Trappery, part nine: unintended traps

Way back in my first Trappery post, I briefly mentioned the idea of accidental traps: things that aren't supposed to be traps, but nevertheless present a danger to PCs that corresponds very closely to traditional traps. I've got a few free minutes and don't feel like writing anything too brain-intensive right now, so I thought I might muse on that for a while. I'm going to start by looking at entirely unintentional traps. These are things that not only aren't designed as traps, but aren't even perceived as hazards. I suggested "showers designed for acid-based beings that find any world with liquid water uncomfortably chilly" and "persistent spells for healing treants that have disastrous effects on human anatomy" before, and that seems like a good place to start. In-game, you're probably going to be looking at non-human things that threaten humans, but I think it might be easier to spot potential hazards by flipping it. What ordinary, everyday, harmless features of human life would be perceived as deadly hazards by hypothetical alien PCs?

Meta: Christmas rush?

I got a faint shock today when I opened Blogger.

Got to say, I'm mildly curious about the sudden rush of visitors (hey, in my world 30+ pageviews is a rush). I'm guessing some are Yoggies lured here by my tome-based posts, but then those don't seem especially inundated with pageviews. I'm be interested to know, if anyone cares to comment.

Tomefoolery, part three: books that read back

Part of a continuing series of uncertain length on Tomes of Unspeakable Evil and the PCs who love them. So far I've blathered about how people get their hands on such books in the first place, and the effects of their dreadful contents on tiny human minds. But sometimes it's not about what you do to evil books, but about what the evil books do to you.

Vampirism

This was the stage where I got drawn into AncientHistory's thread that started all this waffling. They suggested that an evil book would need arcane abilities, so it wasn't merely a lump of paper vulnerable to all the usual things. The one that really struck me was the idea of a vampiric book that feeds on the reader. Cool. The book would draw power from its readers to fuel whatever abilities it had. AH didn't flesh out the mechanics much, but you could model this either as being solely reliant on readers to be anything more than a bundle of paper, or as providing extra power for the nastiest of its abilities while still being a dangerous occult entity at all times. I'll get into that later.

Call of Cthulhu

As we were talking Call of Cthulhu, there seemed to be several types of vampirism available. Each will play out in a different way during games, and they'll work differently depending on whether the book's intended for PC or NPC use, and what sort of timescale you expect it to operate on.

AH's suggestion was POW drain, which is immediately nasty: POW is a crucial resource for, primarily, not going mad, but also for resisting spells (or even casting them). A character drained of POW will get progressively more suggestible, more vulnerable to insanity, and eventually become a puppet of the book, I imagine. You could model POW drain either as an ongoing thing, with an absolute cap, or with a limited rate of drain. For long-term use, a cap would allow the book to be used by Investigators throughout a campaign without crippling them; on the other hand, the crippling bargain they strike with the tome could be a key aspect of the campaign. For a shorter plot, or if it's mostly used by NPCs, the book might drain POW more rapidly and quickly turn readers into mindless drones.

A character losing POW to a book is going to feel its effects immediately, and depending on the loss, it may be obvious to others as well. In metagame terms, it's also likely to alert the players that they're messing with something very nasty, for two reasons. One is simply that books don't usually cost POW, and you can't really reduce their stats without telling them (it's practically difficult even if they'd be okay with it).

I put forward two other options: Magic Point drain and SAN drain.

Magic Point drain

MPs are a very different kettle of fish, because you regenerate MP. MP drain is an insidious threat. It would depend on the rate of drain, but it's likely to manifest as unusual tiredness, with a risk of passing out during intensive reading. The reason it's more insidious is that it's a small and even negligible up-front cost, with little immediate impact on the reader's abilities. This means that in metagame terms, it's tempting to keep reading, to go and consult the evil tome just one more time because it'll make this investigation so much easier... a slow-drip bargain that allows the book to gradually build up considerable power, while each "transaction" doesn't feel like much of a price. It's also less obvious to players that something dangerous is happening, whereas having POW drained is the sort of thing that gets people's attention; and it's a marker of very sinister activities. It would be entirely feasible to keep the players ignorant of exactly what's happening, track the MP accumulation yourself, and just report any exhaustion or fainting to the players.

In character, the effects of the drain are much less obvious than POW, so even if players are aware, the characters could plausibly ignore what's going on until the book starts actually doing something with its accumulated power. It can prey on the same people for a long time, getting them used to 'bargaining' with it and feeding off their power to gradually achieve some plot or other, especially if you have a nice long campaign planned. Again, the seeming innocuousness of the drain could persuade characters to keep using the book even if they're aware of what's going on, because it doesn't necessarily feel like anything that bad is happening. Only when the book's accumulated a lot of power do they start to realise what a bad idea it's been.

Bizarrely, I'm inspired in this by Pontius Glaw from Warhammer 40,000 - a mad Chaos-worshipper whose imprisoned soul the protagonists become reliant on as a source of information, and by bargaining for each titbit, it gradually builds up enough resources to escape.

SANivory

Feeding a book from the SAN cost it causes is more actively malevolent - the book feeds on the madness it creates, effectively. Though there are some similarities to POWvory, SANivory isn't likely to directly turn the readers into its servants, but simply drives them insane. It wants a constant source of new readers to torment, but once it's fed on them they're safe from further predations, at least in the normal rules. You could accept the initial 'price' but then the book would be effectively unable to feed on you any longer, and can be kept prisoner for consultation at your leisure. For a tome of immense power, that doesn't seem quite appropriate to me.

In this case, you might want to change the normal tome-reading rules. Perhaps it's so malevolent that each consultation costs a point of SAN even after the initial reading, just from forcing yourself to deny common sense and morality by reading the accursed thing. With this model, there's the slow drip-drip of power gained as in the MP approach, while players pay a cost that might seem low in the first place, but gradually builds up; and as their SAN drops they probably fall further under the book's influence. That doesn't necessarily mean becoming its servants, but it'd be natural for any insanities they accumulate to be vaguely aligned with the book's goals or contents.

You could also change the book's approach. Maybe it uses its power to ensure it passes from hand to hand, spreading madness and gaining power. This might be through mental manipulation, by creating cults that read it, or more directly by moving from library to library, either by physical movement or by 'possessing' other books. Again, I'll think about that later.

Other feeding

Of course, there's no reason a book needs to restrict itself to mental predations. Characters have a whole array of delicious stats to devour! A book might be able to feed on a range of them, perhaps for different purposes. If we're assigning the book some special abilities, rather than generic malevolence, then it might even gain stats by stealing them from others. These wouldn't tie into magic abilities in the way POW or MP might, but they're still fun.

An ancient tome might easily feast on the INT or EDU of readers to gain knowledge of the era around it. As readers find it increasingly difficult to reason and become forgetful, the book can exploit its new-found intellect to weave elaborate schemes. For an artful touch, perhaps the book actually gains new content as it feeds: previously-blank pages are gradually filled with shaky handwriting, or the book simply becomes fatter...

There's also the familiar idea of the occult scholar, pale and gaunt and over-aged from years of esoteric studies. Perhaps there's a more sinister reason for that physical condition than simple overwork and lack of sunlight. A book might feed, not only on mental energies, but on the very life of its readers.

If it drains CON from a victim, a book could become more resilient to all manner of damage (treating it as armour), or repair itself (think of The Mummy). Stolen STR might not be used in the same way as an animal would use it, but could allow it to exert physical force on the world - moving itself around, breaking out of locked cabinets, or used as part of a spell to attack, such as with telekinetic powers. DEX would help it to react quickly, and perhaps govern the manoeuvrability or speed of a flying book. APP is a natural way of making a book persuasive and domineering, increasing its influence over the weak-minded, and perhaps affecting the tone of its contents to be more appealing to readers.

Spell theft

Another arcane option would be for the Mythosier sort of TOUE to borrow, learn or even steal spells from a reader. In Cthulhu spells are a double-edged sword anyway, so working out how punishing those options are is going to depend on the situation and the spells in question. 'Borrowing' is probably more suitable to other systems, but a Cthulhu tome could easily acquire new spells from the brain of a reader. 'Learning' would mean simply gaining access to the spell, and perhaps adding it to its own contents. 'Stealing' would mean leaching it from the reader's brain entirely. Actually, this mechanism might be useful for non-TOUE artefacts, and could even be included as a fairly benevolent ability that helps protect people by trapping Mythos knowledge and cleansing minds of Mythos horror.

For any of these, the TOUE could simply gain the spell (or a random spell, or even all spells) automatically, or it could have to make its own spell-learning roll in the same was as Investigators do. There could also be an opposed roll to prevent the book from accessing the Investigator's arcane knowledge.

Other systems

Outside Call of Cthulhu, similar policies would apply, tweaked for the stats in use.

D20 systems

D20 games are familiar with the idea of ability loss, though in D&D at least it's typically fairly easy to restore even 'permanent' drain with 4th-level spells. This makes the cost of consulting TOUE pretty negligible. As such, you might have to model this in a different way, perhaps having an opposed caster level check to overcome the book's baleful influence before the spells work.

Most of the stats in question would work the same way as in Cthulhu, though mental stats could pose extra complications because of their importance in spellcasting. This could make psychic vampirism a no-go because spellcasters would quickly lose access to higher-level spells.

One possible option would be to vary the book's effects based on the reader: a magically-inclined reader might learn valuable secrets from the mystical contents of the book, but find it physically draining; a warrior or rogue might find it mentally exhausting to read. You could also use the fatigue and exhaustion rules, though these are also easily negated, and some characters are immune anyway.

The D&D supplements Heroes of Horror and Ravenloft introduce some handy rules for Corruption (physical perversion), Depravity (mental perversion) and Madness (mental breakdown). Some combination of these could be used as an alternative way to model the effects of TOUE and similar influences in D20 systems, if you don't mind imposing some significant changes on the party. They could be reversible, if you're feeling kind. In the right game, certainly, players could have fun trying to conceal their claw-like hands, red eyes or twisted bones from NPCs. Or reigning in their behavioural issues.

These effects might be a long-term, slow-building consequence of constant exposure to the book, perhaps voluntary, and calling for significant roleplaying. Alternatively, they could be a fairly short-lived and pulpy issue if the book is more of a short-term plot element and you don't want to dwell too much on the Price of Power and all that jazz.

Skill points could also be at risk of vampirism. Maybe the book's own skills depend largely on its readers, and it can steal a point from a random skill each time it's read, adding it to its own skill. However, this kind of vampirism may be harder to explain and justify in-game ("I just... forgot how to pick locks?"), whereas sapping life force is pretty straightforward.

Spell vampirism I've touched on already. In systems with Vancian spellcasting, it'd be fairly simple to implement 'spell borrowing', where a book gains a single use of a spell from the reader. This might be a straight gain, or it might take that use from the reader, as though they'd cast it themselves. Spell learning is also pretty simple here, but spell theft would be trickier, especially for classes like sorcerers who can't freely learn new spells.

A similar process could be applied to more esoteric special abilities. Imagine that the book's simply absorbing knowledge and experience from its reader. Bard? Hey, it gained fascinate. Rogue? Oops, now you've got a malevolent book with +3d6 backstab damage. If you're feeling cruel, the book could steal an ability from each reader, and retain it until it's destroyed.

General options

In a combat-oriented game where balance and stats are vital, and given the ease of overcoming most penalties, it might be easier not to apply the same kind of vampirism. Perhaps you simply add to a notional 'mana pool' whenever the book has the chance to affect someone.

In a similar way, you could tap other replenishable resources than Magic Points. These could include Hit Points - perhaps building up the book's own pool of health - as well as luck in games where it's a separate resource. But vampirism doesn't need to directly relate reader stats to book stats. A TOUE could perfectly well drain life energy and gain magic points, or turn any drained stat into a boost to any of its own stats.

Depending on the genre, the tone you're going for and the intended length of the TOUE plotline, you may want to have resistance rolls of some kind. If PCs have to regularly consult the book, and you're using a per-consultation drain, or if they slowly suffer effects as long as the book's in their possession, you could wear them out quickly. Also, it may be more interesting if some PCs are more vulnerable to the effects than others. On the other hand, if you're using one-off drains, this probably isn't necessary. For a short, snappy campaign, a heavier drain but with resistance rolls may be more appropriate to give it a dramatic edge.

Another possibility, slightly more arcane, is having the book exert a general 'baleful influence' that effectively produces bad luck. In some systems, there are actual Luck or Fate mechanics you could use: Cthulhu characters could suffer penalties to their Luck, Savage Worlds characters could lose bennies or have penalties to benny-based rolls, D&D has luck modifiers to die rolls. Rerolls might be limited or disallowed, or challenge thresholds increased. Die pools could be reduced whenever it seems appropriate.

Generally, I'd suggest that vampirism relate to the importance of the TOUE in the campaign, and potentially to the value of the book. It's going to depend on what sort of plot you're looking at, though. If the whole basis of the campaign is the existence of a dangerous vampiric tome, then it doesn't need to have much long-term benefit to readers, especially if it's in the hands of NPCs rather than PCs. Such a tome can simply be a baleful presence that saps the life and minds of those foolish enough to read it. On the other hand, if it's intended as a two-edged resource the PCs can use at a price, then there needs to be at least a belief on their part that it's worth keeping and reading.

Narrative vampirism

So what do the effects of vampirism look like? This is important, particularly if players won't necessarily be aware of what's happening on a metagame level.

Again, how things get described will depend on what you're doing. If the book's nature is a mystery plot point, then you may not want to make the link between reading (or being near the book) and feeling strange very obvious. However, if it's supposed to be obvious, or the players are making costly trade-offs, then emphasising their condition is more important.

Various types of drain might end up displaying some of these effects:

• Feeling tired and short of breath
• Aching muscles, as though you've been doing physical labour
• Trembling hands, legs or eyelids
• Pins and needles, or numbness
• Headrush, dizziness or a sense of being off-balance
• Nausea, or gnawing hunger
• A heavy, leaden feeling to your movements, or clumsiness
• Weakness, or discomfort when doing physically-demanding things
• Loss of coordination, tendency to drop things, spill drinks
• Slow reactions, spacing out ('brown study')
• Headrush, dizziness or a sense of being off-balance
• Blurry vision, difficulty focusing
• Slow reactions
• Dry or flaking skin
• Paleness
• Low temperature
• High temperature
• Distractedness, sense of unease, lose train of thought
• Sensitivity to light or noise
• Regular 'tip-of-the-tongue' feeling when trying to think
• Indecisiveness, impulsiveness
• Feeling low, dull, uninspired or stupid
• Nervousness, loss of confidence, stumbling speech, embarrassment, self-consciousness
• Insensitivity, obliviousness

Luck is a bit more subtle and would need to be genre- and context-appropriate: in terms of descriptive effect, it could include finding hairs in your food, bumping into people while tracking a suspect, finding the lights always against you, pens running out or leaking, never having the right change, struggling to get a taxi or a room, or equipment malfunctioning.

#7 #6RPGs

Arthur has just drawn my attention to the 7rpgs and #7rpgsrun thing, which seems mildly interesting.

Sadly, my own lists don't even hit seven in total.

Most Played:
1) Neverwinter Nights as a DM'd system for D&D 3.5
=2) Call of Cthulhu, Deathwatch
=4) After Sundown, Monstertown, Dying Earth

Most Run:
1) D&D 4E
2) Call of Cthulhu
3) D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder
4) Hellcats & Hockeysticks

It's worth noting that's a lot less gaming than it may look like. Neverwinter Nights has probably had, oh, thirty sessions over the last couple of years. The joint second Most Played tabletop games reach, I think, five sessions apiece. The others got a single session of play. For what it's worth, After Sundown was a playtest with some mates, and Monstertown was an ad-hoc test of a work-in-progress. So I can't really count any of those as games I've really got the measure of; in fact it seems a bit cheeky including them at all.

Meanwhile, I've run not quite an entire 4E D&D module, three Call of Cthulhu scenarios and two in PF/3.5, and playtested H&H once. So it's not like I stick rigidly to a couple of old favourites, I just haven't actually done much gaming.

The dearth of games isn't for want of interest, as the fact that I have two gaming blogs might suggest. A mixture of major scheduling problems, extreme busyness, players moving away and health problems has ended both the D&D campaigns, and put two ongoing Cthulhu games on indefinite hiatus. Deathwatch is technically still underway, though. Thankfully, NWN has provided a reasonably steady dose of gaming, with a nice mix of modules, though it's not quite the same as tabletop.

I'm hoping that next year things will even out, though as I'm likely to be looking for a new job, it may be a forlorn hope. I'm still quite invested in the Cthulhu campaign I'd started, I want to see how Dan's Cthulhu game ends up, there's a lot of orks in need of the Emperor's wrath, and there's so much stuff out there I haven't even tried...

I might have to see if we can get something cheerful and light-hearted going. Between Cthulhu, Deathwatch and some slightly downbeat Pathfinder it's been a little bit grim in tone. Lots of comedy moments along the way, of course, but something deliberately optimistic and brightly coloured might be fun, if I can think of anything...

Inspirations: the Sands of Time, part one

I’ve recently been playing Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time. While I had a distinctly mixed reaction to it, I enjoyed the ambience and style of the game, and I thought it had a very intriguing main gimmick. With that in mind, I started wondering if you could introduce something similar in an RPG context, and how. Obviously, such a project should be attempted in public, for maximum potential humiliating failure.

This idea is, of course, completely unoriginal: it’s inspired by both Shannon’s Game Translation series, which discusses ways to bring narrative and stylistic elements of computer games to your tabletop, and Dan’s Reimaginings series, which is also inspired by Shannon but takes a more mechanical approach. I really enjoy both of these and am a shameless copycat. This project will probably end up falling somewhere in the middle: apart from anything else, I don’t have Dan’s knowledge of game mechanics, nor Shannon’s experience of GMing. At the same time, I’m not strictly trying to create POPSOT The RPG, I’m just seeing if there’s something fun I could hack out from the ideas and feel of that game.

A brief summary of POPSOT for those who haven't played it (oh, and spoiler warning for ten-year-old game). The eponymous prince's father's army invades an Indian city with the help of a treacherous vizier, promising to give him his pick of the treasure within. The prince runs off alone to loot the vaults, seeking glory. He loots the fabled Dagger of Time and finds a magical hourglass alongside it. The company return to camp, where the prince is praised and the vizier immediately cheated, denied both the Dagger and the Hourglass despite the earlier promise. They journey to Azad in Persia to show off their loot to the king's old friend, and cunningly get the vizier to demonstrate the power of the Sands of Time. Astonishingly, he betrays them and transforms the palace into a broken, twisted mockery, while all its inhabitants are mutated into bizarre sand-monsters. The prince, a captured Indian princess and the vizier alone are spared, each protected by an artefact: the Dagger, an amulet and a staff respectively. The prince flees without giving up the dagger, fighting through a horde of sand-monsters, while the vizier has the hourglass transported to a preposterously high sinister tower. For the rest of the game, the prince and the princess make their way through the palace ruins and environs with a mixture of acrobatics, puzzle-solving and combat. The Dagger of Time has the power to finish off wounded enemies by draining the sand from them, and can use the captured energy to rewind time briefly, to freeze enemies in time, or to slow time. Eventually he reclaims the hourglass, and travels back in time to prevent the whole business.

It looks like this:

Let's have a quick look at some major elements of POPSOT, which I think can be broken down into gameplay:

• Climbing, swinging, jumping and running on things
• Defeating waves of enemies through tactical combat
• Rewinding time to negate setbacks
• Highly discrete chunks of gameplay
• Quantitiative health tracking

and stylistic elements:

• Prodigious (but not superhuman) athletic, martial and acrobatic feats
• Interpreting your environment as a series of challenges
• A linear narrative that links puzzles
• Heroic struggles against sinister forces

In the game itself, these fit together to produce a cinematic puzzle-platformer. Limiting you to human athletic potential, or introducing exhaustion, or specific injuries, or long-lasting injury, would just get in the way, and so you’re a tireless acrobat who’s fully refreshed by a long drink. The combat is really another obstacle to be overcome, and needs to be flashy and stylish to fit the exaggerated style of the game. Checkpointing makes sense (to some extent, at least) because each section is a discrete puzzle with absolutely no relation to the next, and having you fully healed means you’re starting each puzzle from scratch.

General issues

Handily, some of these are easily adapted into RPGs. Hit Point-style health mechanics are widespread, poetic licence for physical feats is common, and pretty much everything has time-travel nowadays.

Wait, that's not right.

Okay, so the time-travel bit is going to require some work. I'd also say the checkpointing isn't really an issue here, since tabletop RPGs don't do saving. The platform-heavy feel of the game is a gameplay style issue rather than a mechanical one. Another point is that we're probably not looking at a strict puzzle-solving exercise, since that sounds fairly boring to me, to be honest.

A faithful replication would also involve over-long, repetitive brawls against groups of the same four enemy types, relying on timely deployment of specific instakill attacks against each enemy type. I'd rather not have any boring elements. Matching attacks against appropriate opponents might be an interesting mechanic, but grinding has to go. I'll also say no to enemies spawning behind you from thin air, and to unlimited perfect teleportation for all enemies; neither felt remotely justified, both were irritating, and both restricted your options for interesting play by making movement and terrain irrelevant.

There are some other issues in terms of turning the existing story into an RPG session. As it stands, it would have to be extremely railroady, because I really can't see the players - knowing full-well it's an RPG, and being familiar with widespread tropes - agreeing to take instructions from a totally trustworthy vizier who betrayed his sworn liege to you for the sake of getting a powerful magic artefact that you're now refusing to hand over on the grounds that you nicked it first. In any case, it would be quite easy to derail the storyline purely by accident because the players did something unexpected. For example, they could end up without the Dagger of Time to protect them from the Sands of Time, bringing the whole thing to an unfortunate and early conclusion. So a new storyline background and plot hooks would be needed to set up the premise.

There's also the complication of adapting the story for multiple players. In the original, the prince can fight back because he's the one who picked up the Dagger, but you'd need to somehow equip your whole party with the means to survive and use the Sands of Time, preferably without seeming so contrived that the players actually revolt. Now that's not necessarily a problem, but it might mean changing the way the story develops. Another option would be to steal the basic ideas of the game but swap in a different plot entirely, so long as it gives some basis for the PCs and nobody else to have Time-Faffing powers.

Tabletop conversion

So, how to model the important aspects in an RPG? From a gameplay perspective, I think the time travel is a bit secondary. It needs careful consideration, sure, but it's something to implement rather than a key feature, if I'm interested in a game that feels a bit like POPSOT. The most important aspect is the tone and feel of the game, which basically boils down to "heroic badassery". Okay, from a strictly accurate point of view, the Prince of Persia in the game could be rather more heroic with less of the unprovoked invasion, pillaging and kidnapping. But you're setting out mostly alone against a numberless horde of sand-monsters, a vast array of traps and a massively dangerous landscape, in order to prevent the evil plans of an evil wizard, so it still counts. To retain that feel, the protagonists need to be basically in the right, and any moral quandaries or grey areas that arise need to not interfere with the main "good vs. evil" dichotomy.

In badassery terms, the prince doesn't have any kind of levelling curve to worry about, or slowly rise from being a weakling with a rusty dagger to being a terrifying avatar of death. Pretty much the first thing you do in game is wipe the floor with a group of four armed warriors, with a shiny array of parries, thrusts, reposites and dodges that involves attacking in several directions at once, rebounding from walls, and running right up people before vaulting over their heads and running them through. On the other hand, it doesn't really get any better from there, until the actual finale where you simply obliterate enemies with a new magic sword. In a straight replication of the game, we'd be looking at a non-progressive system, or at least a system where no meaningful progression took place over the course of the adventure. I think this fundamentally boils down to "don't start at 1st level". In a system without meaningful levels, like BRP, this won't be an issue, but if I wanted to try this as a Pathfinder game, we'd need to be talking about picking PC and enemy levels where PCs can regularly take on multiple opponents at once.

The other major aspect of the game is its narrative and atmosphere. There's a fairly strong Persianesque aesthetic to the game, and a rigidly linear plotline that serves to lead you from one puzzle to the next. However, neither of these is necessary for tabletop play.

There's also a mystical tone to the setting, with magical relics, fabulous technology, and the vizier having limited magical powers; but there's no actual spellcasting and magic plays no direct part in the game at all.

So roughly what we're looking for in Time Faffers is:

• A heroic, cinematic feel
• Protagonists that start out already awesome, with little levelling
• Navigation and pathfinding as a significant part of the game's challenge, including some puzzle elements
• Time-faffing abilities

Another practical issue is the game setting. While it's not essential to retain the Persian setting, I think we probably do want Time Faffers to be quite a lot like the setting of Sands of Time, for a few reasons. One is that modern technology would offer new transport options that overcome navigation puzzles: if you can get to a vehicle or call a helicopter, things look a lot easier. Communications technology allows you to call for help, or for enemies to monitor you and keep in contact.

Also, firearms complicate matters in dealing with sand-monsters. For one thing, if you can fight effectively at range, you just hunker down and blast away, or pick them off at long range. I'd be happy with that as an occasional option, but I don't want it to be the main playstyle, because it sounds boring. It also makes it more difficult to implement sand-gathering, which in POPSOT involves downing an enemy and then draining the magic out of them with your knife; you can't do that at long range. Obviously, though, the mechanic could be changed. Or players could take down enemies with suppressing fire, then rush in to drain them, I suppose?

To me, though, keeping it as a mostly melee-based game just feels more appropriate to the heroic, athletic style. It also handily means not worrying about ammunition, firearms in melee, reloading or firing into combat. At the same time, it means PCs won't face enemies with firearms either, so it's only people who can reach them they need to worry about. This should allow a fairly loose playstyle, where it's not that important how long activities take, or whether you'd technically be visible to some distant guards, and where athletic PCs can readily evade lumbering monsters simply by getting out of reach. Finally, it should mean I can do some interesting things with time-faffing in combat, which is easier to justify if you can physically reach enemies to affect them.

If we're looking for an athletic sort of game, there's a potential pitfall in creating physical challenges for them. How much planning is needed to create the appropriate level of detail, where they'll face problems in negotiating the terrain and seek solutions to them? In the game itself, you're frequently looking at quite complex puzzles, involving Wall-of-Deathing along some wall before pushing off it into empty space to grab a swinging rope to reach a beam you can walk along to rebound your way up a stone chimney. For tabletop, I'll need to think about the appropriate level of abstraction. This could effect the choice of game system, as well as being a headache for GMing.

Next time I'll start looking at implementation.

Tomefoolery, part two: the price of knowledge

In which I continue to plagiarise be inspired by AncientHistory at YSDC to discuss Tomes of Unspeakable Evil.

The Price of Knowledge

So, you've got your evil tome. You may or may not be aware of its true diabolical nature, or even the occult secrets it contains. Maybe you just think it's a weird old book. Maybe you think it's a valuable anthropological artefact. Maybe you think it's a useful piece of evidence against the murderous cult you broke up.

Regardless, at some point, someone is going to read it. Inevitably in fiction, more or less inevitably in gaming. Assuming anyone has the slightest inkling that there's something remotely interesting about it, they'll probably want to read it. Admittedly, if they have a reasonably accurate inkling, they might prefer to burn it before anyone so much as glances at the contents, but that's a different issue.

Knowledge typically has a price, and in the case of TOUEs, the price may be a bit more drastic than usual. There are two issues here. One is the actual content of the book, which may be soul-rending in and of itself. The other is the sentient malevolence of the tome. Today I'll look at the first one.

Mankind Was Not Meant To Know

In a lot of cases, a TOUE's contents are unspeakably horrific. There's plenty of scope for variation in the details, though, and they don't necessarily have to be innately supernatural. They might simply be too advanced for a sane human mind of our era to comprehend, so gruesome that they drive the reader insane, or reveal secrets that drive the reader insane with megalomania. Some possibilities include:

• The true origin of humanity as an accident / foodstuff / joke
• History is wildly different from what we believed, and far more terrible
• Knowledge of the dreadful omnipotent beings that control reality and consider humanity as nothing but fodder, slaves, a mild irritation or a source of entertainment
• Dreadful supernatural or alien beings lurk amongst us, preying on humans or using them as tools and pawns in some secret scheme
• What we call "reality" is nothing but a delusion disguising the unspeakable truth
• Prophecy of the ultimate end of history
• Prophecy of the reader's own fate, undoubtedly awful
• The horrific diaries of a mass-murderer
• Spells that grant immense power... at a terrible price
• Spells that are innately evil, but offer tempting power
• Rituals to appease, petition or release some hideous monstrosity
• Scientific knowledge so advanced that the human mind cannot accept it
• Mathematical or psychological insights that offer near-supernatural power

In any case, it's useful to have a mechanism for handling the effects of this reading. Call of Cthulhu is the archetype here, and its Sanity mechanics offer a straightforward method for handling tomes. Any book of Mythos secrets (true revelations, as opposed to the merely occult) will impose a SAN cost on the reader, which cannot usually spark any specific insanities, but does whittle down their mental stability. In some cases, a Keeper (GM) might want to create a special case for TOUEs if they're deemed to have specific effects on the reader.

What sort of effects might a TOUE have on the reader? Well, depending on their contents and the nature of the tome, they might trigger nightmares, compulsive reading, phobias, nervous tics, or obsessions. A tome that indicates vampires secretly control society could have someone constantly looking for possible vampires. They might conceive a hatred for mobile phones, if a tome claims they're part of an alien plot.

But things don't have to be nearly so dramatic. Again, it's a genre issue. The book might be disturbing or sickening, rather than mind-blasting. The reader might be horrified by the revelations of some supernatural or alien plot, but rise to the challenge rather than cracking under the strain. The more seductive sort of TOUE might inspire vague, enticing dreams over a long period, instead of nightmares. Sometimes it's entirely appropriate for readers not to believe what they're reading, in which case they're not going to flip out immediately; instead, they're gradually shaken as the truth of the book becomes apparent. Even a spellbook - perhaps especially a spellbook - might arouse reluctant curiosity rather than anything more extreme.

Leaving BRP behind, D20 gaming has plenty of options here. For a start, there's the Call of Cthulhu D20 system. There is also a Sanity system presented in Unearthed Arcana, the basics of which which can be found at the SRD - it may well be the same, I don't have D20CoC. The D&D supplement Heroes of Horror offers Depravity rules, while the Ravenloft campaign setting has Madness.

In World of Darkness games, there's existing mechanisms that could be roped in: Morality, Clarity and so on, though some may work better than others, and they're weighty enough that they should be used with caution. There's also actual Derangement mechanics. I'm largely ignorant about the system, though, so I'm going to stop right there before I say something clueless.

Basically, most systems where you might want to involve a TOUE will probably have some mechanic you can use for to indicate that characters' tiny minds have been wracked. There are subtler options too. For mild disturbance or distractedness, there might be a small penalty to appropriate skills. Characters might find it hard to sleep properly, and not always receive the full benefits.

Learning

Obviously, if you're reading all this stuff, you should learn something from it. Whether you wanted to is another matter. Again, Cthulhu has this down with its built-in reading mechanics; readers of tomes gain skill points in Cthulhu Mythos, and sometimes other things. There are also sometimes specific things to learn, most often in the shape of spells, though perfect learning isn't guaranteed.

Other systems don't necessarily have anything so specific to dark knowledge by default. D20 TOUE could offer bonuses to relevant skills, though the level-based nature of the game can make one-off permanent bonuses inconvenient to handle. They can generally handle spell-learning, though, and even a non-caster could learn a spell from such a book, if you choose. Whether they can use it themselves is another matter, but knowing a spell you can't physically cast offers some interesting possibilities. Storyteller systems could offer bonus dots. If long-term balance might be a problem, these bonuses could be tracked and later revoked if the book is destroyed - its evil knowledge seeping away from the reader's mind, thankfully lost.

Indie Press Revolution

I just wanted to quickly share a shopping story. It's okay, shopping is unlikely to become a major feature of this blog.

I went to Indie Press Revolution to pick up a couple of game PDFs. Specifically Maid and Dinosaurs in Spaaace!, as I've been looking for potential light relief games to run, something maybe easier to get going than the Cthulhu and Pathfinder stuff that's recently ground to a halt. I heard reasonable things about both games, and while I've got some reservations about Maid, it sounds to me like I could probably at least hack up something from the system, even if we don't want to play it RAW.

Trying to set up an account with IPR, I spotted a problem: there's a glitch with their address data, so it includes some UK counties that no longer exist, and is missing a few extant ones. At it happens, I wasn't able to give my address correctly, so I dropped them a line mentioning the issue; I didn't like to set up an inaccurate address, as I've no idea what the legal issues might be for them or me. Overnight, an email came back from the general manager, no less. I won't quote it as I haven't asked permission, but I'll paraphrase.

Don't worry about the website; what can I do for you? He attached a spreadsheet of the current catalogue, in case I was having trouble using the website.

I told him what I was looking for, and that I was quite happy to set up an account if that was okay by him.

No problem, it'll cost this much; you can pay by PayPal or card and I'll set up a Dropbox link.

I agreed.

Here's a link to the files. Here's another link to pay by PayPal.

Everything went smoothly, and I got my games. I was particularly pleased by his sending the file link at the same time as PayPal, which showed a lot of good faith. Okay, it wasn't much money to risk and it'd be a bit of a rubbish scam, but still, nice gesture and it sped up matters for me too. Given that companies (in general) can be a bit inclined to treat customers with suspicion, I appreciate that.

So sure, there was a slight problem with their website, but I'm well impressed with their customer service.

Tomefoolery, part one: acquisition

AncientHistory over at YSDC has just started a thread about evil books, and I feel vaguely inspired.

Evil books are a pretty cool idea. The lure of lost mysteries or forbidden lore, the power they might contain... they can seem entirely harmless, their danger overstated or simply rumour. People can assume they're simply a collection of mad ramblings, or stories, or folklore. Like the classic cursed ruby, surely all those violent deaths are just a consequence of their value to thieves and would-be inheritors. Some people will seek them out in the full knowledge of their power, sure they can master the tome, and wrong. Others have a vague idea of what they hold, and hope to learn something vital, but don't realise the danger they're in. A few are willing to pay the price for knowledge they think they want, but haven't understood the insidious nature and malevolence of the books, or the true horror of the secrets they contain.

Discovery

The first step with evil toming is to get your filthy hands on one. Like buses, once you've got a tome to hand, further works of despicable malice will flock to you. But how do you track down that first precious grimoire?

This sort of thing will vary a great deal by genre.

• Inherit it. Your benefactor might be the elusive, enigmatic figure you never really knew. They might be the cheerful, wholesome person you though you knew. Or they might be a total mystery to you, a long-lost uncle or long-dead grandmother amongst whose possessions the tome comes to light.
• Have it pressed upon you by someone. Typically, this is a wise mentor anticipating their murder, or a stranger (or better yet, a close friend) fleeing some unexplained and unimaginable horror that's hot on their heels. Sometimes they are already dying, and have no time for anything but to whisper to you the secret of the book's location, or thrust the rough-bound parcel desperately into your hands with an expression of hopeless pleading.
• Discover it in a place of power: an ancient crypt, a madman's study, or the long-buried subterranean temple of a secret and vanished cult. Children often find artefacts in their explorations, archaeologists notoriously "stumble upon" them. Perhaps you're doing some building work on a house, and uncover an antediluvian shrine beneath the kitchen. Perhaps you're off potholing, chased into the sewers by a gang, or lost in the woods, when the floor gives way beneath you. Most likely you'll discover its power by accident by carelessly reading something out loud (as we all do, so often) and bringing about some terrible calamity (also known as a 'plot hook').
• Unearth it in a peculiar bookshop, full of odd staircases and windows that don't seem to align inside and out. The proprietor may have no inkling of the tome's true nature; they may giggle cryptically as they accept a token price for it; they may even suggest it to you, sensing your lust for strange mysteries. Some booksellers are agents of sinister powers, others dangerously dismissive, and a few entirely ignorant of what they do.
• Steal it. Perhaps you're a servant curious about the mistress' library, trapped behind the curtains when she strides in, and you see her open the secret panel and chant words of power from an ancient book. Perhaps you're a thief who finds a gem-studded book on a lectern, and hurries away with it. Perhaps you're a police officer who interrupts a sinister cult ritual, and confiscates the dark book they're reading. Perhaps you're even an innocent traveller who takes the wrong briefcase on the train.
• Be led to it. Something - heredity, a brush with the occult, finding a scrap between the pages of an ordinary diary - creates a connection between you and the tome, and it begins to call to you. You hear it in your dreams, perhaps, and walk in your sleep. Maybe a series of peculiar coincidences leads you to it - the cancelled train, the mistaken taxi-driver, the sudden shower of rain outside the narrow bookshop. Maybe you're simply doing some occult reading, and are seized with the desire to track down a reference, then another, each step taking you closer to the dreadful source.
• Seek it out. Dabblers in the occult may be slowly drawn into ever-deeper secrets, and drawn to search for legendary tomes. Some are honest scholars and collectors, with a purely academic interest in these cultural curiosities or the historical knowledge they contain. Some are sceptics curious to see what nonsense lies within. Some are seekers after understanding, hoping that one day they will find some answers to the questions of existence. Some are convinced of the book's authenticity, and hope it will aid them in some endeavour, not comprehending its true nature. And a few are well aware of just what it is they seek, fools or madmen either willing to pay the price for the power the tome will bring them, or rashly believing they are strong enough to control it.

For some reason, I can't think of or easily find examples of all these, though I'm pretty sure I've seen them all before. Maybe they didn't all relate to books then? Anyway, I'll let it rest for now.

Acquisition in games

In a game, a relatively realistic system like Call of Cthulhu might simply start off with you obtaining what turns out to be a sinister tome, typically by one of the passive methods. After all, you can't guarantee the players taking whatever action you intended, and trying to make the book interesting enough to definitely take may undermine any ideas you had about subtlety.

More fantastical or magic-heavy games might expect PCs to seek out artefacts of their own accord, whether or not they know what they're dealing with. In D&D, the book might just seem like an ordinary magic book to begin with, a perfectly useful item to have around, and they only slowly discover its true nature. Ravenloft seems like a natural fit here; the PCs will perhaps be more suspicious of everything being potentially evil, but the idea of damned bargains and moral trade-offs is right there.

Any game with amoral, mercenary or evil PCs is also a reasonable starting point, as they may be inclined to seek out or use books with a sinister reputation. On the other hand, though, the book might seem harmless or even benevolent to begin with (hey, it worked in Harry Potter) and PCs may not appreciate its malevolent plans.

Pulpier games might have a more direct method of acquisition. Tough detectives could unearth the book amongst the possessions of a gang boss. Vigilantes might retrieve it from a cult headquarters after breaking up a ritual. A merry band of heroes could find it locked away in the castle where the pirate sorcerers were lurking, and accept it as general loot.

The 'led to it mysteriously' technique is a bit fiddlier, as you need to have the players more or less onboard for what you're doing. It's going to emphasise the book's significance more than just about any other option, though it doesn't necessarily explain what that significance is. This might work well for a plotline that's about dealing with a known threat from a sinister book, as well as for one where it initially seems useful.

To some extent it's also going to depend on what you're planning. If the book is part of a specific plot, then you may want to establish its place by delivering the book through Plot. Especially for a one-shot. If it's a wild-card element of a campaign that might be turned into a major plotline, then letting it drift in gently may keep more options open, depending on what the players do later. There's some risk that if you Plot-drop the book on them with something like the Dead Mentor Gambit, as a tool for solving a mystery or overcoming an obstacle early on, then later revealing it as a malevolent force insinuating itself into their lives may not play well. Obviously, that's going to depend on the setting, the type of game you run and the characters, as well as the players. A game with a lot of twists and schemes might support this better than a straightforward one where stuff is either bad or good, and players don't want to bother about moral judgements or treachery.

There are usually ways to make things acceptable, though. For example, a noble, wise mentor probably wouldn't deliberately give them a tome of evil - but the PCs might misunderstand their last words and assume they're supposed to use it, rather than destroy it.

NPCs

So far I've only talked about things from the PC angle, but in fact grimoires in fiction are often in the hands of NPC-equivalents. That puts the acquisition a step away from the PCs, and means you don't need to worry about railroading them into obtaining it so the plotline will work out. Instead, you let them become aware of either the book or the NPC's activities, and see what unfolds. It might lead to the PCs acquiring the book; to a confrontation with NPCs that sees the book destroyed or buried; or even to a direct conflict with a powerful sentient tome. In this situation, the acquisition is background information that might enlighten the PCs or help them deal with the problem, but doesn't need to be handled onstage.