Everyone who spends time near the River Stush has to deal with them. They are the price locals pay for rich soil and plentiful fishing. A nuisance, yes, but no more so than floods, earthquakes, malaria, or any other objectively terrible thing humans have gotten used to. The few who die are mourned, but their loss is made up for by the complete absence of famine from living memory.
The growths root deeply in muscle before the “fruit” appears. It has a hard outer skin, and squishy, yellow-green flesh within, hence the name. They cause a deep aching pain in the body, which can be managed by clipping the growths each morning to keep them small. They’re sensitive enough that clipping is extremely painful, but leaving them unclipped for even a few days allows them to grow to an unmanageable size. The baseline pain threshold of the locals has thus been set to inhuman heights. As far as they’re concerned, outlanders are all pansies.
New growths appear now and again, a few inches apart. They mostly grow on the back, belly, and the upper half of the arms and legs. Removing them completely is a difficult and dangerous process, but necessary for those who’ve got too many sprouts, or whose growths have migrated to an area where they may do serious damage, such as the chest, hands, feet, or head. Fortunately, there’s the River Doctor.
She’s a kindly old woman, well into her ’70s, traveling up and down the river with her tongueless apprentice and her bag of tools. She spends a few weeks in each town, removing what growths need it, and ensuring everyone heals up well before loading her river yacht with the grateful town’s foodstuffs, and moving on to the next settlement. The trip back and forth takes most of the year. She disappears for a few months each winter before starting her journey again after the spring thaw.
It is lamentably inevitable that she lose a few patients each year. What doctor does not? She insists on keeping the bodies for autopsy, which everyone agrees is reasonable. No one is crass enough to question the saintly doctor. Before her, things were much worse.
In truth, the River Doctor has rarely ever lost a patient. The gourd growths are trivially easy to remove for anyone with the right tools and basic surgical training. No, the ones who “die” are simply those with the most promising fruit. In the bowels of her yacht are metal cages where the ‘dead’ are kept drugged and docile until the winter, when she takes her boat down the sea coast to the manse of the Mad Marquis.
Beneath this imposing cliffside villa is a dungeon where the growths are fostered in an ideal environment, clipped only when they’ve achieved a full and painful bloom. The Marquis enjoys them as a delicacy. The enlightened mind can’t be bothered by the trifles of human suffering. If a good meal means turning people into immobile clusters of gourd growths, it’s a small price to pay. The Marquis even operates a small and secret market for other discriminating elites enlightened enough to share his philosophy.
Eventually the unchecked growths always kill their host, but not before producing one final fruit, which always sprouts from the top of the head. Pale blue in color, the Marquis believes it contains the victim’s soul. Whether or not that’s true, there’s no denying that consuming these blue fruits is an experience that defies description. One never quite knows what to expect.
It has always disappointed me that more players don’t pursue creating their own spells. Encouraging them to do so was the impetus for Magic Words, a system I created back in 2015 and have been using ever since. It remains my most notable mechanical contribution to the OSR. In the past 3 years the system has undergone numerous mutations and tweaks, but the premise remains fundamentally the same: players collect words, combine those words to form the names of spells, and between sessions the referee creates that spell’s description.
I’ve had no reason to doubt the efficacy of that fundamental premise until recently. For the past few months I’ve been playing a magic user in a campaign run by noted OSR Man of Mystery, Chris H. Much of the peculiar way he runs Magic Users is kept intentionally obscured from the players, so I cannot describe it in full, only what my experience has been.
I began play with two spells: one that can trap other spells in a bubble, and another which conjures a suit of bubble armor for a friendly target. I didn’t have any input on creating these spells, or in selecting the “bubble” theme they both conform to. They were presented to me with exhaustively written mechanics, like any spell you might find in a book, with the caveat that they only represented the most reliable way to conjure magic my character had thusfar discovered. Chris encouraged me to tinker, and twist, and see what I could get away with. To apply the general principals of how the spells were constructed to achieve different results.
For example, that bubble armor spell? I’ve used it to seal and apply pressure to a gaping wound. I’ve used it to create a semi-reflective helm to give me 360 degree vision, and a bonus to my perception checks. I’ve used it to form a bubble around our camp which would loudly ‘pop’ if anyone were to approach. All of these were done in the moment without any additional prep. I presume there is some means by which my spell alterations might fail, but again those details are obscured from me as a player.
Fundamentally, Chris and I are trying to achieve the same thing. We’re trying to force magic users to be more creatively involved in their spells. Yet while my Magic Words prompt creativity between adventures, Chris’s method prompts creativity during adventures. As fond as I am of Magic Words, I must confess that the creative focus of Chris’s method is more interesting, and a healthier way to construct a game.
I’d like to experiment with pushing the creative focus of Magic Words towards that same point. Given that this is by necessity a fundamental departure from the original premise it seems only fitting to dub it Magic Words 2.
Magic Users begin play knowing 3 magic words, determined randomly from whatever list is handy. Additional words are learned by encountering them through play, though Magic Users are limited in the number of words they may know at one time: never more than their level + 2.
Magic Users may cast spells a number of times per day equal to their level. They do so by arranging some number of their words (one or more) into a spell name, and describing their desired effects for that spell. The referee will reject any spell out of hand if its effects do not relate to the words used to construct it.
After the player describes their spell, the referee will assign it a failure chance between 1-in-6 and 6-in-6, determined by how powerful they judge the spell to be. At this point the player may either attempt their casting by rolling a d6, or they may negotiate for a more favorable failure chance by reducing the proposed efficacy of their spell.
Note that while it is possible for spells to have a 100% failure chance, it is not possible for a spell to have a 100% chance of success. Such fungible magic is necessarily volatile.
If a spell fails, the referee will adjudicate some appropriate backfire. A failed fireball may appear in the wrong location, or it may be at the right location but produce only a few sparks, or it may encase the caster in a pyramid of ice. A failed spell may be devastating, however, it does not consume any of the Magic User’s daily spellcasting. If the MU is able to cast 3 more spells today, and produces a spell failure, they may still cast 3 more spells.
ANALYSIS:
If I want to push myself towards more in-the-moment spell creativity, this is the obvious way to do it. Obviousness isn’t a virtue, but if this doesn’t work then at least I’ve gotten the obvious option out of my head to make room for less obvious ideas.
Players have always chaffed at the fact that Magic Words doesn’t give them a say in what their spell’s description will be. I’ve never wanted to give them a say, because it leads to an inevitable back-and-forth negotiation that I have preferred to avoid for the sake of the referee’s time. The codified negotiation presented above should give players what they’ve always wanted without placing undue burden on the referee. In fact, this system removes a great deal of the work the original method required from the ref.
My worry is that this method will be too free form. It will be difficult for me to walk the line between allowing my players to cast spells which are too powerful, and being too harsh with my failure chances.
The only way I can think of to mitigate this is to introduce some guidelines. As I understand it, the game “Ars Magica” does something like this. I’ve not read the system myself, but it sounds more complicated than I’d want to use for an OSR style game. My goal is always to create mechanics the referee can easily memorize.
I do want to give this idea a fair shake at the table, but my gut says this isn’t the kind of idea I’ll want to play with for very long. We will have to see.
Learning to play D&D is more a study of philosophy than it is of rulebooks. Character classes, and saving throws, and combat mechanics are all just subsystems for resolving edge cases. The core mechanic of the game is conversation. Specifically, a Three Step Conversation.
1. The referee describes an environment.
2. The players describe their actions within that environment.
3. The referee describes how the environment changes.
In my experience, this back-and-forth effectively describes the vast majority of good play. For example:
1. “You are in darkness.”
2. “I light a torch.”
3. “The torch illuminates a windowless, brick-walled room with a single door.”
2. “I look around at the ceiling to see if I can find where we entered from.”
3. “The ceiling is vaulted. The hole you fell through isn’t actually up there. It’s on the rear wall, about 10′ off the ground, angled upwards into a chute.”
2. “CRUG THE DESTROYER HATE TINY ROOM! CRUG SMASH DOOR WITH AXE!”
3. “The door’s wood was not particularly strong, and is easily smashed to bits beneath Crug’s mighty blow.”
I came up with this formulation a little over a year ago, and have been smugly satisfied with myself ever since. Then, the other day, I was talking with John Bell of The Retired Adventurer. We were discussing refereeing advice, and he suggested following a pattern of Question Answer-Question, something he’d written about back in 2012. To quote the most relevant passage from his post:
I recommend that you, whether a player or referee, end almost any and every assertion you make, especially one that answers another player’s question, with another question, one that either asks what their response is, what further information they want, what the foreseeable consequences of doing something would be, even just confirming their choice.
Question Answer-Question pairs well with the Three Step Conversation. I’m going to work it into the way I referee from now on, and I anticipate seeing some improvement to the flow and momentum of play. If nothing else, ending on a question is a clear signal to the players that I’m done talking. It ought to cut down on awkward pauses where the party waits to see if I have more to add. Moreover, I can occasionally direct my questions at specific players like a vindictive primary school teacher. It could be a useful tool for involving folks who are normally too shy to speak up.
During our talk, John further suggested presenting the players with specific options, not unlike old video game RPGs. “You’ve entered a square room with a door on each wall and a statue of a goblin in the center. Do you want to press on through one of the exits, examine the statue more closely, or look around the room for anything subtle you might have missed?”
Initially this seemed limiting to me. An act of reducing the player’s infinite number of choices down to whatever handful are most obvious to the referee in the moment. That assumes, though, that players will respond to a given list of choices by accepting them as a limitation. That’s generally not how these things go.
Presenting a person with an infinity of options, (“You’re in an open field, what do you do?”) tends to create analysis paralysis, and prompt “safe” responses. Conversely, having the referee put forth some of the more obvious choices could encourage players to look for something outside the box. Even experienced players, who might not always appreciate this sort of presentation, can occasionally benefit from a nudge. And for new players it could be a great way to get them into the adventuring frame of mind.
The method also dovetails nicely with the principals I described in Obfuscation Through Volume, one of the oldest posts on this site which I still stand behind. (The advice, that is. The writing is awful).
Bit of a shorter post today. Sorry if you feel cheated. There’s not a lot to say about this idea, but it felt valuable to share none the less.
The other day, all-around likeable dude Chris Wilson sent me a message:
“I know you’ve been running a successful Google hangouts campaign for awhile now, and I was just wondering if you have any advice for me to get a similar campaign started?”
This isn’t something I’d ever really thought about. After two and a half years, On a Red World Alone definitely qualifies as a long running online campaign, but that’s not something I set out to accomplish. I have no program for keeping it going aside from simply responding to problems as they’ve arisen. None the less, Chris seems to have found the conversation useful. Perhaps the same advice can be helpful to others as well.
The most important thing is to Keep Showing Up. Everything else I have to say could be distilled down to this single point. Campaigns end when the referee gives up on them. If you surrender to your first bout of “setting fatigue,” your campaign will be lucky to last 6 months.
There have been times when ORWA bores me. Days when I just don’t feel like running very much. I push through those times because I enjoy hanging out with my players, and because I know my boredom is temporary. I know that in a month I’m going to come up with a cool new idea. When I do, I’ll be happy I still have my weekly ORWA session to inject it into.
On a Red World Alone will end someday, but it won’t end because I’m bored with it. It will end because I’m satisfied with it.
It’s also essential to understand that Your Players Won’t Keep Showing Up. That’s not a judgement on them, it’s just a fact of life. No group of adults will be able to consistently keep the same night of the week available for years at a time. People drop out. Presently, ORWA only has one and a half of its original players. I lost most of my starting group within the first 6 months, and since then there have been multiple “generations” of the party. Some of the later players have become more essential to my idea of what the game is than the people who were there with me at the beginning.
If I have more than a couple sessions of low, or no attendance, I go recruiting. I get out there on g+ and let folks know there’s room for them at my table. Sometimes it takes a couple weeks to find someone, but it’s worth the effort. I’ve had 16 different players in ORWA over the years: some dropped out after a few weeks; some are still new recruits themselves; some played for many years but have moved on to other things; some have returned to the game after long absences. Only one player has been part of the game consistently since its beginning.
To mitigate players dropping off, I do my best to Make The Game Part of Everyone’s Routine. In my experience the most common time to lose players is when the schedule is unpredictable. On a Red World Alone happens every Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm PST. That time has never changed, nor have I ever taken a hiatus away from it.
That isn’t to say we’ve never missed a session. In the 132 weeks since we started playing, we’ve only played 101 times. Sometimes Wednesday is a holiday, and we cancel the game so people can be with their families. Sometimes I can’t avoid needing to work during our normal game time, or I’m too sick to play. Sometimes I show up, but none of my players do.
These things happen, but it’s always handled on a week-to-week basis. The session is always assumed to be on until something disrupts it.
In terms of Organization, my games work pretty much the same way that everyone’s games do. I set lofty goals for myself and constantly fall short of them. Somehow the game hasn’t completely imploded yet, and is still a lot of fun, so I can’t be doing everything wrong.
The first step I take in any new campaign is to create a new community for it on Google+. A place where the players and I can talk about the game without any distractions. It is insanely useful, and is easily my #1 organization tip. Beyond that, I can divide my campaign documentation into three groups: the player’s guide, the public records, and my private notes.
The Player’s Guide is a document I throw together which contains all the house rules we will be using. I don’t have any of the ORWA guides available for easy sharing, but the guide I wrote for Fuck the King of Space is a good representative example. Don’t be intimidated by the 23 pages of writing I did for that game. I use a TON of house rules. The original ORWA player’s guide was much less impressive.
Public Records start with the play reports, where I note down everything important that happened during a session. I acknowledge that my style in this is wildly excessive, and creates a lot of useless documentation that nobody will ever use. Do not emulate the way I write play reports. A good play report can be much simpler than the ones I write.
Out of these play reports I copy some information into various threads. Some are more useful than others. For example: any time a new spell is created, I write it up in the play report, but I also copy it into the Spellbook thread. I do the same thing for any guns that are discovered. I have thread for recording the player’s activities during their Haven Turns, and threads for recording which sessions various NPCs have appeared in.
Finally there are The Referee Notes. Nothing too surprising here: it’s a document with all the tables I use, as well as a few notes about what certain NPCs are plotting, etc. Most of the details about the world just live in my head, same as any other referee. Occasionally I’ll need to stat up a monster or doodle a map. I have a pocket notebook where I write all that stuff.
Some issues are unique to running games online. I use Google Hangouts for a few reasons. Habit is the biggest one, but it’s also easily accessible to people I know through Google+, it’s good at supporting multi-user video chats, and is more-or-less reliable. That being said, Google has definitely been treating the service like an ugly stepchild, gradually making it less and less and less useful over time. I’m hopeful that Discord will be able to replace hangouts, but last time I tried it they still had way too many issues with multi-user video chats.
(Please: no one proselytize to me about Roll20. I do not care.)
In an online chat it’s important to realize that everyone’s voices are being pushed through the same set of speakers. Because of this, everyone gets flattened out to the same volume. It’s not possible for two people to lean over and have a side conversation, or for multiple people to talk at once and remain intelligible. The group needs to be good at giving one another space to speak. They also need to acknowledge that this puts increased pressure on people who are shy. If someone looks like they’re trying to say something, do what you can to give them the space to speak.
Don’t make a big deal about not being able to see people’s dice. Some folks get completely bent outta shape over this, as though it’s impossible to play unless there’s some shared dice roller application. It is pathetic. We’re playing D&D, not craps. There’s no money on the line. Who cares if someone fudges a roll? All they’re doing is damaging their own experience.
If someone showed up at my table saying they rolled an 18 in every stat and a 20 on every attack…so what? It’s not going to save them from making stupid decisions, and the only one who is gonna have any less fun because of it is them.
Audio issues happen. People are going to cause some echo or some static. It can be pretty dang frustrating, but you gotta be understanding. Take some time at the start of the session to let people know they’re causing an issue, and give them a chance to fix it. Often having them put on headphones is all that is required.
If it can’t be fixed and it’s a minor issue, try to live with it. Sometimes people live near the train tracks. It annoys them more than it annoys you, so try to be cool. If someone has a major technical issue which is disrupting play, it’s okay to ask them to leave until they can get their gear working.
People are absolutely going to get distracted. They’ll have you open in one tab while they’re looking at their g+ feed in another tab. It happens, just roll with it.
Finally there’s Mapping. At some point you’re going to need a way to communicate the environment to your players visually.
I’m fortunate to have a 25 square foot white board on my wall which I can easily direct my camera towards. It makes mapping a breeze. By far the simplest method I’ve ever seen in many years of online play. If you can set something like this up, I highly encourage you to do so.
If you can’t, some folks screen share their maps using an image editing program like GIMP. If you add a black layer on top of the map, you can slowly erase it as the players go along, revealing what they see. I’ve always found this method painstakingly difficult, because you can’t see the map any better than your players can. There’s always the risk of revealing something you don’t want.
There’s also Digital Whiteboards, such as RealTimeBoard. It’s a powerful tool. Not only can you draw on it, but you can also upload images & PDFs, place post-it-notes, etc. I’ve played in games that were run entirely through the RTB. John Bell has spent a lot more time with the service than I have, and has a few good posts describing the best ways to leverage it for your game.
The downsides to RTB is that everybody needs to create an account, and will need to be invited via email before they can access the board. Also, the company has been scaling back their free service gradually over the years in favor of a paid subscription. It’s not terribly expensive, but it may not be something you want to do just to play D&D online.
When the idea that I might want to make tabletop games first wormed its way into my brain, I set myself two goals. I wanted to make an RPG based on Metal Gear Solid; and I wanted to make an RPG based on Final Fantasy 7. Neither of these projects ever went anywhere, as is typical with the wild aspirations of youth.
Recently, a thread Dan D posted on G+ set me to thinking about this for the first time in years. I’m surprised how many ideas I have. I want to let them pour into my keyboard. Let loose with an unmoderated stream of consciousness and see where things go. I make no promises about the quality of this post, or how many follow up posts there’s going to be. This might become The FF7 Fangame Blog, or I might never mention the thing again once I’m done here. Depends on where my heart goes.
The first question that needs to be answered is: what do I want out of an FF7 game? The PS1 original was a jumble of bland gameplay strung together to justify a poorly written melodrama. It’s not the sort of game I’d like to make, or run, or even play in. If I’m rejecting the core essence of the original game, what is left to play with?
Looking back on the game 20+ years after its release, there are a few elements that still speak to me:
The juxtaposition of high and low technologies.
The phenomenally underrated art of the backgrounds.
The music, obvs.
Exploring the destructive impact of capitalism not just on the environment, but on the very idea of what it means to be human.
The grand sense of scale. Starting out feeling insignificantly enveloped by the megacity of Midgar; then seeing Midgar disappear over the horizon as you set out into the wider world.
The feeling that these characters had real agency (even if I, the player, was on rails). They subverted my expectations. They changed their circumstances. They strove, and overcame.
That sense of being an agent of change in the world needs to be the core of the game. It doesn’t matter whether the players are a force for good, or for evil, or just for some obscure personal cause. What matters is that they strive to make their will manifest in the world.
Which leads nicely into the next question that needs to be asked: what rules need to be different from the way I normally play D&D? I have no intention of reinventing any wheels that can be avoided. Attacking by rolling a d20 against your foe’s armor rating works just fine. I see no reason to change it.
However, gaining experience points for treasure or for killing monsters makes no sense to me in this game. Seven isn’t a megadungeon, nor is it a hex crawl. It’s something different from what I’ve done in D&D before. The best term I can come up with for what I’m thinking is Political Sandbox. As in: it’s a world full of people and communities and systems, and the job of the player is to enact their will to power. I’m not 100% happy with the term, but it’ll do for now.
What I’m driving at is that players should get experience points as a reward for the change they create in the world. They might affect their change in any number of ways: they could employ persuasion, or trickery, or bribery, or brute force. So long as the world is altered to suit their will, the players get rewarded.
It’s not something I’m going to be able to figure out in this post, but I’d like to systematize this somehow. I don’t want the referee to be completely responsible for arbitrating what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps any change has a very low baseline chance to go the way the players want? The players then need to accomplish tasks and put assurances in place that will raise the chance that the player’s desires will be carried out?
That feels like it could be made at least as easy to manage for a referee as treasure is.
Regardless of the specifics, I think I ought to actually be able to use the Simple XP system I wrote way back in 2011. I wrote that thing in literally the first month that I took blogging seriously. It’s among the most popular posts I’ve ever written, and it’s kinda cool for it to be relevant again.
Okay, I wrote a lot about how experience gain will work. What else needs to change from how I normally run D&D?
There’s some irrelevant stuff we can get rid of to free up space for increased complexity elsewhere. This isn’t a game about managing diminishing resources, so most of the bookkeeping I normally insist on can be relaxed. Encumbrance can be a vague “whatever feels reasonable.” Nobody will need to worry about rations. Ammunition is inexhaustible.
It’s tempting to wildly inflate health and damage numbers to better emulate the feel of a Final Fantasy game. It’d only be fun for about 10 minutes, though. Eventually all the 4-digit calculations would get tiresome. I’ll stick with d6s for most stuff, I think.
Materia are a vital part of the setting. Bits of congealed souls which grant the character wielding them special abilities. Not only will this need to be the magic system, but in the original game it’s also how characters gained mundane abilities like “Steal.”
I’m thinking that materia should not only replace the magic system, but should replace character classes as well. The PCs are all 1hd shmucks without their materia. When the players earn experience points it doesn’t make them any inherently better. Instead, the players spend their experience points to decide which materia they want to advance.
I don’t know what will determine how many materia a character can equip simultaneously. I don’t like the idea of just slotting them into weapons and armor. Maybe characters have to swallow their materia? It’s inside your body, part of you. If you swallow too many of them you get sick and can’t function. If you want to swap one materia out for another, it takes a couple days to get everything sorted.
Materia would be used to cover even very basic advancements. Early in the game players would be able to acquire a Vitality materia, which they could level up to improve their health beyond its starting value. Other materia might grants common class abilities, like bonuses to attack, or sneak attack damage.
There’s no need for MP. Materia which allows their user to cast magic spells can be used a number of times per day according to their level. So, when you first get the Fire materia, you can cast Fire once. If you put experience points into it and get it up to level 2, you can cast Fire twice. There’s no need for more advanced fire spells (Fire 2, Fire 3), because we’re keeping everything limited in scope.
I realize there’s a lot of potential for exploitation in letting people mix-and-match class abilities, but it sounds fun, so I say try it.
I don’t think the game would need any kind of skill system, just a simple resolution mechanic for handling skill-based tasks. A baseline 2-in-6 or something. If the character wants to be really good at a skill, they’ll want to seek out an appropriate materia.
I am out of ideas for now. Thank you for indulging me.
Often, I write a post as a means of working through an idea for the first time. Forcing myself to explain the idea gets my thoughts in order. Later, the idea develops further through play, and within a few sessions the rules I’m using are markedly different from what I’ve got posted up on the blog.
This isn’t the worst thing. Blogs posts aren’t meant to be sourcebooks; they’re meant to be part of a community-wide conversation. None the less, it’s not ideal. I often want to post updates to older posts, which I don’t mind doing if there are a ton of changes to what I originally wrote, but seems like kind of a waste when the changes are less dramatic. As a middle ground, I figure I’ll address multiple old posts at a time.
I’ve been tinkering with this approach to social encounters for half a decade now. As such, my changes here are quite small. The numbers have been tweaked by playtesting, and a few special cases are called out explicitly.
Attempting Parley
When a potentially hostile encounter occurs, the referee should first determine surprise. If one party surprises the other, attempting parley would require them to sacrifice that advantage.
Parley begins with the players making a social roll, which is 2d6 + any relevant modifiers (such as Charisma). This first roll determines 3 things:
1. The number of exchanges the NPCs will tolerate before they want to leave. The referee should write it down and tick off 1 for each back-and-forth that occurs. (“How are you?” “I’m doing well.” counts as a 1 exchange).
2. The disposition of the NPCs towards the party, determined by comparing the result to the first column of the table to the right.
3. The success or failure of whatever the party’s opening social action was.
Social actions fall into four basic categories: Banal, Give, Take, and Convince. Any time the players say something, consider which of these four it most closely fits in with. If it’s anything other than banal, it will require another social roll.
Banal actions are simple conversation: trivial questions, small talk, and other minutia. They have no chance to fail, and thus require no roll. That’s not to say they’re useless, it’s just not interesting for them to have a failure chance.
Giving actions are those where the party attempts to ingratiate themselves to the NPC. To make themselves more liked. It may take the form of telling a joke, offering compliments, giving gifts, or just listening attentively.
<8: The NPC is unimpressed. 8-10: The NPC enjoyed that. +1 to your next social action. 11+: The NPC likes you. +1 to their disposition.
Taking actions are attempts to get something out of the interaction. Specifically something the NPC may be hesitant to give. This roll covers things like negotiating an agreement, requesting aid, asking a sensitive question, intimidation, bribery, etc.
<4: You’ve upset the NPC. Disposition drops 1 category. 4-6: The NPC refuses you outright. 7-9: The NPC will meet you halfway. 10-11: The NPC agrees to what you want. 12+: The NPC agrees, and offers to do a little better than what was asked for.
Convincing actions are attempts to bring the NPC around to a viewpoint different than the one they currently hold. Used for making arguments or telling suspicious lies. These are difficult to succeed at, and risky to attempt. People don’t like it when you try to change them.
<5: Disposition drops by 1 category. 5-7: Disposition drops by 1. 8-9: The NPC is unconvinced, but not insulted. 10-13: The NPC is swayed, but needs some proof. 14+: The NPC accepts what you said wholeheartedly.
Social encounters are a many-faceted beast which defies being resolved by any simple chucking of dice. This system is not meant to dictate what a social encounter can be. Rather, it’s a baseline which can be adhered to or deviated from in whatever way serves the game best.
Just as they would with combat, the players should look for ways to gain advantage. The referee should imbue the NPCs with their own goals and desires. Penalties and bonuses should assessed where appropriate.
I still like all the stuff I said about the Three Step Conversation and the difference between a Quick and an Involved Deviation. It’s just the hacking system itself that needs to be updated.
There are some minor tweaks to the numbers, and I’ve dropped a few elements that didn’t turn out to be useful at the table. The biggest change is to how failure is handled. The original alarms were too lenient, and assumed the party would always be afraid of their hacks being discovered, which often isn’t the case. If your’e hacking the computer in a long forgotten techno-dungeon, the idea that the hack will be discovered by the police a week from now is not anything to worry about.
Basic Computer Design
Computers have a security rating between 2 and 6 (inclusive) which indicates how difficult it is for a user to do something they’re not supposed to do. Optionally, the referee may want to prepare a list of what information or devices the computer has access to. Just as easily, this can be done using common sense fiat at the table.
When To Roll a Hacking Attempt
Unless players are using a personal computer or a public terminal, they’ll need to make a check just to log on. From here, they can access basic information about the computer’s systems, what it’s connected to, and what type of data is stored on it. Most of the really interesting stuff will require further hacking checks.
For example: reading someone’s personal files, downloading those files, altering the computer’s settings, activating a device connected to the computer, uploading a new program, erasing security footage. Each of these would require a new hacking check.
Making a Hacking Check
Untrained characters have a hacking skill of 2d6. Training adds additional dice to the pool up to a maximum of 5d6. When attempting a hack players roll their entire pool. Each die showing a face equal to or greater than the computer’s current security rating is a success.
Rolling no successes means the hack has failed, and the security rating is raised by 1.
Rolling a single success means the hack has succeed, but it was done sloppily, so the security rating is still raised by 1.
Rolling two or more successes means the hack has succeeded, and the security rating does not change.
If the security rating is raised to 7, the computer completely locks down and it becomes impossible to attempt any further hacking.
If the security rating was raised at all, it will eventually be noticed by whoever owns the computer. Depending on circumstances, they may be able to identify who the hacker was and seek retribution against them.
Special
Assistance: One player may assist the primary hacker by making their own hacking check against the computer’s security rating. If they get 2 or more successes, the primary hacker may add 1 success to their own pool.
Network Hacking: Attempting to access a computer over a local network increases its security rating by 1. Attempting to access it across the Internet increases its security rating by 2.
Lowering the Alarm Level: If the security level has been raised, the hacker may attempt to lower it by making a check against the current security rating + 1. Security cannot be reduced below its starting level.
Root Access: Hackers can attempt to gain root access on any system. Doing so requires four successes. Hackers with root access can perform any local action without making further checks.
Both my socialization system and my hacking system have undergone rigorous playtesting since I wrote them. I have a lot of hard data about how to make them better. Not so much with the Cleric variant I proposed early this year. As I write this I’ve only had a single player use the class during a single session, and it didn’t go well.
Even before that, I knew there were some issues. Nobody wants to play the thing because it was originally written to be almost completely reactive. I was worried about making the class overpowered, and in doing so I made something nobody wants to play. The classic issue with the Cleric.
I still believe in the core ideas I proposed here, I just think they need some tweaking.
There is a divine music to the universe. Before the fall of man, when we lived each day in the light of our creator, we heard this music always. After we were cast out from the sacred garden we lost the ability to hear. The music still rings out from every sphere in the heavens, but it is beyond us now.
Through diligent study of God’s word, and meditation on the divine, Clerics have trained themselves to hear the faintest echos of that music. Hearing it changes a person. They experience reality the way God always intended for his beloved children. Their only desire is to hear more, and to hear better. Sin disrupts the music, and becomes hateful to the cleric. There is no sin greater than magic.
Clerics have a d8 hit die. They advance and make saving throws as the default cleric class does. Clerics cannot cast any spells. If alignment is used in your game, clerics must be Lawful.
Clerics have the following abilities:
Miracle: Once per week, per level, clerics may call upon God to aid them. The almighty will momentarily intervene in material affairs to do one of the following things:
Reveal a hidden truth.
Alter the cleric’s environment.
Heal a living person’s un-healable ailment.
Create an impressive spectacle
Think of it as a wish with limited focus and potency. Remember, also, that God is an NPC. God does not appreciate being treated as a class ability. Clerics are warned not to be trivial in calling upon The Almighty. God is never obligated to answer. The referee is the final arbiter.
Turn: The cleric confronts their foes with a brief glimpse of God’s might. The player should indicate a single target and roll 2d6, comparing the result to the matrix below
(Note: this ability affects all foes, regardless of type)
If the cleric’s roll is equal to or greater than the result indicated for their target’s hit dice, that foe is awed by the terrible might of God. They will flee from the cleric if there is an easy escape, or cower meekly if there is not. This effect persists as long as the target is not attacked, and the cleric takes no action aside from looking imposing, or turning other foes.
The cleric may turn as many times as they wish, so long as they are successful. If a turn attempt fails, the cleric’s mystique is undone. They may not turn this group of foes again today.
On the table, a result of “-” means turning is impossible. A result of “T” means turning is automatic. A result of “T*” means that any of the target’s allies with the same or fewer hit dice are also turned. A result of “D” means the target is destroyed by the unbearable glory of God, and that the target’s allies with similar hit dice are automatically turned. A Result of “D*” means that the target, and their allies with similar HD, are destroyed.
Dispel Magic: Clerics may force chaos to bend itself back to order by an act of will. Simply roll a d6. On a result of 1, the attempt fails; otherwise it succeeds. The magic is undone; it fails to activate or its effect ends. If a permanent magic is targeted (such as the enchantments on a magic weapon), then it is only suppressed rather than destroyed. It will return when next the item is touched by moonlight.
Anytime a spell is cast in the cleric’s presence, they may attempt to interrupt its casting by dispelling it. Doing so consumes their next turn.
Keep track of how many times each day this ability fails. If it equals the cleric’s level, the music of God’s perfect creation has become warped in their ears. They won’t be able to dispel magic again until they’ve had 8 hours to rest, and to pray.
For every hit die a Magic User has above a cleric, the failure chance of this ability increases by 1. So a first level cleric suffers no penalty against a first level magic user; but when dispelling the casting of a second level magic user their failure chance would be 2-in-6. Against a third level magic user it would be 3-in-6, and so on.
Referees may also wish to assess penalties for other types of magic. Those which are fundamental to a creature’s being, such as fairy magic. Those which are deeply rooted, or ancient, or unusually potent. It is left to the judgement of the referee, but this is meant to be a powerful ability. It should not be undermined to excess.
Identify: Thoroughly shutting down magic the way Clerics do requires a profound understanding of it. Clerics can determine whether or not a thing is magical, what the effects of that magic are, and even some obscure details like how long ago the magic was cast, and whether the caster was right or left handed.
This is not something a Cleric can do passively. They can’t walk into a room, and immediately point out all the magic items within. However, if they handle an object, look at it closely, smell it, taste it, and listen to it, they will gain an understanding of any magics attached to it. Discovering the magical properties of a thing requires 10 minutes.
Spell Resistance: Clerics have a chance-in-twenty to resist magic, equal to their level. 1-in-20 at first level, 2-in-20 at second level, etc. Any time the Cleric would be the target of magic, before any saving throws or spell effects are rolled, roll a d20. If the result is equal to, or lower than the Cleric’s level, the spell passes harmlessly over them.
This ability reaches its maximum at an 18-in-20 chance.
All in all, being dead is not so bad. It’s less “The End,” and more a change in perspective. When you were alive you hated the world and all living things because you were trapped in a horrible little corner of human existence. Now your experience is unlimited. You can go anywhere, see anything. You have a myriad of more interesting reasons for hating the world and all living things. Eventually you’ll resolve whatever unfinished business binds you to this world so you can move on, and see if the afterlife lives up to the hype. For now, though, you’re putting that off so you can have some fun as a ghost.
Possessor Spirits advance as specialists, and share their hit points and saving throws with the Magic User. As ghosts they are completely incorporeal. They can neither be affected by the material world, nor can they affect it. This means they can pass through walls, and are immune to damage from non-magical weapons. However, they couldn’t make a grain of rice wobble if their afterlife depended on it.
When a Possessor Spirit is not attached to a physical body they appear as a monochromatic specter. During character creation the player should select the color of their translucent body: classic white, ghostly green, poltergeist pink; whatever tickles their fancy. They should also figure out what clothes they died in, since that’s what they’ll be wearing for the rest of eternity.
Despite their inability to affect the physical world, ghosts can still speak, as well as experience the world through their senses. They can feel the texture of an object, or taste a bit of food, but they cannot move the object or eat the food. Also, given how most people feel about ghosts, it may prove difficult for the character to socialize with outside their party. Some wizards or monsters might be comfortable having a chat, but most folks are very fleshist.
The best part of being a Possessor Spirit is the possessions. Just gettin’ on into people’s bodies and controlling them like puppets. It’s the best. Characters are able to possess one person, per day, per level. The target of the possession is entitled to a saving throw versus Magic to remain in control of their body. Their save is modified by the difference in hit dice between possessor and possessee. (For each HD the target has above the possessor, they get a +1 to their save. For each HD below, they take a -1 penalty.) If the save is successful, the Possessor Spirit is rebuffed. They take 1d6 damage, and cannot attempt to possess this target again until they level up. A failed possession attempt does not count against the spirit’s limit of possessions per day. If the target’s saving throw fails, the spirit takes control of their body.
While in command of a body, the possessor spirit gains full access to their host’s knowledge and abilities. Any skills, spells, secrets or powers belonging to the host are now at the disposal of the possessor. This open flow of information can be a double edged sword. The suppressed mind of the host gains equal access to the knowledge and secrets of the spirit which supplanted them. They may use what they learn to troublesome effect after the possession ends.
There are a few uncommon limits to a Possessor Spirit’s mastery over their host. Individuals with a heightened awareness of the spiritual world may recognize that a body has been possessed by a foreign spirit, and may even have means by which to cast the spirit out. Likewise, the host’s intimates may pick up on their friend/parent/lover’s peculiar behavior. Any conversation with such a person has a 1-in-6 chance to tip them off that something is wrong. The chance will increase if the possessor is not doing their best to act natural.
If a host dies while a Possessor Spirit is in control, both spirits (the possessor and their victim) are forced out. The victim’s spirit has a 4-in-6 chance of becoming an angry ghost which will return at a later time to seek vengeance for their demise. Otherwise, they pass on to the afterlife. In either case, their burning anger towards the possessor knocks the player character down to 1 hit point.
There is no limit to how long a host can be possessed. However, once a Possessor Spirit leaves a body, that victim will have a +2 to any save made against future possession attempts. This bonus stacks with each successful possession.
The most important preparations I make for my D&D games happen after the session. Making dungeons and monsters is fun and valuable work, but it’s important for the game to respond to the PC’s actions. Right after a session is when the events of play are fresh in your mind. It’s the best time to think about what consequences might arise in the future.
I think it might be a useful tool (for me, if not for anybody else) to put together a post-session questionnaire. Something to prompt the referee to examine the elements of the session most likely to bear interesting fruit in the future.
Who did the characters wrong during the session?
Do the wronged parties know the characters are responsible? If they don’t know, will they care enough to find out? How will they try to get back at the party? Will they try to hunt them down and take violent revenge? Will they attempt to pressure the party legally or socially? Will they concoct elaborate schemes, or take a more direct approach?
Don’t limit yourself to NPCs who’ve appeared in the game. If someone died, did they have a family who will want vengeance? If the characters won something, does that mean there’s someone else who lost it? Good deeds earn the ire of villains as easily as evil deeds earn the ire of goodly folk.
Did the characters do anything stealthily during the session?
Did they go anywhere they weren’t supposed to be? Did they leave behind any clues that might make someone want to find out what happened, or to improve their security? Just because nobody heard the characters prying open a door doesn’t mean the damaged door won’t be discovered later.
Is there anyone, aside from employers, who benefited from the character’s actions?
Do they regard the party as selfless and heroic, or do they take a more cynical view? Just how far does the party’s good reputation spread? Will they admire the party? Seek to aide them in the future? What is the most interesting way they could show their appreciation? Can they provide the party with information, services, material, or future jobs? Will the party inspire them to become adventurers in their own right? If so, will they attempt to join the party as hirelings, or will they pop up in some future adventure to aid the party?
If anyone died in the course of the party’s adventure, what sort of hole did they leave behind in their community? What effect did they have on their environment which will be lost now that they’re dead?
Did people depend on the person who was killed? Will they lose their jobs, or become vulnerable to attack, or have their legal system disrupted? Will someone rise to fill the vacuum they left, or will there be a period of chaos followed by a significant change in status quo?
The same questions might apply to any objects the party stole.
What information did the party spread around?
Did they make any new discoveries, or reveal any secrets? Will the people who know this new information keep it to themselves, or will it quickly become public knowledge? How can the information be exploited for personal gain and profit?
Did the characters do anything which the authorities, or the public at large, will have feelings about?
Did the characters engage in any public violence in a normally peaceful space? Did they flout local custom in some particularly egregious way? Did they rile up a mob? Did they make anyone afraid? Did they make shows of wealth in front of the poor, or shows of poverty in front of the rich?
Are the characters known to be the cause? If so, will there be legal consequences? If not, do people want to know who is responsible? In either case, will there be some change to the local laws or attitudes?
Did the players express any desires or interests you might use to engage / hook them in the future?
Did anyone mention a goal that they have? Perhaps an item or territory they wanted; a power or social status they wished to achieve? Did they particularly like an NPC who could reappear as a friendly face / be injured to make the players angry? Did they particularly hate an NPC who could develop into a bigger antagonist just to annoy them?
If you read this post without purchasing Faux Pas, you are stealing! That tactic works to get people to buy things, right? Fuck, I just…I really want you to buy it. I think it will make you happy. It’s only $4 and it comes with a free audio book. Please?
Race-as-class is heckin’lame! Your species shouldn’t determine what you’re able to do, man. Ya know what else is heckin’ lame? : elves and dwarfs and hobbits halflings! Gnomes are tight, but they’ve been done before. Let’s do somethin’ newwwww!
BUBBLE BOI
“Boi” is a misnomer resulting from our patriarchal society’s ideology of gender essentialism and the male default. Bubble Bois are genderless.
Common folk are terrified by Bubble Bois because they look creepy. To mitigate this, BBs often wear baggy clothes and disguise their faces with flesh colored paint, googly eyes, and bushy mustaches that hide their lack of a mouth. This effort generally just makes them even creepier.
Since they are only slightly heavier than air, Bubble Bois are able to jump pretty much as high and as far as they want, though if they overreach they may be blown off course by a gentle breeze. They’re also pretty much immune to falling damage. Both of these benefits are lost if the BB is ever more than lightly encumbered, which is why many choose to be wizards rather than fighters.
Another reason for preferring the back lines of combat is that Bubble Bois have low manual dexterity. They can carry things just fine, and turn the pages of books well enough, but anything that requires expert use of fingers is going to incur a penalty. Also, if they’re ever struck by a piercing weapon, they must make a saving throw versus instant death. So that’s kind of a bummer.
On the upside, their anatomy has no resemblance whatsoever to humans, so they’re immune to most poisons. If anything, injecting a Bubble Boi with poison just gives them a poison touch ability for while.
SHOULDER CONSCIENCE
Not everyone has a shoulder conscience. Most people’s actions just aren’t cosmically important enough for the spirit world to care what they do one way or the other. So, if you’re playing a shoulder conscience, you’re attached to someone goddamned impressive.
The referee ultimately decides how impressive they are, but it should be pretty big. Maybe when they’re rolling ability scores they roll 5d6, take 3 highest, arrange to taste; while the other players have to roll 3d6 down the line. Maybe they get to level up as two different classes simultaneously. Maybe something else.
The player of the shoulder conscience must pick an extremist alignment. They may be absolutely good, absolutely evil, absolutely lawful, absolutely chaotic, or absolutely something else that seems appropriate. They are a cosmic embodiment of these ideals, there are no half measures here. If they ever stray from this alignment, they will lose 1 influence over their ward.
Whatever alignment the player picks for themselves will be directly opposed by another shoulder conscience. When the player wants their ward to do something, this other guy wants the exact opposite.
Much of the time the player of the shoulder conscience may control their ward directly, as though it were their character. The cosmic forces of right and wrong don’t care what you choose to have for breakfast. However, any time the ward might be conflicted about what to do, the referee should call for a roll. 50/50 chance that the ward does what the player wants, or the opposite of what the player wants.
If the player wins 5 decisions in a row, they gain 1 influence. Now, their ward has a 70% chance to do what they want. If they ever win 10 decisions in a row, their influence increases to 80%. This works the same way in reverse: if you lose 5 decisions in a row, your chance of success decreases to 30%. If you lose 10, it decreases to 20%. All influence resets to 50/50 at the start of a new session.
METAL GURL
To a human observer all Metal Gurls are, indeed, female. Our researchers haven’t been able to identify any anatomical or sociological variations. Yet among themselves, Metal Gurls are able to identify 7 entirely distinct sexes. We’ll just have to take their word for it.
The species is easily identified by their naturally colorful hair and markings. Adults will also have metal spikes growing out of their body somewhere. The particular combination of hair color, skin markings, and spike locations is unique to each individual. No two Metal Gurls are alike.
Any action which could be described as “totally metal” comes naturally to Metal Gurls, and they should receive a significant bonus to success. Note that any action which doesn’t result in significant injury to one’s self cannot be described as “totally metal.”
TWISTED METAL ABOMINATION UNTO GOD
Nobody likes these guys. If you play one, just be aware of that. There’s a lot of prejudice against your people, and all of it is entirely justified. The way you bounce around, twisting your body into different shapes and offering unsolicited advice? It’s gross, and you should be ashamed that you were born this way.
Because of their uncanny ability to manipulate their body’s shape, Twisted Metal Abominations Unto God grapple as though they were 4 levels higher than they are. They also cause any party they’re in to suffer a -6 penalty on initial reaction rolls, because people hate them just that much.
The real reason people hate T-MAUGs is their constant, condescending explanations. They have this primal need to hear themselves talk. It doesn’t matter how good you are at something, or how many times the T-MAUG has seen you do that thing: they will explain it to you anyway.
When a T-MAUG explains how to do something to a person who is already doing it, that person must make a saving throw. If they succeed, their anger inspires them to do a way better job than they normally would in an attempt to prove to the T-MAUG that they don’t need any help. (This never works, but the character still gets a significant bonus to whatever they were attempting).
If the saving throw fails, the target’s anger forces them to make an attack against the T-MAUG with the nearest available weapon.
Way back in January I wrote Clerics as Anti-Magicians. It’s my (latest) attempt to rehabilitate the class; to turn it into something people will actually want to play. Personally, I think it’s one of my better posts, which is why it ended up in my hastily assembled list of “greatest hits” over on the sidebar.
Dan D, the blogger over at Throne of Salt apparently agrees. He’s taken it on himself to tinker with my version of the class to create a cleric for his own game. This is particularly interesting for me, because I’ve actually been working on my own update to that class. It’s nice to get another perspective just around the same time that I’ve decided to reevaluate.
There’s some parallel thinking, and some crossed wires between us. I don’t wanna dig into what I’m planning, but I think both Dan and I saw the problem with the cleric being too reactive. Dan’s cleric is generally more capable of taking assertive action than my original draft of the class.
I also like that Dan’s cleric has some social powers. That’s something I strongly considered doing myself, even in the first draft. “Priest” is an inherent persuasive occupation. The only reasons I didn’t do that myself are firstly that I’d already posted a couple social-focused classes; and secondly that I was aiming for broad appeal with that post. I didn’t want it to be limited to people who use a lot of social rolls in their games.
I will say Dan’s removal of all the anti-magic stuff doesn’t appeal to me. I suspect he may have been trying to prevent the class from becoming overpowered, but I don’t think being overpowered was ever the issue with my cleric. Also, it’s the mechanic that I literally named the class after, so obviously it’s near and dear to my heart.
(July 16th 2018 Edit: Dan has clarified the change was made for flavor reasons, rather than balance. )
I’m also not a fan of making players pick between nine different holy orders when they create their character. for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.
