Sunday 29 June 2014

Temporary hiatus has begun

For the handful of people who read this blog and don't already know: I'm currently moving house continent, and as such there is a bit of a hiatus in posts. I've been preoccupied with packing the last couple of weeks; I'm currently stowing boxes around my parents' house and spending time with family, which means very little time or energy for thinking about games or editing podcasts. I'll be flying out in a few days, and then starting school in a week's time. Both of these are likely to keep me busy.

I've still got a small buffer of podcasts to go up, but as I like to write accompanying thoughts they probably won't be up that soon. There are also about fifty part-written posts on various subjects, all of which I'd like to get back to, so there's no shortage of material there. Fingers crossed I will be back on the air in mid-July once I've settled down.

A secondary effect of the move is that I'll be essentially gameless on account of being on the opposite side of the planet from my gaming group, which even puts the kibosh on Skype games for the most part. This is likely to cut down on inspiration, although it should be an opportunity to work through that buffer, of course.

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 08

The Siege of Mersadie Hive was a custom scenario lovingly crafted by Arthur. As such, unless your GM is planning to borrow the scenario by hacking together what they hear on this episode and the notes on Arthur's blog, there's really no spoilers to worry about.

As always, be aware that the podcast is not really family-friendly, and features some background noise, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Link to Episode 08.

The Episode

"Ambient level of ork" is my new favourite phrase.

This is, possibly, the first of many occasions when I try to use Wrathful Descent when not fighting hordes. For some reason it just feels like it should work against everything, and I find the hordes-only thing really hard to remember.

I'm a bit sad we didn't see more of the weirdboy, because I'd have liked to see a bit more of how ork psychics work, but enemies really don't stick around much in the brutal combat system in play here. When they do - see diablodon - it generally means they're annoying.

The gargant navigation section was a little more detailed than you'll hear here. When we defeated the weirdboy and got to the two-way junction, Arthur actually outlined what the different sections looked and sounded like, giving some indication of what lay that way even without rolling skills. Unfortunately, just at that point the recorder was assailed both by someone rummaging through, selecting and opening a bag of crisps (hence the munching noises) and by a passing ambulance, and I felt it wasn't really salvageable. This was not a unique event, so we lost a couple of explanatory bits. Recently I've tried to get munchies into bowls instead, but this is an early recording. Also, I'm gaming in someone else house and we're there to game rather than to record, so getting all naggy about foodstuffs is more likely to put an end to recordings than increase the quality.

I was pretty pleased with Nikolai in this game. He doesn't exactly wreak havoc, but he does make a certain amount of mess, and more importantly he plays like I feel an assault marine should - taking point and getting in people's faces. Unfortunately, it's a pretty risky approach because most things that are formidable in melee are extremely nasty in melee. Here we see an excellent demonstration as Nikolai gets his head bashed in by an ork warboss who catches him off-guard. I really need to get used to the idea that advancing on any kind of boss other than with the utmost caution is likely to get you killed.

Monday 16 June 2014

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 07

The Siege of Mersadie Hive was a custom scenario lovingly crafted by Arthur. As such, unless your GM is planning to borrow the scenario by hacking together what they hear on this episode and the notes on Arthur's blog, there's really no spoilers to worry about.

As always, be aware that the podcast is not really family-friendly, and features some background noise, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Link to Episode 07.

The Episode

In this episode, Nikolai is very briefly awesome, but is undone by a NPC's Fate Point. Luckily, the librarian is around to annihilate the archon with Smite before she can gut him. In fairness, this would have happened whether or not the archon was stunned. Librarians are, as they say, sick OP... I still think the awesome counts.

As I've mentioned (interminably) before, I haven't had a huge amount of mechanical success with Nikolai. Ironically, in this episode he kicked a fair amount of ass by dint of several spectacular heavy bolter rolls. I'm pretty sure this is the most he's ever achieved in a combat. But then, heavy bolters are also sick OP.

I know the corrupt aristocracy plot is a bit of a 40K cliché, or indeed a general cliché, but I for one have no problem with tropes emerging in my genre games. That's kind of the point. While a game about the complex bonds of brotherhood between teenagers granted enormous power but condemned to expend it in eternal war, unfolding chiefly through social interactions between missions and the decisions made during a battle, and dealing with indoctrination, loss, humanity, compassion, and the trade-offs between preserving humanity and the ruthlessness demanded by the enemies they face, could probably be quite interesting, that isn't what I'm looking for when I sign up for Deathwatch. It's particularly true because it's a very specific setting, not some generic sci-fi game where there's more free reign.

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Monitors: side-effects of magic

So, next on the list is magical side-effects! As I've already discussed this, let's review my earlier thoughts.

Sticking with the whole d20 thing, I think I'm going to go for rolling on a d20 chart for effects. The rough breakdown will be 1-10 No Effect, 11-17 Trivial Effect, and 18-20 Substantial Effect. These aren't formal categories or anything, I just think that's about the right sort of balance. Depending what kinds of trivial effects I come up with, I might increase the range of those later. Depending how I implement things, I might have specific types of spell modify die rolls to try and get flavoursome effects. For example, if I have a sub-table of "Manifestations" then Call the Ashen Beast might well add to the result roll on that if a side-effect does occur.

What sorts of effects do I want? Let's try some examples, in some rough order of severity.

  • A chorus of voices whisper to the wizard.
  • Visions of a strange landscape flash before the wizard's eyes.
  • The acrid taste of bile fills the wizard's throat as the strange syllables of the spell are spoken.
  • Frost forms on nearby surfaces and a skin of ice over liquids.
  • Strange lines etch themselves into the wizard's skin, fading slowly over the coming days. They may carry some meaning or be simply disturbing.
  • The wizard feels watched, as though ancient and inscrutable eyes were drawn to them in the casting. (the GM might make a side-plot out of this)
  • A sinister and unearthly laugh echoes around the room.
  • A heady and somehow dangerous scent fills the air, sending senses reeling and leaving a lingering clue to the wizard's presence.
  • Metal objects resonate eerily to some unheard harmonic of the spell. Determine the volume of the resonance randomly.
  • Something seems to squirm and boil into life in the shadows, darting out of sight before you can focus on it. (the GM might use this minor entity or ignore it)
  • In their mind, the wizard can feel the heartbeat of every nearby creature. This ability is both useful and distracting; apply a +2/-2 modifier as appropriate. The ability fades after a short while.
  • Winds from some alien gulf wash over the wizard, sending dust dancing uncannily into strange and near-intelligible patterns.
  • Leaves wither and crackle, or burst into new and unexpected life.
  • A flash of witchfire traces wild patterns across the floor, leaving behind scorched trails.
  • A swarm of insects gathers around the focus of the spell, whirling and humming.
  • Intangible glittering motes twinkle into existence and float through the air, casting a faint and unearthly light. (these might give away the wizard's presence, provide light in a dark room, distract or alarm NPCs)
  • Ghostly figures and structures fade into view, intangible but haunting. (these might provide a distraction or cover)
  • Skirling spirits whirl and dance through the air around the wizard. (the GM might have these interact with nearby objects, distract creatures, attract attention or even pose a mild threat)
  • The spell does not fade away, but lingers on regardless of the wizard's wishes. Its effects continue for an additional 1d3 rounds, but otherwise remains in the wizard's control. (The GM determines whether this effect makes any sense in context).
  • The spell breaks free of the wizard's control. It fulfils the wizard's initial purpose, but has additional effects as determined by the GM. A summoned creature may be more self-willed than usual, but retains an amiable attitude to the wizard unless provoked; it cannot be dismissed. A concentration spell may linger for 1d3 additional rounds. The effects may be beneficial, problematic or neutral but should not be actively harmful, and should make sense in terms of the original spell.

Broadly speaking I've got effects that creep out the wizard; effects that are noticeable to other characters; effects that might have minor consequences for the wizard; effects that leave evidence and may distract characters; effects that might have notable consequences; and effects that twist the original purpose of the spell.

It's fairly easy to come up with the lower-tier ones (nosebleeds, smells, cosmetic changes, thoughts, emotions) but the more significant the effect, the more thought is required. I may need to brainstorm this one. Suggestions are welcome!

I am tempted to have one where the wizard is locked into the spell and unable to do anything until they break free, but not quite sure if that's still on the fun side of the line. What are your thoughts on this?

Most of the time, the effect should be fluff, albeit portentous fluff. I want a small proportion of mechanically-interesting effects, and a very small proportion of significant effects.

I also want to generally avoid effects that tend to make the spell effectively fail. Magic is intended to be unreliable, but I'm thinking more of a sense that it has peculiar side-effects or distorts your intentions, rather than that it might be a dud. If you're trying to summon a needle-soul to pin down the minds of potential observers, and instead you don't summon a needle-soul, this strikes me as not very interesting.

Also, having moved over to a dicepool system, and thought about this more, I think sticking with a dicepool for the magic roll makes sense too. This will be a very basic 2d6 unless I change my mind. It just allows for weighting in the effects, which I'm keen on here.

The idea that's creeping into my mind is to have side-effects work on an axis from what I'll call Influence to Manifestation. Let's see if it makes any sense.

Magical Axis

So you roll your 2d6. The idea I have is that if you roll very low, this (arbitrarily) corresponds to a strong Influence. If you roll very high, that corresponds to a strong Manifestation. If you roll a 7 nothing noteworthy happens. More moderate (more common) rolls produce lesser effects.

Influence

Influence would correspond to side-effects focused on the wizard. Some might be noticeable to others, many would be sensory or emotional effects. It would include such things as hallucinations, memory effects, and minor temporary transformations.

Manifestation

Manifestation would indicate side-effects that bleed into the external world, as the spell's energies leak through or the spell itself goes awry. They would include classic "haunted house" effects like writing or cold, as well as accidental minor summonings, or a spell that lingers longer than intended.

Does that work better than just a sliding scale of severity? Worse? About the same? Not sure. The second thing I'd like to do is to have thematic effects, so that certain types of spell are more likely to produce certain types of effect. It makes sense for a summoning problem to result in the summoned creature acting outside your intentions, or summoning the wrong creature. It makes sense for a telepathic spell to produce unwanted kinds of mental after-effect.

Suggested effects

Many of these side-effects have no specific mechanical consequence. Hopefully, players and GMs will take them as roleplaying cues and act on them, rather than shrugging them off as "nothing happens".

I say this partly because it's exactly what we often do with Deathwatch, which is probably a mistake - reacting to the horrors of the Warp is pretty good for establishing the setting, so when things start floating or dripping blood we should be invoking the Emperor and shuddering in brave, manly xenophobia. Especially now that Erec has an upgrade that turns most minor psychic phenomena into "weeping blood", we basically tend to go "just weeping blood, then" rather than reacting to the fact that hell-spawned blood is oozing from the walls.

  1. A chorus of voices whisper to the wizard.
  2. The wizard feels a great sense of loss, as though some poignant dream has slipped from their grasp forever.
  3. Visions of a strange landscape flash before the wizard's eyes.
  4. Fierce hatred or resentment courses through the wizard's mind.
  5. The acrid taste of bile fills the wizard's throat as the strange syllables of the spell are spoken.
  6. The wizard senses a hostile presence behind them or lurking in some nearby cover.
  7. The wizard feels watched, as though ancient and inscrutable eyes were drawn to them in the casting. (the GM might make a side-plot out of this)
  8. Coruscating clouds form across the wizard's eyes, casting everything they see in strange and opulent colours.
  9. Strange lines etch themselves into the wizard's skin, fading slowly over the coming days. They may carry some meaning or be simply disturbing.
  10. The wizard's hands harden into mineral for several seconds, slowly reverting to normal.
  11. As energy leeches from their body, the wizard appears haggard, even skeletal.
  12. A surge of magic lifts the wizard several inches into the air.
  13. A sinister and unearthly laugh echoes around the room.
  14. Frost forms on nearby surfaces and a skin of ice over liquids.
  15. A heady and somehow dangerous scent fills the air, sending senses reeling and leaving a lingering clue to the wizard's presence.
  16. Metal objects resonate eerily to some unheard harmonic of the spell. Determine the volume of the resonance randomly.
  17. In their mind, the wizard can feel the heartbeat of every nearby creature. This ability is both useful and distracting; apply a +2/-2 modifier as appropriate. The ability fades after one Tick.
  18. Something seems to squirm and boil into life in the shadows, darting out of sight before you can focus on it. The GM might use this minor entity or ignore it.
  19. Nearby electrical devices flicker and groan as their energies are disrupted. Very sensitive devices may malfunction or their programs reboot.
  20. Winds from some alien gulf wash over the wizard, sending dust dancing uncannily into strange and near-intelligible patterns.
  21. Leaves wither and crackle, or burst into new and unexpected life.
  22. The wizard is granted a moment's glimpse of the future. They may reroll once during the next game hour to represent this prescience.
  23. A flash of witchfire traces wild patterns across the floor, leaving behind scorched trails.
  24. All creatures within 30 feet receive a haunting vision. They gain a 1d3 Distracted die and will sleep badly for several nights, whispering as they stir and shift.
  25. A swarm of insects gathers around the focus of the spell, whirling and humming.
  26. Intangible glittering motes twinkle into existence and float through the air, casting a faint and unearthly light. These might give away the wizard's presence, provide light in a dark room, distract or alarm NPCs.
  27. Someone else within 30 feet receives a glimpse of the wizard's mind. They may learn intentions, emotions or the wizard's current preoccupations.
  28. Ghostly figures and structures fade into view, intangible but haunting. These might provide a distraction or cover.
  29. Unearthly calm spills through the minds of all nearby, stilling thoughts of hostility or strong emotions.
  30. Giddiness spreads from the wizard like a wave, leaving all creatures within 50 feet Pinned.
  31. A pulse of gravity threatens to knock everyone to their knees (Might 2 to resist). Small objects go flying.
  32. Skirling spirits whirl and dance through the air around the wizard. (the GM might have these interact with nearby objects, distract creatures, attract attention or even pose a mild threat)
  33. Time seems to slow down, as though the world were moving through treacle. Everyone can roll an extra die until the wizard's next turn, as they have extra time to think and prepare.
  34. The wizard flickers out of existence, only to rematerialise the following round unaware of their disappearance. They might travel a short distance or be facing the opposite direction, but should not generally teleport out of cells or into furnaces, chasms or hungry mouths.
  35. The spell does not fade away, but lingers on regardless of the wizard's wishes. Its effects continue for an additional 1d3 rounds, but otherwise remains in the wizard's control. (The GM determines whether this effect makes any sense in context).
  36. The spell breaks free of the wizard's control. It fulfils the wizard's initial purpose, but has additional effects as determined by the GM. A summoned creature may be more self-willed than usual, but retains an amiable attitude to the wizard unless provoked; it cannot be dismissed. A concentration spell may linger for 1d3 additional rounds. The effects may be beneficial, problematic or neutral but should not be actively harmful, and should make sense in terms of the original spell.

Possible severe effects when tracing runes:

  • The rune is weak and ineffectual, reducing its Difficulty by one step.
  • The rune is crooked, warping its effects. The GM should determine some alternative (and roughly equivalent) effect.
  • The rune is incomplete, and its power uncontained. The wizard gains a 1d3 Pain die.

Possible severe effects when tracing summoning:

  • The summoning was flawed, and the creature's bond to its maker remains unsevered. On each subsequent round, the wizard must roll Mind 3. On a failure, it will drain one additional heat point from the wizard and convert it to an additional Wound, point of Might or point of Speed.
  • A falter during the summoning distorted the intention and called forth the wrong creature. The wrong entity is summoned, although the substitute must be of a similar or lesser potency and remains loyal to the wizard.
  • Stumbling over the invocation, the wizard leaves her summons unbound. An unbound summons behaves as it wishes, though it is not initially hostile to the wizard.

As you know, I quite like self-generating systems. I'm wondering about a Side-Effect system that might preclude the need for charts like this, or at least help in generating a wide range of effects where these could be turned into examples. One the plus side, a procedural table could be less restrictive and not get samey; on the minus side, it puts the onus on the GM to generate the details, and might therefore end up being samey after all.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 06

The Siege of Mersadie Hive was a custom scenario lovingly crafted by Arthur. As such, unless your GM is planning to borrow the scenario by hacking together what they hear on this episode and the notes on Arthur's blog, there's really no spoilers to worry about.

As always, be aware that the podcast is not really family-friendly, and features some background noise, if that sort of thing bothers you.

It just occurred to me that my habit of putting links at the very bottom of the post is unfriendly to those who dislike spoilers. Sorry! I've moved this one and will try to remember in future.

The Episode

Link to Episode 06.

For more information on this and the remaining episodes, see Arthur's notes.

This episode offered more tactical goodness (with some tricky decisions) as well as juggling the conflicting demands of at least two problem situations - one immediate and serious, the other tentative, uncertain but potentially catastrophic.* I felt like we made the most interesting call here, and one justified by the circumstances. Marines would be keen to avert an internal disaster, but the orks were a known and obvious threat needing to be dealt with, more in line with their expertise than confronting possible corruption, and less liable to cause political complications. Allowing the situation to brew somewhat also left us with, I think, a more interesting set of encounters all round than we might have had by just blowing the top ten levels off the damn hive already - although I suppose a hive breach while we were distracted would also have been rich fodder.

*For those not entirely up on the Warhams setting, this aristocrats business was starting to look like a cult. Chaos cults are bad, in the way that reality-shredding rifts summoning endless hordes of mankind's worst fears incarnate to slaughter the entire populace of a world in a vast sacrifice that draws the favour of appalling powers and dooms the world to eternally languish in the neverspace of a nightmarish other-realm of ever-shifting and dreadful reality beneath the laughter of the thirsting gods is bad. In exactly that way.

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 05

The Siege of Mersadie Hive was a custom scenario lovingly crafted by Arthur. As such, unless your GM is planning to borrow the scenario by hacking together what they hear on this episode and the notes on Arthur's blog, there's really no spoilers to worry about.

As always, be aware that the podcast is not really family-friendly, and features some background noise, if that sort of thing bothers you.

The Episode

There are two links today, because one entire play session happened in between episodes 4 and 5. I can't remember whether this occasion was due to me just forgetting the recorder, or the batteries being unexpectedly dead. It's tragic, because we lost a very enjoyable episode full of Underhive frolics and hot scout-on-ork action. I decided to record a brief summary of the session's events so that later references would make sense, but mostly just so any keen listeners out there wouldn't miss out entirely. For more on this session, see Refereeing and Reflection.

Incidentally, if there are any keen listeners out there, do say! As far as I know the only people listening to these also took part, which is a teensy bit demoralising.

There's been quite a bit of planning and strategising during this game, which I very much enjoyed, but possibly isn't fascinating listening if you weren't part of it? Hard to tell. Here it starts to pay off, as the actual fighting starts and we try to come up with clever ways to massacre aliens. This isn't the first thing that comes to mind with 40K games, but is actually quite in keeping with those parts of the source material that are more about strategy than skirmish tactics. Following experiences fighting tyranids, and bearing in mind that we're fighting several thousand orks at a time as part of a huge war front, a lot of this involves using resources at our disposal to direct the battle, rather than immediate personal intervention, but I'm fine with doing that sometimes. It's fitting for space marines not just to be all about bolt shells to the face; they're masters of war, not just competent killers.

Link to Episode 04b.

Link to Episode 05.

Reviewish: The Menace from Sumatra

It's been a while since I managed a review. This one is critical but still broadly optimistic. It's the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Menace from Sumatra from Dark Designs.

The review is up on my YSDC blog here.

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Salience of challenge types

So yesterday, Dan finally succumbed to my pestering and ran an alpha playtest of Parkour Murder Simulator From the Shadows for us, because I really wanted to try it before fleeing the continent. And much fun was had.

A recording is in the bag and will hopefully turn into a podcast over the next few months; I have a bit of a backlog, and what with liking to comment on episodes and not wanting to run short of stuff, even if I get the editing done this week it'll still be a good while before it surfaces.

Anyway, something that came up during play and we discussed at the end was the role of magical obstacles. To explain a bit, we'd decided to test the game out using the classic assassin-prostitute trope beloved of fantasy, and devised a death cult within an order of temple prostitutes. So magic was definitely a thing, and I took my character specifically in that direction: I invented a part-dragon called Elspeth Salamander* and ran with the hacker thing, making a sorcerous hacker/investigation/security fixer archetype who would be able to magically overcome obstacles, break through wards, scry out secrets and so on, as well as kicking people in the face and vaulting small buildings. It's worth emphasising that all PCs are automatically well ninje, so character definition specifically establishes what your flavour of ninje and role in the team is.

*For which The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo is probably to blame. No, that isn't a typo.

Although we played in a fantasy setting, we didn't actually run into any pre-existing magic. When we got into the mark's house, I actually ended up specifying that I would scan for and disable the wards in his private chambers, flipping them to keep the guards out rather than to trigger when we attacked - essentially creating an obstacle for myself to disarm. As far as I know that was the only lot of actual magic in the game (Dan may have devised more that didn't come up). Your skills are defined by the kind of obstacles they tackle, not by the kind of thing you do, so unless skill-appropriate obstacles are present, a skill is not relevant.

This is absolutely not a criticism of Dan. Running first games is hard, running a game you're writing and that partly exists only in your head must be even harder, and keeping track of exactly what abilities PCs took is a lot on top of that. It's also very much the kind of game where players create most of the gameworld - there's world creation phases, plus some very fun flashback mechanics where you add elements that your character researched or scouted out earlier, and I took extensive advantage of this. It felt very natural for me to suggest obstacles to my own goals, so this was just one more occasion.

The aspect of this that I actually thought was postworthy is the relative salience and organicness of different types of obstacles.

Physical obstacles are very very intuitive. We automatically think about them when considering the difficulty of doing something in real life. Stretching that consideration to cover imagined situations is very little effort. At the most basic level,** if you want to get inside a building, there are walls and things in the way, and we have to consider how easy it is for us personally to enter through the door - are we just allowed in?, is the door locked?, do we have a key?, and so on. Distance is another obvious obstacle. We assume that important buildings will have guards and locks, and that valuables will be stored in safes. Patrols must be hidden from, and noises not made.

**I massively overuse this phrase.

Social obstacles are also an ingrained assumption, because they are again a very real day-to-day issue. If we're playing beggars, we don't tend to assume that they can go and talk to the king. If we want information about an NPC's habits, we assume it will take effort to get that information out of their servants or business contacts. We assume that guards must be distracted or charmed, and that planting useful lies requires some skill. These parallel the real-life difficulties of negotiating with colleagues, asking favours, booking appointments and so on.

In a modern-day or sci-fi setting, we tend to bear technological obstacles in mind, though maybe a bit less automatically than physical or social ones. Surveillance devices, alarms, firewalls and passwords are easy enough to slip in. We're familiar with the sorts of places these appear, both in real life and from fiction, so I think these feel natural. It would seem strange if the bank vault didn't have security cameras, or there was no hacking protection on the EvilCorp servers.

In contrast, I think that even in a highly fantastical setting, it's quite easy not to think about general supernatural obstacles. Magic can very easily exist only in the form of monsters and of specific spells used by wizards during combat encounters. This reminds me somewhat of my posts about magical castle defences. Essentially I think the difference is that we don't deal with magic in real life, so aren't used to thinking about it as a systematic, holistic thing.

This isn't necessarily a problem. In some circumstances, as in our game above, it can mean that some skillsets don't get much airtime. I partly noticed this because I repeatedly realised that some social skills would have been useful in the things I wanted to do, whereas there weren't obvious obstacles to test my sorcerous mettle against. What tended to happen was that I'd actively think up magical things to do to further our agenda, often in the form of research; however, the more defensive uses of my abilities were always on social (not giving the game away) or physical (hiding, fighting) skills. While I didn't suffer in practice, this could have disadvantaged my character compared to those focused on those skillsets, and is definitely something worth attention during game design. Dan mentioned having ideas for slot-in defenses that could have been occult wards in this case, and something like that seems promising.

It occurs to me I write quite a few posts about ways in which my characters are disadvantaged, which I think says something about the kinds of characters I tend to make...