m trying to get the quickstart for my perpetually-almost-finished game Monstrous Mishaps together. I have gotten to the chapter on GMing, and that’s hard, because… er… I suck at writing GMing advice, as it turns out. It’s funny, I have no problem writing player advice, but for GMs I keep trying to think of something more helpful than, “just do it properly! You know, properly. Like, not in the way that causes me actual pain to watch. Do it in the way that isn’t like that. Jerks.”

I don’t know. GMing is more an art than a science for me, I guess…

Anyway, I did manage to put together ten suggested plot hooks, to give the reader a better idea of what sort of thing you get up to in Monster World.

• A rival Monster managed to dump a barrel full of Jell-Oh over one of the PCs in full view of the Court. Now the PC has to find some way to PWN the prankster right back, or they’ll be a laughingstock for months.

• Against his better judgment, a PC posted bail for his no-good brother-in-law, and then the jerk failed to show up for his court date. Time to go turn over every rock he might have crawled under, while an inept police detective is certain that the PC is hiding the fugitive and keeps interfering.

• A PC’s boss is coming over for dinner. Nothing must go wrong! The problem is, the PCs live in a Maze, which is to say, a perverse haunted house with no regard for their career prospects…

• A PC’s best mate has lost his job and his apartment, and a PC has graciously let him crash at her place until he can get back on his feet. However, after several months of him doing nothing but hanging around pitying himself, the cohabitation is starting to become a drag. The PC is going to have to somehow both find him a new job and get him to shape up enough to keep it.

• A PC has somehow attracted an annoying Haunting that inflicts a taboo on him – whenever he hears a bell ring, he has to immediately do a silly song and dance routine or else suffer an unlikely and painful accident. There’s a counterspell to get rid of the curse, but it requires a bunch of bizarre ingredients that must be gathered from all over town. Too bad that the annual Bell-Ringing Festival is just around the corner.

• A PC’s rich aunt wants him to babysit her bratty son for the afternoon. He’d better come back in one piece, or she’ll make some alterations to her will. The kid resents being babysat and has absolutely zero self-preservation.

• A sneaky Slayer has spread the vicious rumour that a PC has been seen kicking a puppy. The good news is, the animal shelter needs volunteers, giving the PC an excellent opportunity to prove what an animal lover she really is. How hard can it possibly be to take care of a few dozen maladjusted critters with simmering grudges against all of humanity?

• A PC has inherited an old house that needs to be cleaned out so they can sell it. This will require not only dealing with a bunch of squatters who aren’t happy about being ousted, but a grumpy Haunting that’s just woken up as well.

• A PC’s ex-husband is refusing to share custody of their pet parakeet. Dragging him to court would probably not help, so there is nothing to it but a bout of parakeet-napping. Problem is, the ex is a Monster too, so it will require traversing his Maze.

• The lady who accidentally ran into a PC’s mailbox last week is not only refusing to pay for damages. No, she’s also countersuing for emotional damages of the PC having irresponsibly placed a mailbox where innocent people might need to drive. The PC’s enemies are all too happy to offer damning character testimony, so the PC needs to find just as many people to assure the judge of what a nice fellow he is.

So there you go. Three actual samples of what I’m working on right now. Yes, Aberrant is so bad that it’s driving me to try to do better myself. Which is, admittedly, a positive effect common to many bad games, so perhaps it fills some sort of function in the cosmic order after all…