A Difficulty With Dice; or, A Plethora of Projects

So I just don't feel like I'm designing enough systems right now. You know how it is.

So, Craig Shaw Gardner, right? Author of parodic fantasy (etcetera) books with alliterative names, featuring comically-inept protagonists accidentally overcoming implausible evils. Distinctive mishap-based writing style. I wondered how difficult it would be to make an RPG system that supported that kind of story.

I suspect the answer is both "very" and "one already exists", but who am I to let such trivialities deter me?

CSG writes a very specific kind of genre fiction, be it fantasy, B-movie or otherwise. It's essentially comic heroic fiction.

Protagonists are mildly special, not particularly competent, fairly decent at heart, and suffer enormous swings of luck. They win through by a mixture of enormous good fortune, coincidence, courage, derring-do, not really seeing any alternatives, improvisation, flashes of genius and the power of friendship. The most classic of these is Wuntvor the Apprentice, a wizard's apprentice who never really had time to learn any magic. He occasionally attempts the odd spell, which inevitably misfires, but still often achieves something useful, sometimes simply due to surprise value. He often carries powerful magic or artefacts of uncertain effect whose use must be carefully judged and delayed until a really desperate moment.

A hotchpotch array of allies, semi-allies, love interests and magical creatures (sometimes overlapping) accompanies him in an ever-shifting party that manages to repeatedly fend off the threat of demonic incursion, rescue his wizardly master or his love interest, and bicker incessantly. All are technically quite powerful, but hampered enormously by various problems, ranging from cursed weapons and the constant attention of annoying salesdemons, to an allergy to magic, to inability to refrain from announcing honest opinions, to staggering narcissism and lust, to complete inability to perform a spell correctly, to obsession with music-hall comedy and the search for fans, to raging feuds with other party members, to appalling memories.

Objectives of the system

1. Party members should be incompetent but successful, in that they generally achieve (harking back to Dan's terminology) their long-term aims, but often fail at their short-term goals.
2. Number 1 should work out because something else interesting happens as a result of failure at an action, which may be equally or more beneficial to the PC than success in their attempt.
3. Wild swings of luck should be common, constantly dropping the PCs in trouble before allowing them to get out of it.
4. Coincidence and Chekhov's Guns should be regular aspects of the game.
5. Playing up preposterous characteristics should be mechanically beneficial in order to encourage it.
6. All setbacks should be temporary. Victory is not ultimately in question, only the manner in which is is achieved and how long it takes.

This putative system will be called A Band of Bunglers for future reference.

Mechanical considerations

Any die roll to determine success should ideally tackle two questions.

1. Did the action achieve its objective? (Success)
2. Did the action work as expected? (Competence)

For example: Snorelock the Sorcerer is attacked by a band of pirates due to a misunderstanding over some treasure. He attempts to use Rumpold's Raging Ravens to drive the pirates away, but accidentally turns himself into a gigantic peony instead. The pirates decide that the treasure must be accursed and make a hasty retreat. The spell achieves its objective while misfiring spectacularly.

This may well be the sort of game where a non-traditional mechanic would work best, but let's start with what I know and work from there.

Contrary Dicepool System

The first mechanic that comes to mind is one where two different aspects of a dicepool determine these outcomes.

Let's assume you have four attributes named Cunning, Smarm, Furtiveness and Violence. These are all rated from 2-5. You roll one die for every point in the attribute, and hope for matching dice. The number of matching dice determines how competent you are, while the value of the group chosen determines how successful you are. The player may choose which dice to select if there are (for example) a low triple and a high pair.

This would be a describe-roll-narrate system, where the player announces their character's broad intention, rolls the dice, then narrates what actually happens.

I really can't do the maths here. It seems fairly clear that you will generally work out far more successful than you are competent, but beyond that I'm lost.

Luck Pendulum System

This is a deliberately swingy system, still pretty traditional.

Again, let's assume you have four attributes named Cunning, Smarm, Furtiveness and Violence. These are all rated from 2-5. You roll one die for every point in the attribute and hope for a 4+. Each success means you do better at what you attempt.

When the game begins, there are also 5 dice assigned to a Luck pool and 5 to a Doom pool. Ideally, these should be a different colour from the rest of the dice.

If a roll goes badly, a player can grab extra dice from the Luck pool and add them to the result. If they are successful with the Luck die, then things work out for them, but through luck rather than competence; they should narrate the outcome accordingly. Used Luck dice are transferred to the Doom pool.

Dice in the Doom pool can be used to introduce additional complications. These might be making a task more difficult, getting the party lost, allowing monsters to nick off with some bit of equipment (they can get it back later), kidnapping a vital NPC, and so on. Used Doom dice are transferred to the Luck pool.

Freestyle Doom Token System

In this system, it really doesn't matter how you resolve obstacles.

There is no GM. Each player is allocated, oh, two Doom Tokens at the start of the game. These represent problems that will afflict the party.

At any time, a player can throw in a Doom Token to make life worse for someone, including themselves, by introducing a problem. It may represent an enemy, a task proving more difficult than expected, a sudden calamity, hostility from the townsfolk, a romantic embarrassment, the loss of some item, or whatever.

Once there is only one remaining Doom Token per player (not necessarily distributed in that way) then you collect all the tokens and distribute them again. This time, you distribute three. Next time, four. And so on. The same or similar problems may well recur, but this time bigger and more ridiculous.

Two Skill System

Again, let's assume attributes rated from 1-5. This time, the numbers represent targets you want to roll less than or equal to in order to succeed at your objective. The difference is that there are only two attributes: Competence and Luck.

If you succeed at both rolls, you achieve exactly what you set out to do. If you succeed on Competence only, you do what you intended, but it doesn't work out quite the way you expected. If you succeed at Luck only, you achieve roughly what you wanted (more or less) but bungle the thing you were actually trying to do.

GMd Doom Token System

In this system, it really doesn't matter how you resolve obstacles.

The GM introduces problems by assigning a number of Doom Tokens and placing these on the table. These represent the problem's difficulty: a bigger Doom pile will take more effort to overcome (essentially they are hit points).

Players can work on overcoming the difficulty by using their abilities. Successful rolls can chip away at the Doom Token pile, and the player gains those Doom Tokens into their hand.

At any time, a player can throw in one or more Doom Tokens to create a stroke of luck. This may be as simple as having an enemy duck the wrong way, or they may spontaneously change the weather, introduce a helpful NPC, or whatever else seems fun. Running gags or recurring and erratic NPCs seem good. A spent Doom Token may end up being largely mechanical, or adding new elements to the game. Spent Doom Tokens are returned to the Doom Pile. If a Doom Token is spent to overcome the Doom Pile, this may be a zero-sum exchange.

Either the GM or players can also chip away at the pile by suggesting setbacks that afflict the players. Perhaps, instead of decapitating one of the mad hatstands with her die roll, the warrior trips over the wizard's beard and her sword goes flying into a tree? Perhaps the cyborg assassin's previous programming as a coffee machine once again resurfaces? Perhaps a mob of angry cobblers turns up demanding payment for the large pile of worn shoes left (and repaired) in an earlier town as part of a hilarious misunderstanding? Perhaps the alien has discovered a countermeasure to some technique that previously rendered it helpless? Again, these tokens go to the affected player(s).

Multiple tokens may be spent all at once on substantial changes.

Essentially, the idea here is that the GM and players trade tokens back and forth to swing luck in either direction and create entertainment, for as long as it seems enjoyable. The obstacle is overcome once all the Doom Tokens are held by the players, so things going badly for them is actually beneficial.

FATE

It strikes me that actually, at least some parts of the FATE system would be quite suitable here.

Let's assume that we strip down the skill list to my four attributes named Cunning, Smarm, Furtiveness and Violence. Okay, we probably also need something like, oh... Poise, Velocity and Brawn. There is no magic attribute, because magic is a character concept rather than a skill.

Aspects could well be perfect for building characters around a strong core of rather silly premises. Salt-of-the-Earth Apprentice Wizard With A Yearning for Luxury is a solid starting point. My Heart Is Your Doormat is a reasonable source of both problems and strength, especially when coupled with Inexplicably Alluring. I Must Serve My Master is another good double-header that can inconvenience the character or spur them to heroic efforts.

But I don't think I like the existing Fate Point economy. We want something... swingier. And more prominent. Aspects that only come up occasionally aren't hugely defining.

Let's go back to my earlier idea of the Doom Pool. To define challenges, the GM assigns a Doom rating based on how difficult it is, combining them if several challenges coincide (say, two different antagonists). To be clear, coinciding should happen a lot, because pantomime antics are the order of the day. A Doom Pool of a corresponding number of dice (or tokens) is assembled.

This, coincidentally, if articulated in the rules, could also help provide that balancing guide that I really needed for Dixie-2.

At any time, characters can invoke an aspect for the usual benefits. They don't need to spend a Fate Point to do that. Fate Points are earned when things go wrong for the characters because of some Aspect or other (compels) in much the same way as ever. A really bad stroke of luck should earn multiple Fate Points.

What you do want Fate Points for is to invoke, well, fate. That Doom Pool I mentioned that represents the current situation? Those is a rich seam of pure, untapped luck. At any time, including after a roll, you can chip in a Fate Point to grab a fistful of dice from the Doom Pool and add them to the current player's hand.

The difference is that when you succeed at a task because of Doom Dice, your in-character success is due to luck. The magnitude of the luck versus skill should be loosely based on the dice involved: if you roll four successes with skill and one with Doom dice it's only a small fluke, whereas eight successes from Doom and none from skill means you bungled spectacularly but somehow it worked out enormously in your favour.

This scheme has some benefits because it intrinsically encourages the unlucky-lucky dynamic I was talking about. You can only use the Doom Pool to get lucky by spending Fate Points you earned from being unlucky.

Monitors: the continuing story of side-effects

Based on the spell categories I've outlined, I'm going to try whipping up some more specific tables, so that significant side-effects can be themed to the spell being cast.

Main Table

When a spell is cast, roll 2d6 and consult the following table. The first line gives a brief indication of the kind of effect produced, while subsequent entries are examples. The GM or players could invent alternatives if they wish. On a 2 or 12, roll on the appropriate sub-table.

Note that while some side-effects have specific mechanical implications, these are not the only or primary results. As always in Monitors, common sense takes precedence. For example, if a wizard gains uncontrolled telepathy and senses the thoughts of those around them, and if this results in them sensing that the shrew police officer is in the pay of EvilCorp, they can use this fact in conversation. If a wizard becomes emotionless, they still understand that tending the injured or rescuing the endangered is their duty, nor do they become sociopathic killers. Many of the manifestations are enough to alert antagonists or civilians alike that something is going on.

2	Major Influence
Roll on the major table for the spell type
3	Strong Influence
The spell causes barely-controlled telepathy, precognition or emotion.
The wizard is granted a moment's glimpse of the future.  Once during the next Tick, they may reroll any dice from their hand to represent this prescience, keeping the best result, but are immediately pinned from the shock.
An antagonist within 30 feet receives a glimpse of the wizard's mind.  They may learn intentions, emotions or the wizard's current preoccupations, gaining a temporary or one-off bonus if appropriate.
The thoughts of all nearby creatures flood the wizard's mind. For 3 rounds they gain a die whenever this insight might help, but also incur a 1d4 Distracted die. Both effects end together.
The wizard's mind becomes utterly calm, a stone fortress of order. They ignore Pinning and feel no emotion for one Tick. Effects on conversation should be determined by the GM.
Uncontrolled telepathy turns the wizard's inner monologue into a psychic narration heard by all nearby. Recipients do not necessarily know the wizard is responsible, nor their location, and will find it unnerving.
4	Influence
The wizard is subject to flows of energy, empathic overspill or lingering transmutation.
A surge of magic briefly lifts the wizard 1d6 feet into the air. This may attract attention or require a Physical roll to land upright when the surge fades.
In their mind, the wizard can feel the heartbeat of every nearby creature.  This ability is both useful and distracting; apply 1 die modifiers as appropriate.  The ability fades after one Tick.
Fierce hatred or resentment courses through the wizard's mind for 1d3 rounds. The player may determine the object of the emotion and should act accordingly, but is not forced to violence.
The wizard feels watched, as though ancient and inscrutable eyes were drawn to them in the casting.  (the GM might make a side-plot out of this)
5	Minor Influence
The wizard is struck with visions, temporary weakness or superficial transformation.
Coruscating clouds form across the wizard's eyes, casting everything they see in strange and opulent colours.
Strange lines etch themselves into the wizard's skin, fading slowly over the coming days.  They may carry some meaning or be simply disturbing.
The wizard's hands harden into mineral for several seconds, slowly reverting to normal.
As energy leeches from their body, the wizard appears haggard, even skeletal.
6	Trivial Influence
The wizard experiences a mild sensation or emotion, or a minor aesthetic change.
The wizard feels a great sense of loss, as though some poignant dream has slipped from their grasp forever.
Visions of a strange landscape flash before the wizard's eyes.
The acrid taste of bile fills the wizard's throat as the strange syllables of the spell are spoken.
The wizard senses a hostile presence nearby, but cannot locate its source.
A faint glow briefly emanates from the wizard's breath or eyes.
7	Negligible
There is no effect other than a momentary dizziness.
8	Trivial Manifestation
The immediate environment is mildly disrupted.
Unearthly calm spills through the minds of all nearby, stilling thoughts of hostility or strong emotions.
Metal objects resonate eerily to some unheard harmonic of the spell.  Determine the volume of the resonance randomly.
A flash of witchfire traces wild patterns across the floor, leaving behind scorched trails.
A swarm of insects gathers around the focus of the spell, whirling and humming.
9	Minor Manifestation
Mental or sensory impressions spill around the wizard.
Intangible glittering motes float through the air, casting a faint and unearthly light.  These might give away the wizard's presence, provide light in a dark room, distract or alarm NPCs.
All creatures within 30 feet receive a haunting vision.  They gain a 1d3 Distracted die and will sleep badly for several nights, whispering as they stir and shift.
Ghostly figures and structures fade into view, intangible but haunting.  These might provide a distraction or cover.
Something seems to squirm and boil into life in the shadows, darting out of sight before you can focus on it. The GM might use this minor entity or ignore it.
10	Manifestation
Physical, emotional or magical effects hinder nearby creatures.
Giddiness spreads from the wizard like a wave, leaving all creatures within 50 feet Pinned.
Skirling spirits whirl and dance through the air around the wizard. (the GM might have these interact with nearby objects, distract creatures, attract attention or even pose a mild threat)
A pulse of gravity threatens to knock everyone to their knees (Might 2 to resist).  Small objects go flying.
Nearby electrical devices flicker and groan as their energies are disrupted, increasing the difficulty of associated actions by 1.  Very sensitive devices may malfunction or their programs reboot.
11	Strong Manifestation
The spell is not fully controlled, or there are major localised changes to physical laws.
Time seems to slow down, as though the world were moving through treacle.  Everyone can roll an extra die until the wizard's next turn, as they have extra time to think and prepare.
The spell lingers on regardless of the wizard's wishes.  Its effects continue for an additional 1d3 rounds, but remain in the wizard's control.  (The GM determines whether this makes sense in context).
Distances and proportions in the immediate vicinity fluctuate wildly for 1d3 rounds. Movement, attacks and similar complex physical actions will fail 50% of the time.
12	Major Manifestation
Roll on the major table for the spell type

Major Influence

Roll 1d6:

1. The wizard is obsessed with one other person or object, and must focus on them for 1d3 rounds. Alternatives: compulsive behaviour.
2. A sense of insatiable hunger leaves the wizard Distracted (1d4). Alternatives: tranquility, euphoria, crawling dread, nausea.
3. The wizard is overcome by vivid recollections of some past event. They suffer a -1 die penalty until the end of their next turn, but may recall valuable information or shake off one Penalty Die at this time.
4. A surge of arcane energy leaves the wizard invigorated and confident - roll one additional die next time they roll.
5. The wizard shatters into jigsaw fragments, then reforms; it is painless, but disconcerting. Alternatives: freeze and thaw, shrink and regrow, become 2-dimensional.
6. Choose an effect by spell type.

Major Manifestation

Roll 1d6:

1. The gathering of magical energy has drawn a creature to the wizard. Summon one Minor entity, which is neutral to the wizard.
2. Excess energy disperses itself as arcs of lightning. 1d6 random creatures are knocked prone and lights flicker for a few seconds. Alternatives: localised earthquake, gust of wind, mini-tornado, thunderclap, gravity decreases, gravity increases.
3. Matter randomly forms as the spell is cast, creating a wall of twisted glass near the wizard. Alternatives: stalactites, tree, writhing tendrils, bone tower.
4. Utter silence washes across the room, so that even implants cannot make a sound. Alternatives: sound is amplified massively, light is muted, colours shift.
5. One nearby creature is wreathed in green fire, which they can control. It does not burn the wearer. Alternatives: sprout wings, cloak of frost, radiance.
6. Choose an effect by spell type.

Sigils

• Influence: The sigil is malformed and traps part of the wizard's life-force. The wizard gains a 1d3 Distracted die that cannot be lost until the sigil is destroyed.
• Manifestation: The sigil is incomplete, and its power uncontained. Roll a d6 each subsequent round; on a 5+ the sigil explodes, Pinning all creatures within short range with a burst of arcane energy.
• Manifestation: The sigil is crooked, warping its effects. The GM should determine an alternative effect of similar potency.

Conjurations

• Influence: The summoning was flawed, and the creature's bond to its maker remains unsevered. On each subsequent round, the wizard must roll Mind 3. On a failure, the creature will drain one additional heat point from the wizard and convert it to an additional Wound, point of Might or point of Speed. On a success, the bond is severed and the spell functions normally.
• Influence: Rather than summoning an entity, something surfaces within the wizard's mind. The wizard gains some arbitrary abilities, enhancements or knowledge determined by the GM. The spell ends after 2d3 Ticks.
• Manifestation: A falter during the summoning distorted the intention and called forth the wrong creature. The wrong entity is summoned, although the substitute must be of a similar or lesser potency and remains loyal to the wizard.
• Manifestation: Stumbling over the invocation, the wizard leaves her summons unbound. An unbound summons behaves as it wishes, though it is not initially hostile to the wizard.

Transformations

• Influence: The wizard flickers out of existence, only to rematerialise the following round a short distance away, unaware of their disappearance. They might travel a short distance or be facing the opposite direction, but should not generally teleport out of cells or into furnaces, chasms or hungry mouths.

---

Yeah, unless I come up with some actual transformation spells, I'm not going to get any more ideas in that line. As far as the others go, I'm reasonably happy with this. It will call for multiple rolls one time in 18, but I'm sort of okay with that. My only concern really at the moment is the balance between general and specific effects, in terms of whether I should be having Sigil effects and so on come in earlier or be a higher proportion of the Major results. I may also need to revise these to try and minimise any complexity in mechanical effects.

Any comments or thoughts? Twould be much appreciated.

Link: Exploring the world through questions

For German-speaking readers (or anyone with reasonable Google Translate-fu), System Matters has a worthy article about using questions to collaboratively build fantasy settings - you could generalise to other genres, of course.

I'm a firm believer in asking questions at the start of games, even when using an existing setting. In particular, I like to establish things like:

• What genre is the game aiming at? If I'm not familiar with the source material, I need some explanation - it doesn't mean I can't play, but I'll want more information. This is a relatively common issue because of my lack of TV knowledge.
• How supernatural is the setting? A lot of games we play feature some amount of supernatural stuff, but I like to establish how pervasive we expect that stuff to be. Even in fantasy settings, this can vary a lot. Is this the kind where magic replaces technology even to the extent of things you could do a lot more conveniently without magic? The kind where every village or suburb has a local mage, or magical businesses are commonplace? Is magic something everyone has, or just a few people? Can you learn it, or is it a gift, or an external force? What is magic, anyway? Alternatively, is this a setting where the supernatural intrudes onto normality? If so, is it widely-known and acknowledged (Ghostbusters), dealt with by a few dedicated heroes (Buffy), or hushed up by secret government organisations (so many things)? Perhaps most importantly, how much of the time are we expected to be looking for supernatural explanations and solutions?
• How serious a game is this? This is a big one because most of our games are non-serious, but there's a whole gamut of frivolity from slapstick nonsense (some of my Cthulhu games), via irreverent parody, through to a pretty straight game with some silly names and the odd media reference dropped in character (most of our D&D games).
• What is our characters' place in society, or relationship to important figures?

FATE Dixie 2: episode 04, post-game chat

More actual play of the FATE Core silly Bravestarr rip-off I ran earlier this year. Contains spoilers for nothing, because I'm not sure you can even do spoilers in FATE.

This episode, we talk even more about FATE Core and how we think the game went.

Episode 4

The Episode

Unfortunately, due to lateness of the hour, our post-game chat here was curtailed before we had the necessary three hours or so to really thrash out our views, via talking about Warhammer a lot, and propose four alternative versions that would be essentially entirely different games, as we are wont to do. So it's a mere hour.

The game rather shook my optimistic view as I discovered that my initial difficulty getting my head around some concepts hadn't, as I thought, melted away with reading. Although I broadly had the concepts down, I continually struggled to GM the thing, as I found it very difficult to work out how to apply the mechanics. As Dan suggests somewhere or other, FATE is trying to be a game about story, but does this by having mechanics that act on mechanics. This does make the mechanics a flexible and abstract thing that aren't constrained by direct interaction with the game fiction, allowing you to skin outcomes how you want; on the downside it means that determining what happens in the fiction based on a roll, or deciding what mechanics to use for a particular in-game happening, is not simple.

As I found regularly running the game, the disconnect between what was happening in the narrative and the mechanical support was one I found very unintuitive. As Dan has pointed out to me, I'm fairly inclined towards quite world-simulatey systems where consequences flow fairly naturally from actions and the mechanics simply determine how they work out, because I tend to find abstractions more difficult to get my head round.

Alternatively I think systems that are even more abstract and stripped down, with just a few abilities that work by handwavium and interpretation, can work for me. FATE for me fell in an awkward middle ground, where anything you do has to be modified by an abstract intermediate layer based on your intention in performing an action. Similarly, evaluating what kind of roll-off I should call for (Contest, Conflict, C-something-else, one die roll) felt like an additional complication in resolving events.

I enjoyed the game, but I didn't particularly enjoy running it because I felt incompetent with the mechanics and this was very obviously slowing down the gameplay. I could have overcome this somewhat by handwaving things but that sort of ruins the point of a playtest. Having had time to mull things over and listen back to this recording, I could probably run a better game next time, but the easiest way to do that seems to be for the GM to take back a lot of the work that's assumed to be done by players, like having them decide the result of a roll rather than players picking an objective beforehand. Are they creating an advantage or making an attack? Unfortunately, this goes against the grain of the book as very player-driven.

We could take another bash at this and probably handle things better, but it seems like it would be easier just to try and run more Dixie-2 in a system we're more familiar with. I'm not sure what'll happen with this. Just like before, I'd really like to hear some people who actually know what they're doing running this game.

FATE Dixie 2: episode 03, Gunfight at Snake Gulch

More actual play of the FATE Core silly Bravestarr rip-off I ran earlier this year. Contains spoilers for nothing, because I'm not sure you can even do spoilers in FATE.

This episode, we delve into sexual morality in sentient cybernetic horses, and finish the spurious Maglev-company-oppression-based plot with a gunfight full of explosions. What more could anyone want?

Episode 3

The Episode

The scene between the horses was fun, and in a longer-running game I'd be interested to see how that works out, and/or what happens with Silver's wandering eye.

The fight at the camp was okay, but once again I found the mechanics a bit frustrating in terms of actually running an exciting combat, which is a bit of a ding for a system supposedly designed specifically for action-adventure gaming. Quite possibly I'm just doing it wrong, but considering how simple the system is supposed to be, that is itself a problem if they haven't managed to get across clearly how to use their ruleset.

There seem to be quite a few things that are a bit tricky to do, or at least aren't explicitly discussed in the rules, like doing things with no obvious mechanical outcome. This makes the system less suited (I think) to the world-exploring kind of stuff that I tend to like, because doing random bits of research for titbits of info isn't well supported. Similarly, I wasn't sure how to handle sneaking up on the guard on the cliff, and ended up just calling for a couple of random rolls.

On reflection, I should probably have called for a sneaking and/or recon roll to create an advantage against the guard for a future attack, with the proviso that a failed attack or a botched sneak would result in the alarm being raised. Mechanically it would have been basically as difficult as I did ask for, so it's a wash, but I'd have liked to feel confident in it at the time.

Monitors: spell categories

Since I seem to be using de facto categories of spell, I should probably try to thrash out what those are. This would allow me to look out for potential issues, and also to consolidate some rules by applying them to categories rather than individual spells. I will attempt not to just reel out the names of spell schools in D&D, but damme if they didn't do a pretty good job nailing that stuff.

A secondary but important goal is ensuring that category names are nice and distinct, rather than, for example, all beginning with the same letter. Right, FATE?

Conjuration spells seem to be fairly prominent, and because there's historically some issues with those across games I should pay some attention.

I'm also fond of spells that involve runes and other big glowing things you can carve into the very air! that do stuff, so let's consider those a category of Sigils.

While it's very fluffy, a lot of spells are going to fall into a generic category of pretty generic spells that mostly have immediate effects and neither summon things nor create runes. Let's call these Invocations.

I haven't yet offered any examples, but I imagine some kind of Transformation spells are likely to come up. To avoid the Polymorph Problem I will want to pay these careful attention.

Conjuration

Conjuration spells allow you to summon an entity that acts semi-independently, typically having its own dicepools and instinctive behaviour.

Conjuration spells vary in power, requiring different amounts of energy (heat points) to cast them. These points are not merely spent, but invested. The investment is determined by the power of the entity summoned, which ranges from Trivial to Minor to Major. A single casting may summon several Trivial entities, while summoning a Major entity will drain multiple heat points over multiple rounds.

I had a lot of concerns here about limiting the power of summoning, since a wizard in a warm room could in theory summon an unending army. I spent ages working out possible ways to limit this with heat so that Conjuration spells don't create a massive advantage in either hot or cold conditions. Some failed models are listed at the bottom of the post.

Sigil

Sigil spells inscribe a symbol or create a field that provides an enduring effect. In essence, once the sigil is written, it continues to cast itself without the wizard's intervention.

Sigils take varying amounts of time to inscribe and may have varying power requirements. A wizard can always disable their own sigil without requiring a roll, though they must be within a specified range to do so. Some sigils are indescriminate, others can affect only specific targets. Because a sigil is dependent on shape, they can be rendered ineffective by altering the sigil or manipulating the surface it is inscribed on. Some sigils can be muffled by covering them with cloth or paint, but this is not a universal solution.

All sigils require the investment of the heat points expended to cast them.

Invocations

Invocations are the most generic type of spell and the basis of the magic rules. They have no additional special rules.

Transformations

Some spells can alter the physical form of a target entity or object.

Only the most recent transformation remains active, so a creature cannot benefit (or suffer) from multiple simultaneous transformations.

A wizard attempting to replace an existing transformation must make an opposed Wits roll against the original caster.

Some Transformations require investment of heat, but not all.

Investment

Any heat points currently invested in spells are recorded alongside the body temperature chart. If the wizard's body temperature plus their invested heat reaches 11+, they immediately fall into heat shock. Thus, it is dangerous to try and maintain large numbers of spells by remaining near a heat source.

Broken models

For reference, here are some abandoned models of how to handle investment in Conjurations (which I later extended to Sigils for similar reasons). The original point of this mechanic is partly to be atmospheric, but mostly because otherwise a wizard with a heat source can conjure an unlimited number of entities, losing heat each time and then regaining it. I felt it would be preferable to a hard cap. Eventually I went for the option described above.

Distance model

For each point currently invested in a Conjuration, the character's body temperature is treated as being one step further from the ambient temperature when determining temperature change.

Problem: in a warm environment this exacerbates the problem, allowing the wizard to regain body heat faster than normal. In a cold environment it makes conjurations far more dangerous than other spells for no obvious reason, since the character will lose heat rapidly and potentially become torpid even in a non-freezing room.

Hotter Model

For each point currently invested in a Conjuration, the character's body temperature is treated as being one step higher when determining temperature change.

Example of Investment

Starting from a body temperature of 6, Xerxes uses Fragments of Dreams Abandoned to conjure a Splintered One. He invests two points in the entity over two rounds. His temperature is now 4 with two points invested. His actions are subject to the rules for being Chilly in accordance with his temperature of 4.

If he is in an office at temperature 6, then there will be no temperature change. He is treated as temperature (4+2 = 6) which is the same as the office. He will be unable to warm up while he remains here.

If he is on a windswept marsh at temperature 2, then he will roll 4 dice to test for heat loss. He will continue to roll for heat loss until he reaches body temperature 0, at which point he will go torpid.

If he is in a boiler room at temperature 9, he will be sheltered from the heat to some extent as he rolls only 3 dice for heat gain rather than 5. When he reaches body temperature 7, he will stop rolling and can continue to act at optimum ability.

Problem: This model doesn't quite allow for unlimited summoning. When Xerxes has invested 9 points, he'll stop gaining new heat points but also fall torpid because his effective body temperature is 0. However, it allows conjuration spells (but no others) to provide a safe buffer against heat, rather than an immediate cooldown with the risk of side-effects. As long as you have at least one summoned entity, it'll be impossible to go into heatshock. Meanwhile, cold environments become extra-dangerous even though they weren't part of the initial problem.

Instability Model

For each point currently invested in a Conjuration, the character rolls an additional die when testing for temperature change. If body temperature currently equals the ambient, determine whether heat is gained or lost at random.

The more points are invested in conjurations, the more body temperature will swing and the greater the risk.

Example of Investment

Starting from a body temperature of 6, Xerxes uses Fragments of Dreams Abandoned to conjure a Splintered One. He invests two points in the entity over two rounds. His temperature is now 4 with two points invested. His actions are subject to the rules for being Chilly in accordance with his temperature of 4.

If he is in an office at temperature 6, he rolls two dice plus an additional 2 for the points currently invested. When he reaches temperature 6, he continues to roll the 2 dice for his invested heat, and may swing from temperature 4 to temperature 8 depending on the rolls.

If he is on a windswept marsh at temperature 2, then he will roll 4 dice to test for heat loss. When he reaches temperature 2, he continues to roll 2 dice and may swing from temperature 0 to temperature 4, passing in and out of consciousness.

If he is in a boiler room at temperature 9, he will roll 7 dice in total, which means a bad roll could land him in heat shock immediately, though it's unlikely. He will gravitate towards temperature 9 and then swing from 7-11, again passing in and out of consciousness.

Problem: This isn't a terrible model, and generally does what I'm aiming for, but it feels unsatisfactory at the point where body temperature should stabilize. Because of the role of chance (and insulation) it's also relatively unlikely that wizards will actually pass out.

Blocking Model

When a point is invested in a conjuration, that step of the heat scale becomes unavailable and is blocked off, chipping away at their ability to cope with temperature change. The more steps are blocked off, the more vulnerable the monitor becomes to torpor or heat shock.

Example of Investment

Starting from a body temperature of 6, Xerxes uses Fragments of Dreams Abandoned to conjure a Splintered One. He invests two points in the entity over two rounds. His temperature is now 4, and steps 5 and 6 on the scale are blocked off. His actions are subject to the rules for being Chilly in accordance with his temperature of 4.

If he is in an office at temperature 6, he rolls two dice as normal for heat change. If he gains one heat point, he will skip over the missing steps and reach temperature 7. As this is warmer than the office, next round he must roll again for temperature loss. While the points remain invested, his body temperature cannot stabilise in this temperature 6 room.

If he is on a windswept marsh at temperature 2, he will roll 2 dice to test for heat loss as normal.

If he is in a boiler room at temperature 9, he will roll 5 dice as normal. However, any heat gain will skip right over the missing steps, which means a bad roll could land him in heat shock immediately.

This model seemed very promising when I was mulling it over. It has essentially no effect on cold environments, since the monitor's body temperature will drop as with any other spell, and as the tendency will be for them to get colder, the fact that some steps are missing higher up is little problem.

Of course, someone could plan for a cold environment by using up steps 2-4 on the chart through investment, then hoping to find heat sources that will let them leap from 1 to 5 with very little effort, minimising the time they spend on heating up. Bear in mind, though, that they'll be rolling a lot of dice to see if they cool down and even one die can send them back to temperature 1 - so it's not exactly flawless.

In warm environments, blocking some steps will make you warm up faster. You could use this to make it easy to stay at temperature 7, but if you keep summoning more things then you'll lose that slot as well.

Essentially, the problem I was concerned about was wizards in a warm room summoning unlimited numbers of things over a long period. In this model, a wizard in a temperature 7 room will lose the 7 slot. They'll then tend to gravitate to temperature 8; investing that, they'll gravitate to 9, and so on. In a temperature 7 room, a wizard can invest only 4 points of heat before they are at serious risk of passing out from heat shock. Strictly speaking, you could argue that they could wait to wake up and then summon more stuff until the whole 2-10 range is blocked off, but it's very unlikely anyone will try it, not least because they'd be constantly passing in and out of consciousness.

Problem: This model is fundamentally kind of faffy. You have to use an actual chart to block things off, not just a pile of tokens or a die as you might otherwise. It also gets complicated because it convolutes the (fairly simple) heat rules, and raises questions about what happens when a conjuration ends - do you just pick one slot to unblock, or do you need to remember them? While I like it, I feel like it would unnecessarily complicate the game to achieve a fairly simple end.

FATE Dixie 2: episode 02, Two Robots Ride Into Town

More actual play of the FATE Core silly Bravestarr rip-off I ran earlier this year. Contains spoilers for nothing, because I'm not sure you can even do spoilers in FATE.

This episode, we begin the bits of play that aren't world creation, and I immediately start running into problems. Apologies for the fairly slow progress of the game.

Episode 2

The Episode

I enjoyed the tone of the game from the outset, it's kind of the slightly silly tone that most of my games end up with, only with no need to pretent not to be silly.

As I mention in the after-game segment, one area where FATE Core falls down for me is in guiding the GM towards satisfying encounter design. In this specific case that means combat, because what probably should have been a fun little tussle that the PCs were bound to win was resolved in a single die roll. More broadly, given that similar mechanics are used for everything in FATE, I didn't (and still don't) understand how to set up an encounter that would be interesting as a fight, as a social problem or whatever. The tone of the book strongly leads you towards not using unique PC-level characters except as ultimate antagonists, but also read to me like you shouldn't often be using mid-tier characters either, so the disparity will tend to be very large.

That being said, for a combat resolved in a single die roll this episode sure does go on for a while. Okay, I'm exaggerating - what happens is things move from physical to social combat, followed by some follow-up around town and a lot of mechanics discussion. I hope it's not too tedious.

FATE Dixie 2: episode 01, chargen

As mentioned quite a while ago, I ran a sample game of FATE Core this year to test out the ruleset. The game rather shook my optimistic view as I discovered that my initial difficulty getting my head around some concepts hadn't, as I thought, melted away with reading. But we'll get onto that later.

Here, we do chargen, which FATE Core is at pains to point out is part of the gameplay. This sounds kind of cheesy but (leaving aside things like how it's very different from everything you do once you start on stuff most people would consider "playing the game") is broadly true, in the sense that it's fun and helps establish what's actually going on. The game as described expects players to be guiding events quite substantially, so rather than turning up to a game and being presented with a pre-crafted world of the GM's devising, you collaborate on it.

Episode 1

The Episode

I had a fair bit of fun with this session, despite being plagued by insecurity (as per usual) about whether I was doing it right, and how much to steer things. There was definitely a bit of heavy-handedness at times, such as me basically picking the setting we'd use, but in my defence this was largely a reaction to ideas being proposed that I couldn't possibly do, and in some cases I'm not sure anyone could do. Games about cyberpunk copyright lawyers could well be interesting and is presumably technically doable with FATE, but it's a major departure from the basic "action adventure" premise and not very suited to first contact with the system.

Arthur, Dan and I actually have pretty substantial differences in what media we're familiar with, which means in these situations we end up proposing things each other don't really know anything about. This is very largely down to me having watched very little TV; I saw the odd thing at other people's houses, there was a narrow window from about 1993-1998 when I watched a lot of Saturday morning TV, then I basically watched the odd episode of Buffy and drifted back out of the habit.

It's not like we were anti-TV in our house, it's just my brother broke the set when I was a mere babe, and we couldn't afford a replacement until I was about 7 or 8, by which point nobody in our family had a TV-watching habit; we read or listened to the radio instead. And that TV was black-and-white and fuzzy, so it wasn't exactly amazing viewing, it was maybe 1995 before we had a colour model. So yeah, I've never really had the attention span to sit for long periods and just watch a screen - I need more active entertainment. At least with the radio you can do other stuff at the same time.

It's not like I think TV is bad or anything, and in fact I've missed out on a lot of shared pop culture and worthwhile stuff by not watching it, which I sometimes regret. A lot of my pop culture comes second-hand, and I make some effort to catch up on the odd thing, but mostly films (manageable) rather than TV (watching 20+ hours of something is pretty much beyond me). A lot of what I did end up watching was documentaries, because that's what the family bothered tuning into. And Doctor Who, of course. The old version.

Once we settled on the premise, pinning down the details was fairly straightforward. Again, I've seen remarkably few Westerns and almost all of those were parodies or post-Westerns (I think everything but The Magnificent Seven, in fact) so even this was a little tricky for me. Luckily, I have seen Bravestarr.

I'm occasionally concerned about how much of my media consumption is parodies. It may well exceed the amount of non-parody stuff I read/watch/listen to. There are probably genres I've only encountered in parody.

I ended up really liking this world, so I vaguely hope to one day get back to it and kick up some more mischief.

Mutants of Cthulhu

So for whatever reason I have this weird fascination with the Call of Cthulhu game, which makes me gravitate towards it as a system despite its flaws (which, to be fair, are in my view not worse than most other games). For once I think this may actually be a good idea.

Basically I was, I think, listening to some Miskatonic University Podcast or other which probably mentioned about characters being normalish people with no special abilities, and this either prompted or reminded me of an idea for changing that without completely overhauling the game.

I have so many game ideas thrown out and languishing unfinished that I've probably forgotten some myself, but I was talking about a thing called Alpha Dregs the other month and this is very tangentially related.

My new idea is very slightly like Alpha Dregs in that you have powers you can't really use, but differs in most other respects, such as the actual point of the game, which is to do the same stuff you normally do in Call of Cthulhu. This wouldn't be a new system, just one game run in BRP.

Premise

So basically the premise is that you're a bunch of people with poorly-controlled mutant abilities, more along X-Men lines than classic superheroes. Details don't matter hugely, but I broadly imagine that you're brought together either as a kind of Mutations Anonymous group, or by a small group of scientists, civil servants, clergy, social workers or whatever who are trying (and so far failing) to convince anyone important that this is a real thing that someone should be addressing. Picture the traditional frustrated public sector worker, trying to do their job in the face of job cuts and general indifference, only now they're trying to get someone (anyone) to believe in superpowers without getting themselves fired or institutionalised in the process, nor bringing the tabloids down on you poor folks.

For whatever reason the characters get drawn into weird stuff. Maybe they form an unlikely detective agency. Maybe the tiny barely-known department trying to take care of them also handles everything bizarre and they get dragged into it. Maybe they're on the way back from a meeting when a hunting horror grabs someone across the street. Maybe they're actually in some kind of facility, the place suddenly collapses and they have to help themselves. Doesn't matter.

I'd be inclined to handle this pretty loosely. I'd encourage players to give themselves, say, three new skills to represent their abilities, each one based on an existing stat (probably 2x stat) and able to increase as normal. Skills would be broad in scope and can be used however the player wants, though difficulty should be adjusted as seems appropriate. Each successful use of a mutant power would cost at least one Magic Point. Each failed use of a power costs one Sanity Point.

Example

So Arthur Perkins is a mutant bank clerk. He ends up taking the skills Telekinesis, Force Field and Levitation because they seem like a coherent set. The group rules that Perkins can use Telekinesis with the distance acting as a modifier; he also uses POW rather than STR when using it, and a very good roll will increase its effect. Perkins can now use this to shut doors, interpose crates between him and nearby ghouls, or attempt to hurl said ghouls out of sixth-storey windows.

Lucinda Beversley is a mutant lady of leisure. She takes Pyromancy, Summon Elemental and Phasing as her powers. The result of her Summon Elemental roll will determine (amongst other things) whether the elemental will actually obey her, though only on a botch might it become hostile. The group decides that her Pyromancy powers don't create fire from nothing, but depend on some source of heat being available, and that turning a small heat source into a serious fire will be more difficult than simply controlling an existing fire.

My feeling is that this would be one case where the BRP percentile system's high failure rate would be fitting, as characters attempt to invoke unreliable powers and deal with the consequences. It would keep things fairly genre-appropriate while introducing special abilities to the game. Basically I think it might be quite fun.

Skill atrophy, part 2

So last time I was talking in general terms about how skill development in real life doesn't really match the constant escalation of most games. Let's see what we could do about that.

Introducing skill atrophy to games

If we wanted to have a system where people's skills shifted more naturally to match their activities, what could we do? What would we be looking for?

1. Skills increase with use
2. Skills fade with neglect
3. Neglected skills are easier to revive than new skills are to acquire
4. Skills follow a curve - it's easy to master the basics, but every improvement is a little harder than the last

On unique abilities

This post is inspired by a combination of listening to more KOTN Numenera and a comment of Dan's on a post a few months back:

If a player tries to do something with a very limited ability, the GM is usually likely to let them get away with it, because that ability is seen as being low-utility and because a lot of GMs like to "reward creativity" (whatever that means). By contrast if an ability is very broad in scope, the GM's natural instinct is to rein it in. "Yes I know you've got a skill in Doing Anything but I can't just let you roll it for *everything*."

This is, once again, not a criticism of the KOTN playstyle, just some observations. I'm sure I've seen similar cases before, this is just the one that caught my attention.

One of the characters has the Talks to Machines focus, and I'm pretty sure at least one of the other podcasts I listened to also features this ability. Something I can't help noticing is the contrast between its description and how it tends to work out in play.

Distant Activation

You can activate or deactivate any machine you can see within short range, even if normally you would have to touch or manually operate the device. To use this ability, you must understand the function of the machine, it must be your size or smaller, and it can’t be connected to another intelligence (or be intelligent itself).

This is a pretty useful ability, so obviously it comes up for quite a lot of use. Now, I only noticed this recently and don't really fancy relistening to everything to get some stats (the disadvantage of audio over text, I suppose) but there's something interesting about what happens when a player tries to use it: very frequently, the GM calls for a roll.

It doesn't sound unreasonable, and I'm not sure that it is, but I'll point out that there's nothing in the text which indicates a roll is called for. What this power lets you do is turn a machine on or off without physically touching it, providing it's not an AI or interfaced to an AI.

But being able to turn machines on or off is a very useful power, and obviously some machines are advanced or complicated or plot-relevant and it makes sense to call for a roll to turn those on or off at a range, so...

...does it?

It seems intuitive, but why? Why should this ability require a roll, bearing in mind that the mechanics do not at any point ask for a roll? It's actually fairly limited to begin with, assuming you're reasonably sensible about "understand the function" and the size constraint. Compare it to the Leads ability "Command", which lets you force a creature to obey one non-damaging order - my gut feeling is that it's unlikely anyone would demand a roll for that. And I'm certain that if you took an ability that lets you spend 1 point to add to your melee damage, nobody would demand a roll to use it successfully "because this creature is hard to damage".

I think partly this kind of feeling comes from the fact that Distant Activation grants you a new ability, rather than enhancing an existing one. Another aspect is, as Dan says, its broad applicability - there are a lot of machines out there, and activating machines could help you overcome puzzles in a way that inflicting damage more effectively wouldn't. Essentially, this ability grants you a new tool to overcome obstacles or achieve ends, rather than enhancing an existing one, and I think this is where the instinctive conservatism creeps in.

Increasing damage doesn't feel like a game-changer because it simply makes an existing ability more mechanically effective; combat is slightly less of a challenge, but then there are many mechanical factors that can make a combat more of a challenge in return. Giving commands to a creature is a significant ability, but there are other ways to influence creatures to do something you want - persuasion, threats, tricking them with body language or feints, setting up situations in which they'll do what you want, and so on. I suspect also that getting somebody to do one limited action for you is of more limited use than you might think. Often there's no advantage over just doing it yourself, and at other times the advantage you gain (perhaps by disarming an enemy in a fight) has to be balanced against the action spent giving the order.

Distant Activation mostly allows you to do, at a short range, something you could probably do with physical contact. There are a few exceptions: it can open a door from the wrong side, or even detonate (or deactivate) a bomb, even if you don't have the clearance normally required. In general though, what it's going to offer is an alternative way to do something you normally could anyway, such as create a distraction, open a lock, or avoid detection. You could use it to turn off certain kinds of weapon, or detonate a grenade, although in the latter case you'd be blowing yourself up as well.

One of the difficulties is that this power very quickly gets fuzzy in a way that some others don't. Adding damage is just adding damage, non-damaging orders offers room for grey areas but is fairly explicit. In play though, people immediately jump to using Distant Activation on parts of machinery, such as electronic locks on a bulkhead door. Can you use it to start a car engine? I'd say not. Turn on a lightbulb? What about activating one lightbulb from a set? Can you fire a loaded mortar with it (I think so), or the cannon of a tank (probably)? How about deactivating the cooling fan in a mainframe? Or closing the protective shutter on the end of the death-laser approaching you?

If you think about it, Distant Activation applied strictly isn't that much of a game-changer compared to many other abilities. Phasing through solid objects is a huge advantage and a relatively common sort of power. Sensing thoughts is amazing. Travel powers like flight, tunneling or teleportation can completely alter the challenge posed by a problem. I'm inclined to say that the best way to ensure Distant Activation and other such unique abilities don't end up unbalancing things is to carefully apply the restrictions and abilities built into the power, rather than calling for additional rolls when it seems inconvenient.

Skill atrophy, part 1

Yet another entry in the continuing series of posts inspired by Shannon.

Key quote:

The point about pushing people out of the fun is a good one. Ranking is also quite odd, on reflection. Games tend to model highly skilled PCs acquiring rank and power as they level, whereas in real life this isn't how it works. A large proportion of prestigious people either inherit a position or get there through a kind of attrition. Promotion to high rank tends to involve having, and honing, management and political skills rather than those suited to lower-rank assignments, and these high-rank skills get practiced while the others are neglected or get outdated. There's only a handful of people in an organisation who are both highly respected for their skills, and able to use that respect to exert power - usually technical specialists, in my experience. I suspect a large part of the reason is that games really don't tend to have skill atrophy.

Link: otherness in Lovecraft

Because most people won't have seen it, I thought I'd share this forum post, specifically the second half - it talks about race/otherness in Lovecraft's writing, and I thought it was pretty interesting stuff myself and perhaps of interest to other folks. Seems like it falls within the hazy purview of this blog.

ElijahWhateley on Post-Lovecraftian Fiction

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 09

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

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

The Episode

Link to Episode 09.

There's some (I think) very interesting discussion around the 20 minute mark of the interplay between balance, genre and expectations. Dan brings things out pretty clearly with the point that "the sorts of things that player characters are encouraged to do are the sorts of things which you probably wouldn't do if you had a 50% chance of dying doing it". Fate Points do tip the balance in favour of heroics, but there's a constant tension between wanting feats of heroism and the actual chance of getting away with it. The canon isn't a huge help here, because depiction of PC-level characters and/or Space Marines varies between portraying them as elite soldiers who are still very mortal, or as godlike warriors who shrug off the strongest attacks.

During the discussion my old favourite topic of problems with Assault Marines comes up again. In my defence, we recorded this long before I wrote a lot of my posts on this topic, because of backlog. I'll let the discussion stand for itself. We also discuss the Rocket Tag situations that more powerful enemies cause due to subtractive armour and so on. Arthur raises interesting counterpoints with discussions of the layers of death-proofing offered by RPGs versus tabletop.

This mini-campaign was a challenging idea, because in principle a siege offers a good sandbox, but actually it departs enough from the usual mission-based game that it puts extra weight on the GM. While there was a bit of work we could come up with, and we could probably have devised more if necessary, the onus is definitely on Arthur here to provide a steady and varied stream of things to deal with. Thankfully, I think he did a decent job of it, and picked a good time to bring things to a close. As (I think?) ended up being mentioned in one episode, I'm considering running at least one game set in the siege. It seems a nice rich environment to flesh out.

I wrote the above paragraph (like a lot of the show notes) while doing the editing, i.e. before I moved to the other side of the planet from the rest of the gang. While I'm still working on that Arbites game, it's probably going to be a while.

I'm really sad that we don't have recordings of the middle session, because this showcased the more active part of our activities: sending a recruiting and diplomatic mission to the Underhive to secure it from the orks, and sending the scouts on raids. We all take a lot of pride in the exploits of our boys, and they definitely done good. What remains in the recordings is relatively passive. Admittedly, this is different from many scenarios (in many games), which often feature pretty static plots for the PCs to interact with, so it's still hopefully a bit of a change of pace. However, we lost the section that best highlights how even an apparently passive situation, like a siege where the initiative lies with the attackers, can still offer opportunities for taking an active role.

It strikes me this would be a reasonable place to focus some effort - I know Deathwatch is aimed at special forces-type missions, but actually I imagine it's pretty common to use it for general Space Marine stuff, and larger-scale battles are a key part of that. Some missions designed for integration into wars might be a decent supplement. Siege-breaking, taking out supply chains or leaders, holding strongpoints, they're all good for heroics.

So that's it for Mersadie Hive. Hope you enjoyed this series as much as I enjoyed playing them, and indeed listening back to them as I edited. Do leave any comments you might have.

Temporary hiatus has begun

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

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

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

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 08

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

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

Link to Episode 08.

The Episode

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

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

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

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

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

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 07

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

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

Link to Episode 07.

The Episode

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

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

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

Monitors: side-effects of magic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Magical Axis

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

Influence

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

Manifestation

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

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

Suggested effects

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

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

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

Possible severe effects when tracing runes:

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

Possible severe effects when tracing summoning:

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

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

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 06

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

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

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

The Episode

Link to Episode 06.

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

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

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

Deathwatch: the Siege of Mersadie Hive, 05

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

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

The Episode

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

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

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

Link to Episode 04b.

Link to Episode 05.

Reviewish: The Menace from Sumatra

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

The review is up on my YSDC blog here.

Salience of challenge types

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**I massively overuse this phrase.

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

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

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

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

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