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  • Grimdark Principles

    Grimdark Principles

    Woo! I have been hard at work with my Dark Heresy port – which I realise is all that I ever talk about lately, but when I get manic about something I need to ride it until it starts boring me again, at which point I can get manic about something else – and I’m actually pretty close to having it ready as a playable game. There is some fine-tuning, but most of it is in sorting the rules into a more easily accessible format. The actual function of them I think I can more or less stand by at this point.

    For this week, have a look at my Principles. Principles are one of my favourite parts of Powered by the Apocalypse – they’re specific assumptions and elements of playstyle that goes with the particular setting and genre of a particular game. I had to rewrite these about a million times, but now I think they actually work for the sort of game I’ve been running. Here they are:

    • Never whisper when you can roar. The forty-first millennium has no room for subtlety. Everything about it is oversized, overwrought, overwhelming, and not least of all loud. There are no genteel duels on sunlit streets, only frantic no-holds-barred chainsaw-wielding brawls fought atop the broken stained glass of ruined cathedrals; no calm discussions between dispassionate parties, only furious demands shouted over the thunder of enemy gunfire. Whenever you frame a scene, ask yourself: how could this be more operatic and baroque?
    • Fill the world with brooding ruins; afflict everything with slow rot. The galaxy is old, its decadent empires stubbornly clinging to life even as they are dragged, inch by inch, towards oblivion. Nor is anything replacing them – those that manage to prosper in this time of fire and blood are those that have no interest in building anything of their own, only in tearing down or consuming what already exists. The decay isn’t fast, but it’s omnipresent, visible in the blasted skylines of bombed-out cities and the jagged scars of grizzled veterans. Everything is either old and worn out, or new and crudely inferior.
    • Spin webs of baffling complexity. Nothing is simple and elegant. Everything is covered with unnecessary details and slathered in adjustments, caveats, reworkings and contradictory purposes. Every culture has a convoluted history that has given rise to bizarre practices, and every piece of machinery has been jury-rigged from components originally meant for something else. Things that are meant to be covert are even more so; whatever part of a secret plan you manage to unravel is probably a diversion designed to cover a deeper agenda, or else it was meant to go down a whole different way but was sabotaged by unplanned events or a third faction. If something seems straightforward and common-sensical, it means that you haven’t added enough detail and contradiction to it yet.
    • Beneath every demoralising appearance, hide an even more awful truth. Things always seem pretty bad, and they’re invariably even worse than that. If you think that you have a predator on your trail, there is probably a second one lying in ambush ahead of you. If you’re tracking a skeevy underhive cult, it will turn out to be only the smallest part of a vast, powerful conspiracy reaches into the highest spires. Whomever you most rely on will either stab you in the back or die right before your eyes. Show plenty of problems and threats to the players, and for each one secretly ask yourself: how might this be worse than it seems?
    • Hoard knowledge and spread deceit. Knowledge in the Imperium is at once tightly controlled and rapidly decaying. No one has a complete picture – the real facts are either strictly classified, distorted by propaganda, or simply forgotten or misfiled. As acolytes of the Inquisition, the players have a duty to separate the truth from the lies, but they should have their work cut out for them; even the most trifling pieces of accurate data are furiously protected and once acquired, turn out to have large holes in them.
    • Show that humanity is fleeting. The Imperium is fighting for mankind against all that would see it end, against the alien xenos and the mutating powers of the Warp. However, the way it fights invariably eats away at the humanity of its people in turn. Imperial Commanders accept, or initiate, horrific widespread atrocities because it’s the only way to keep the system going, turning the strong into sadistic monsters and the weak into whimpering animals. Psykers invite the Warp into their own minds for the power to meet it on the battlefield. Tech-priests replace their bodies with metal out of loathing for human weakness. Even Astartes, supposedly the ultimate champions of Man, have turned themselves into lumbering, brainwashed killing machines that have little resemblance to the men they once were. On every side, show human nature suppressed or corrupted, stolen away or abandoned.
    • Let there be no innocence, only degrees of guilt. No one is pure, no matter how impeccably they present themselves. The seemingly noblest of people are still driven to acts of petty spite and hubristic arrogance by the strain of their position. Lesser souls, realising that there is little justice in the galaxy and that their ultimate fate will likely be a grim one, sell out their integrity for a slightly more bearable life here and now. Some people are worse than others – there are depths of depravity in the galaxy that the common, everyday sinner could barely even imagine, much less partake in – but no one is both completely sane and completely righteous, and most are some combination of crazy and corrupt.
    • Explore the brutal power of faith. Faith in the Imperium is not about gentle comfort and community; it is a thing of cleansing fire and blood-soaked martyrdom, of baying mobs and dungeons echoing with screams. Faith can turn a crowd of cowering peasants into a conquering army, can move planets on their axis, can spit in the face of Hell itself. Terrifying, psychotic certainty is a weapon as powerful as any bolter, and as volatile as a promethium refinery. Let the players try to use it to their advantage, but also put them to the risk of finding themselves on the wrong side of someone’s crusade.
    • Make every victory pyrrhic. Victory is always possible even in the grim darkness of the far future. After all, if there was no reason to fight, how could there be war? However, victory is rarely uplifting or hopeful. Rather, it never comes without losses, casualties, and the dismal knowledge that this can’t go on much longer. Never let a victory completely restore the status quo. Every triumph has a too-heavy cost, and entropy always increases, whether from the collateral damage of the fight or from the ever-accumulating injuries and mental scars of the fighters.
    • Treat technology as magic. The Imperium uses advanced technology while being almost wholly ignorant of science. The oldest and most powerful devices are relics that no one knows how to build anymore, and even machines and tools that come off the assembly line are constructed by rote, according to ancient instructions that are treated with religious awe. As far as Imperials are concerned, their weapons and vehicles work by the will of the machine-spirits, who are appeased through maintenance rituals; accordingly, any high-tech device will be decorated with fanciful engravings and colourful prayer rolls to keep it in a good mood. This also means that “high” and “low” technology exists side by side, with waxen candles burning atop cogitor banks and the instructions for operating a mechanic walker being scribbled on vellum. Whenever technology is mentioned, add some detail to hint at how completely its wielders misunderstand it.
    • Relish the players’ fight against impossible odds. The players may be tiny insects struggling against the vagaries of an uncaring cosmos, but the story is nevertheless about that struggle. They are the antiheroes of this tragedy, destined to ultimately fall but compelling for their desperate struggle against their dark fate. Push them to the brink, because that’s where they have the chance to shine; cheer their temporary victories and relish the Heavy Metal brutality of their inevitable defeats. Don’t go easy on them, but always give them a way to fight back, to prove their manful defiance of the odds stacked against them.
    • Portray visceral realities, not abstract rules. Never treat the numbers and the rules like they have an existence of their own. Mechanical effects – injuries, penalties, moves – come from the fiction and have consequences in the fiction. If you’re down a few Wounds, then you have a specific injury; if you’ve gained a few Insanity Points, then some past event still haunts your mind. Never apply a rule without noting what part of the grimdark reality it represents.
    • Demand immediate action. Things in Dark Heresy happens quickly, relentlessly, and often brutally. Threats are always escalating, the chrono is forever running out. Whenever you stop talking, demand to know what the players are doing about what you just said, and then build off of their actions to a new dilemma. Keep the situation ever-changing and the players engaged in it.

  • Psykers being psykic

    Psykers being psykic

    I have been hard at work this week adjusting the Dark Heresy Careers to my new idea of how to structure the port. Mostly it has given met yet another new idea for how to structure the port that I will eventually have to adjust the entire rule set to, but… let’s leave that for the future, I think.

    Anyway, the part I’m most proud of is the modified rules for psychic powers. As with most things DH, I keep struggling to keep it simple and elegant, but end up having to settle for making it simpler than the original rules (which is, let’s be honest, not a very high bar to clear). In this case, I had to give psychic powers a slightly different structure than most special moves, by incorporating the Fettered/Unfettered/Push scale from Deathwatch and onward. The goal being to make something that’s relatively straightforward to use but still captures the randomness of Warhammer 40,000 psychic shenanigans.

    Thus, I present to you, my new and improved rules! The progression in psychic strength depends on four Talents, like so:

    TALENT: PSY RATING 1

    When you draw on the power of the Warp and get a result of 10+, you achieve a Minor Success on if you used the power on Unfettered strength and a Basic Success if you used the power on Push strength.

    TALENT: PSY RATING 2

    When you draw on the power of the Warp and get a result of 10+, you achieve a Minor Success on if you used the power on Fettered Strength, a Basic Success if you use it on Unfettered strength, and a Major Success if you used the power on Push strength.

    TALENT: PSY RATING 3

    Choose one Psychic Discipline. You may now learn Psychic Powers from it.

    TALENT: PSY RATING 4

    When you draw on the power of the Warp and get a result of 10+, you achieve a Basic Success on if you used the power on Fettered Strength, a Major Success if you use it on Unfettered strength, and an Absolute Success if you used the power on Push strength.

    And all of those refer to the actual move draw on the power of the Warp, which looks like this. Brace yourself now, this gets long:

    SPECIAL MOVE: DRAW ON THE POWER OF THE WARP

    When you draw on the power of the Warp, decide which strength to use: Fettered, Unfettered, or Push. Then roll +Willpower. 10+, you succeed at a level depending on the strength you used and the Talent that gave you access to the move.

    • Minor Success: you activate a Minor Psychic Power that you possess, but you exhaust your will; take -1 ongoing to draw on the power of the Warp until you’ve had a chance to rest and meditate.
    • Basic Success: you activate a Minor Psychic Power that you possess.
    • Major Success: choose one of:
      • You activate a Psychic Power that you possess.
      • You activate a Minor Psychic Power that you possess, and also hold 1 that can be spent on activating a Minor Psychic Power that you possess at a later time without the need to roll.
    • Absolute Success: choose one of:
      • You activate a Psychic Power that you possess, and also hold 1 that can be spent on activating a Psychic Power that you possess at a later time without the need to roll.
      • You activate a Minor Psychic Power that you possess, and also hold 2 that can be spent on activating a Minor Psychic Power that you possess at a later time without the need to roll.

    In addition, if both your dice showed the same number, you manifest a Psychic Phenomenon depending on the strength you used and the number rolled.

    • Fettered: your disciplined caution keeps most of the energies you wield in check, only allowing them to hint at their undying malice.
    1. For a few seconds, voices echo oddly around you, as if you were standing in a vast cavern.
    2. A loathsome stench spreads around you.
    3. A fine coating of frost grows on every surface in your immediate surroundings.
    4. All animals in your immediate surroundings become spooked and restless.
    5. All food and drink in your immediate surroundings instantly spoil.
    6. All mirrors within your immediate surroundings crack.
    7. All plants within your immediate surroundings wither and die.
    8. Blood pours from stone and wood around you. Any carven idols or statues appear to be weeping blood.
    9. You and everyone within short range of you become short of breath for a few seconds, unable to run or exert themselves until the feeling passes.
    10. For a few seconds, utter darkness descends on an area within reach of you.
    • Unfettered: you trifled with forces beyond your understanding, and some of their destructive potential slipped your grasp. You still contain the worst of it, but all the same you’ve just demonstrated why psykers are not safe to be around.
    1. Everyone currently looking at you are forced to recoil in fear as they see you with a horrifying visage for a split instant. You also gain 1 Corruption Point.
    2. All mechanical devices around you temporarily seize to work. All ranged weapons drop to 0 Ammo.
    3. Ghostly apparitions appear around you for a few seconds. You and every player within short range of you gain 1 Insanity Point.
    4. Everyone within short range of you are knocked off their feet by a sudden earthquake.
    5. A piercing wail causes everyone within short range of you to be deafened for a few hours. Anything made of glass shatters.
    6. Uncontrollable Warp energies courses through your unprotected mind. You gain 1d5 Insanity Points.
    7. You and every player within short range of you gain 1d5l Insanity Points from glimpsing the heart of the Warp.
    8. A psychic shockwave emanates from you. Roll to refuse to fall, and everyone within reach of you becomes stunned for a long moment.
    9. Everyone within reach of you suffers a momentary rage and must attack whoever is closest to them. Players also each gain 1 Corruption Point.
    10. You and everyone within reach of you are flung about as high into the air as a second-story window. Anyone who can’t stop their fall somehow suffers injury as normal when hitting the ground again.
    • Push: foolishly, you opened the gates of the Immaterium wide, and what now comes pouring through them is beyond anyone’s control. The cost of your hubris may be steep.
    1. You wink out of existence and appear again, without knowledge of the intervening time, about half a minute later.
    2. Blood rains from the sky, and for the next short while you can only draw on the power of the Warp with Push strength.
    3. You switch bodies with another person near you for a few seconds. You gain 1d10 Insanity Points from the experience, and if the other person is a player, they do as well.
    4. Dark energies course through your body. You gain 1d10 Corruption Points and cannot attempt to draw on the power of the Warp again for an hour.
    5. The Warp touches everyone around you. You and every player within long range of you must roll to shield yourself with disgust.
    6. A Lesser Daemon materialises. It will eventually be forced to return to the Warp, but before then it’s free to work its malice.
    7. You become the epicentre for an explosion of psychic energy. You and everyone within reach of you take a hit for 1d10h damage, and all your carried equipment is instantly destroyed, including your clothes.
    8. Gravity reverses itself within long range of you, causing everything to fall upward for about half a minute.
    9. A daemon possesses you. It offers you your body back in return for you performing a heinous act that will irrevocably doom your soul. If you accept, the daemon remains in the back of your mind for as long as you work towards your sinister goal, ready to take back control permanently if it thinks you show insufficient enthusiasm, only leaving once you have held up your end. If you refuse, or if the daemon declares you in breach of the agreement at a later date, you permanently become a Daemonhost; make a new character.
    10. A rift in reality is torn opens and you’re sucked through, never to be seen again. Make a new character.

  • Where I Read: Daggerheart (part four)

    Where I Read: Daggerheart (part four)

    All right, communities. They can represent either a location, an ethos, or a common goal, meaning that more than one could apply to your character’s background, but you should choose the one that has most defined their outlook. Also, it’s all very complicated and nuanced and you should consider your character’s inner-most delicate feelings and THIS IS A GAME WHERE YOU CAN PLAY A WALKING FUNGUS WITH A TURTLE SHELL WILL YOU PLEASE STOP PRETENDING THAT IT’S SOME KIND OF HIGH ART?!!!

    Sorry, sorry, I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. Honestly, it’s probably a miracle that it took this long for this readthrough to turn into an angry rant, usually that happens on circa page four…

    Okay, let’s try to get through this without further outbursts…

    Highborne communities… well, they’re nobles, basically. High and mighty, like to think that they’re better than the people who are really not their sort of people. They get an advantage on rolls to negotiate with those impressed by titles and wealth, which, let’s face it, are a not inconsiderable portion of the population. A suggested variation is that the aristocracy might actually be a magocracy, with nobles being those with magical powers.

    Loreborne communities are all about learning and skill, and of furiously politicking to rise through the ranks. Guilds and schools are both typical Lorebornes. They get an advantage to rolls to have read about something in a book at some point.

    Orderborne communities are ones that be described as an “order,” a group of people who think that they stand for something and are very serious about it. Clerical and knightly orders are the obvious examples. Once per day, they get to roll a d20 as their Hope Die if they can explain how what they’re doing is in keeping with their beliefs.

    Ridgeborne communities are sturdy hill folk with a chip on their shoulder about how those damn dirty flatlanders can’t be trusted. That’s about it, they live in the mountains and hills where most people don’t wanna live. They get an advantage on traversing and surviving in harsh environments.

    Seaborne communities live by and off of the water, as sailors, fishermen or pirates. Some might even be nomads who live their whole lives on their ships. Every time they roll with Fear, they get a token that they can trade in for a bonus on another roll, because they “can sense the ebb and flow of life.”

    Slyborne communities are crooks, your basic thieves and scoundrels from the wrong side of the magic-powered train tracks. They lie, scheme, and get in trouble with the law. They get an advantage to rolls to detect lies, hide, or negotiate with criminals. There’s also some flavour descriptions of gambling dens, black markets and hideouts with hidden escape routes.

    Underborne communities live underground, either in your typical fantasy gigantic cave system or just in a hole in the ground like a hobbit. There are some examples of houses hanging from the roof in the silk of giant spiders, or being built into the base of stalagmites. They get an advantage on rolls to either spot or hide in an area with poor light.

    Wanderborne communities are fully nomadic. Examples offered are people traveling in great big air balloons, piloting kite-drawn skimmers across the sea, or just walking on their own two feet and living in portable dwellings. They get the ability to spend Hope to reach into their pack and take out precisely what they needed for the situation they’re currently in.

    Wildborne communities live deep in the woods to commune with Nature. Possibilities include tree houses, hollowed-out trunks, or homes built into giant mushrooms. They get an advantage on rolls to move without being heard.

    So that’s all of them. Okay, so none of that is terrible or anything, and some of the flavour ideas are nice, certainly it’s more interesting to have the players come upon a village of dwarves living in giant mushrooms than just have them stumble on yet another community of dirt farmers, but I don’t really like how non-mutually-exclusive a lot of these are. Honestly, I feel like these are the ones that should have been possible to combine for additional customization, not the ancestries. For instance, a pirate should be a mix of Slyborne and Seaborne, a scion of a magical overclass should be Highborne and Loreborne, a monk from a mountain monastery should be Ridgeborne and Orderborne… I feel like that would have made for more interesting and nuanced characters than being the bastard offspring of a turtle and a toadstool… Oh well.

    The chapter ends with a long teary-eyed lecture on how to play disabled characters Sensitively, and I have decided that I’m not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Instead, I’ll try to get back into the spirit of things by trying out the character creation system.

    So, first up I need a class and a subclass. Let’s go with Wizard, of the School of Learning. I’m all about the utility spells! I’m instructed to take my subclass’ foundation card – ah, okay, so you do get it for free, I missed that earlier – which in my case means I can take an extra domain card, and also I can take Stress instead of spending Hope when I want to invoke an Experience. Because my brain is all big and shit, see.

    Further fringe benefits: I have the ability to perform flavour magic tricks at will, and when I roll a number I like (let’s say 5) on a die I gain Hope or clear Stress. I have the ability to make an enemy reroll a successful attack against me by spending 3 Hope. Naa na na na – na na – na na – can’t touch this…

    I also get either a book I’m trying to translate or a small, harmless elemental pet. Okay, I decide that I travel alongside Sparky, my pet fire-imp. There are also a bunch of questions, and I’ll get to those, but let’s put the character together a bit more first.

    Hum hum, I start with level 1, makes sense… Choose my name and pronouns, my name is Scielbald Fleetflipper and I’m a boy-frog (at the moment, at least – us frogs are known to switch depending on environmental factors…). Ancestry, as I just alluded to I’m a Ribbet, because while I’m not as psyched about that as I started out being I still think it might be fun.

    Community… well, there it gets a little more interesting, doesn’t it? I could really double down on the nerd angle and go with Loreborne, but that feels a little too boring. So let’s say I’m Seaborne. I grew up among the fisher-frogs on the banks of the Great Gahoola Lake, until I was apprenticed by a wandering wizard. That’ll get me that ability to gather up bonus from Fear, making me more mystical.

    Character Traits… well, my spellcasting comes from Knowledge, so I’d better take +2 in that. I also think I’m pretty good at hopping and skipping, so let’s put the +1s in Agility and Finesse. My spindly little frog-limbs don’t lend themselves to heavy lifting, so let’s put the -1 in Strength. That leaves the +0s for Presence and Instinct. I’m a little too bookish to be good at social niceties and noticing what’s going on around me.

    As a Wizard, I start with 5 Hit Points and Evasion 11, and like all characters I start with 6 Stress boxes and 2 points of Hope.

    Equipment! Apparently I get suggestions for equipment in my character guide. I had to spend some time trying to find my character guide, but it was hiding at the back of the book. It apparently suggests I start with a quarterstaff and leather armour. Sounds good. I also get a bunch of other standard adventurer stuff like rope and rations. Fine, fine – equipment always bores me.

    Okay, so now it’s time to answer those background questions. Let’s go find them.

    “What responsibilities did your community once count on you for? How did you let them down?” I was meant to follow in my father’s flipper-steps as the wiseman and lorekeeper of our village, and I was only meant to study enough magic to be more useful. However, once I saw the wonders of the world outside, I could never bring myself to return.

    “You’ve spent your life searching for a book or object of great significance. What is it, and why is it so important to you?” I am searching for the Frozen Egg of Eugastine the Truth-Croaker. She was a great hero of the Gahoolan lands, but her bloodline has been extinguished over the years. Legend has it that one of her eggs was preserved in magical statis, and if it could be found and revived, the heir of Eugastine might yet return. If I could do that, it would prove that my wanderings were ultimately in my family’s interest, and I would be vindicated and forgiven!

    “You have a powerful rival. Who are they, and why are you so determined to defeat them?” Ah, that would be that puffed-up buffoon Martinus Bloodwart! He’s always getting ahead of me, snatching up tomes of eldritch lore by offering prices that I can match. He seems to think that the High Art of magic is something you can buy your way to. Well, I’ll show him that the Gift cannot be bought for gold!

    Next I choose two Experiences. Let’s go with “Lake-Town Shaman” and “Travel the World in Search of Elusive Lore.” That sums up my main conflict pretty well.

    Then I need to choose my domain cards. Usually I’d choose two from the first-level cards for Codex and Splendour, but my foundation card gives me an extra one, so three in total. The Codex cards are all “grimoires,” so they give me several spells apiece. The ones I can choose between are Book of Ava (lets you knock people back, strengthen armour, and summon an ice spike), Book of Illiat (put people to sleep, shoot magic missiles, and speak to people telepathically), and Book of Tyfar (set people on fire, conjure a mist, and telekinetically lift things). For Splendour I can take Bolt Beacon (damage an enemy, and also they glow in the dark and get easy to hit), Mending Touch (heal) and Reassurance (let an ally reroll their dice).

    Well, first of all, this is… really kind of flavourless. I mean, it’s pretty clearly repackaged D&D spells, but D&D spells are quirky and fun. These ones barely bother to tell you what they do other than strictly mechanical effects. Oh, all right, all right. I guess I’ll take Book of Illiat, Book of Tyfar, and Mending Touch. That’ll give me some nice tricks up my sleeve.

    The last part is connections to other players, but as I have no other players, I guess I’m done. Well… I guess I can see myself playing this character, sure? There’s some quirky appeal to him, he’s got a nice range of abilities (almost a little too many, but it’s within reasonable limits), and there’s fuel for me to ham it up and get over-enthusiastic about stuff, which is really my forte as a player. But I can’t say that I’m all too psyched, either. It’s all passable, but it’s also all kind of… meh.

    I can’t believe they took the fun out of playing a humanoid frog…

  • Moves, moves, moves!

    I have been hard at work with my Dark Heresy port this week, and I think I’m actually getting somewhere. I’ve edited the basic moves so that they amount to something comprehensive (which forced me to add even more of the damn things, but screw it, at this point I am making a complete mockery of the whole “rules-light” nature of PbtA anyway, so I might as well go crazy), moved more of the combat rules out to the weapons section, and begun editing the Careers and their lists of Advances again. This time I’ll turn it into something that’s easy to play! Yeah, I know I’ve said that before…

    Anyway, here are the basic moves as they stand now. Aside from editing them a bit, I also arranged them by type so they’re easier to keep track of.

    COMBAT MOVES

    MELEE

    When you bring down the hammer, roll +Weapon Skill. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Basic Success: choose 1 option below. You may spend Righteous Fury to choose additional options, 1 for each Righteous Fury spent. Each option can only be chosen once. If you have training in the weapon you are wielding, you also hold Righteous Fury, which can be spent now on additional options or saved for later.
      • You inflict a hit on an enemy within range of your weapon and do damage according to your weapon and the enemy’s type.
      • An enemy who has you within range of their weapon does not inflict a hit on you.
      • You occupy the enemies within range of your weapon and keep them from engaging your friends. Hold 1 that can be spent on nullifying a hit from one of those enemies on another player or NPC. You may not deflect hits against yourself this way.
      • You push an enemy back to the range of your weapon or keep them from getting closer than that.
      • You knock down an enemy within range of your weapon or keep them from getting back on their feet.
      • You gain or maintain a grappling hold on an enemy within hand range.
    • Major Success: the same, but also hold Righteous Fury, which you can spend on an additional option now or save for other purposes.
    • Absolute Success: 20+, the same, but select 2 options.

    Examples: Exchanging blows, tackling an enemy, giving ground while looking for an opening.

    RANGED

    When you unleash the fire and fury, roll +Ballistic Skill. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Basic Success: choose 1 option below. You may spend Righteous Fury to choose additional options, 1 for each Righteous Fury spent. Each option can only be chosen once. If you have training in the weapon you are wielding, you also hold Righteous Fury, which can be spent now on additional options or saved for later.
      • You inflict a hit on an enemy within range of your weapon and do damage according to your weapon and the enemy’s type.
      • You cause all enemies within range of your weapon to fall back, get in cover, or stay in cover.
      • You establish a kill-zone within the range of your weapon. Hold 1 that can be used to inflict an automatic hit on an enemy moving into or through that zone while you continue to cover it. The hit does damage according to your weapon and the enemy’s type. You immediately lose the hold if you take your eyes off of the kill zone.
      • An enemy who has you within range of their weapon does not inflict a hit on you.
      • You are not driven back, pinned down, locked into melee, or otherwise have your freedom of movement confined. You may also, if you so choose, alter your distance to the enemy closest to you by one category, e.g. from reach to close or from short ranged to long ranged.
      • You do not need to reduce your Ammo by 1. This cannot be chosen for an Ammo-S weapon.
    • Major Success: the same, but also hold Righteous Fury, which you can spend on an additional option now or save for other purposes.
    • Absolute Success: the same, but select 2 options.

    Examples: Charging in guns blazing, laying down fire to cover your escape, taking aim from a sniper nest.

    TRAVERSAL MOVES

    DODGE

    When you make a tactical withdrawal, roll +Agility. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you escape whatever you were fleeing, but terror leaves its mark on you. Gain 1 Insanity Point.
    • Basic Success: you escape whatever you were fleeing with enough margin that you feel merely a passing fear.
    • Major Success: you either escape with a comfortable margin, or you manage to snatch something useful or valuable up along the way at the cost of gaining 1 Insanity Point from the heedless risk.
    • Absolute Success: you escape with a comfortable margin and also manage to snatch something useful or valuable up along the way.

    Note: This move is triggered when you attempt to escape a location and its accompanying dangers completely. If you are just manoeuvring for a safer position within your current location, e.g. leaping into cover to avoid enemy fire or ducking under a sweeping blade, use escape a tight spot instead.

    Examples: Racing to catch the last life pod, fleeing from a fight, getting out of the blast radius.

    CLIMB

    When you overcome an obstacle, roll +Strength. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you make it through, but it leaves you exposed or vulnerable for a moment.
    • Basic Success: you make it through quickly and cleanly.
    • Major Success: you either make it through quickly and cleanly, or you allow yourself to be exposed or vulnerable for a moment in order to clear a path or show a way for the next person to follow you; if you choose the latter, you may allow one other player to share your progress without making a roll of their own.
    • Absolute Success: you make it through quickly and cleanly while also managing to clear a path or show a way for the next person to follow you; you may allow one other player to share your progress without making a roll of their own.

    Examples: Pushing your way through a crowd, wading through a treacherous swamp, scaling an enemy fortification.

    CONTORTIONIST

    When you escape a tight spot, roll +Agility. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you make your escape, but it’s a near thing; you lose 1 Wound and suffer the loss of one piece of gear of the GM’s choice.
    • Basic Success: you make your escape, but not unscathed; choose whether to lose 1 Wound or abandon one piece of gear.
    • Major Success: you make your escape in one piece.
    • Absolute Success: you make your escape in one piece, and you feel confident in your ability to slip free of any trouble; lose 1 Insanity Point.

    Examples: Slipping out of someone’s grip, scurrying into cover, squeezing through a narrow gap.

    SWIM

    When you charge boldly onward, roll +Strength. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you close the distance, but in heedlessly barrelling forward you exhaust yourself; take -1 ongoing to Strength and Agility rolls until you’ve had a chance to rest.
    • Basic Success: you close the distance with plenty of vigour to spare.
    • Major Success: you either close the distance with vigour to spare, or you exhaust yourself (take -1 ongoing to Strength and Agility rolls until you’ve rested) to arrive quickly enough to gain some sort of unexpected advantage or opportunity.
    • Absolute Success: you close the distance with vigour to spare and also arrive quickly enough to gain some sort of unexpected advantage or opportunity.

    Examples: Swimming through an underground passage, chasing down a fleeing enemy, leaping a gaping chasm.

    STEALTH MOVES

    CONCEALMENT

    When you find a hiding place, roll +Agility. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you manage to find a hiding place that will obscure the subject for a while, but that will soon be searched in the ordinary course of things.
    • Basic Success: you find a hiding place that won’t be uncovered by anything but a thorough search.
    • Major Success: you either find a hiding place that won’t be uncovered by anything but a thorough search or a hiding place that will remain secure for the foreseeable future; however, the second hiding place also holds the risk of what is hidden there being in some way damaged or endangered before it can be retrieved.
    • Absolute Success: you find a hiding place that will remain secure for the foreseeable future, no matter how many people look for it.

    Examples: Hiding behind some crates, burying evidence, smuggling contraband past customs.

    SILENT MOVE

    When you move unseen, roll +Agility. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you make it across a stretch of territory unseen, but you have to take the long way around or remain in hiding for some time, costing you valuable time.
    • Basic Success: you make it to where you are going deftly and quietly.
    • Major Success: you can make it to where you are going deftly and quietly, but along the way you stumble on a chance to examine or overhear something along the way that others would have preferred to keep secret from you, at the expense of risking detection.
    • Absolute Success: you make it to where you are going deftly and quietly, and along the way you manage to examine or overhear something that others would have preferred to keep secret from you, without risking detection.

    Examples: Sneaking up on an enemy, circumventing a sentry, making it through a secure area unchallenged.

    RESISTANCE MOVES

    CONTEMPT

    When you armour yourself in contempt, roll +Willpower+your current number of Disorders. 9-, you suffer a Failure. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Failure: the shock is too much for you, and part of your mind irrevocably shatters. Choose a Disorder.
    • Basic Success: while you hold on to your reason, you are deeply shaken. Choose a Trauma.
    • Major Success: you maintain a white-knuckle grip on your rational faculties.
    • Absolute Success: in a flash of clarity, you realise that death in the service of the Emperor is an honour, not something to fear. Hold Righteous Fury.

    Examples: Encountering a grisly murder scene, facing a monstrous xenos, experiencing something unnatural.

    CAROUSE

    When you fight the effects of poison, drugs, fatigue, or extreme conditions, roll +Toughness. 9-, you suffer a Failure. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Failure: you take -1 ongoing to rolls with one particular Characteristic until you’ve had a chance to rest and recover. The GM decides which Characteristics, depending on what the exact causes are.
    • Basic Success: your hardy constitution makes it possible for you to push on, but perhaps at a price. Choose one alternative below.
      • You take -1 ongoing to rolls with one particular Characteristic, as from a failure.
      • You suffer serious medical harm. Take 1d5l damage that is not affected by Armour. Toughness modifies normally.
      • Your refusal to slow down runs the risk of making you pass out. Roll to refuse to fall.
    • Major Success: you shrug off the effects.
    • Absolute Success: you not only resist, you start to build up a tolerance. Reduce the current penalties gained through failures to fight the effects by 1. If more than one Characteristic is affected, you choose which one gets a reduced penalty.
    • Absolute Success: in a surge of willpower you banish all mortal weakness. Lose all current penalties gained through failures to fight the effects.

    Examples: Resting the effects of drugs or poisons, pushing on without water or rest, enduring extremes of temperature.

    DISGUST

    When you shield yourself with disgust, roll +Willpower. 9-, you suffer a Failure. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Failure: Chaos infuses your very bones. Advance your Damnation Track by two boxes.
    • Basic Success: you manage to hold back the worst of the dark transformation, but some of it still takes hold. Advance your Damnation Track by one box.
    • Major Success: your flesh refuses to bend to Chaos, but instead breaks out in stigmatic bleeds. Take 1d5 damage, not reduced by Toughness or Armour.
    • Absolute Success: by near psychotic determination, you deny the Ruinous Powers a grip on you… this time.

    Examples: Reading a forbidden text, facing a daemon, witnessing a dark rite.

    ENDURANCE

    When you refuse to fall, roll +Toughness. 9-, you suffer a Failure. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15-19, you achieve a Major Success. 20+, you achieve an Absolute Success.

    • Failure: the tribulation is too great for you, and you pass out.
    • Basic Success: you stagger on, but your inner reserves are dwindling. Take -1 ongoing to further rolls to refuse to fall until you’ve had a chance to rest.
    • Major Success: whether through unyielding faith or simply a burst of adrenaline, you bring your treacherous body back under your control.
    • Absolute Success: your suffering brings you a vision of the Emperor. Lose 1 Corruption Point.

    Examples: Suffering a Crippling Injury, being put through torturous pain, being sedated by powerful drugs.

    INVESTIGATION MOVES

    AWARENESS

    When you keep an eye out, roll +Perception. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: the GM tells you one detail of your current surroundings that is odd, notable, or out of place. She doesn’t tell you why, only that the detail for some reason sticks out to you.
    • Basic Success: the same, and the GM also tells you why the detail is noteworthy.
    • Major Success: the same, and the GM also tells you what the wider implications of the detail is and what it might portend.
    • Absolute Success: the same, and take +1 forward to any roll that makes use of or makes reference to your observation.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, taking a look around, listening to your instincts.

    EVALUATE

    When you evaluate your surroundings, roll +Intelligence. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: the GM tells you of one nearby inanimate object or feature of terrain around you that could be valuable or otherwise useful to you.
    • Basic Success: the same, and the GM also tells you which such object or feature (which can be the same one or a different one) that some relevant NPC or group would most desire to own or control.
    • Major Success: the same, and you may declare which particular NPC’s or group’s needs you’re able to anticipate. Alternatively, you may describe a particular sort of person to cater to.
    • Absolute Success: the same, and the object or feature you found for your own use was especially well-chosen; take +1 forward to make use of it.

    Examples: Surveying the contents of an armoury or market, looking around for an improvised weapon, finding the best spot to land a ship.

    GAMBLE

    When you count the odds of some potentially risky course of action, roll +Intelligence. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you get a hunch. You may ask the GM whether doing something would, in her opinion, be a good idea. She tells you either “yes” or “no.”
    • Basic Success: the same, but you’re able to pinpoint what the hunch is based on. The GM tells you “yes” or “no,” and also tells you what she’s basing her assessment on.
    • Major Success: the same, and you develop a lucky streak; if you follow your hunch, hold 1 that can be spent on making a roll of exactly 9 be treated as a roll of 10-14.
    • Absolute Success: the same, but your luck is truly unbeatable; by spending the hold, you can turn any result of 9- into a result of 10-14.

    Examples: Sizing up an enemy, checking the security, estimating someone’s reaction.

    INQUIRY

    When you conduct a thorough investigation, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you learn some broad rumours that have been flying around, but either any other interested parties learn that you have been asking questions, or the people who tipped you off had their own sinister reasons for doing so.
    • Basic Success: you either learn an actually juicy tidbit at the cost of attracting attention or being lured into a trap, or you learn the broad rumours without any adverse consequences.
    • Major Success: you learn the broad rumours, and you also have a lead to learning something highly useful, but it will likely involve going somewhere dangerous or drawing attention to yourself.
    • Absolute Success: you learn both the general rumours and something highly useful without any adverse consequences.

    Examples: Eavesdropping in a bar, casually asking questions, offering a reward for information.

    LOGIC

    When you apply logic to a complex problem or vexing mystery, roll +Intelligence. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: the GM gives you a hint towards the mystery’s solution or lets you unravel part of the problem, but your unfettered thoughts flirt with sedition; you gain 1 Corruption Point.
    • Basic Success: you get a hint or make progress without ill effects.
    • Major Success: you either get a hint or make progress, or you completely unravel the mystery or solve the problem at the cost of gaining 1 Corruption Point.
    • Absolute Success: you completely unravel the mystery or solve the problem in a way that is safely in line with the Imperial Creed.

    Examples: Finding your way through a maze, solving a riddle or puzzle, piecing together bits of evidence.

    SCRUTINY

    When you see corruption everywhere, roll +Perception. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: the GM tells you if someone around you is lying to you.
    • Basic Success: the same, and the GM also tells you what part of what they said was a lie.
    • Major Success: the same, and the GM also provides you with the most likely thing that they are hoping to achieve with their lie.
    • Absolute Success: the same, and you may ask one question of your choice. If the liar knows the answer, you manage to deduce what it is.

    Examples: Study body language, ask leading questions, analyse past behaviour.

    SEARCH

    When you search an area, roll +Perception. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you find or notice something that hints at what has previously happened in this place.
    • Basic Success: the same, and the GM also tells you what the most likely backstory is for your find.
    • Major Success: the same, and the GM also tells you where you should go next if you want to find out more.
    • Absolute Success: the same, and the GM also tells you what probable dangers will face you if you proceed with your investigation.

    Examples: Examining a murder scene, ransacking an office, excavating a xenos ruin.

    INTERACTION MOVES

    BARTER

    When you strike a hard bargain for something that is at least potentially for sale, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you manage to strike a deal, but it’s a bad one; you will need to pay much to get little, or there is some additional hidden cost like attracting legal trouble.
    • Basic Success: you manage to acquire what you need at a fair price.
    • Major Success: you get what you need at a significant discount.
    • Absolute Success: you get what you need in return for nothing but a promise of repayment at some hazy future date.

    Examples: Negotiating a fraught alliance, buying illegal goods, bribing an official.

    CHARM

    When you turn on the charm, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you manage to appease suspicions or calm an argument, making the other party willing to at least talk things over.
    • Basic Success: the same, and you also talk the other party into doing you a small favour that won’t cause them more than a momentary inconvenience, like letting you have the next dance or pointing out a useful person to talk to.
    • Major Success: the same, and the other party also relaxes around you, potentially letting down their guard.
    • Absolute Success: the same, and the other party considers you a cherished friend from this point forward… which of course doesn’t mean he definitely won’t stab you in the back, only that he’d be sorry to do it.

    Examples: Offering a respectful greeting, buying a round of drinks, declaring your honest intentions.

    COMMAND

    When you bark an order, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: your orders are carried out in a haphazard sort of way, but some people never manage to get anywhere with their appointed tasks and others end up doing things only vaguely related to what you said.
    • Basic Success: your orders are carried out with what passes for competence in the Imperium, but without much enthusiasm and with everyone doing the least amount of work they can get away with without actual dereliction of duty.
    • Major Success: your orders are carried out to the largest reasonable extent to which the ordered people are capable of them.
    • Absolute Success: your faithful minions are so determined to make you proud that they exceed themselves, performing far beyond their regular capacity.

    Note: Like all moves, bark an order must be plausibly triggered. In its case, this means that the people being ordered around must in some way be susceptive to command; either because they are officially on the player’s payroll or because they are uncertain and eager for someone to tell them what to do. Conversely, disciplined underlings being told to perform routine duties will follow such orders without the need to trigger this move.

    Examples: Rallying frightened and confused people, getting mutinous underlings to snap into action, making poorly trained troops execute a complex strategy.

    DECEIVE

    When you tell a cold-blooded lie, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: your lie is believed for now, but the truth will soon come out.
    • Basic Success: the lie will be believed until some pressing evidence against it is revealed.
    • Major Success: the lie will either be believed until some pressing evidence against it is revealed, or the mark will believe your lie indefinitely, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. However, the second option requires you to truly commit to the lie to the point where you’re not even sure yourself what is real and what is not; you gain 1 Insanity Point.
    • Absolute Success: the mark will believe your lie indefinitely, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

    Examples: Professing your innocence, impersonating an Imperial officer, feigning compliance.

    INTIMIDATE

    When you become a figure of terror, roll +Strength. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Minor Success: you manage to bully the victim into submission for now, but they will drag their feet in anything you make them do and betray you at the earliest opportunity.
    • Basic Success: the victim will do your bidding as long as you remain in their presence, but as soon as you are out of sight they’ll start plotting revenge.
    • Major Success: the victim will continue obeying you even after you have left their presence, too terrified to even think of going against you.
    • Absolute Success: the victim not only continue obeying your orders after you have left their presence, but will be so desperate to please you that they will act in whatever they perceive as your best interest whenever they get the chance.

    Examples: Cocking a gun, name-dropping powerful friends, slapping someone around.

    SPEAK (LOW GOTHIC)

    When you make yourself understood, roll +Intelligence. 10-14, you achieve a Basic Success. 15+, you achieve a Major Success.

    • Basic Success: you find a way to convey basic concepts and broad ideas (e.g., “I am a friend,” “there is danger in that direction”).
    • Major Success: you find a way to communicate effectively albeit stumblingly, but the precision is still lacking; take -1 ongoing to all moves that require you to be understood.
    • Absolute Success: you device a way to communicate freely and perfectly.

    Examples: Signalling through gestures or other crude codes, overcoming a language barrier, getting through to someone in the grip of terror or berserker rage.

  • Remaining DH problems

    Remaining DH problems

    I am still working on my Dark Heresy port. It’s come a long way, but I’m still not satisfied. The main problem I still see are:

    1. The weapon rules, or rather, the way they’re organised. The way I’ve written them, certain weapon types rewrites the attack moves – adding some options, removing others. Rewriting the attack move every time a player makes it is turning into a slog. I need to think of some more convenient way to structure, for instance, the difference between single-shot, semi-auto and full-auto attacks.
    2. The basic moves in general still don’t add up to the full array of things a player might do for me, even though there are a lot of them, 24 in all. For my WoD ports I “only” have 16 basic moves, but I still never find myself without a move to trigger when I want one. I need to have, e.g., the Agility move cover everything that an untrained person could possibly attempt and potentially succeed at involving Agility. Right now, the list is effectively Run, Sneak, Duck and Hide (yourself or something else). Which is fine, but I can think of several other scenarios – balancing on a narrow foothold, for instance. Dunno.
    3. The move for psychic power use is kind of boring. A partial success means that the player gets to choose between gaining Insanity Points, gaining Corruption Points, or letting the GM declare that some unwanted supernatural effect happens. That’s kind of bland, especially given how flavourful the list of psychic phenomena and perils of the Warp are in the original game. Not sure how to fix that.
    4. The GM moves need to be rewritten from the rather generic and boring ones I have right now into something that more brings forth the experience of being an out-of-your-depth agent for a ruthless, all-powerful organisation bent on rooting out plots and schemes in a universe where everything is always ten times worse than it seems. This one I feel the most optimistic about – I should be able to manage it, given some time and effort, it’s more a matter of flavour than of mechanics.

  • More warhammering

    Today’s session turned out to be Dark Heresy, which reminded me that that port may have come a long way, but it’s still in an unfinished state. The basic moves work well enough, but they just don’t feel comprehensive in the way I want – I can usually find one that fits, but not always. I don’t have that problem with the WoD ports, despite them having half the number of basic moves. I don’t know. Maybe I need to think a little more broadly. For instance, today I ended up jury-rigging a move that’s really meant for communicating across language barriers and use it for getting across to someone in an agitated state – making it more generally a move to make someone listen and understand who would otherwise be unlikely to do either. That might be a way to approach it.

    Combat could use some fine-tuning, too. For one thing, I need to do something to make grenades less tempting to break out for everything. They do a ton of damage, but that’s supposed to be offset by them being awkward to use at close range and expensive to stock up on – I think I may need to try a little harder to enforce both those things.

    Also, copy-pasting together the actual options faced by a player whenever they succeed at throwing a grenade (as a Blast weapon) is still getting old. I don’t know, should I just write up separate combat options for each major type of ranged attack (Blast, single-shot, semi-auto and full auto)? That sounds awkward, but it might be a step in the right direction.

    Need some more flavourful GM moves, too. I’ve been using the regular, game-agnostic set (deal damage to them, take away their stuff, give them a tough choice, etc), but they’re not terribly inspiring. I’m thinking some more like:

    • Confront them with brutality and oppression, with them on the receiving end or not. The Imperium isn’t a nice place to live. Terrible things happen to perfectly ordinary people on a regular basis, ranging from merely being worked to death in a fabricarum to being hunted for sport by degenerate nobles. With this move, play up some routine horror, either as a background event (which they might try to stop, if they’re feeling foolhardy) or something that affects them directly.
    • Show them that they’re small. It’s a vast universe, and even the most accomplished human is only qualified to deal with a small part of it. With this move, reveal that the players are completely out of their depth, dealing with a situation far more complicated (and perhaps deadly) than they can even begin to address. Something as simple as finding your way through a labyrinthine hive city can be daunting, and once poorly understood technology and convoluted organisations get involved, things may simply be beyond your ability. For obvious reasons, this move must be used with care, to not cause the players to just stop trying. However, it’s integral to the setting that some problems just aren’t solvable.
    • Have something go terribly wrong on a large scale. Industrial accidents. Natural disasters. Entire swaths of space stations losing life support. When things go wrong in the Imperium, they tend to go wrong in a downright operatic way. With this move, smash something up that changes the entire environment the players are in. They should still have a reasonable chance to survive, of course, but they will likely need to start running.

    Something like that. I’ll need more of them, but that’s a little more fitting for the setting.

  • Houston, we have a resurrection!

    Houston, we have a resurrection!

    Today marks an occasion for my Mummy: the Resurrection campaign. We actually got to the resurrection part. The players finally returned from the Underworld, returning to life in the city morgue. Now let’s see them deal with the various parties who have developed an interest in them. And how long it takes before they stand before the Judges again, of course.

    We ended up spending a little more time in the Underworld than I intended. I’m not exactly sure what to blame that on. On the one hand, I grumble a lot about how my players keep hyper-focusing on whatever is right in front of them and ignoring the overarching situation, but in all due honesty… part of it is also that I set them to too ambitious a task while in the Underworld, having them rescue prisoners from a spectre stronghold. Which required them to first get hold of a Hierarchy cache so they wouldn’t have to do it bare-handed. And then they ran into trouble along the way, because the Shadowlands are dangerous.

    So yeah… in retrospect, I shouldn’t have gotten quite so ambitious with something I just intended to be filler. I do have this tendency to assume that things can get polished off in a session or two, but of course I also don’t want to rush through it without giving the situation proper gravitas, and then I sit there six months later and wonder why we never got to my super-cool “real” plot.

    Part of it is the nature of the World of Darkness, too. It’s supposed to be, if not “realistic,” then at least grounded in some sort of internally consistent setting. Everything is supposed to come from somewhere, everything is supposed to have context. That’s what I love about it. But it does mean that there aren’t much in the way of simple encounters – you can’t just go, “suddenly, you’re attacked by zombies!” because each individual zombie has to have its own angsty backstory or it feels like you’re phoning it in.

    Funny thing? Out of the WoD games I’ve tried, the one that runs the most smoothly is Mage: the Ascension, once I figured out how to manage it. There are still no simple encounters, but the game does encourage you to just throw more mismatched intrigues and general weirdness at the players, and then let them figure it out as best they can. Mummies and werewolves are supposed to be fighting a war. Mages are just meant to “reach enlightenment,” and the nice thing about that is that just about anything can be framed as another Very Important Step On Your Personal Journey. And of course, when the players get really interested in something random and start examining it from every angle, they are acting exactly like the sort of erratic geniuses they are meant to be.

    But yeah, as far as mission-centric games go, I probably should learn to break the missions down into smaller pieces.

  • Where I Read: Daggerheart (part three)

    Where I Read: Daggerheart (part three)

    Okay, so classes. First there’s a page repeating a lot of what we’ve already learned, but it also mentions a few new things. For instance, every class has a Class Hope Feature which lets them spend Hope to do something. Each subclass also has a Foundation Feature, Specialisation Feature, and Mastery Feature, though you don’t get those for free, you have to take them as a card when you level up. Okay then.

    First up is the Bard. They’re charismatic and slightly bitchy arteeeests, and their domains are Grace and Codex – so they know mysterious lore and can express it really prettily, basically. Their Hope Feature is that they can spend Hope to distract an enemy, and their Class Feature is that once per session they can give the party a rah-rah pep talk that grants each other PC a d6 that they can roll, once, to add to another roll or to reduce Stress.

    They can also choose to start the game with either an unsent letter (ooooh) or a… romance novel. Okay, so again I’m noticing that the cutesy postmodern humour kind of clashes with the stated intention of making the game feel epic and evocative… though that is, I will admit, a problem I have with a lot of modern fantasy. The Dragon Prince, I’m looking at you!

    Bards can be Troubadours or Wordsmiths. Troubadours have some abilities related to healing and bestowing Hope, while Wordsmiths have some advantages in terms of boosting actions and reducing Stress. So basically the one is about getting people to chill, and the other is about getting them to excel.

    Next up are Druids, who are your basic nature nuts. Their domains are Arcana and Sage, so they practice natural magic of the forest. They can turn into animals by taking Stress, or by using their Hope Feature that lets them spend Hope to do it instead. They can also pull off minor cosmetic acts of nature-magic, like making flowers bloom.

    They can be Wardens of the Elements, in which case they can channel one of the elements in combat for some perks, like doing damage to anyone who strikes them for fire or raising their resistance to injury with earth. Any Warden of the Elements can channel any element, but only one at the time. Alternatively, they can be Wardens of Renewal, who can restore Hit Points and clear Stress in people.

    There are a couple of pages of animals you can turn into, along with special rules for them. It all looks kind of fiddly, but it certainly makes Druids pretty adaptive – even sticking to just the ones you have access to at level one, that’s a pretty big bag of tricks.

    The Guardian! As mentioned before, this dude’s into Valour and Blade. He protects people, and his Hope Feature is that he can spend Hope to clear out Armour Slots. I guess that means they can take more of a beating. Their Class Feature is that they can turn themselves Unstoppable, during which time they take less damage and do more damage. Each time they do damage, they increase the amount of extra damage they do, but once that reaches a maximum, they drop out of Unstoppable again. Okay, so that’s kind of cool.

    Guardians can be Stalwarts or Vengeances. Stalwarts can tank even better, while Vengeances have higher Stress tolerance and can also spend Stress to cause people who attack them take some damage in return. On higher levels, Vengeances can also select a target to prioritise, and on attacks on them they can swap the results of their Hope and Fear Dice (so they gain Hope no matter what the roll is, I suppose).

    Rangers are cunning hunters and outdoorsmen who use the wilderness to their advantage and fight pragmatically, as showed by their domains of Bone and Sage. Their Hope Feature is that they can spend Hope to make a successful attack hit three different enemies at once. Their Class Feature is that they can mark an enemy for takedown, which means that that enemy suffers Stress when struck and also that the Ranger can turn a failed attack into a successful one, though at the cost of unmarking them.

    Rangers can be Beastbounds and get an animal companion, who levels up as they do, our they can be Wayfinders, giving them more bonuses on hitting things and some extra skill in, well, finding their way to places. There’s a page of rules just for the animal companions, who need to be fleshed-out characters in their own rights…

    … I’m trying to keep an open mind here, but I’m increasingly feeling like this game was written by people who felt like D&D 5E wasn’t fiddly enough. Which, okay, if that’s what floats your boat then more power to you, but… how does that fit in with the whole “focus on the story more so than the mechanics”?

    Rogues… well, they’re what you’d expect. They sneak around and stab people in the back. Their domains are Midnight and Grace, for hiding and lying. Their Hope Feature lets them spend Hope for a bonus to Evasion, and their Class Feature lets them remain hidden even from enemies who should be rights be able to spot them, right up until they attack.

    Rogues can be Nightwalkers or Syndicates. Nightwalkers can teleport from one shadow to another and hit harder when they’re Vulnerable (which we don’t know what it means yet, but I guess it’s meant to give them a “cornered rat fights twice as hard” style), while Syndicates automatically know someone in every new town they come to who they can ask for a favour.

    Next up is Seraphs, our holy warriors. They have Splendour for the healy-healy and Valour for protecting the innocents. Their Hope Feature is a limited healing, and their Class Feature is that they get a bunch of bonuses per session that they can use to boost allies’ rolls, reduce incoming damage, or give them Hope. They can be Divine Wielders, in which case they can fling their melee weapons at enemies and then cause them to return to their hands, or Winged Sentinels, in which case they can, well, fly.

    Sorcerers we have already dealt with in the form of that sample character. They are people with inherent magic that runs in their family. Their domains are Arcane (for inherent magic) and Midnight (for illusion). Their Hope Feature lets them reroll damage dice for damage-dealing spells, and their Class Features lets them sense magic, create minor illusions, and discard a domain card to gain Hope or enhance a damage-dealing spell. They can have an Elemental Origin, in which case they can do some tricks with the elements, or a Primal Origin, in which case they can enhance magic (mostly magic that deals damage – yeah, I’m sensing that Sorcerers are very much meant to be a DPS class).

    Warriors are more big fighty types, though they have a bit more of a “swordsmaster” or “warrior philosopher” vibe than just “I hit people onna head.” Their domains are Blade, for the swording, and Bone, for the intelligent swording. Their Hope Feature is a bonus to attack, and their Class Feature is that they get an attack of opportunity when their enemies try to retreat from them.

    Warriors can have the Call of the Brave or the Call of the Slayer. The Call of the Brave gets Hope and Stress-relief when failing a roll with Fear or when performing a ritual before engaging a superior opponent. So basically, you’re at your best when you’re doing something that’s clearly a bad idea but you’re going to do it anyway because it’s HONOURABLE!!! Heh. I kind of like that, to be honest. The Call of the Slayer can build up bonuses every time they roll with Hope that they can then spend for a powerful strike. Hiyah! Okay, I’ll grant you that I like this class a good bit better than the standard D&D Fighters…

    Wizards, finally! They are nerds who can do magic because they’ve done their homework. Their domains are Codex (for magic books) and Splendour (for healing, since in this game they’re the ones who do that, too). Which makes sense, honestly – like I’ve said before, I don’t really get the whole D&D convention whereby wizards can’t heal. Curing diseases is, like, the first thing that people expect from a wizard! After that it’s love potions, fertility, and putting curses on people you don’t like, in no particular order.

    Anyway, the Wizards’ Hope Feature is, somewhat interestingly, the ability to make an enemy reroll an attack or damage roll. Their Class Feature is that they can do minor magic tricks and that whenever they roll a particular number on their Hope and Fear Dice, they gain Hope or lose Stress, since they’ve spotted an auspicious sign. That’s sort of neat.

    Wizards can be of the School of Knowledge, in which case they can draw additional domain cards and can use their Experiences by gaining Stress instead of by spending Hope. Or they can be of the School of War, in which case they get extra HP and when they succeed at an attack while rolling with Fear they do extra damage.

    Next up is ancestry. There’s a lot of frankly tiresome hand-waving about how everyone is a unique individual first and foremost and yay the brotherhood of sentient beings and look, we’re totally not racist, honest! Yes, yes… Anyway, each ancestry gets two features, so let’s dive right in.

    Clanks are robots or golems – some sort of manufactured creature, either way. They can look pretty much like anything. Their Ancestry Features are that they were built for a purpose that aligns with one of their Experiences, so they get an additional bonus when using that Experience. Also, they rest up faster than feeble organic creatures.

    Drakona are humanoid dragons. They can look more draconic or more humanoid – from just being people with scales and sharp teeth to having tails, snouts, back ridges, and vestigial wings. They have protective scales and can breathe some element, like fire, lightning, or ice.

    Dwarves are… well… Dwarves. They can embed gemstones in their skin, though, for extra sparkliness. Also, their nails are tough and stonelike, and dwarves like to polish them and carve them into facets. Their features are about taking damage really well.

    Elves, likewise, nothing much to see here. They do develop a “mystic form” when they devote themselves to the protection of the natural world, though, which can manifest as them having freckles that twinkle like stars or ivy growing in their hair. I’ll give the game this much, there has been a considerable effort spent on impressive visuals… Anyway, Elves can get an advantage on initiative and can perform an extra “downtime move” while resting.

    Fairies, on the other hand, are a little different from their usual depiction. Here, they are actually insectoid to varying extents – much like the Drakona, how much varies between “pretty girl with chitin instead of skin” to “big humanoid beetle.” They all have some variety of insect wings, though. They also range in size from two feet to seven feet. They can spend Hope to reroll their own or an ally’s action.

    Fauns are goat-men with powerful legs and stately horns. In much the same way as the Fairies and Drakona, they range from “human with horns and hooves” to “goat that inexplicably walks around on two legs.” They can jump and kick really well.

    Firbolgs are honestly pretty similar to Fauns, in that they’re half human and half horned animal, only the animal part is usually something a bit more dignified than a goat.  Firbolgs who look like half-bulls are also known as minotaurs. By any name, they have a 1 in 6 chance of shrugging off Stress gain and also get a bonus to charging enemies.

    Fungril are… okay, I think I’m spotting the theme here. They’re mushroom-people. They grow elaborate caps on their heads that they can decorate in various ways. Their Features are that they can speak telepathically (through their “mycelial array”) to speak with other Fungril, and by touching a corpse they can extract one memory from it.

    Galapa are turtles. Okay, I think this is getting a little old now, and I’m not even halfway through the list… They have shells that offer them protection from injury, and they can retract into them to be even safer (though then they can’t move). Galapa shells can be carved into decorative shapes or reinforced with metal, though it’s a slow and painful process.

    Giants are big dudes, though maybe not as big as you’d expect – they’re somewhere between six and nine feet tall. They are born without any eyes, and new ones may appear or disappear on their faces throughout their childhood, with them finally ending up with between one and three of them. They get extra HP and reach.

    Goblins are little dudes with great big eyes and ears. They also come in every colour of the rainbow. They are good at keeping their balance and spotting danger. Gotta admit that the picture of the little Goblin witch on this page is kind of adorable…

    Halflings are small people with prominent ears, noses, and feet. The fluff text mentions them possessing acute hearing and smell, but that’s not part of their Ancestry Features – instead, they may reroll a 1 on their Hope Die. Also, at the start of extra session, everyone in a party who has a Halfling in it gains 1 Hope, because halflings are good luck. Heh. That’s kind of nice.

    Humans are maybe not quite Humans as you know them – they apparently regularly live to be a hundred, so I guess Daggerheart Humans are supposed to be one of those older and nobler races that modern man is but a fallen remnant of, sort of thing. Otherwise they are what you’d expect – they can take more Stress, because of the good ol’ human spirit, and they can reroll failed Experience rolls, because they adapt well to new situations.

    Infernis are humanoids with horns… Seriously? Another kind? That’s three now. Okay, I am definitely starting to feel like this game has a clutter problem. Save some for the supplements, guys, that’s where the money is! Oh well. Infernis are descendants of demons from the Circles Below. Aside from horns, they also have fangs, and occasionally forked or arrow-shaped tails. They look demonic, and when they get angry they start looking extra demonic, enough to get a bonus to intimidate. They can also take Stress to turn a roll with Fear into a roll with Hope, because they fear nothing.

    Katari are cat people. You know the drill by now, they can look more like cats or less like cats, they can look like different sorts of cats, bla bla bla. I mean, I do approve of this approach from an ease-of-play standpoint, because it means you don’t have to internalise a ton of specific lore – you can just say that Katari are cat people, and whatever people picture when they hear “cat people,” that’s perfectly correct. I’m just kind of losing interest in all these ancestries that are all “human mixed with something else” and carefully avoiding specifics. Oh well… Katari are very agile and have retractable claws.

    Orcs have tusks and green, grey, blue or pink skin. Some have no body hair at all, while others are giant fur balls. They get extra resistant to attacks when they’re down to their last HP, and they can gore people with their tusks.

    Ribbets are the frogs. See, I was all set to be excited about them, but the game sort of ran the formula into the ground before we could get here… Variations include webbed fingers, warty or smooth skin, and any number of vibrant skin colours and patterns. They have a long prehensile tongue and can breathe underwater.

    Finally, Simiah! They’re monkeys or apes. They’re good at dodging blows and climbing. I refuse to spend more words on them than that.

    There are also rules about being a mix of two ancestries, because Lord knows we don’t have enough choices as it is… It’s pretty basic, though, you just pick one Ancestry Feature from each of your two ancestries. So if you really want to be a walking fungus with a turtle shell, that’s a character you can play here.

    Next part is communities. Which I seem to recall there are at least not that damn many of.

  • Where I Read: Daggerheart (part two)

    Character creation! You start out by first choosing a class and a subclass (of which each class seems to have two to choose from). Bards can be Troubadours or Wordsmiths, depending on whether they sing healing songs or engage in “clever wordplay.” Hmm. Weaponised punning, huh? I am cautiously intrigued… Druids can be Wardens of the Elements and throw elemental magic around, or Wardens of Renewal and heal people.

    Guardians seem to be your basic big guys with swords, except they’re different from Warriors, who are further down. They can be either Stalwarts or Vengeances, I guess depending on whether they’re pure tanks or leaning towards damage-dealers. Rangers can be Beastbounds (you get a pet) or Wayfinders (you get to hunt and kill things). Rogues can be Nightwalkers (who can sneak) or Syndicates (who know a guy).

    Seraphs are another class that’s not quite standard D&D, though the closest analogue seems to be paladins. They can be Winged Sentinels, in which case they fly, or Divine Wielders, in which case they get a legendary weapon. Also, the Winged Sentinel seems to be the flying knight chick from the cover.

    Sorcerers can have an Elemental Origin and “channel the raw power” of an element, or a Primal Origin and focus on “versatility.” So brute force versus finesse, I guess? Also, the picture for the Elemental Origin Sorcerer is the frog dude from the cover. Aw yeah. Still calling dibs on playing a frog!

    Warriors can have the Call of the Brave or the Call of the Slayer. The former “[uses] the might of [their] enemies to fuel [their] own power,” while the latter strike with “immense force.” So I guess maybe the Call of the Brave gives you some kind of bennies for being hit, maybe? Not sure. Finally, Wizards can have the School of Knowledge to be super-nerds, or the School of War if they basically just want to throw fireballs.

    I don’t know about this, to be honest. I feel sort of like I’m drowning in options here, and some of them are really kind of samey-sounding. I mean, that’s a problem I have with D&D to start with, and they’ve made it even worse here. But we’ll see, perhaps the classes are more distinctive in their actual writeups.

    Having chosen a class, you get a Class Feature, which is on your sheet. You may need to choose one of several available Features. Hmm, okay.

    Next you choose your Heritage, which is made up of ancestry (what species you are) and community (what your folks did for a living, basically). Your ancestry gets you two features, and your community gets you one. There are eighteen different ancestries (including the regular spread of Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling, some more unorthodox ones like Giant, Orc and Faerie, and some that I have no idea what they are, like Clank, Fungril and Katari) and nine different communities, but they’re not described here. One of the ancestries is the Ribbet, which I assume are the frog guys. Ribbet, huh? I take it that for all the talk of epicness, this isn’t a game we’re supposed to take entirely seriously? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for that, but I’ m sensing some tonal mismatch.

    Next is your Traits, which are Agility, Strength, Finesse, Instinct, Presence, and Knowledge. It’s basically the regular D&D ones, except they’ve broken Dexterity into two and mashed Strength and Constitution into one – both of which are, to be honest, excellent ideas. You assign an array of +2, +1, +1, +0, +0 and −1 among your Traits, in best Powered by the Apocalypse spirit.

    You also get some fixed values. Your Evasion and Hit Points are both based on your class, and everyone starts with 6 Stress and 2 Hope. Stress is Hit Points for your brain, basically – you lose them when you start cracking under the pressure. You gain 1 Hope every time your Hope Die shows a higher number than your Fear Die, while the GM gains 1 Fear every time the opposite happens. In both cases they can be used to power some not-yet-described effects. Evasion is what it sounds like – it’s your defense stat. It’s noted that it’s up to you how you describe your defenses, so for instance a wizard might describe as a magical force field that attacks shatter against. That’s a nice touch.

    You get to choose either one two-handed weapon or two one-handed weapons to start the game with, from the Tier 1 list. The weapon you’re wielding determines the type of dice you roll for damage, while the number of dice is determined by your Proficiency (which starts at 1).

    Likewise, you can choose one set of a Tier 1 armour. Armour is mentioned as having a “damage threshold” which determines how much damage you can take before you lose HP. That’s phrased a little ambiguously, and it’s kind of implied that it’s not as simple as “roll damage, subtract armour, lose that many HP,” so that’s another thing we’ll see how it turns out. Armour also has something called “Armor Score” which I think gives you a limited number of times when your armour can reduce how badly a hit hurts you – essentially, the armour takes some of the impact, but it breaks a little from it at the same time. Okay, cool, cool…

    You also get a basic set of adventurin’ supplies, a bit of gold, a Health or Stamina Potion (restores HP and Stress respectively) and one special item from your class. That’s another detail I approve of, buying gear is my least favourite part of chargen in any game.

    Next you get to choose two Experiences, which are kind of like FATE-style Aspects – they’re ideas that describe your character’s background, talents or approach, and if you can argue that one is relevant to a roll, you can spend a Hope point to get +2 on that roll. I’m not sure I see why it’s necessary to spend something to make use of a trait that’s always supposed to be true, but then, I have pretty much the same gripe about FATE… Either way, there are some guidelines about making Experiences both specific and flavourful, all decent stuff but nothing out of the ordinary.

    Your class, it turns out, is composed of two different “domains” that it shares with some other classes – for instance, the Bard class has Grace (being quick on your feet) and Codex (magical study), while the Rogue class has Grace and Midnight (shadows and secrecy). You start out with two “domain cards” taken from your available domains, with each card giving you certain skills and abilities. Interesting approach, and it does somewhat justify why there are so many classes – they really are meant to overlap a little.

    Finally, you are supposed to describe your connections to the other PCs, which you can do with questions provided by your class. Another bit of PbtA-ing there, I guess, though not a bad one.

    Next follows an example character, the Elven Sorcerer Marlowe Fairwind. Her Experiences are “Royal Mage” and “Not On My Watch.” As a Sorcerer, her Class Features apparently include sensing magic, creating illusions, and doing something very crunchy called “Channel Raw Power” that apparently lets her surrender one card to gain Hope or empower a damage-dealing spell. Her backstory is that she’s in the King’s service and she’s apparently the only one who can save him from some mysterious danger, but he refuses to tell her what that danger is. Okay, that’s kind of cool.

    There’s a list of the domains, some of which are more intuitively named than others. They are: Arcana (inherent magic), Grace (charisma), Blade (weapons), Midnight (shadows and secrecy), Bone (bodies and combat… yeah, I don’t know, I think this is going to turn out to be a “monk” thing, but I’m not sure), Sage (knowledge of nature), Codex (scholarly magic), Splendour (healing and necromancy) and Valour (protection).

    There’s a flashy image that shows how the classes overlap in terms of domain, though it’d be easier to follow if the names of the domains were written out instead of represented by images… but okay, I see here that the Guardian is poised between Valour and Blade, while Warrior is between Blade and Bone. So I guess Guardians protect people with weapons, while Warriors are more about just kicking ass. Well, that’s a distinction… I guess… A Seraph lies between Valour and Splendour, so yeah, they’re paladins, basically. Wizards, perhaps a little more unusually, are between Splendour and Codex, so it looks like they’re healers in this game and there’s no such things as Clerics. Fair enough, I never did get the whole “arcane casters can’t heal” thing that D&D insists on. Also somewhat interestingly, Sorcerers share Midnight with Rogues, so apparently they’re supposed to be a bit sneaky in this game.

    There’s also an example of a domain card and some explanations of how to read it. Every domain card has a level and a domain, and you can only choose cards you have the right domain for and are of an equal or higher level than. There are also some rules for “recalling” domain cards, since apparently after level five you will have more cards than you can hold at any one time, so you need to choose a loadout whenever you rest. There are three types of cards, abilities (which are non-magical), spells (which are magical) and grimoires (which are bundles of small spells). Other than that, it seems you just follow the rules written down on the individual card. Okay then. Next up is the list of classes.

  • Where I Read: Daggerheart (part one)

    Where I Read: Daggerheart (part one)

    Hello and welcome to my readthrough of Daggerheart, one of those new-fangled roleplaying games who turned up while I wasn’t looking. I figure giving it a thorough look might be a good way to find out where things are at the moment, so here we go.

    First off, the cover. It’s very shiny. It portrays a whole bunch of fabulous-looking characters – there’s a knight chick with wings, a dude who seems to be all mouth and no face, a mechanical Necron-looking skeleton with a staff, and what seems to be a humanoid frog with a glowing hand. Huh. Okay, if I can play a magic frog, I’m totally gonna, just for the record.

    We’re on to the introduction. Daggerheart is a game of fantasy adventure where you explore exotic locations and save the day. It “provides the tools to tell a story that is both heartfelt and epic.” All right, so we’re definitely aiming for the flash and sizzle more so than the grime and gore, then. Fair enough. It also “takes a fiction-first approach” and “focus on the story [it’s] telling rather than the complexity of the mechanics.” Oh dear, that gives me a sense of foreboding, but it might just be my emotional scars from spending my formative years with Storyteller games that tended to combine over-complicated mechanics with a snotty contempt for anyone who wanted to actually use them… We’ll see, maybe this one will be better with 30 years of extra wisdom to draw on.

    More emphasis on “epic battles and emotional narratives.” Okay, I’ll grant you that I like both those things. Well, to be exact, I like kicking ass and looking really pretty doing it, and so far the game seems like it supports that.

    There’s a long list of inspirations (or “touchstones,” as it calls them). The roleplaying games include a couple of Powered by the Apocalypse ones, along with Lady Blackbird and Shadowrun. Under literature, we have A Song of Ice and Fire, Sabriel, A Wizard of Earthsea, Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time. Okay, that does suggest fantasy worlds where magic is a little more mystical and semi-spiritual, rather than just being a matter of flinging energy around.

    The video games session includes Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and… Borderlands. Okay, the last one is an interesting choice. Let’s see if I can spot the connection as we go on.

    The core mechanic is that you roll 2d12+modifier against a Difficulty. There is a special wrinkle, however, in that one of your d12s is your Hope Die and the other one is your Fear Die, and things can happen depending on which one rolled higher, irrespectively of whether the roll succeeded or not. Interesting. You also roll damage dice when you hit someone, to see how much you ruined his day.

    There’s a note on the Golden Rule (that is, you can change any rule you don’t like), and Rulings Over Rules (which here means that rules only apply when it makes sense for them to apply). Sure, sure…

    There is a rundown of what’s in the book. The first three chapters are called, respectively, “Preparing for Adventure,” “Playing an Adventure” and “Running an Adventure.” Heh. I do like the symmetry of that. The fourth chapter is the antagonist section, though it also seems to include environments (which can, to be sure, be plenty adversarial in their own right). The fifth is about “campaign frames.” Not sure I understand what that’s supposed to be, I guess we’ll see when we get there.

    What do you need to play? Well, 2-5 players and a Game Master for a start, and also the usual pile of dice. It notes that you need a d100, which I sincerely hope is just a mistake and d100s will be simulated by two d10s as usual, because I dread to think what one of those would actually look like…

    You also need tokens, which are “small objects that represent the look and feel of your character.” Hmm? Like some sort of miniatures? No, apparently not, because it’s mentioned that you’re going to need to place tokens on cards or character sheets to use certain abilities. Starting characters need about seven tokens, more powerful ones may need as many as 15.

    Okay, hang on, here it explains that tokens can really just be any kind of small objects used to keep track of stuff – paper clips are fine, for instance. But you’re supposed to pick something that expresses your character’s unique aesthetic. Ooooookay, that’s a little too precious for my taste, but oh well.

    You also need game cards, which represent your character’s “ancestry, community, subclass, and domain.” So… it’s basically just a cheat note for keeping track of your special abilities and so on? Finally, you need character sheets, and the game recommends getting the class-specific ones from the game’s website. Hrmpf. In myyyyyyy day we got a single one-size-fits-all character sheet, and we had to photocopy it ourselves so it was always smudged, and by Jove, that was how we liked it!

    (okay, no, we hated it, but still…)

    Maps and miniatures can be used but aren’t mandatory. Too bad, these days, what with Roll20 and the likes, I actually have an easier time playing with maps than I have playing with all those other kinds of handouts.

    There are a set of principles for play, which seem to be strongly inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse. Well, I’m all for those. They are:

    • Be a fan of your character and their journey.
    • Spotlight your friends.
    • Address the characters and address the players.
    • Build the world together.
    • Play to find out what happens.
    • Hold on gently.

    I do like “spotlight your friends,” which means to find ways that the other players can show off and get their moment to shine. It’s something I try to do when I play, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it put into words like this before, so that’s nice. I also like “hold on gently,” meaning to think in terms of what would be interesting and evocative if it happened, but not be so married to it that you try to brute-force it. Again, that’s more or less my own philosophy too.

    The full-page picture before chapter one appears to be a anthropomorphic tiger with a monocle, which I admit does bring a smile to my face. So, Chapter one: Preparing for Adventure! We start with a brief description of the setting, or at least the underlying metaphysics (I am going to go out on a limb and guess that this is one of those games that has an implied setting in the form of classes and races and stuff, but the actual geography and history are up to you).

    Apparently the world consists of the Mortal Realm, the Hallows Above, the Circles Below, and the Realms Beyond. The universe used to be ruled by the Forgotten Gods, but they were overthrown by the New Gods and cast into the Circles Below. The New Gods now rule from the Hallows Above, and they have made it so that it’s hard to cross between planes, mostly to keep the Forgotten Gods from coming back for a rematch. There are also the Faint Divinities, who are a sort of demigod servitors of the greater gods. Some hang out in the Mortal Realm, others were banished with their makers into the Circles Below to become demons.

    The New Gods can see what’s happening in the Mortal Realm from the Hallows Above, but to actually go there they need to sacrifice something of great importance. Hmm, that’s interesting – usually it’s mortals who sacrifice something to get a god’s attention. It does say that it goes two ways, though, so mortals or demons can theoretically enter the Hallows Above through some great personal sacrifice. Also, arcane magic used in great acts of evil can open a portal to the Circles Below.

    The Realms Beyond are a catch-all term for every other dimension that’s not one of the three main ones – examples are “the Elemental Lands,” “the Astral Realm,” and “the Valley of Death.”

    There is a section on magic, and here’s where it gets complicated – apparently magic takes the form of cards, and every time you level up, if you’re a magic-user of whatever sort, you get more cards. Does this mean that I’m going to have to read through the cards too? Honestly, you’d think with 400 pages in this thing it would cover it all, but I guess not. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to consider when to go over them.

    Anyway, there is another section that explicitly allows you to “re-flavour” your spells and abilities, as long as it makes no mechanical difference. Well, that’s nice, I know there was at least once when I was playing a 4E Druid in Dark Sun, and I felt that it was kind of off that my spells included damage-dealing “cold winds.” “Tearing sandstorms” felt more setting-appropriate… Anyway, there is also a reference to armour having “Armor Slots you can spend to reduce damage,” which sounds interesting, so let’s see what that’s all about when we get there.