Tomefoolery, part four: evil authorship

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, the effects of their dreadful contents on tiny human minds, and dread grimoires that feed on their perusers. But there's another obvious question: given these dreadful possibilities, why write an evil tome?

Why write a tome of fiendish evil?

Tomes of unspeakable evil are all very well and good, but why would anyone go writing one in the first place? Where do these gruesome grimoires spring from, to blight lives and lure reckless minds to their doom? Are they even written at all? Here's a few possibilities. Bear in mind, these ideas aren't restricted to Tomes Of Ultimate Evil alone: some would work perfectly well as tomes with fairly human personalities, as bizarre and bewildering influences that aren't strictly evil, or even as Tomes Of Great Benevolence.

• The tome is a trap, created to lure the curious to their destruction.
• The tome is a trap, created to snare and enslave the unwary into the service of dark powers.
• The tome is a trap, created to entice and destroy fools who thought they could steal your knowledge.
• The tome is a tool, dangerous only to those without the power to master it, but invaluable to those with such power.
• The tome is an accident, a collection of terrible magic that has become as malevolent as the knowledge it contains.
• The tome is an accident, a book of great power that gained sentience, and with it its own selfish desires and goals.
• The tome is a psychic imprint, tainted by the twisted mind of its writer.
• The tome is haunted, more or less - imbued with intellect, motivation, or the broken remnants of personality by the spirit of its creator.
• The tome is a prison, where entities or souls have been trapped, and these jointly or severally exert their influence on readers or their surroundings. You've played Myst, right?
• The tome is not really a tome, but a sentient being transformed into a book.
• The tome is not really a tome, but a sinister being in the guise of a book, or an extension of their self.
• The tome is a revelation of terrifying truths, beliefs, plans or possibilities written directly or inspired by a powerful entity.

If we take a functional view, there are trap-tomes, whose main purpose is to lure in and destroy victims; tool-tomes, whose malevolence is a side-effect of their usefulness; and fallout-tomes, which just happen to be malevolent.

You could also consider it from an origin point of view: some TOUEs are written as an act of malice; some are written to store and transmit knowledge; some may be written for personal catharsis or satisfaction; some are written under the influence of madness or malevolent forces that imbue the tome with power; and some are actually entities that simply appear to us as books.

The Lure of the Library

Let's take a closer look at trap-tomes, those that draw you in to certain doom. This includes guise-books that are actually a dream in the mind of dread Cthulhu and what-have-you.

One of the classic sorcerer tropes is the Faustian, Dark Side thing, where the pursuit of knowledge, then forbidden knowledge, lures would-be wizards into losing their humanity, or bargaining with terrible powers. From this, we can imagine a tome that was created by those selfsame dread powers - be they ancient vampire wizards, Sith lords, the Devil or Nyarlathotep - for the very purpose of ensnaring people. Some of them may use it to provide slaves and servants in the world. Some may use it to draw in new acolytes: anyone who studies the book deeply enough, without being repulsed or driven mad, is a suitable apprentice and will gain the knowledge to track them down. The Chaos Gods of the Warhammer universes also delight in this sort of corruption, especially when they can ensnare those who think themselves wise and alert enough to escape it.

These sorts of tomes are likely to be full of tempting knowledge and power. Often, they'll start by offering something simple and fairly harmless without much obvious cost, to get people invested: spells to defend themselves from bullies, knowledge to save their business, secrets to find sources of power. Once someone's trusted the tome that far, they slowly become more open to the more sinister knowledge it contains. From fending off bullies, to stopping them, to seeking revenge, to punishing anyone who displeases you, to tyrannical rule... From consulting spirits to guide your failing business, to invoking them to influence customers, to calling them to blight rivals, to summoning them to help run the show, to letting them feed on the more worthless of your employees... They'll also favour give-and-take, with each new bit of power coming at an incremental cost, binding you closer and closer to the dark power. This might be obvious: reveal secrets, destroy enemies, spill your own blood, or let a spirit ride in your mind. Other trades are more subtle: restore the shattered statue (so it can return to life), drink the empowering potion (which will slowly mutate you), tattoo yourself with the runes (that allow possession). Only gradually does the dark power's interest in these things become apparent, usually when it's too late.

Of course, not all dark powers have such high-mindedly constructive motives as luring souls into vile servitude. Sometimes it's just all about the lulz, the schadenfreude. Seeing innocents, or not-so-innocents, slowly descend the spiralling path to madness, atrocity, obsession and hideous death gives the dark powers a kick. Sometimes, it's even more abstract: they don't care enough about the reader to even enjoy their downfall, but they relish the chaos and horror that their actions unleash upon the mortal world. This is quite a Nyarlathotep sort of thing to do, according to the way he's commonly portrayed as an agent of chaos. Such tomes will be full of two-edged power and things that, once bound, cannot be unbound. Note that this is different from the trap books, whose sharp edge is the bargain forged between the reader and the Forces of Darkness. Here, the powers simply have unintended consequences, ideally consequences that force the reader to turn again to the TOUE for help to quell them. Think of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, only more evil. You enchant a broom to carry water from the well, and it floods the house; you chop it into pieces, and it regenerates; you call a fire-spirit to burn the brooms, and it does - but then it slinks away to start house-fires all over town.

They can also spiral in other ways. You use special mathematical secrets to cheat the markets and become rich, but soon all kinds of agencies are taking an interest in you, let alone criminals. You follow the instructions to grow strong using horsehair snuff and incantations, but find yourself feeling increasingly horsey. You learn to sense what others are thinking, but now the constant voices are driving you insane.

There are halfway houses in this setup, too. A good example would be the Revelations of Glaaki, a Lovecraftian tome. In itself, it's actually not particularly baleful, apart from the sanity-blasting Mythos content and an array of vile spells. However, it also draws the attention of Y'golonac, a horrific Great Old One who enjoys taking over human bodies. Anyone who's read the tome is liable to, at some point in the future, have their body suddenly remodelled into a headless ogre with mouths in odd places, and their soul blotted out so Y'golonac can go for a joyride.

The other kind of book in this category is the vengeance trap. A powerful necromancer, for example, may leave her spellbook riddled with deliberate errors to punish anyone foolish enough to steal it. You can raise the dead, all right, but they'll only want your life; you can conjure flame, but it will consume you. More subtly, the book may simply draw the owner to you, especially if they're now a bodiless spirit or dream-being.

Toolbooks

Many books are created as tools. They contain knowledge invaluable to a scholar, secrets to educate those inducted into a discipline, or techniques used directly for spellcasting and similar powers. Some of these, either by intention or by accident, become more than simple books, gaining supernatural influence and sometimes intellect. We're concerned here only with those that do take that step, and moreover are malevolent in some way, or at least whose influence is damaging to mortal minds.

These books are directly useful to a reader, but the knowledge inside may be very dangerous. In some cases it's intrinsically horrific, while in others it's simply easy to misuse or misunderstand. A spell that summons powerful forces is dangerous if you don't know how to bind them. The secret location of an ancient relic is dangerous if you can't master its power. The ability to predict the future is dangerous if you don't know how to deal with that knowledge. A fae lady may be perfectly able to use her library of magic without harm or difficulty, but its alien aura and psychic emanations are so dangerous to humans that it might as well be actively evil, driving them to madness and monstrosity, and wanting to turn the mortal realm into a mirror of the dreamlands of Faerie.

Some of these books will slowly evolve a dreadful sentience from their horrific contents. Their worldview and personality is built around their contents. The necromantic tome becomes a necromancer in its own right, or else relentlessly tempts others to necromancy: it seeks to raise corpse-warriors and create blasphemous kingdoms of the living dead, to corrupt sorcerers into lichdom, to draw innocents into vampirism and uncovering the sealed graves of vile powers. The tome of Tzeentch knows only sorcery and change, and brings all manner of mystical chaos for its own sake, weaving century-spanning plots. The diary of a murderous maniac or death-cultist might seek endless blood. A tome of war-lore and battle-magic might not be malevolent as such, but unable to comprehend anything but endless strife, and see everything in shades of enmity. Tomes created by, or dedicated to, particular deities or powers are likely to mimic their nature. This kind of book's aims are likely to relate directly to its contents.

Other tomes develop more subtly. They aren't intelligent manifestations of their contents, but simply gained sentience by dint of the arcane (or divine, or diabolical) power that fills them. Over time, they develop their own personalities, plans and desires, which do not necessarily relate directly to their contents. A tome of general nature magic can perfectly well have diabolical plans to rule the world, and exploit readers and magic alike to that end. Conversely, some such tomes may not be malevolent at all, but selfish, erratic, insane, icily pragmatic, childish, stupid or even benevolent. A well-meaning tome that nevertheless spreads chaos or destruction through mistakes, idiocy or simple alienness from humanity, could be quite an interesting element in a game. Think of all those misguided supercomputers working "for our own good". For these tomes, goals are more unpredictable, and the mischief they will get up to depends on their own personality.

Possessed Books

The last big category of books is those that are basically twofold: one part book, one part sentience, and the two not necessarily related. From the list I gave above, this could include books that are actually haunted, and books resonant with the pyschic influence of their creator.

A possessed book of the first two kinds is likely to be predictable in many ways. It's also likely to be quite limited in some respects.

A psychic imprint will probably have only a few ideas or emotions, and can't necessarily adapt; it's probably not intelligent in the strict sense of the word, but more like a residual aura or a discrete set of available ideas and thoughts, which it cycles through. Such a tome may be very dangerous directly, but it doesn't have the flexibility and intellect of true sentience - it's a little more like an AI, or a small child without the sophistication of experience. However, it's a very dangerous small child at that. The aura of the book may be strong enough to imprint itself directly onto readers, or to plant subtle influences that affect their behaviour. Such books are often the works of mad wizards, cultists and other deranged authors, but an arguably sane author with immense passion for their work could also leave an imprint behind. In cases like this, there's likely to be a strong connection between the book's contents and its nature: the author has left behind a part or shadow of their own psyche, most likely connected with the subject matter.

A haunted tome typically contains a trapped ghost, often that of the author. The haunted tome will be more sophisticated than a mere psychic imprint, with something approaching a real personality and sentience, but its isolation from the world (and being a book rather than a human body) means it's still likely to be erratic and perhaps mentally trapped in the past. There are as many kinds of haunted book as there are of ghost: anything from a few whispered ideas and visions, through the classic obsessive spectre trapped in the same limited loop of thoughts, to the full-blown ghost that's more or less a fully functioning human who happens to live in a book. Personalities and desires are infinitely variable, but if the tome itself is a thing of nightmare arcana, its author isn't likely to be a bastion of benevolent sanity.

In passing, Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter is a pretty good example of a possessed book, and the sort of manipulations it gets up to.

Prison Books

Prison books - including beings transformed into a book - are a slightly different matter. The entity trapped inside may have little or nothing to do with the book. In some cases, a powerful tome may contain a bound spirit, supernatural being or even a wizard, whose own power is used to empower the book and increase its usefulness to the original owner. While a few spirits might not object to this treatment, many will be eager to regain their freedom. Even a neutral or benevolent spirit may be driven to desperation or insanity over decades and centuries of imprisonment, and be prepared to do anything to escape. In other cases, the book is a trap, used to remove an unwanted enemy or inconvenient person from circulation - consider the books in Myst. Some such victims may be largely innocent, others utterly vile, and how hard it is to guess which!

Some prison books may contain multiple prisoners. A book might be ensorcelled so that anyone attempting a particular spell is drawn into it, never to escape. This might be a means of thwarting hubristic ambitions, or another form of the traps I discussed earlier, set by a malicious owner who delights in the schadenfreude of a thief catching herself.

The prisoners may reveal their identity, or keep it a secret; they may even strive to disguise the fact that there's anyone present at all. Some will plead with anyone who uncovers the tome, begging to be released. Others might adopt an assertive or contented air, thinking this will make the owner more likely to release them, particularly if the necessary steps can be disguised as something else. In some cases, perhaps a prisoner can only be released if someone takes their place; some prisoners will try to trick a reader into doing so, while others might try to persuade the reader to find a deserving victim for this punishment, either because they're not actually evil, or simply because they think that plan's more likely to succeed.

Imprisonment in a book could vary substantially. Some exist only as spirits within the book, and for them the time between consultations might seem like falling asleep - or being chloroformed - with long dreams in the dark times, and a period of confusion and weariness on first waking. Others might feel physical confinement, as though they're trapped between the pages, but able to perceive what's around them. Still others might exist in a pocket dimension, or even another world on the far side of the page. Some may exist in the form of text, only knowing what is written down on them, and communicating by changing their own words. Some may perceive the book as their own body, mobile or otherwise. Others may take the form of holograms or ghosts, able to manifest around the book but unable to leave it. Or they might be a poltergeist-like force with no perceptible form, but able to interact with the book's immediate environment.

A somewhat more horrific alternative is a tome modelled on the Devourer, which would devour unwary readers and imprison them as a source of monstrous fuel. As the tome draws on its power, the trapped souls are slowly obliterated. Such a tome might be a tool for an evil mage, who traps enemies or unfortunates as a source of power, and uses their spirit to fuel further misdeeds. It could be a magical tome that's gained sentience, and with it the will to feed on readers (or victims sacrificed to it) in a more literal sense. On the other hand, it might be a more independent entity, such as the creation of a dark-humoured deity. A nicely ironic twist might be a devourer-tome that uses the souls of prisoners as fuel for its master's magical deeds - right up until it exhausts its supply, and devours its current master to replace them. Tzeentch or Nyarlathotep alike would appreciate such a TOUE.

With prison books, their personality and actions would depend on a combination of things: the identity of the prisoner(s), the identity of their current owner, the nature and conditions of their imprisonment,

Inspirations: the Sands of Time, part two

So I've been wondering about how to replicate some elements of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in a tabletop RPG context that I'm arbitrarily calling Time Faffers. Let's see what we can manage in the systems I'm most familiar with. As a reminder, here's some of what we're looking for:

• Acrobatic gameplay
• A heroic feel
• A high initial skill with limited levelling
• Terrain-puzzling and platforming
• Stylish combat against hordes of enemies
• Manipulation of time

Let's look at the combat first, simply because it's such a major part of the original game. We need individual PCs to successfully fight off multiple enemies, repeatedly and consistently, with limited injury. Because PCs will be doing a lot of fighting, consistency is important. A KO should only happen with bad judgement and bad luck.

I will use the annoying abbreviations DPR (Damage Per Round) and PCR (Person Combat Round, you know, like "man-hour": one round of combat with one person).

Pathfinder

Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess you could manage this with, say, 4th-level characters and 1st-level enemies. A whole swarm of mooks should still be able to bring down a PC, but one isn't really a threat.

Pathfinder vs. Zombies

Our first PC is a 4th-level Rogue, with rapier (+7, 1d6) and no armour (AC 14, 9hp). This seems to fit well with the "acrobatics and traps" theme. Our second is a 4th-level Ranger, with longswords (+7, 1d8+3) and no armour (AC 13, 22hp)

Let's put our sand-monster down as zombies (+4 to hit, 1d6+4, AC 12, 12hp). Let's ignore their damage resistance, since this would be annoying, but also ignore their usual slowness.

The rogue needs a 5 or more to hit, so she'll hit 80% of the time for 3.5hp, meaning it takes five rounds to kill a zombie, on average. Sneak attack would up that to 10hp, or two rounds to kill a zombie.

The ranger also needs a 5 or more to hit, and hits 80% of the time for 8hp (two-handed), giving average damage of 6.4hp/round. That makes it two rounds for a single kill, or eight kills every fifteen rounds. With dual-wielding, we have two attacks at 7 or more to hit, giving a 70% hit rate for an average of 7hp, or 9.8hp/round, giving twelve kills in fifteen rounds.

The zombie hits 55% of the time, for 7.5hp. That gives a DPR of 4.125hp, so on average a rogue will die in four rounds of zombie-fighting and the ranger in six. Ouch, and not suitable for the heroic feel. This is clearly not the right combination!

So, I'm wrong. At least, this particular combination isn't going to work. I'd either have to use much weaker mooks, or boost PCs' defences somehow. In practice, PCs are likely to have slightly higher AC than I've allowed, but they'll also be fighting mobs rather than single enemies. How about a kobold?

Pathfinder vs. Kobolds

We have a 4th-level Rogue, with rapier (+7, 1d6) and no armour (AC 14, 9hp), and a 4th-level Ranger, with longswords (+7, 1d8+3) and no armour (AC 13, 22hp)

This time, the enemies are modelled as kobolds (+1 to hit, 1d4-1, AC 13, 5hp).

The rogue needs a 6 or more to hit, so she'll hit 75% of the time for 3.5hp, meaning it takes two rounds to kill a kobold, on average. Sneak attack would up that to 10hp, giving a one-hit kill.

The ranger also needs a 6 or more to hit, and hits 75% of the time for 8hp (two-handed), killing the kobold instantly. With dual-wielding, we have two attacks at 8 or more to hit, giving a 65% hit rate for an average of 7hp, typically giving two kills per round.

The kobold hits 45% of the time, for 2hp. That gives a DPR of 0.9hp, so on average a rogue will survive ten PCRs of kobold-fighting and the ranger twenty-four. A lot better, but good enough? Especially when facing several opponents at once? Three kobolds could down a rogue in five rounds or so, but also in one lucky round; and Pathfinder doesn't allow beleagured PCs to switch to pure defence mid-round, only at the start of their own turn.

I think the main problem here is actually the PCs' power level: in POPSOT you can attack much faster than monsters, and parry or evade very effectively while still attacking. You've also got special one-hit takedowns. To replicate this, I'd basically have to change some core mechanics of the game. I could compensate by ramping up the PCs' level even higher, but then you're starting to get the weirder abilities creeping in, which could alter the tone of the game substantially.

On that basis, you could either leave things as they are (expecting characters to flank for each other to provide sneak attacks), or introduce a simple bonus rule, like "a successful hit allows sneak damage if you attack them again next round", or "a successful Acrobatics roll allows sneak attack". The former would be tricky as I'd expect PCs to be outnumbered quite often, and less able to provide flanking. The latter is class-dependent.

However, there's still other issues. For one, Pathfinder characters quickly end up with magical abilities, so you'd have to either allow for that or radically restrict class choices. The full casters (wizards, druids and so on) quickly gain access to invisibility, shapeshifting, powerful ranged attacks and spells that render barriers and terrain irrelevant. Given that I'm not planning to give them spellcasting enemies to offset this, it'd change the game considerably. Half-casters have more indirect spells that could end up largely useless, which would leave them effectively weaker.

In general, the system itself is quite fiddly, with various saving throws, multiple types of armour class, and class abilities as well as the basic stats. On the other hand, feats would potentially be a nice way of allowing PCs unique and distinctive abilities in a fairly restrictive setting. Also, combat feats and manoeuvres would help make the combat more interesting, and repetitiveness was one of the things I complained about in POPSOT. On the downside again, Pathfinder combat is attacker-based, which means defending yourself from enemies consists of hoping they roll low, rather than performing stylish parries.

BRP

The other system I'm reasonably familiar with is BRP, in its incarnation as Call of Cthulhu. It's a loose, simple system based on skills, with no intrinsic magic, no classes and no special abilities. Perhaps this'll be more suitable for the fairly straightforward game I have in mind?

BRP combat consists basically of a skill roll by the attacker. Unlike Pathfinder, it includes options for dodging and parrying attacks, which is a plus. On the downside, humans are limited to a single attack roll in each round, which makes it hard to fight multiple opponents: however, you could interpret this as focusing your attacks on one main target, while fending off the others. Another downside is that you can generally only do one thing per round, which makes acrobatic combat tricky: really we want people darting in and out of combat and delivering flashy vaulting strikes, not standing still and hacking at monsters. Thirdly, you can only dodge attacks if you don't attack yourself, while you can only parry a single enemy's attacks, which doesn't do much for group combat either.

To try and overcome these issues, I'm going to declare two arbitrary rule changes.

1. You can attempt a parry against every attack made against you. There may be a penalty for cumulative parries, to be determined later.
2. You can always combine combat with a tactical manoeuvre, which may or may not require a skill check.

While the Prince basically never misses with an attack, they're occasionally parried or otherwise absorbed, so that a single "round" of attacks isn't necessarily enough to fell an opponent. I'm going to assume that our PC is a skilled professional with a skill of at least 75% in Sword.

BRP vs... something

Call of Cthulhu is a slightly awkward basis because notable features of its monsters do not include weakness or fragility. Those that aren't physically superior to humans tend to be invulnerable, miniscule, or possess overwhelming magical powers. Preposterously, then, I'm going to use a common or garden dog as our enemy. In the rulebook illustration, this is pretty clearly a pug. So our heroic, sword-wielding, stripped-to-the-waist princes will enter into mortal combat with a cute-ugly pug. Fine, fine.

Our average warrior PC has Sword at 75%, Dodge at 50%, 11hp and inflicts 1d6 damage with a sword.

In the blue corner, Pugsy has Bite at 30%, Dodge at 26%, 7hp and inflicts 1d6 damage with a bite. He also has a rhinestone collar with his name on it.

Allowing for dodges, the warrior will hit 55% of the time, inflicting an average of 3.5 damage. This works out as a DPR of 1.9, which means it'll take four rounds to take down a single pug. 5% of the time, though, he'll get an impaling blow and inflict double damage. Strictly speaking, Pugsy can't dodge while attacking; however, armed enemies can parry while attacking, which will work out about the same mathematically.

In contrast, little Pugsy will hit a mere 7.5% of the time, because the PC gets to parry with his Sword skill. With 1d6 damage, this gives us 0.26 damage per round, which means the PC can survive an average of 44 PCRs (Pug Combat Rounds).

The PC survival rate is pretty good, but their damage output seems a bit low. It'll vary somewhat because slightly above-average Strength would give an extra d4 damage, boosting it to DPR 3.3hp and giving a kill time of 2-3 rounds.

One thing the Call of Cthulhu rules don't automatically include is tactical combat - in fact it's pretty much the antithesis of Call of Cthulhu. However, it's also a key element of POPSOT. While it's possible to fell most opponents by simple weight of attacks, most of the time you're going for a manoeuvre that'll overcome their defences and take them down in one. That boils down to either rebounding off a wall for a powerful knockdown, or somersaulting overhead for a backstab, but there's no reason for us to be so limited.

While this isn't implemented in Call of Cthulhu, the rules mean it shouldn't be too difficult. I could simply declare that an appropriate skill roll lets you pull off some advantageous manouevre: tripping, flipping overhead, swinging round a pillar, pulling a tapestry over them, or even lurking hidden for a sneak attack. A failed roll means you're stuck with basic attacks, but have no other penalty; a botch would lead to an appropriate (and preferably cinematic) disadvantage, like pulling the tapestry over yourself, tripping the enemy right on top of you, or losing your grip on the pillar and flying out to land sprawled in the middle of the floor.

On the downside, I'd basically have to create appropriate skills for these manoeuvres, and it could be tricky to do this in a fairly balanced way. Using a single skill would mean everyone really just needs to stick points in that and Sword - particularly if it also covers acrobatic climbing and so on, which would be a natural way to do things. If you use several, and they're not balanced with each other, then people who pick less-effective skills will be disadvantaged. I think this mechanism might work for Call of Cthulhu combat, which isn't that tactical, but it's not really appropriate for a game that's as combat-heavy as I expect Time Faffers to be.

Closing remarks

Both systems have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to modelling stylish combat against large numbers of enemies. Pathfinder has passive defence and relatively vulnerable PCs, though this can be alleviated by using very weak enemies. There's also a real question when it comes to finding suitable classes to incorporate. On the other hand, it's built to handle tactical combat, with plenty of mechanisms for combat movement, manoeuvring and special attack forms to spice up fights. BRP has active defence as well as dodging when all-out defence is called for, can fairly readily handle all kinds of unusual manoeuvres by the universal mechanisms of skill and stat rolls, and it's fairly simple to create enemies of suitable weakness. On the other hand, it's really not designed for tactical combat, and so fights could easily come down to the same three or four skills, all crucial to PCs and all rolled constantly.

Next time, I'll take apart the POPSOT combat system, and think about which bits of it we actually want to keep. I might also (if I'm feeling strong) take a look at that most tactical of tactical combat RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons: Fourth Edition and see if it might make the time-warping grade.

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.

Killing Me Softly, part 4

So. I've been wrestling with soft attacks every so often, trying to get somewhere useful, and to be honest I think the most useful thing at this point is a quick summary and to move on. There are so many different things to consider, all of which play into other aspects of the game, that I can't usefully do much specific without actually creating a game from whole cloth. And that's more Dan's thing.

So here's the main conclusions I've reached.

Granularity

The main thing, the biggie: how much granularity does the status system provide? It's not really about the attack, or the resilience, or the recovery; it's about whether you can be "blind" vs. "not blind", or whether you measure 10 different degrees of blindness.

Higher granularity means low swinginess, high scalability and a high tracking burden. Low granularity means high swinginess, low scalability and a low tracking burden. Anyone picking a system for soft attacks needs to decide which of those is the priority. The details of the system involved are really a secondary matter.

For a game without much in the way of levelling - the sort of thing where a new character is about as effective as a veteran - scalability is not an issue. In those cases, the decision might come down to other elements of the game. If it's supposed to be highly realistic, the cost of tracking might be acceptable - particularly as in such a game, quite a lot of tracking is probably already necessary: if you have to track damage to a number of specific locations, ammunition, energy expended, morale, fatigue and thirst, adding in blindness, sleepiness and stunnedness might seem perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, if it's a fast-paced game featuring "alive", "wounded" or "dead" statuses and very little else, nobody wants detailed tracking of blindness.

If the game has strong levelling, then scalability is important. Having low-level soft weapons that cripple high-level targets creates loopholes, cheap tactics and can undermine the setting. On the other hand, having high-level soft attacks that are often ineffective makes makes it not worth using them. There are ways around this other than granularity, though. If the attack rolls necessary scale with level, and the status effect isn't too severe, then a binary system may be acceptable.

Example: Scaly Monitors

In a new build of Monitors, skill is modelled by simple skill pluses linked to level. A modified roll of 11+ on a d20 is a success. Roj, a 5th-level iguana xenologist, has +5 Pistol and carries a tranq pistol to capture interesting fauna on the ice-world of Kraant, as well as a standard-issue blaster for self-defence. When his research group are confronted by a 5th-level cryoboar with +5 Stamina (which subtracts from his roll) he has to roll an 11 or better to successfully stun it, halving its action rate, which will make it easier to capture, kill or escape from. On the other hand, he could turn to the trusty blaster, which should kill the boar in five or six shots.

A little later, Roj runs into a cryophant. Oops. With a Stamina of 10, he needs a 16 or better to stun it. A lucky shot would make life substantially easier, but attempting to beat the critter would still be very risky. Once aggro'd, the cryophant's hit points mean it'll survive to reach combat sooner or later, at which point Roj may be wishing he'd gone straight for the blaster rather than waste turns trying to drug it, since he'd have to endure fewer rounds of punishing combat.

D&D seems to aim for this with its scaling attack rolls, defensive stats and DCs. However, the major status effects in D&D (stun, blind, slow and paralyse) are very powerful, and this means makes it viable to focus on stun-locking, or to spam soft attacks at a boss until once gets through, followed by unloading the party's most damaging attacks while it's vulnerable. While those are perfectly valid ways of playing, it can become repetitive and feel cheesy - and designers and DMs alike tend to compensate with immunities and very high defences.

Swinginess

Swinginess is amplified against small numbers of relatively powerful targets, since these are typically highly resistant to compensate for their numbers. With only "success" or "failure" results, a single soft attack can make the difference between a difficult battle and a cakewalk (depending, of course, how powerful the status effect is).

Penalties can vary in severity, in duration or both. The most and least severe penalties inflicted by a soft attack are a significant factor. Soft attacks with a weak maximum penalty can be allowed a high success rate without risking 'ruining' boss fights. Soft attacks with a strong maximum penalty need to rarely impose that penalty on powerful enemies, otherwise they become disparately useful. The duration complicates matters further: a minor penalty that lasts for a long time has limited effect, but may be a pain to remember, depending how the system models it. A severe penalty that also lasts a long time is more swingy as an individual attack, since a single good result can cripple the target for the duration of a fight; however, a severe penalty that's short-lived can be very powerful if it comes at just the right time, and otherwise has limited effect, so it's also swingy. There's probably not much to choose between 'em, to be honest.

Soft attacks should never be crippling, either by themselves or through synergystic effects. This, as Dan mentioned, basically allows them to circumvent the standard combat system. The only situation where I might be inclined to favour this would be niche games, where hard-attack combat isn't what you're supposed to be doing.

Example: All's Fair

For example, I can visualise a game about fey interlopers. You have a variety of supernatural abilities that allow you to beguile, bemuse, bewilder and bewitch NPCs that come between you and your goals. Striking people blind, sending them to sleep or rooting them to the spot fit perfectly well with fey folklore, rather better than hacking your way through hordes of guards. The smooth way to play the game is to slip gently through the NPCs you encounter, eliminating them with tactically-applied magic. Actual combat is a fall-back if you mess up, and something to be avoided. The tactical challenge isn't whittling down individual opponents, it's dealing with the situation as a whole, picking the right spells to use in a situation, and avoiding drawing down a whole crowd of enemies on your head at once. The only point where drawn-out combat occurs might be dealing with other magic-using entities, where arcane duels might take place.

Final Thoughts

For a lot of games, a highly granular soft attack system is not going to be appropriate, despite its advantages.

• As we agreed before, a game with highly abstracted combat doesn't want very granular soft attacks, because it contradicts other aspects of the combat system.
• For games that try to minimise the tracking burden, perhaps to create a streamlined and accessible system or to speed up play, granular soft attacks are also inappropriate.
• For games that aren't especially concerned about "realism" or "fairness", the granularity may simply not be a priority. If the setting is full of randomness and arbitrariness, with luck and the whims of the powerful playing a significant part, then it doesn't necessarily matter whether blind spells are swingy, since just about everything else is too. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you die.

For most games, though, I'm inclined to feel that at least a three-way distinction is useful, with "semi-successful" sitting between "effective" and "entirely ineffective". This would reduce swinginess by allowing soft attacks to have limited effects on powerful creatures, without either rendering them useless or allowing them to stun-lock the big bads. Exactly how the result would be established would depend on the system as a whole.

The other thing is that any soft attack system depends on the frequency of soft attacks in the game. If only rare equipment can blind, stun or paralyse creatures, a relatively high-maintenance resolution system isn't too problematic if it gives pleasing results. If they're going to come up in every fight, though, the smoothness of play is more important.

And that's probably it from me, to be honest. I had thought of scribbling a bit more about recovery systems, but I'm not sure there's much point. So a rather desultory end to a rather confused project.

Trappery, part eight: magic

The next logical Trappery would be a fantasy setting example, but here we start running into complications.

What I've been doing so far could mostly be summed up as "de-abstracting" traps into something that has a bigger presence in the game than a couple of rolls. Once you're looking at fantastical settings, though, some new factors and assumptions come into play. These are:

• Magic
• Sufficiently advanced technology
• "It's not magic, it's INSERT-THINLY-DISGUISED-WORD-FOR-'MAGIC'."

For simplicity's sake I'll generally refer to all these as "magic".

Trappery, part seven: royal tomb example

This episode of Trappery brings you the second in a set of exploratory examples, working out the role (or lack of role) of traps in particular situations, and what those traps are likely to look like.

It's probably something like this.

Orphan Blog

So it looks like Librarians and Leviathans has become an orphan.

As I've mentioned before, this started out as a place to track progress of our D&D/Pathfinder campaign, a easier-maintenance version of the website I used for an earlier ill-fated 4E campaign. That campaign was substantially a way for a couple of friends to try out roleplaying, and for a couple of my 4E group to get another dose of it. They had a reasonable time with the first adventure (a basic dungeon exploration), and were keen enough to progress to a looser follow-up that I'd carefully set things up for just in case. This more free-form style of play seemed more popular, though it was still fairly rigid on the whole, as I wasn't keen to dive too far into improv with all of us so inexperienced.

After the second adventure, we slid into the deadly hiatus, largely due to some health issues on my part that, coupled with a completely mad few months at work, meant planning and running games was just not viable. More recently, I've talked to them about reviving the campaign as things are going better. However, one player has moved to another city, and another (one of the two veterans of the original L&L group) is now too busy to commit to a game. That leaves us with two players, both fairly busy, and both playing spellcasters. The players don't seem particularly interested in ambient gameplay, and would prefer having some kind of group objectives to work towards, but weren't that keen on dungeon-crawling.

It might be just about viable to run a sociopolitical, investigative, low-combat game. I was already looking along those lines when I considered reviving the campaign, as the party was already caster-heavy. The problem with that is, it places an awful lot of pressure on the GM. For one thing, pregen scenarios that aren't either dungeon crawls are few and far between, and most of those that I've seen are (naturally enough, perhaps) closely tied into a particular campaign world or set of events that wouldn't sit comfortably with what we've established. That means I'd have to come up with all the content myself - with suggestions and input from the players, certainly, but fundamentally coming up with mysteries or interesting situations is down to the GM. Tied into that is the problem that given D&D's proclivities, coming up with interesting low-combat scenarios is significantly more awkward than creating your own dungeons.

Barring extreme enthusiasm on the part of my players, the effort of creating entirely new scenarios suitable for a pair of career-minded spellcasters with zero combat ability seems like too much to deal with. At present, I don't know any other potential players who might round out the party a bit and make it easier to find or create suitable scenarios. So basically, I think we're stuck.

So sadly (although perhaps inevitably) this campaign blog for a specific group of players has more or less fully transformed into a purely theoretical blog about generic RPG matters, with little or no relevance to the Pathfinder campaign. So it goes.