Mister Monster's Workshop

Tag: rpg

  • 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.

  • Magey moves

    Magey moves

    This week, I managed to move on with my Mage: the Ascension port and write up a list of GM moves. This is something like my fourth or fifth version of this list – as usual, Mage resist easy summary. But I think this set works with my conception of Mage as a game about mystery, conflicting viewpoints, and the contrast between the magical and the mundane.

    • Introduce a tantalising mystery or an opportunity to learn. Every mage desires, in one form or another, to learn – to better understand a world that is strange, complicated and often contradictory. The fundamental GM move, then, is to offer the players something to learn about. Perhaps they stumble on the outer Ripples of a Mystery (see the section of Mysteries for details), or maybe they catch wind of a rare book of lore, a wise spirit, or a master who might share his knowledge with the worthy. It can even be something entirely mundane, such as the location of an elusive enemy. Whatever it is, it should not come cheap; the players will have to do the legwork if they want to unravel the enigma.
    • Add another ingredient to the witch’s brew. The world is a battlefield between billions of competing wills, and even a straightforward conflict between two parties can grow complicated in a hurry. With this move, introduce another factor to the scene that comes from a different Paradigm or with another agenda than any of the extant ones. The factor can be an NPC or an inanimate force, seemingly mundane or overtly supernatural – what matters is that it’s different, making the scene feel more disjointed and chaotic. For example, the players might spot a Dreamspeaker rival of theirs while infiltrating a Syndicate-owned night club, or have their Verbena grove invaded by a little grey-skinned alien. Less dramatically, if the players are arguing with their chantry leadership about some course of action, an impasse might be taken as an invitation by a previously neutral cabal to suggest their own preferred plan.
    • Remind them that they walk a world of dust. The world is a harsh place, full of petty injustice and bleak misery. With this move, introduce some purely mundane problem – a mugger, a flat tire, a failing business, a bad cold. The problem can even be the simple fact that things take time, and that the world won’t sit still while the players spend a week digging through the library for information on their enemy. Magic can solve a great many of these issues, but of course that tends to lead to problems of its own; force the players to choose between dealing with things like a Sleeper, reminding them of their fundamental humanity, or invoking greater debt in the form of Paradox or unwanted attention from using their supernatural powers to escape everyday concerns.
    • Have a carefully laid plan go awry. Mages know better than anyone how easily clever plans can go spectacularly wrong. With this move, what someone tried to do – whether the player, one of their allies, or the enemy they were opposing – has a drastic unintended effect, causing a huge mess that doesn’t do anyone any favours.
    • Offer their heart’s desire, at a cost. A mage knows that the world is his for the taking, but everything has a price. With this move, present the players with an opportunity, whether to get the upper hand in a fight, to discover a clue to a mystery, to win a convert to their cause, or otherwise get something they want. However, either make the opportunity fleeting and necessary to act on immediately, without any chance for the players to hedge their bets, or hint that there will be considerable downsides to seizing it.
    • Let them be touched by the flames. Mages try to avoid physical danger, and most of the dangers they face are of a subtler kind. All the same, it’s a dangerous world out there, especially if you take an aggressive approach. With this move, deal Damage to a player, with a level determined by precisely what the source is.
    • Inflict a slow poison or a lingering curse. Any mage knows that the subtlest cut is the one that will barely be noticed at first. Wounds can fester, poisons can take time to kick in, and curses can ruin your life over a period of days or months. With this move, have a player be poisoned, infected, or otherwise compromised, but only hint at it for now; keep the full effects in store for later.
    • Punish them for breaking the laws of the world. Mages attract the wrath of the Consensus by their very nature, and especially so when they use magic carelessly. This move either causes a player to mark Paradox, or creates a Paradox Effect with a level proportionate to how much Paradox the player currently has marked, or – as is usually the case when a player fails an Arete roll – both. It is also appropriate when a player draws attention to some ongoing Effect, when interacting with something supernatural and volatile, or when in the presence of a Maurader.
    • Challenge or threaten their values. Every Tradition value something, if only because it’s something they rely on for power. Hermetics revere the written word, Verbena places of unspoiled nature, Choristers hallowed ground. With this move, place something a player’s Tradition considers special and powerful in the cross hairs, perhaps as part of a plot by a rival Paradigm, perhaps just as a natural consequence of events. This can be a player’s own foci, a location where their Paradigm is strong, or just an abstract value or ideal that’s being contradicted or suppressed. Either way, this gives them a chance to practice what they preach, and stand up for something greater than themselves.
    • Confront them with folly. The ignorant and deluded can be more dangerous than the outrightly malicious, if only because they are so much more numerous. With this move, have an NPC’s failure to see the world for what it really is either cause trouble for the players or provide them with an opportunity. People who are obviously wrong are people who need tutelage, which can strengthen a player’s Paradigm, but they can also dig in their heels and insist on a disastrous course of action unless the players can stop them.
    • Let them define their own reality. A mage practices his craft as much in his way of life as in his spells. With this move, simply ask the player to describe something, whether a character, a location, or a piece of history. Then take that description and add something to it, preferably something that makes the players’ lives more difficult.
    • Teach them that nothing ever truly ends. The consequences of a mage’s actions echo down the ages, and lessons learned frequently have to be rediscovered. With this move, bring an element – a character, an event, a location, an arcane principle – that had seemed over and done with back into play.
    • Make a Paradigm Move. When the players are dealing with some particular Paradigm, you can make a move unique to it that expresses its flavour and feel. This move can be overtly supernatural or merely philosophical, depending on the situation, but either way it represents a particular idea of how the world is meant to work.

  • Naming moves

    Naming moves

    This week, I’ve been taking another crack at my Mage: the Ascension port. In particular, I’ve tried to get something done with the move names.

    See, I use the same basic moves for all my WoD ports, or near enough – I figure that what a person can accomplish without superpowers in the World of Darkness is pretty consistent. But since each game has a very different tone and focus, I try to make the names of the moves imply it. Asking a player to roll to show your teeth feels very different than telling them to roll to swear holy retribution, even when the mechanics are exactly the same.

    Here is the same list of moves for Werewolf:

    1. Melee attack (Strength): Rend and tear
    2. Feats of strength (Strength): Perform a mighty feat
    3. Ranged attack (Dexterity): Take aim
    4. Feats of speed (Dexterity): Seize an opportunity
    5. Overcome injuries (Stamina): Relentlessly push on
    6. Diplomacy (Charisma): Deal honourably
    7. Manipulation (Manipulation): Cunningly manipulate
    8. Intimidation (Manipulation): Show your teeth
    9. Seduction (Appearance): Rely on animal magnetism
    10. Style (Appearance): Prowl fearlessly
    11. Knowledge (Intelligence): Display your wisdom
    12. Technology/Craft (Intelligence): Use the tools of man
    13. Perception (Perception): Sniff the air
    14. Self-control (Wits): Stay in control
    15. Pathfinding (Wits): Follow a trail

    And for Mummy:

    1. Melee attack (Strength): Smite the wicked
    2. Feats of strength (Strength): Strain your mighty thews
    3. Ranged attack (Dexterity): Let fly your vengeance
    4. Feats of speed (Dexterity): Seize the moment
    5. Overcome injuries (Stamina): Relentlessly push on
    6. Diplomacy (Charisma): Preach the truth
    7. Manipulation (Manipulation): Engage in intrigue
    8. Intimidation (Manipulation): Swear holy retribution
    9. Seduction (Appearance): Beguile with your beauty
    10. Style (Appearance): Appear haughty and regal
    11. Knowledge (Intelligence): Display wisdom and learning
    12. Technology/Craft (Intelligence): Practice artifice and craft
    13. Perception (Perception): See beneath the surface
    14. Self-control (Wits): Master your soul
    15. Pathfinding (Wits): Make the journey

    You get the idea. Werewolf is about pre-medieval tribal warriors who live half their lives as animals. So their move names are meant to invoke a primal, savage feel. Mummy, meanwhile, is a little more civilised, but still ancient – it’s faintly Biblical, about proud warrior kings and wise prophets trying to walk the righteous path.

    And then we have Mage, which I keep trying and failing to come up with something similarly flavourful for. I think a large part of the problem is that it’s harder to come up with a distinct theme for mages. Each Tradition effectively inhabits a genre all of its own, and there’s just not much overlap between a serene Akashic warrior-philosopher and an angry Virtual Adept anarchistic hacker.

    This is my attempt for this week:

    1. Melee attack (Strength): Fight for your beliefs
    2. Feats of strength (Strength): Push your limits
    3. Ranged attack (Dexterity): Strike from afar
    4. Feats of speed (Dexterity): Act with swift purpose
    5. Overcome injuries (Stamina): Endure the cost
    6. Diplomacy (Charisma): Speak for those with ears to hear
    7. Manipulation (Manipulation): Shape the narrative
    8. Intimidation (Manipulation): Make them fear your power
    9. Seduction (Appearance): Weave a sensual enchantment
    10. Style (Appearance): Come and go as you will
    11. Knowledge (Intelligence): Recall esoteric truths
    12. Technology/Craft (Intelligence): Place things in their proper alignment
    13. Perception (Perception): Spot the subtle signs
    14. Self-control (Wits): Master your inner turmoil
    15. Pathfinding (Wits): Blaze a trail

    I dunno. It’s a little better than my last effort, I think. Still not sure about some of them, especially the technology one and the diplomacy one.

  • Fiddling with Talents

    Fiddling with Talents

    This week, I have been working on my Dark Heresy port. I’ve decided that I’m mostly satisfied with how the rules work, but they need to be easier to look up. Since the system is so based on slight upgrades to existing abilities, it leads to a lot of flipping back and forth through files to figure out what a character is even capable of. That won’t do.

    The approach I decided on is to make each player’s character sheet less of a copy-paste from the rules and more something you build up according to the rules. That way, you can ignore all the rules that don’t affect that particular player, and concentrate on what applies to them, personally.

    So I’ve been writing the basic moves up like this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, you achieve a Minor Success. 15-19, you achieve a Basic Success. 20+, you achieve a Major Success.
    • Minor Success: if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, but no details of the nature of the threat.
    • Basic Success: the same, but if you are in fact in danger, the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why.
    • Major Success: you learn precisely what the danger is.
    • Absolute Success: you not only learn what danger is threatening you, but also the most promising way of avoiding it.
    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    Then a player will start out with a move that looks like this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, but no details of the nature of the threat. 15-19, the same, but if you are in fact in danger, the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 20+, you learn precisely what the danger is.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    Then, if that player takes the Awareness (Known) Talent (which bumps up the results of a successful move to show healthy paranoia), the move gets altered to this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, and the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 15+, the same, but you learn precisely what the danger is.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    And if the player further takes the Awareness (Trained) Talent, which adds an additional result on a roll of 20+, the move again gets rewritten to this:

    When you show healthy paranoia, roll +Perception. 10-14, if you are in some sense in danger at the moment, you sense an eerie feeling of menace, and the GM also gives you a hint as to how and why. 15-19, the same, but you learn precisely what the danger is. 20+, you not only learn what danger is threatening you, but also the most promising way of avoiding it.

    Examples: Stopping to smell the air, glancing behind you, thinking back on what danger signs you might have missed.

    You see what I mean. At every turn, the player’s sheet only contains the information that will apply to that player themself. This would absolutely not work if we were still using pen and paper like some sort of savages, but of course these are modern times and everything is stored in easily edited .txt files.

    I do worry that this will make it more troublesome for the players to choose new Talents, since now the information on what a move actually does and the information on how it is altered by a Talent will exist in two different places. But I’ll see what happens when I have a chance to run a session with the new PDF.

  • Honour to the Administratum

    Honour to the Administratum

    This week, my players ended up exploring the byzantine bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that most of my thinking this week has been about bookkeeping.

    Character bookkeeping, I mean. It’s not an especially sexy topic, but it’s something that really makes a difference for how easy it is to run a roleplaying session. You want to be able to tell, at a glance, just what rules apply to a character – what their abilities are, what modifiers are affecting them, what they can and can’t do. Because having to stop all the time and flip through the rulebook is freaking annoying.

    One of the charms of Powered by the Apocalypse style games is that they seek to make bookkeeping easy. Rules are kept as modular as possible, so that you usually just deal with one paragraph of text at the time, not three or four different ones that are spread throughout the book. When that isn’t possible, information is often repeated so that it appears everywhere it needs to be, even if that means adding to the page count. It’s part of what makes these games so smooth to run.

    As I’ve mentioned before, when porting Dark Heresy I eventually had to admit that I couldn’t make it quite that nice. I’ve tried my hardest to not make rules depend on other rules that depend on still other rules, but it’s still a big, sprawling, messy game set in a big, sprawling, messy world.

    For example, one thing that I struggled with in today’s session was constantly having to adjust the options available for fighting for the particular weapon the players were using. You see, my rules for ranged combat go like this:

    When you unleash the fire and fury, roll +Ballistic Skill. 10-14, 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. 15-19, choose 2 options. 20+, choose 2 option, and hold Righteous Fury.

    • You manage to disengage from melee and get onto at least a range of reach to the nearest enemy.
    • You hit a single enemy within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.
    • You inflict 1 damage on an enemy Horde within range of your weapon.
    • A single enemy who has you within range of their weapon does not hit you and inflict weapon damage on you.
    • An enemy Horde who has you within range of their weapons does not hit you and inflict weapon damage on you.
    • You are not forced to retreat or to take or stay in cover.
    • You cause a single enemy within range of your weapon to find or stay in cover.
    • You establish overwatch; the first single enemy within range of your weapon to leave cover (including to fire a shot of their own) takes 1d10 damage, reduced by Armour.
    • You do not need to reduce your Ammo by 1. This can not be chosen for an Ammo-S weapon.

    Examples: Firing a lasgun, throwing a knife, sniping from ambush.

    But when you’re wielding a weapon with the Blast tag (such as the frag grenades my players were flinging around), the following extra rules apply:

    When you unleash the fire and fury with a weapon with the blast tag, you may also choose the following options:

    • You inflict 1d10 damage on an enemy Horde within range of your weapon.
    • You hit every character in a group standing closely together (such as enemies engaged in melee, allies covering each other’s sides, etc) within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.

    However, when you unleash the fire and fury with a weapon with the blast tag, you may not choose the following options:

    • You hit a single enemy within range of your weapon and inflict weapon damage on them.
    • You cause a single enemy within range of your weapon to find or stay in cover.
    • You establish overwatch; the first single enemy within range of your weapon to leave cover (including to fire a shot of their own) takes 1d10 damage, reduced by Armour.

    So while I can normally just copy-paste in the list of a player’s options as they succeed at something, neat as you please… here I have to edit the whole thing on the fly every time (okay, so after the first time I guess I should have saved the edited list, but I didn’t think of that at the time). And there seems to be no easy solution to it, beyond writing up the full list of options for every single weapon in the book… and that seems a little much even for PbtA.

    And then there are all the things that players can do, which are adjusted when they take certain Advances, and the things they implicitly can’t do because there are other Advances that allow you to do those things… It’s a lot.

    I think maybe I should restructure the port into a more traditional format. Man, Warhammer 40,000 fights back hard against being PbtA-ified! Possibly it thinks that it’s heretical or something…

  • The Challenge System

    The Challenge System

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Starlight Dreams

    Starlight Dreams

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

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

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

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

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

    CHARACTER CREATION

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

    Choose your Identity:

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

    Choose your Calling:

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

    TASK RESOLUTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    FANCIES

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

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

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

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

  • Dark Heresy powerup

    Dark Heresy powerup

    Well, tying back to my thoughts from the last Dark Heresy game, me and the player talked about it after today’s session and it was agreed that the higher starting Characteristics would be a good idea, for many of the reasons I mentioned in that post. We’ll see next time how that works out, but I feel like it’s the right move.

    I did manage to write a bit on the Corruption rules this week in preparation for this session, too, so here is where they stand:

    CORRUPTION AND MUTATION

    Humanity is eternally under spiritual siege, the dark lore of Chaos threatening every second to find its way into each human’s soul. When it finds a vector, whether through unclean teachings or the direct touch of Warp entities, it threatens to remake the victim of the revelation into its twisted image. Whenever you encounter blasphemy or supernatural horrors, you gain some amount of Corruption Points. Whenever your Corruption Points equal or exceed 10, reduce them by the largest possible multiple of 10 (i.e., from 17 to 7, or from 23 to 3) and roll to battle for your very soul. This may cause you to advance your Damnation Track, which looks as follows:

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Mutation.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] Choose a Mutation.

    [ ] Choose a Malignancy.

    [ ] You permanently transform into a deranged Chaos Spawn under the GM’s control. Make a new character.

    Malignancies and Mutations are both permanent. Purity, once lost, is never regained.

    MALIGNANCIES

    • Wasted Frame. The flesh wither on your bones. Permanently reduce your Strength by 1.
    • Poor Health. Your breathing is laboured and your blood flows sluggishly. Permanently reduce your Toughness by 1.
    • Palsy. You suffer from constant tics and tremors. Permanently reduce your Agility by 1.
    • Dark-Hearted. You are filled unholy spite that you can never entirely hide from others. Permanently reduce your Fellowship by 1.
    • Morbid. Your critical thinking is constantly distracted by macabre fantasies. Permanently reduce your Intelligence by 1.
    • Malign Sight. Unclean voices whisper in your ears and nightmare visions dance in the corner of your eyes. Permanently reduce your Perception by 1.
    • Skin Affliction. You become plagued by boils, scabs and weeping sores. You are immediately noticeable and memorable. If you have or acquire the Unremarkable talent, it cancels out this Malignancy, making you recognisable to anyone who’s ever had a good look at you but not immediately noticeable in a crowd – you look terrible, but no more so than any dozen other diseased beggars. Without that talent, people stare at you in horror wherever you go and there is probably not as wretched a visage in the entire star system.
    • Night Eyes. Bright light hurts your eyes, forcing you to squint. This does not confer any sort of ability to see in the dark, so unless you have access to that from some other source, your vision is always impaired from either too much light or too little. Your visual acuity at the best of times is roughly equivalent to what it would be in darkness lit by a single candle, with all what that implies for your ability to spot things and discover people sneaking up on you.
    • Witch-Mark. You gain a cosmetic but highly obvious physical mutation, such as a small tentacle growing from your elbow or a third eye in the back of your neck. You must conceal the mutation at all cost or risk being executed for being a mutant.
    • Night Terrors. Like the Horrific Nightmares Disorder.
    • Strange Addiction. Like the Addiction Disorder, but instead of a normal drug, you are addicted to some strange substance, like rose petals or widows’ tears.
    • Ashen Taste. Food and drink tastes foul to you, and you can’t bring yourself to ingest more than absolutely necessary. As a result, you are perpetually weak with hunger. Whenever you achieve a result of 10-14 on a roll to refuse to fall, take -2 ongoing to further rolls to refuse to fall instead of -1 ongoing.
    • Irrational Nausea. Something entirely innocent causes you to feel sick at the sight of it. When you face your anathema, roll +Toughness. 9-, you become violently ill and must spend the next scene doing little more than puking your guts out. 10-14, you master your treacherous belly, but take -1 ongoing while you remain in the presence of the anathema. 15+, you manage to push down your bile. For a weakness, choose one of:
      • Flowers in bloom
      • Human laughter
      • Fresh food
      • Prayer books and holy items
      • Bare skin (other than faces and hands)
    • Blackouts. You suffer regular blackouts. As a GM move, the GM can declare that the consequences of something you have no recollection of doing suddenly catch up with you.
    • Hatred. You develop an irrational hatred for some group of people. This is not the sort of holy fury that the Imperium approves of; not only do you have no socially acceptable reason to hate the group, but instead of being strengthened by your hatred you loathe them so much that you can barely function when one of them is around. You take -1 ongoing to all Fellowship and Willpower rolls at such times. Choose one of the groups below:
      • Soldiers and warriors.
      • Priests and the deeply religious.
      • Scholars and bureaucrats.
      • Lawkeeper and authority figures.
      • Common labourers and the poor.
      • Tech-priests and technomancers.
      • Criminals and outlaws.
    • Bloodlust. When the battle frenzy is upon you, mere victory is not enough; you must see the light die in the foe’s eyes. If enemies flee from you, you must chase them by whatever available means is most efficient, even if that might catch you in a trap or if it pulls you away from your true objectives.
    • Distrustful. You cannot bring yourself to trust a stranger, and it makes interaction with them problematic. When making a Fellowship roll that involves strangers, treat any result of 10+ as a result of 10-14.
    • Self-Scarification. Like the Self-Mortification Disorder, except instead of wholesome religious flagellation your self-harm takes the form of carving elaborate occult symbols into your flesh with a blade.
    • Vivisector. You are driven to cut up living creatures and study their insides. While PETA has been disbanded for many thousands of years, this behaviour draws its share of ire. As a move, the GM can proclaim that you sliced up something you really shouldn’t, whether someone’s pet, a valuable prisoner, or a creature with a big, angry mate.

    As you can see, the Mutations are still missing, but since by these rules no one can get a Mutation before taking a whole lot of Malignancies, I still have some time to work on converting those.

    No work done on the GM Moves, though. I really do need to sit down with one. I feel like I’m getting better at bringing the grimdark (this session included stifling bureaucracy in the face of humanitarian crisis, misanthropic religious fanaticism, and a band of renegade plague victims, so I think I did okay), but I still don’t feel like I’ve done a very good job of codifying it.