New Character Options from Erlendheim Part 2

Gods are superheroes too

In the last post, I wrote about how D&D 5E characters are basically superheroes by another name. I also introduced the new Warlock patron that we came up with for Yulla in our D&D 5E campaign, Erlendheim, a few years ago. She had abandoned her “Fathomless” patron and taken up with “The Source.” After Yulla got her groove back and started living up to her potential, it was our Druid’s turn.

Habjorn, played by David, had not wasted the years since their former adventuring days. He’d settled down with his wife, Lydia and started a little family which quickly ballooned into a sizeable troupe of children. There were seven in total, Habjornson, Sigrid, Gurt, Hogarth, Jankur, Flaarj and Yeet, the little one. But, as I noted last time, they, along with several of their neighbours, went and got themselves kidnapped by one of the antagonists. Lydia had already passed away a few years previous.

So, obviously, the party to go to great lengths to find them. Lengths that eventually led them to Sigil and beyond.

While the party were in the City of Doors, they got a job from Kesto Brighteyes, the gnomish owner of the Parted Veil, a bookshop where the PCs went to find the tome they were looking for. I found Kesto and everything about him in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. This was an invaluable source-book for this campaign and provided at least three incredibly useful, well drawn and significant NPCs who were residents of the Cage with depth and interconnectedness.

Anyway, this quest led them off to the Lady’s Ward of the city, where they managed to defeat the object of their quest, a Gautierre. Upon the occasion of their victory, Habjorn the druid was approached by Lydia, his dead wife, in the form of a Petitioner. Petitioners are the souls of dead sentients, ascended to the Outer Planes who are, to all intents and purposes, reborn into new lives there with no memories of their old ones. They normally turn up on the plane where their gods lived or, at least, on a plane that matches their alignment. But, Lydia’s god, it turned out, was dead. So, she started wandering the planes looking for somewhere to belong. Until she felt a pull drawing her to her husband when he passed through a portal into Sigil.

Lacking a god or any sense of purpose, she felt a connection with Habjorn that she thought she should have had with her god, Helm, but didn’t due to his deceased state. So she started to believe in Habjorn like a god. She didn’t necessarily agree with him all the time or obey him at all, in fact, but she still had a strong enough belief in him to essentially grant him the status of a Minor Power, a godling out there on the Outer Planes.

It was actually pretty tragic. He was overjoyed/heartbroken to see her again but she didn’t recognise him and had no memory of their life together before her death. She knew nothing of their family and her motivations were totally different as a Petitioner.

But I digress. Before he knew it, Habjorn started hearing the prayers of his kids, held deep underground on the plane known as the Outlands, under the roots of one of the World Tree’s saplings. They were hoping and praying that he would come and save them and their belief began to compound the meagre abilities provided by Lydia’s own prayers.

And thus the Druidic Deity was born. So, like Thor and Hercules (kinda) before him, Habjorn became a superhero god!

Now, believe me, I understand that this stuff is totally unbalanced and potentially game-breaking. But I was throwing these characters up against some very tough situations, so I felt ok about it. I will point out, also, that, unlike the Warlock patron from the last post, this is not a subclass. Instead, its a couple of new features that work for Habjorn the Circle of the Land Druid/minor god, in particular. It is unlikely to work for anyone else in its current form but I think it was a fun addition to his set of abilities that allowed him to do some interesting stuff in particular situations and led to some truly fantastic character and story moments in our game. So, take it under advisement! But, if you want to use it or any part of it, please feel free!

New Druid Features: Druidic Deity

Grant Druidic Magic

The Druidic Deity can grant two cantrips and two first level spells from the Druid Spell List to their follower/s. The druidic deity can grant the cantrips and spells once and cannot do so again until they have completed a long rest.

The Power of Prayer

When a worshiper has prayed for spells to be granted the Druidic Deity gains a Prayer. There is no upper limit to the number of Prayers the Druidic Deity can be in possession of and if not spent before taking a long rest, they carry over. The Druidic Deity can spend a Prayer using a bonus action. This Prayer can be spent in several different ways:

Allow the Druidic Deity to regain an expended spell slot of any level they have access to
Allow the Druidic Deity to gain another use of Wild Shape
Allow the Druidic Deity to Wild Shape into any CR 2 Beast or Monstrosity that they have seen
Allow the Druidic Deity to remain in Wild Shape for double the normal length of time
Allow the Druidic Deity to cast spells while in Wild Shape
Allow the Druidic Deity to use the Natural Recovery feature to regain all used spell slots including 6th level ones and higher
Allow the Druidic Deity to cast one of their Circle Spells without expending a spell slot
Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Land’s Stride ability , granting them the opportunity to pass into a plant of sufficient size and emerge from a similar plant of sufficient size within 200 ft
Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Nature’s Ward feature, granting them immunity to one more damage type of their choice until they complete a long rest
Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Nature’s Sanctuary feature so that beast and plant creatures cannot attempt to save against it.
Grant a worshiper another cantrip or first level spell

So, like I mentioned above, I know these features are potentially game-breaking and open to abuse. But my players took this sort of thing in good faith and David played his character as he thought he should react to becoming a slightly shitty kind of god. He was somewhat incredulous but used every ounce of his power to do the things his “worshipers” wanted of him. In other words, for Daddy to come and save them. And that’s what he did.

I would mention here as well, that balance, as a concept in D&D/TTRPGs in general is a concept that I take with extreme caution. I would rather chuck an unbeatable monster at them and have them figure out they need to run away or use their wits instead of charging headlong into the fray, then stick to Challenge Ratings most of the time. In this respect, I think the OSR has it right. But, I think this door swings both ways, if a challenge can be unbalanced due to an encounter’s difficulty, the PCs can also be a challenge due to their ability. They should get to feel like the superheoroes thery are. On the other hand, I also have the ability to keep piling on the difficulty as the party gets more and more powerful, so I see it as a win-win.

Let me know if you have any comments on these nutty druid features, dear reader.

New Character Options from Erlendheim Part 1

D&D Superheroes

There’s no doubt in my mind that the creators of the current version of D&D meant to make the PCs into superheroes. This goes for 5E 2014 as well as 2024.

You can have opinions about this. There are times when it frustrates the hell out of me as a DM just trying to introduce potentially deadly situations to our games. I usually overestimate the lethality of these situations, whether they might be traps, encounters or particularly difficult episodes of exploration. The players normally trounce these situations readily. They always have a feature or a spell or a power or a magic item or a special friend who will come to their rescue so that they emerge largely unscathed and only further emboldened. On the other hand, I do feel bad when a PC dies in one of my campaigns. I mean, of course! They spent hours designing and imagining and embodying this person… and they died… it can be devastating. It should be devastating. Not just for the player in question, but for every player in the game, including the DM. So I get it. I understand why the average D&D PC’s life expectancy has sky-rocketed in the last couple of decades. I also understand that if you want something more lethal, Troika! is right there. So, if you want more lethal play, there are plenty of options.

Anyway, when I finally realised the superheroness of the characters, we were playing one of my long-time RPG group’s more iconic campaigns. It was called Erlendheim and it was based on my home-brew world of Scatterhome. Here’s the TLDR for the campaign:

The PCs were all former adventurers living in or around their hometown of Dor’s Hill on the island of Erlendheim. The island was surrounded by a terrible and eternal storm meaning no-one could leave and no-one new ever turned up. The PCs started at level 8, but their adventuring days were behind them. Until one day, they were asked by the powers that be in Dor’s Hill to investigate some strange reports from an outlying fishing village. While they were off fighting what turned out to be Yugoloth fiends there, all six of the Druid’s kids were kidnapped by some more extraplanar beings. This, eventually and after much adventuring, roleplaying, schmoozing and drama, led them to Sigil, The City of Doors, The Cage. For the uninitiated, Sigil is the city at the centre of the Outlands, the plane at the centre of the Outer Planes in the D&D cosmology.

Now, as a die-hard AD&D 2nd Edition player of old, I was a massive fan of the original Planescape setting, the new shit it introduced to the game and the way it expanded our horizons as both DM and players when it came out in the nineties. But, I’ll be honest, I don’t think I knew how to use it as a 14 or 15 year old DM. It was just too massive. I wrote and ran adventures that were pretty much standard AD&D adventures except in a place in the Outlands instead of on the bog-standard fantasy world I had devised. So, in 2021, when I got the chance to send these PCs to Sigil!!! I grabbed that bull by both horns. It was so much better than I could have hoped. Even just the act of getting there was a major campaign milestone. And before long, both the players and the characters were knee-deep in planar weirdness. They didn’t know it, they didn’t understand most of it, but they still had goals. They were there for a reason (they had to find a book that explained the keys to all the planar doors in a mysterious tower beneath the town of Dor’s Hill back home.) So they pursued that. On the way, they all gained even more super powers than they already possessed. Why? Because, once you understand that D&D 5E is a superhero game, it’s a good idea to lean into it.

The first PC to get blessed in this manner was our warlock, Yulla (played by Tom.) Now, it just so happened that Yulla, up until this point, had a patron named Aegir, an elemental spirit that turned out to be the baddest guy of the entire campaign. So, when she went to Sigil her confidence in their patronage had taken a few knocks. When she then discovered her long lost, presumed dead parents there she was open to new possibilities. Now I was using the gorgeous, unimpeachable original version of the Planescape setting for this game. It was made for AD&D 2nd Edition but that was no impediment at all. (When I got the new 5E version I was a little shocked and affronted to find that they had done away with one of my favourite Sigil factions, the Believers of the Source. I understand that this actually happened way back in one of the nineties Planescape novels but I never read those so I had no way of knowing.) Anyway, the entirety of my Erlendheim campaign had been built around the Believers, their doctrines, their headquarters, etc. And it turned out that Yulla’s birth-parents had been members of the believers for decades since their supposed deaths. Anyway, this led Yulla to seek the Source as a patron, instead of the untrustworthy and, frankly quite evil Aegir.

And this is where the extra super powers come in. Tom and I designed a new Warlock Patron for Yulla, the Source itself. I based it around the philosophy of the Believers: you must try to reach your potential, your existence should be evolved as much as possible within your own lifetime, etc. Here is the result. If you like the look of it and you can find a way or reason to use this in your own campaign, please feel free.

New Warlock Patron – The Source V 2.1

Description

You have have made a pact with the ultimate creative and destructive power in the multiverse. The Source is that from which all things come and which all will someday rejoin. The members of Sigil’s faction, The Believers of the Source understand that all beings should be striving to evolve within their lifetimes to become one with the Source. To this patron, time and space have little meaning; sentients are beings of pure potential and a deep understanding of the planes of existence is essential.

Expanded Spell List

Spell Level	Spells
1st	Find Familiar, Inflict Wounds
2nd	Wither and Bloom, Vortex Warp
3rd	Motivational Speech, Life Transference
4th	Aura of Life, Vitriolic Sphere
5th	Destructive Wave, Legend Lore

Features

1st Level Feature

Burst of Potential

From 1st level, as an action the warlock becomes a silhouette of themselves and emits a brief burst of soft yellow light. They draw on a fraction of the unlimited potential of the Source and grant it to those allies in a ten foot cube around them. Until the end of the Warlock’s next turn all within the aura gain advantage on a single ability check, attack roll or saving throw of their choice.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

1st Level Feature

Fragment of the Source

From 1st level, using a bonus action, the Warlock of the Source gains the ability to summon a fragment of the Source in the shape of a softly glowing orb. It will appear at a chosen point anywhere within 60ft of the Warlock. The Fragment of the Source will remain for a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier. The Fragment can use its potential energy to allow a creature within 5 feet of it to roll with advantage or force a creature within 5 feet of it to roll with disadvantage on any attack roll, saving throw or ability check. As a bonus action on their turn, the Warlock can move the Fragment up to thirty feet. The Warlock can summon the Fragment a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus and regains all expended uses when they finish a long rest. The Fragment of the Source will act on the same initiative as the Warlock.

6th Level Feature

Aura of Potential

From 6th level, the Warlock of the Source’s Burst of Potential feature becomes an aura. The effects are the same as the Burst but apply to each ally that starts their turn in the aura. Also, the effect can be used to ensure maximum damage on an attack roll.
The Aura of Potential lasts a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

6th Level Feature

Wasted Potential

From 6th Level, as a reaction, the Warlock of the Source may fire a sparkling yellow orb at any creature taking an action, making an attack roll or rolling a saving throw within a 30ft range. The creature must make a Charisma saving throw against the Warlock’s spell save DC or apply disadvantage to their roll.

10th Level Feature

Mark of Potential

From 10th Level, the Warlock of the Source begins to gain benefits from the potential bestowed or denied by the Aura of Potential and Wasted potential features. Each time an ally succeeds on a roll which benefits from the advantage bestowed by the Aura of Potential the Warlock gains a Mark of Potential. Each time a creature fails on a roll affected by Wasted Potential, the Warlock gains a Mark of Potential. Gained Marks spark briefly into being around the Warlock’s head before fading into invisibility.
At 10th level the Warlock can hold up to a maximum of nine Marks of Potential. At 14th level the Warlock can hold up to ten Marks of Potential (See the “Evolution” feature below for how ten marks can be spent.)
The appearance of the Marks is up to the individual Warlock.
Marks of Potential may be held until spent.
Marks of Potential can be used in the following ways:

Marks Spent	Effect 1	Effect 2	Effect 3
1	Apply advantage to any attack roll, saving throw or ability check	Double the range of Fragment of Potential
2	Roll a hit die plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
3	Maximise any damage effect	Induce a critical success
4	Roll two hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
5	Double the area of Aura of Potential	Double the number of targets affected by Wasted Potential	Double the number of Fragments of Potential Summoned
6	Roll three hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
7	Increase the casting level of any appropriate spell by one
8	Roll four hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
9	Regain a Spell Slot

14th Level Feature

Evolution

At 14th level the Warlock of the Source gains the ability to use ten Marks of Potential to evolve into a form which brings them closer to the Source for a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier. For each level the Warlock gains above 14th, the duration of the evolution is increased by one round.
In their evolved form, the Warlock gains the following features:

5 hit dice plus Charisma modifier of temporary hit points
Makes all attack rolls, ability checks and saving throws with advantage
Triples the area of Aura of Potential

The appearance of the evolved form is up to the individual Warlock.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.

The Theatre of Trophy Gold

Getting my flash in

Orlen, dusty, wide-brimmed chapeau drowning her alarming eyes in shadow, holds aloft her trophy, beaming. The bag of coin, pleasingly hefty, dangling from her dextrous digits. “‘Aah ‘baht ‘at ‘en?” Her companions, ensorcelled by something above her sturdy, sinister shoulder, point. A hiss, as a punctured bladder, sounds in her ear. Speculative, her left hand shoots up, ready to throttle the looming serpent. It narrowly misses losing its ring finger as a dagger, recently released by Rasei, skewers the snake to the formerly coin-concealing statue. Orlen chances a glance. The cold blood dribbles down the stone man’s shoulder, over the sickle he holds dramatically crossing his sword over his chest. Nima cries, “More snakes!” Time to go. The treasure hunters scarper down the path of the sickle, ignoring the sword’s point and the keep slouching beyond it on the horizon, hoping for Hester’s Mill.

A dramatic retelling of the opening scene of our recent game of Trophy Gold, run by friend of the blog, Isaac. To those who were there, apologies. I’m sure I got a few details wrong, either deliberately or by mistake. Drama seems appropriate for this fascinating game, defined as it is, within Sets.

Trophy

So, as you probably know, dear reader, if you have been with me for a while, here on the dice pool dot com, I am a more-or-less avid listener of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast from the Gauntlet. I wrote a post on my appreciation for it and the Indie RPG Podcast last Summer. Our path to playing this incursion (as Trophy scenarios are called) leads very much from that. Jason Cordova, one of the podcast’s capable hosts, rarely ventures into the OSR’s hex-defined landscapes. Rather, you can generally find him in the narrative woods and trails of story-based games. On the podcast, he often discusses his experiences in running OSR (or just old tbh) modules in other systems. Back in the olden days of Fear of a Black Dragon, this generally meant either the incredibly rules-lite World of Dungeons or Dungeon World My last post on this blog was about the feelings Dungeon World made me feel. Go and have a look!) These both have PBTA DNA. Their mechanics lend themselves more to the application of imagined narrative than cut-and-dried, D&D-esque, result-binary systems. And this is really only because of the inclusion of a third option, a mixed success, or success at a cost. Since the implied consequence cannot be defined outside the context of the situation, it is usually left up to those at the table to invent it (although Dungeon World generally provides far more pre-written options than does the baldly efficient text of World of Dungeons.) And look, if you’re a PBTA maven, my deepest apologies for what is, no doubt, a faintly condescending and largely inaccurate paring down of a game system that is probably the most influential in the indie game space of the last decade and a half. But if you were raised on a distilled diet of Borgs in your old schools, you’re welcome.

I have gotten off track. The point I was trying to get to was that, a few years ago, Jason switched to running pretty much every module in Trophy Dark or Trophy Gold instead. Mostly Trophy Gold, in fact. Obviously, this got me very interested in the game. The idea of running D&D style modules in a more narrative style highlights a whole new facet of the hobby that I always thought would be very fun to explore. And, after reading a bit about the game and learning of its mechanical descent from Blades in the Dark I wanted to try it even more. It just turns out that, much like Tom (with Dungeon World,) before him, Isaac got there before me. I’m not complaining. I love being a player in these games.

So, to put it briefly, both Trophy games were written by Jesse Ross and published by Gauntlet Publishing. Elements of the rules have been adapted from Blades in the Dark by John Harper, who is also responsible for World of Dungeons and other elements were cribbed from Graham Walmsley’s seminal Cthulhu Dark. They are games about treasure hunters going out into the dark forest to find gold and bring it home so they can continue to survive in a hostile world. In Trophy Dark, your vile little adventurer is a goner; you’re not making it past the end of the session. Sorry. That’s the point of Trophy Dark. But in Trophy Gold you make a treasure hunter who might live to the end of the incursion if you’re lucky. They might even weasel their way through to another one. Speaking of which, I wrote a blog post about making a Trophy Gold character last summer. You may find it illuminating if you’re interested. Do bear in mind, though, the game I used in that post is not quite the same as the one presented in the book published in 2022. I used the game from the Codex Gold magazine, which you can pick up for a steal over on Drivethru. I don’t think there are any really drastic rule changes but we noticed some discrepancies in a few of the tables.

A gold and black illustration of an adventurer being lowered on a rope into a dark cave where a giant spider awaits. the cover is framed by stylised black spiders on a gold background. The words, Codex, The Gauntlet's monthly RPG zine appear in the top left of the cover. — The cover of Codex Gold from Gauntlet Publishing

Hester’s Mill

So, what’s all this about Sets? You didn’t think I remembered mentioning that earlier, did you, dear reader? Well, Incursions are formatted in a very particular way. Trophy Gold helpfully breaks it up and introduces the format like this:

Theme – much like any dramatic work that might be presented on the stage, a Trophy Gold incursion should be built around a theme, even if you are adapting it from another type of module. I would call the broad theme of Hester’s Mill to be “Harvest”
Sets – these are particular locations in which the treasure hunters will be presented with clear goals. I find it fascinating that the rules tell the GM to make the goal explicit to the players. I’m not giving away too much by telling you that the goal in the opening Set I wrote up in the intro is to find the way to Hester’s Mill. You complete the Set by achieving this goal and this is eminently important to the cycle of play. You may not wish to complete the goal of every Set. It might not be clever or necessary for you. Your character’s overall goal is to earn enough Gold to relieve them of their Burden, both of which are abstract scores on the character sheet. In other words, you know from the start how much you need to take home so you don’t die on the streets or get consumed by the evils of the world. I don’t think anyone would blame you for trying to convince the party to get the heck out of there once you had managed to collect enough money. But, just because you got your Benjamins, doesn’t mean everyone else did. This can lead to inter-personal conflict, unsurprisingly. But it might also lead to moments of support and kindness in these Sets. Drama, gettit? And guess what you call the things you find within the Sets… Yep, Props. It’s obvious, really. So the statue of the man with the sickle and sword in the intro? Yep, that’s a Prop. You also have Treasure and Traps as defined elements within Sets
Flowchart – What the holy business-process, Batman? Yep, it makes so much sense, when you think about it. When you are trying to play something like an OSR module, you might have a map which visually represents the location but that does not necessarily represent the decisions, actions and repercussions that might lead the PCs from one Set to the next. In many ways, the Flowchart is the more useful of the two. I’d like to give it a go in any game where I’m running a particular scenario, honestly. Not very theatrical though, disappointingly
Monsters – these are specifically mentioned because the section I am referring to in the Trophy Gold rules from Codex Gold is there to explain how you might convert an OSR module to be played using Trophy Gold instead. So, Jesse Ross has helpfully provided a lot of advice on converting Monsters, a staple of the genre, to be used in that system. One of the most fascinating aspects of the game is that the monsters do not come pre-named. That is left up to the party. This can be either cool AF or disastrous. The monsters we encountered in Hester’s Mill so far have been both bonkers and horrifying. And if it had been left up to me, they would have been called something stupid
Magic – Similar to Monsters, this includes advice on conversion. But, I will say that there is a very useful table of already converted D&D style spells presented in the rules for you to use.

Anyway, it should be clear that the Set is the main denomination of organisational structure within an Incursion. So far, I think we have interacted with three or four Sets in Hester’s Mill and achieved the Goal in two or three of them. You can use another highly abstracted currency, the Hunt Token, to complete a Set without having to actually face its dangers. You can receive (and also lose) these tokens on a Hunt Roll, one of the three types of rolls in the game. If you spend three Hunt Tokens like that, you simply draw the curtain across the stage and open again on the next Set and get to work on the new goal.

In general, rolls, of which you have Hunt, Combat and Risk, are made using a dice pool mechanic much like that used in Blades in the Dark. The D6 is the only die you need but you will need them in Dark and Light varieties. You will always roll a Dark Die in Combat and you can roll one to give you a better chance of success on a Risk Roll if you’re willing to risk mind or body… More drama.

The Combat Roll is particularly fascinating because it doesn’t work like a regular success/failure roll at all. Instead, you describe how your character exposes themselves to harm in the battle and then roll your Light Die. That number is your Weak Point. You then roll a Dark Die for each of the treasure hunters in the fight. Ostensibly, you’re rolling against the Endurance of the Monster, but, if any of them roll your Weak Point, that increases your Ruin, which is like a harm track. One you hit 6 Ruin, you are Lost… So dramaaaatic, right?

Add to this the Devil’s Bargain, nicked from Blades in the Dark and you have a recipe for some real dark character moments in Trophy games. You crowdsource the possible options for both Devil’s Bargains and unfortunate consequences of failed rolls from everyone around the table and this makes for some extremely fucked up inevitabilities on a lot of rolls.

In conclusion

We have yet to finish Hester’s Mill. I know we have at least one more Set to get to. I’m really looking forward to going back to it. We’ll be dealing with the aftermath of something pretty messed up and, hopefully, finding some more goodies. I have to say, the Incursion has been very pleasing in introducing us to a lot of lore and cool fantasy history while also giving us the opportunity to get into fights and burn down shrines so far. With any luck, there’ll be more of that as we wrap it up next time.

How about you, dear reader? Have you played Trophy Gold? Or Hester’s Mill? What did you think?

The Feeling of Dungeon World

Hirelings to Heroes

My good friend Tom. recently kicked off a Dungeon World campaign. I’m a player in it. It’s got a very particular flavour and premise that places the players in the position of being the hirelings of the “real” adventuring party. And so it was at the start. But, before we had a chance to yell, “WATCH OUT FOR THAT FLESHY BOI MAN THING” the tables were turned and the PCs had to dig deep and find something heroic inside themselves or have the entire group die horrible deaths in the depths of the first dungeon. I would like to give a big shout-out to Tom’s awesome in media res beginning in a massive organic mouth with eyes on the inside and little flesh monsters. It rocked.

My character is Craobh Beag (pronounced something like Kreev Byug), a Kyrfolk (think minotaur whose bull half was a Highland) druid. Had a lot of fun with the shapeshifting and his generally chaotic nature. You can check out Tom’s post about how they built the world we’re playing in here.

A shaggy, red-haired straight horned cow in a field. — This is what my Dungeon World character looks like except with two legs and more vines. Highland cow by Nilfanion – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7868883

Old School?

But what I want to write about today is what the game evoked for me. As a player of a certain age, my first introduction to RPGs was the red D&D boxed set back in the late eighties. This was fairly normal at the time, as I understand it. It really was magic. I don’t remember too much of the mechanics of playing that game. My memory is reliably questionable. But I have a distinct memory of the feeling of it. The wonder of imagining my little dwarf swinging his wee hammer at monsters in some unnamed dungeon, having real adventures! I’d played choose your own adventure books like Fighting Fantasy and Zork before but this was entirely different. There was no way of save-scumming by keeping a finger on the decision entry page so you could go back if you didn’t like the outcome. The consequences felt consequential and the world was wide open. No limits!

When I think of old school games, I think these are the feelings they should elicit. Fear of threat, concern for real consequences, appreciation of truly impactful decisions, a sense of freedom in an open world and an enjoyment of the fantastic. I want to be fearful for the life of my character. I need to know that the decisions I make can have a truly terrible or wonderful impact on the world in some way. Now, there are a lot of differing opinions out there as to what constitutes an OSR principle. Some of them involve the inclusion of resource management, others disregard that as non-essential but insist that they should be ‘rules-lite.’ Anyway, let’s take this list I lifted from Wikipedia that comes originally from Matthew Finch’s A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming (2008.)

Rulings from the gamemaster are more important than rule books. Concoct a clever plan and let the gamemaster rule on it.

Player skill is more important than character abilities. Outwit the enemy, don’t simply out-fight them.

Emphasize the heroic, not the superheroic. Success lies in experience, not superpowers.

Game balance is not important. If the characters meet a more powerful opponent, either think of a clever plan or run away.

I think we can see that these four pillars of OSR games cover a lot of the feelings I want to get out of them. A sense of the fantastic is noticeably absent. But that might be something specific to me.

Dungeon World (2012) by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel supports this type of play so well. It ticks all these OSR boxes! Now, obviously, I have only played the one session of it so far, but I have to tell you, the first of the stars I sent to Tom after that session was this:

right at the top I have to say that this is the closest I feel I’ve gotten to experiencing the feeling of playing old school dnd in a very long time. Despite the system being slightly different, it’s close enough that it feels familiar. More importantly, it’s the overall atmosphere [Tom] has created with a pretty traditional dungeon scenario with puzzles and traps in a recognizable fantasy setting. It really brought me back.

It’s an odd duck, Dungeon World. It is very much a PBTA game. You have bonds and moves and holds and degrees of success/success with consequences when you roll your 2d6. But you also have D&D’s core abilities, alignment, HP and magic spells. You even have classes like Dungeons & Dragons. The standard races are human, elf, dwarf and halfling (Tom has tweaked the list of available races or cultures in their campaign. Once again, you can read more about that in their own words here.) So, this is how it retains the flavour of D&D without the ruleset. LaTorra and Koebel could have made a dungeon exploration game that was far more Apocalypse Worldy. I mean, do you really need the D&D style stats? No. Is alignment necessary? No. But we are trained to understand that the fiction presented by those things is reminiscent of a particular type of game that we want to experience the feeling of again. Well, that goes for those of us who have had that feeling before. For others, who maybe never played anything but PBTA games and are loathe to dip their toes into OSE or DCC or even actual D&D, it offers them a chance to do that.

So we were on a storm-wreathed cliff-side, and we were being led by a ghost dog we had just befriended. The ghost dog walked through the air to the other side of the cliffs as though the rope-bridge was still standing. But the bridge had been cut in the middle. Still, we knew the undead doggie was trying to direct us to where we needed to be, so we used a combination of moves (shapeshifting into a forest bird), equipment (lots of rope, which our paladin ended up losing as a consequence of his actions) and luck (mixed success) to make it across to the other side (even though the self-same paladin decided it would be clever to tightrope walk across and nearly plummeted to a nasty death as a result.) This one scene involved most of the pillars of the OSR that I quoted above.

Old as new

Sometimes I find I just have to write about games like this, that are brand new to me, even though they have been out for over a decade. I’ve done it with OSE and Dragon Age too. This might seem a little redundant to some, but the way I look at it is that, if it’s new to me, it’s new to someone else too. I have to remind myself that somebody discovers OD&D every day. I only first tried a PBTA game about three years ago. When it comes to RPGs, there are trends and movements and there is always something new coming out. And there are quite a few people publishing articles on them. But I don’t think that any reason not to write about games like this that I am enjoying and enthusiastic about right now, no matter how old.

Dear reader, we have literally, only just begun our Dungeon World adventure and I am hoping to write more about it and the other games I’m currently involved in over the next few weeks. There are so many! I am looking forward, next, to discussing Trophy Gold, run by Isaac, and a new project/event that Tables and Tales is cooking up too. So stick around for more!

Death and Troika!

Whole-Hearted goodbye

The death of a PC in a role playing game might be something to mourn, it might be something to celebrate, it might be something assiduously avoided, it might even be something to seek out. But I think there’s one thing for certain: it’s almost always memorable.

When I think about the death of a PC there is a high-water mark for me. Heart is a game that builds up to that ultimate beat from the get-go. Your character’s death (or end at least) baked into the character creation system. The Zenith Abilities generally come in only two or three flavors and one of those is going to be the way your fucked-up little guy says goodbye. And yes, I know it‘s possible for a Heart character to die before their Zenith Ability goes off, but that’s only with the consent of the player. And, from my experience, the player really wants to make it to that finale. It is the greatest treasure they can obtain in the game. It is truly, all about them and how they do it. As the endgame hoves into view in Heart, the players are planning how they will work their big moment into the fiction and the GM is paddling away frantically like a murderous swan, to ensure it happens for them. And when the two meet in the middle? When player and GM both realize the ambition to achieve the perfect end? Chef’s kiss. One of the best feelings I have had playing any RPG, honestly.

And then there’s Troika!

Three adventurers protected by a magic shield against a hail of arrows. One of them takes an arrow to the back of the head though… — That’s gotta hurt. Art by Andrew Walken from Whalgravaak’s Warehouse.

We haven’t played much Troika. I ran three players through the hotel-based adventure, the Blancmange and Thistle, from the core Troika book last year. We did it as a one-shot and it was so surreal and hilarious that I knew I wanted to play more. So, in the summer, I thought I would give Whalgravaak’s Warehouse a go. Since then, we have lost one player (who moved to Spain, don’t worry) and two PCs. Please bear in mind, there have only been four sessions exploring the chaotic and bizarre workplace so far. We have lost one PC in each of the last two sessions! Tim got smashed and burned in an encounter with a blood sucking crimson giant (one of the warehouse staff) and Borrowick Grimpkin got got in an encounter with some wizardly loaders. So, this seems like a high lethality rate, right?

I think Troika has a fairly tough rule for character death. Essentially, if you go to zero Stamina (Health) and another PC comes to your aid in the same round, you have a chance of survival. This is particularly nerve-wracking for the incapacitated PC since Troika initiative is random. Each player and enemy gets a certain number of tokens and they all go into a bag at the start of each round along with one other token that, when drawn, means the end of the round. So you never know when it’s going to be your turn or when it’s going to be the end of the round! Add to this the fact that, if you go into negative stamina, you’re instantly killed, and I think you can see what I mean. On top of that, there is no way to increase your Stamina so you will always be exactly as squishy as you are at the start of the game, unless you add armor.

A warrior bleeds from the eyes and mouth as he is assaulted by some other dimensional horror. — I don’t know how to describe this one.

For poor Tim and Borrowick, they were beyond help, insta-dead, no coming back. Some of the enemies in Troika can do so much damage that they are not unlikely to one-shot the average adventurer. And that is the way the game is built. At least, that’s what I am coming to understand. You have to make the most of the time you have with your characters because it’s going to be a good time, not a long time.

Another thing I have come to understand is that, even in a game where your character’s end is not necessarily the goal, and not something you plan for, you can still have a good one that feels right and satisfying. After their character’s death, each of the players highlighted it as a major star of the session! The shock and the surprise element of their endings, in fights that seemed both unexpected and momentous, not to mention, in true Troika fashion, bizarre and unique, left them happy with how they went out.

I’d like to take this opportunity to share the obituaries I wrote up for each of them. I shared these in the general chat on our Tables and Tales Discord. After the second one in a row went up, we all agreed we needed a new channel entitled Fallen Heroes Obituaries. And that has been a big hit!

Tim

We lost a good one last night. Tim leaves behind his beloved gremlin-terrier, Brutus and fellow worthy adventurers, Ba’Naana and Borrowick Grimpkin. He had an illustrious career as a gremlin catcher before ever setting foot into Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. He had once managed to trip up one of Troika’s oversized citizens in the city’s renowned Gianttown district. This caused massive property damage but he still managed to capture the gremlin he was chasing at the time. In the warehouse Tim faithfully executed the wishes of his erstwhile patron, Exultant Wulf Memnemenoch by bludgeoning to death the alien cacogen known only as the Opportunist. Unfortunately, it was a member of staff of the warehouse that laid low the heroic gremlin catcher. He died bravely clubbing another giant, an enormous, crimson, vampiric one named Paude. And no doubt, his sacrifice was deeply appreciated by Ba’Naana and Borrowick Grimpkin as they accidentally but poignantly cremated his body just as the ancient warriors did for their honoured dead.

Borrowick Grimpkin

We lost another brave soul last night. Borrowick Grimpkin, Wizard-hunter extraordinaire, known across Troika City for his exploits in infiltrating and despatching an entire wizarding cult of Muhtrenex the Rufescent, Gulper of Blood, met his end. Despite having fulfilled his mission to slay the cacogen Opportunist, he and his team-mates continued in their exploration of Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. It was there that he was predeceased by his companion Tim in the battle with Paude the vampire giant. The circumstances of Borrowick Grimpkin’s passing were, in many ways, that of a workplace accident, impaled, as he was by the forklift arm of a rusty humanoid loader with the oxidised face of the wizard who created it. If it were not for the fact that, by his actions, his crate pilfering friends, Ba’Naana and Sticky Nicky were afforded the opportunity to escape, that might be how his death was recorded. Instead we can proudly state that Borrowick Grimpkin died as he lived, performing a dangerously acrobatic jumping sword attack from two stories up on a man made entirely of metal. RIP.

How does your group handle PC death, dear reader? Do they celebrate it? Do they rage against it? Are they forgiving or do they hold a grudge?

Dragon Age: Duty Unto Death

The Basics

You might recall, dear reader, that last year, I threatened to put together a game of the Dragon Age RPG. I even wrote a couple of blog posts about the game which you can find here. Well, I’m back to tell you that I’m not just all talk. Sometimes I really follow through on plans to play games. Myself and four other members of Tables and Tales started playing the short scenario, Duty unto Death for the Dragon Age RPG a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had two sessions so far.

The first was mostly session 0 stuff. Only three of the players were able to make it to that one, but those that did make it all created their own characters. My post on Dragon Age Character Creation stood me in pretty good stead for this. We ended up with an Antivan Wayfarer warrior, a Dalish Elf (which my computer keeps autocorrecting to Danish Elf) rogue and a human Apostate Mage (who is short and hairy enough to pass for a dwarf, thus fooling the silly templars.) Our final player joined us for this week’s session so, in order to allow us to get started as quickly as possible, he selected one of the four pregens that came with the scenario. He chose another warrior, this time a Surface Dwarf who makes a decent tank.

The group has a varied experience of both RPGs and Dragon Age. We have at least one super-fan of the video games. They know the lore inside-out and knew exactly what they wanted to play when they signed up for the game. The others all have some knowledge and several have played Dragon Age Origins recently. As it turns out, the scenario I chose is set right before the events of that game and features at least one major character from it, so that’s worked out really well.

We’re using our newly renovated independent game store, Replay as the venue. I haven’t been back there with a group since about this time last year, but since they have greatly expanded their gaming space recently, and because they are open late on Wednesday nights I wanted to give it a go. As always, the staff were welcoming and the place was great. The renovations are still under way but they have done all they can to accommodate players all the same. I can’t wait to see it when it’s done.

Tabletop

A screenshot from the intro to Tabletop with Wil Wheaton.

Does anyone remember the Wil Wheaton Youtube show, Tabletop? It was part of the Geek and Sundry network for quite a while but it looks like the last video is about seven years old now. Anyway, it mainly focused on introducing people to board games but this one time, they got Chris Pramas, the creator of the Dragon Age RPG to write a scenario they could play on the show. So Wheaton wrangled up a bunch of his show-biz pals and they made two half-hour videos of it. This was eleven years ago so it was a pretty early example of an actual play. And it was really good! It taught you the basics of how to play the game and entertained you at the same time. You can find the first episode here, Tabletop: Dragon Age RPG. If you are one of my players and you’re reading this right now, please don’t click on that link!

The illustration is of three heroes, an elf with a bow, a dwarf with an axe and a human mage battling a horde of undead. The words Dragon Age are at the top and the title of the scenario, Duty unto Death is at the bottom where it also indicates that it is an adventure for characters of level 2-4. — The cover of the Duty unto Death adventure for the Dragon Age RPG.

So, the scenario he wrote for it was Duty unto Death. They released it sometime after the show went live. He has included in the published version a few notes on how the game went on the Tabletop show, where the players surprised him, how he improvised certain encounters, that sort of thing. They are fun and possibly useful little asides. It’s short, teaches the basics of the game’s rules well and has lots of Dragon Age flavour in it so it was perfect for my purposes. There are quite a few other published adventures for Dragon Age, but most of them were much longer and would have required a lot more prep time on my part, which I don’t have right now. Duty unto Death is about 8 pages long. It’s not especially involved and doesn’t get into some of the tenets of the game. There is not much in the way of exploration or, indeed, social encounters. But, I feel like it’s doing what it sets out to do very well.

So far, our heroes, a group of Grey Warden recruits, traveling in Ferelden, have been left to their own devices by their leader, Duncan. Fans of DAO will know the name. It was fun to drop it in the intro. Anyway, he had introduced them to the duties of the wardens, gave them a few lessons about darkspawn and the blight and that buggered of to the Circle of Magi. He asked the recruits to head to a village to meet another Warden from Orlais. On the way, they got into a fight with a couple of darkspawn, tipping them off to the possibility of a coming Blight.

Cunning stunts

The Combat Stunts table from the Dragon Age RPG. It has 15 entries including "Skirkish - You can move yourself or the target of your attack 2 yards in any direction for each SP you spend," "Defensive Stance - You attack sets you up for defense. You gain a +2 bonus to Defense until the beginning of your next turn," and "lethal bloW: You inflict an extra 2d6 damage on your attack." The table shows the Stunt Point cost of each stunt on the left hand side and has the descriptions on the right. — The Combat Stunts table from the Dragon Age RPG.

That first battle was very instructive. It was the first time any of us had really interacted with the rules so we were all learning a little. After the first round, they had barely scratched these two Shrieks. It felt bad, like the worst sort of D&D, attritional combat, except for the highlight of the mage casting Walking Bomb on one of the bad guys. In the second round, people started rolling doubles and the stunts started coming. Sandor, the Surface Dwarf, added two extra dice to his damage with a Lethal Blow, almost smashing one of the darkspawn, and we were away. The players started to play more tactically, utilising their minor actions to add bonuses to their attacks by aiming, or bonuses to their defence by getting their guard up. They were utilising their class features almost immediately. I was surprised and genuinely impressive to see how instinctively my, admittedly very savvy and clever players, took to the mechanics. The combat ended with that Walking Bomb paying off, the Shriek went boom and took the other one with it, covering the entire party in black gore.

By the time they got to their destination, and found themselves in another fight, this time with some Devouring Corpses making a nuisance of themselves in the inn, it felt like they were old hands. We had to leave it in the middle of that battle since Replay was closing and we all had to go home. All in all, it has left me wanting more! Can’t wait for the next session.

Making Room for Roleplaying

Pay off

Twelve days into 2025 and I find two of my Gaming Resolutions are already paying off. Numbers 1 and 2 on my list went like this:

Make those stars sparkle and make those wishes come true: I was first exposed to Stars and Wishes this year when I took part in my first Open Hearth games. For the uninitiated, at the end of a session, a GM might ask their players for their Stars, i.e. stand out moments, moves, characters, players etc. and Wishes, in other words, what they would like to have seen happen in the session, what they wanted more of or less of or what they would like to see in future sessions. For a GM, this is an incredibly useful tool. It allows you to see what your players like and what they dislike. But, I find, too often, I don’t always re-integrate the stuff that came up in players’ Stars and Wishes. And I know, for certain, that when I do manage to apply what I learned from feedback, it has made my games better. So, how am I going to do this? I have an idea, that I literally just came up with, to create a spreadsheet to record each player’s Stars and each player’s Wishes from every session of every game. I’ll add in some columns to record potential ways to add more of the good stuff and ways to fix the problems that were revealed. Another column will summarise players’ reactions to the solutions. If it needs more tweaking, another column will detail that. I think this could be an invaluable tool to improve my games and will be there as a record so I don’t forget.

Brighter stars, wiser wishes: Sticking with the Stars and Wishes theme, I’d like to get more useful feedback from it. One of Tables and Tales’ fantastic founding members, Shannen, used a few methods to get more valuable feedback from her players in a game earlier this year. She requested feedback through DMs on our Discord. Why? Well, most people are pretty nice, actually. They tend to not want to offend anyone or say something in front of a group that might embarrass somebody. So, if you take the process away from the table, they might be more likely to tell you what they really think in private. We were just discussing this last night and, along with that, we all agreed that Stars and Wishes in the Discord chat for the game is way more valuable than having people just tell you them at the end of a session, when players are often pushed for time, or before they have had a chance to think about it and provide something really useful. So, my second resolution is to get written and private Stars and Wishes from now on.

Well, we had our fortnightly D&D game on Thursday night for the first time since our December break and everyone had great stars and wishes. They shared them on Zoom with everyone (it’s an online game.) But later some of them also shared theirs in our Discord chat as well. Tommy brought up a couple of really important points. One related to one of their favourite experiences of Wildspace in the game recently and how they would like to see more of that. This is the sort of thing that is easily actionable for me. With solid examples of the type of play people want to see more of, I can work to emulate that in the future. That was the easy one, and I am most grateful for it. More difficult might be their other wish: how do you get more meaningly relationships between PCs, as a GM?

Hands off

A halfling rogue, a femme elf druid and a masc human ranger in a forest presented at a slightly dutch angle. — An illustration of three adventurers from the D&D 5E 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide. They’re probably just about to have a long talk about their feelings. Little Bombo, there, is sick of Lilithidella’s owl always trying to fly off with him as a snack and Roger has been pissing off Lilithidella ’cause he keeps using all her shampoo.

Just butt out? Right? I could just stay out of it. I don’t need to always be sticking my oar in, do I? I think that’s fair. GMs have a lot of jobs to do already, so if the PCs start getting into a conversation that might very well help to build or break their relationship, the GM should just take their big nose and get it out of those PCs’ business. But, of course, listen, eavesdrop and take note. You never know what you might be able to use later.

Sounds simple, right? But to be able to do this, it means leaving room for it to happen. Even if you don’t necessarily encourage this sort of relationship-building exercise, you still need to make time where it could potentially happen. This is one of those unintended consequences of having a game based on a ship. You have built-in downtime while they travel. In fact, the first time they set off on their squid ship, I asked them if they wanted to take some time to get to know one another. Now, this was a band of adventurers who had been thrown together by the vagaries of chance and the unseen hand of powerful NPCs. None of them knew each other at all mere hours before lift off. And some of them had dark secrets. So, the suggestion was met with muted trivialities and outright lies, largely.

Instead, they got to know each other through their actions and words during their adventures, often in the most hilarious ways! Personal relationships were formed between certain of them in a pretty natural way. But there is a clear desire to make similar connections between other PCs. So, I am wondering how to leave space for that. There is an extended wild-space journey coming up, starting in the next session. This might be the best opportunity I have had to hand them that chance. My current plan is to simply ask how they are spending their time aboard ship during the voyage and hope they grab the reins themselves.

Hands on

Large white block letters spell out the name of the book, THE ELECTRIC STATE. They are overlaid on top of an illustration of a huge cartoon-cat-headed robotic drone, damaged and smoking hanging over an overpass beneath a slate grey sky. — a portion of the front cover of the Electric State RPG from Free League. The massive cartoon-cat-headed drone is so pooped after dealing with all the Tension in his party that he decided to take a break by hanging over this here overpass. Illustration by Simon Stålenhag.

But I can’t help thinking about the mechanic in a game I recently read, The Electric State. The Electric State is a road-trip game, so it has the journeying aspect in common with our little jaunt across fantasy space, if not much else. I think the designers looked at this genre and wondered how to bring recurring NPCs into it. I might be totally off the mark with this supposition but there is something about an adversarial or beloved NPC that comes up repeatedly in a campaign that players just love and the “on the move” nature of a road-trip game means that you might have to really shoe-horn in those characters to an extent that might feel very un-natural. So, instead of relying on your NPCs to cause stress and interpersonal drama, the game makes it so that the PCs have to be creating the Tension themselves. Tension is the name of the mechanic and it is required to allow your PCs to recover lost Hope (one of an Electric State character’s two tracks, along with Health that measures how they’re getting on.) Your PC has a Tension rating with each other PC, and vice versa. These ratings are likely to be unbalanced, i.e. Viv might have Tension 0 with Juan, but Juan has Tension 2 with Viv. This extract is from the core Electric State book:

To each of the other Travelers, you have a Tension score ranging from 0 to 2.
0 No tension, no question marks or unspoken thoughts or feelings.
1 Suppressed or contained irritation, love, interest, or other feelings and thoughts.
2 Uncontained strong emotions, such as rage, love, or even fear.

When you lose Hope points through play and you want them back, you have to contrive a scene with another PC with whom you have Tension. This might be an argument or a heart-to-heart talk or an emotional breakdown, but whatever form it takes, you both reduce Tension with the other PC by 1 point (if possible) and you regain a point of lost Hope. Of course, this means that, if your character does not have any Tension with any other PC, they have no way of regaining Hope points. So it is in your best interest to ensure you have some interpersonal drama at all times.

Dave Thaumavore, in his review of the Electric State, tended to think that this Hope-Tension feedback loop did little more than encourage manufactured drama between PCs. Of course, that’s the idea. The game is made to do that. It is certainly no coincidence that the mechanics work that way. But I can see his point. Will it feel too contrived? Will it be a pain for players to try and come up with new ways that one of the other characters has pissed off their own character all the time? Not sure. Haven’t played the game yet, but I’d willing to bet it would get bothersome if the campaign went on too long. Now, I will say that the Electric State is designed for short campaign play, so maybe it would be fine.

My question now is, if I wanted to try and tack on yet another non-D&D sub-system to this game, how would I do it with something like Tension? I could just take the Tension mechanic wholesale and give everyone a Tension score with everyone else. And then ask them to work out there shit in their downtime hours, so building more interesting and deeper relationships. But what motivation could I give them to do this? There ain’t no Hope points in D&D. But, maybe if two PCs deliberately get together to have a scene in which they reduced their tension, they could each take a boon, like a point of inspiration or temporary hit points or some other special effect only available to them when they work together next time.

Maybe the real question is, should I adopt this sort of mechanic just to encourage intra-party roleplaying? Or should I just keep out of the way?

Any thoughts or suggestions will be greatly received, dear reader!

After the Mind the World Again

Disco Elysium

Have you played Disco Elysium from the much lamented Za/um studio, dear reader? It’s one of those seminal, cult-classic games that shifted my thinking on what video games could be. It’s a mystery game but, is it, really? Even if it is, is the mystery the one presented? Is the goal to find out who killed that guy hanging from the tree in the yard behind the Whirling-in-Rags? I suppose it is, but only up to a point. When playing it, you quickly meet and pass that point, much to the frustration of your ever-suffering partner, Kim Kitsuragi. Psychologically freed of the mundane requirements of your character’s job as a police detective, you can finally get to work on the real mystery; finding yourself. In many ways, the game is a protracted character creation session. You have to do everything from defining his political and romantic persuasions, coming to understand his opinions on art, exploring his relationship with vices of all kinds to just figuring out his name. How does the game handle these revelations? Well, largely through the personification of various aspects of your Detective’s personality. These take the form of his stats, Intellect, Psyche, Fysique and Motorics and the various skills associated with them. They speak to you, often in deranged or idiosyncratic voices representative of their own, niche fragment of his personality, and try to get you to look at the world from their highly rarified perspective or to act based on it.

It’s a unique game. It’s also a unique experience that left me with so many interesting thoughts and questions. One such question was, could you make a TTRPG out of this? The answer is, you can certainly try.

After the Mind…

The Character Sheet screen from Disco Elysium. It shows each of the four main stats, Intellect, Psyche, Physique and Motorics and all of the skills that are associated with them in a grid on a black screen with white text. — The Character Sheet screen from Disco Elysium. The TTRPG stats are not as complicated as this.

Last night, I got together with four other members of Tables and Tales to play a session of After the Mind the World Again by Aster Fialla. The front cover of the game uses the tagline, ‘A murder mystery role-playing game.’ This is not an inaccurate description. However, I feel like the subheading on the next page is getting closer to the facts:

A Disco Elysium-inspired murder mystery TTRPG about a
detective and the voices in his head

In this TTRPG, the inspiration comes not from the fascinating world or the city of Revachol, it doesn’t come from the richly drawn characters of the video game, or even its ubiquitous politics. It comes, instead, from the essentials of the gameplay. In other words, the shit that’s going on in the Detective’s head and how it affects the world around him. You see, this is a GMful game that requires five people exactly, one of which is the lone player with the other four acting as GMs. Each GM represents one of the four stats from Disco Elysium, Intellect, Psyche, Fysique and Motorics. They are collectively referred to as the Facets. One of their responsibilities is to describe various features of the world the Detective moves through. Intellect has responsibility for nerdy people, art pieces, journals, etc. Meanwhile, Fysique gets stuff like buildings, a good strong state, and brawny folks.

At the start of the game, the player comes up with a name, pronouns and presentation for their Detective, as well as their role (they might not be a cop, but a PI or an insurance adjuster or something else.) Each of the Facets also gets a turn here, though. Psyche gets to describe the Detective’s face, while Motorics comes up with aspects of their style and an unusual object in their possession, for instance. I found this very fun, as did everyone else at the table, I think. I even commented that having others make your character for you in other RPGs could be just as fun!

Once that’s done, each of the Facets answers a couple of questions designed to form a baseline for their relationships with other Facets at the table. After the Mind the World Again is Powered by the Apocalypse, so this sort of character building question should be familiar to anyone who has played a game like that before.

Then they get started making the Neighbourhood. You go around the table, starting with the person who most recently played Disco Elysium, and get everyone to answer one of the five questions presented in the book that should give you an idea of the type of area this murder has taken place in.

Once you’re done with that, the Detective tells us a little about the victim and then each of the Facets introduces a piece of evidence from the crime scene. Intellect tells us about any Prior knowledge that’s relevant to the situation, Psyche describes a Person of Interest at the scene, Fysique comes up with a Landmark, in this case, where the murder occurred, and Motorics gets to reveal a clue, something tangible at the scene.

From that point, the Detective starts the investigation, describing what they are doing in the fiction, triggering particular Moves, using the Facets’ stats to make rolls and making Deductions in an effort to solve the murder. This is in line with the Detective’s Agenda:

Explore the world to its fullest.

Make the most of your Facets.

Play to find out the truth.

This is complicated by the fact that each of the Facets wants the Detective to act in different ways, offering sometimes conflicting options and sabotaging each-others’ efforts as they try to have the greater influence on the sleuth and the investigation. Facets’ stats can be boosted or reduced in various ways, often by the actions of the other Facets. Its important to note that the Facets’ Agenda is not focused on solving the murder, rather than constructing an interesting experience:

Create an intriguing world for The Detective to explore.

Highlight the differences between the Facets.

Play to find out what happens.

The Detective investigates, and the Facets Declare Evidence as particular features are described in the world. It’s up to the Detective to combine two pieces of evidence to Make a Deduction. When it comes to that point, they ask the Facets for explanations as to how they fit together. Whichever Facet’s explanation is chosen is the truth and the Facet gets a +1 to their stat, while also getting the opportunity to reduce the stat of another Facet by the same amount.

The investigation is structured into a Deduction Pyramid, which is split into four tiers. On the bottom tier, there should be eight pieces of evidence. These should be combined when the Detective Makes a Deduction so that, you end up with four Minor Deductions on the next tier up. These Minor Deductions should then be combined to come up with two Major Deductions on the penultimate tier. Finally, those Majors need to be combined to come up with the Solution to the murder, sitting right there at the top of the Pyramid.

There are several other mechanics in the game, including one to ensure that the Detective does not simply always choose the explanation of the same Facet all the time, which is clever. A Facet’s stat cannot go above +3 or below -1. If that does happen, the Facet gives the Detective a Condition and goes back to the default value of 1.

…the World Again

A screenshot of the aftermath of the Detective from Disco Elysium punching a twelve year old kid. The scene is in the yard of the Whirling in Rags hostel. A man in a green jacket and yellow flares stands over a prone kid who he just punched. Kim Kitsuragi, dressed in an orange jacket and brown baggy, tapered trousers looks on. — A screenshot of the aftermath of the Detective from Disco Elysium punching a twelve year old kid.

None of us had ever played a game quite like this one before. Obviously, some of us had played PBTA games in the past, so the mechanics were nothing frighteningly new. At points, I even felt echoes of a game of Avery Adler’s The Quiet Year that most of us played last year as we took turns describing the world around our Detective. That Detective was an amateur sleuth named Bruce with a fabulous moustache, a flight jacket, an obsession with whiskey and a curious ability to identify any wooden model aircraft he might come across.

But, sharing GMing duties with three others at the table is a unique and sort of chaotic experience. At the start, it’s actually a little difficult to get into gear. I was playing Motorics and I found I had to be constantly checking my playbook sheet to remind myself what features of the world were within my domain, what my GM Moves were and when I should use them. There are features in there that you might not expect so you have to watch it and you can’t use your GM Moves just whenever. Since all four of us Facets were feeling like this, it kind of stuttered into life as a session, once the character creation bit and the initial set-up of the mystery were done. Meanwhile, Bruce, played ably by relative TTRPG noob, Jude, had to come to terms with the fact that, when it came to any of the really important decisions, he had to give up control and ask the Facets for options before settling on one version of the truth or selecting a course of action.

As we got into the flow of it, though, and as some of us became more lubricated by the liberal application of fine Spanish lager, we found the conversation that was the game began to come much more instinctively. We were interacting with the mechanics and deliberately fucking each other over for stat points, while Bruce began to explore the small, dead silent village of Battersfield and investigate the murder of local baker, Barbara Devons. Evidence has been declared in abundance and two deductions have been made! Bruce managed to finally make it out of the Bakery to explore the office, the bare flour cellar and even the gay bar across the road. Unfortunately, we had to leave the case unsolved after the four hour session. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick the trail back up again soon.

We ended up having a really fun time with After the Mind the World again. The stand out scene for me was when Bruce was interrogating Jenny at the crime scene and all four GMs jumped in to answer in particular ways that they thought reflected their own domain within the one NPC. It worked surprisingly well, even though I’m not sure that’s how it’s supposed to work at all.

I would say that there is no way to play a full investigation in a single three hour session without rushing through scenes and maintaining the sort of laser-focus that Harry Dubois does not exemplify in any way. The character creation and making the mystery section took over an hour alone before Bruce ever rolled a die in anger. If you’re going to give it a go, plan it for two sessions.

Do you think you would like to give this game a try, dear reader? Or would you rather go back to Martinaise and collect some tare in a plastic bag while pondering that old wall again?

Games I Got to Play This Year Part 2

Wrap-up

It’s an end of year wrap-up. Everyone’s doing one. Check out the last post for the campaigns I have been playing in the last few months. This one’s for the one-shots.

One-shots

Pirate Borg – the link above will take you to my post mortem on this one shot. It was a great time, in all honesty. My first foray into running any kind of Borg, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and instinctive every part of it was, even the ship-combat, which was new to everyone at the table. If you are interested in pirates, light cosmic horror, or just gnarly old school gaming in an alternate history version of our own 18th century, you’ll enjoy Pirate Borg in all likelihood. By the way, I also did a character creation post on this one.
Troika! – Whalgravaak’s Warehouse – Ok, look, full disclosure, this is supposed to be a list of one-shots but this is technically more like a really spread out short campaign where we get together to play a one-shot of the same game every once in a while when we can all afford the time. Know what I mean? Anyway, in the first one-shot of these two consecutive one-shots, the PCs found two different ways into this warehouse, abandoned by its wizardly owner centuries previous. After crawling this “dungeon” for a bit, they made friends with a thin mutant, and their monkeys got to play with the worm-headed hounds that lived in a nest in the warehouse somewhere. They made short work of the Cacogen they’d been sent to murder and we wrapped up the session. In the second one-shot in this series of one-shots, three of the band decided to continue to explore, making more friends, this time with a large cadre of mercenaries who had been sent to deal with some cultists. They then set fire to some rope, captured some minuscule soldiers in gremlin-jars and climbed a mountain of onions. This is the kind of nonsense the PCs get up to in games of Troika to be honest. This is standard. If this sounds too gonzo or weird, you are in the wrong place. The Eternal City of Troika is not for you. You should probably try somewhere more normal. From my point of view, and, I think, that of the players, if you lean into the bonkers aspects of the setting and you are willing to go along with the more outré elements of the system (the random initiative mechanic stands out) you will probably have a very good time with this game. It’s great for one shots. Or two shots if that’s your thing. Might turn into three shots, actually.
Honey Heist – this was another one of Isaac’s games. He ran it on a night when another game fell through. It was very last minute but we were still able to get a crew together. Jude, Tom and I rolled up some friggin’ bears with criminal backgrounds and went to do a heist at the biggest honey convention in the UK, in the NEC in Birmingham. We tried to do a TED talk, we disguised ourselves as massive bees and we crashed a van. You know, typical bear stuff. Another absolute belter of a one-shot, this one. It’s the definitive one-page RPG by Grant Howitt of Spire and Heart fame. Isaac and Tom had picked up the printed form of a bunch of these one-pagers at UKGE and Isaac had been looking for the opportunity to run one of them. This game was obviously made to create wild swings as you use either you Bear or Criminal stat and try to avoid going too far on the bear side or too far on the criminal side. This forces you to take risks and do stupid things to drive the heist forward or, more likely, sideways. Tom did a brilliant write-up of the session on their blog here.
B.D.S.M. Below Dwelling Sewer Mutants – Yet another game run by Isaac at short notice. It is a mutie-eat-mutie game by Neonrot and you can get it here. The premise is pretty straight-forward. You are a mutant. You are probably unpleasant in some way. At the start, you have a mutation that may or may not be useful in certain situations. You can progress and grow by eating other mutants to gain new mutations along the way. If you like that idea, you’re in for a treat. I think it is probably a game that works best in one-shot play. We had fun with it and I think most tables will.
Cthulhu Dark – Roadhouse Feast – I went into quite a lot of detail on this one in the post I linked above so I won’t go through it all again. Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed running the Cthulhu Dark game for the first time. The scenario itself was great but, to me, it is the simplicity and the ingenuity of the system that really shone. If you are into cosmic horror games and you haven’t tried Cthulhu Dark, you should give it a chance.
Liminal_ – I promised a report on how this one-shot went some time ago and here it is. We had four players (known as the Disoriented) for this one-shot plus me as the the Architect. As I thought we would, rather than have the players play themselves in this Liminal Back-Room nightmare, I had them use the character generation tables in Death Match Island. This worked really well to come up with some distinctive, memorable characters quickly and with no fuss. They started off all in the same public building. Since one of them was a district attorney, we agreed it should be a court house. One of the others was there as a witness in a case and the other two were, in an unlikely turn of events, cousins who had been called for jury duty on the same jury. That is pretty much by-the-by, although it did come up in conversation later. Thy all stepped into a room together and found themselves in a building of nightmares. Now, you have to roll up the rooms as they open the doors. There are a couple of d100 tables in the book that are crammed with inventive and horrific room descriptions. The first door they opened led into some sort of creepy, dank cave system; the next into a mouldering bowling alley that was was canted at a 45 degree angle; the next opened onto the abandoned bridge of a ship, rocking in a dreadful storm and with a trail of blood leading off through one of the other doors. I made a mistake at the very start, where I allowed the players to open a couple of doors and then decide which one they would go through. The rules state that, if you open a door, you have to go through it. This felt a little restrictive to me, in a role-playing game, but we proceeded in this way and the players were good sports about it. As we progressed, rolling on the Room and Entity tables, it felt as though, at times, they really wanted to see what the hell was going to come next. Isaac said afterwards, that it felt a lot less subtle than he had thought it would and I have to agree with that. When you think of liminal space horror, it often is just empty corridors and abandoned hotels and the like. Sometimes a strange entity might make an appearance, but it’s the spaces themselves that are supposed to be innately creepy. Some of these rooms we rolled up on the tables felt that way, like the corridor with missing persons posters of the PCs on the walls but a lot of them were straight-up horror like the one with nurse-entity (I think?) chopping a guy up on a slab (it was ok, he was into it!) Also, I think this is something I would be careful with: when you roll a random entity, they sometimes don’t seem to fit, thematically, with the room that you just rolled up. I think it is ok to re-roll if that happens. I didn’t do that and once or twice, felt like they collided awkwardly. Now, these are nitpicks, really. In general, we had a good time with this, the players loved playing their pretty normal characters in these horrific scenarios, just running blindly from threat to dreadful threat. We used both the regular room table and the guest room table (the entries here were written by some industry luminaries like Johan Nohr and Tim Hutchings.) One of the best things about that experience for me was that I was just as surprised, horrified and disgusted as the players were! One of the challenges then, of course, was that it was my job to quickly read, interpret and present the room to the players without taking too long, stumbling over the words, reading them too much or generally fucking up. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it to the end of their mad dash through the back-rooms. The PCs still have a few squares of fatigue to be filled in. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick that up and finish it off someday.
Mothership – Moonbase Blues I wish this wasn’t in the one-shot pile but heigh-ho. Sometimes your GM moves away and leaves your characters stuck on a moonbase that is probably trying to kill them. I mean, there was someone or something there trying to kill us. I was under no illusions that we were likely to all die out there, I just wanted to know how. Anyway, the one session we had of this game was great. Full props to Joel, our GM, for putting so much time and effort into he prep for it. He had a series of recordings that he played for us at key moments, he had handouts and provided us with cheat-sheets. It was a great experience. Also, I loved playing my character that I created in the post I linked above, Victoria Ibanez, the Corps’ finest. I’d love to get to play her again. Mothership is a great system with compelling mechanics and one of the best character creation experiences out there. If you need any more convincing, you should go and check out Quinns’ review of it.

Conclusion

So, that’s it. Those are all the one-shots that I got to play in the last few months. I didn’t get to play many of the games I wanted to, but I sure did have fun not playing them. Next year, I am continuing the theme of not playing the games I listed in that post by starting the year off with a one-shot of After the Mind, the World Again, a Disco Elysium-inspired, GMful mystery game and, Dragon Age, which, I have at least discussed at length on this very blog here and here. Honestly, I think it was useful to set out goals for the games I wanted to play. I may not have gotten to play any of them if I hadn’t done that. So I will continue to write about things I want to experience on the blog and see what happens.

I will be posting more intermittently as we come into the holiday period now. I will be travelling to visit friends and family a lot and won’t always have the chance to post as regularly as I would like. So, in case this is the last post before the end of the year, I wish you the very happiest Winter Solstice/Hogswatch/Western New Year.

BTW

Here are links for where to buy each of these games:
Pirate Borg
Troika!
Honey Heist
BDSM
Cthulhu Dark
Liminal_
Mothership

The Heart of the Matter

Not entirely seat of your pants

A portion of the inside cover of my copy of Heart: The City Beneath from Rowan Rook and Decard. Illustrations by Felix Miall

The philosophy for some Heart GMs seems to be, don’t you dare plan your Heart campaign or sessions. Like, just sit down with your players, make some weirdos to do some delves and then decide on a starting place. That might be in media res, as the PCs meet one another while hopelessly lost in Labyrinth or it might be at home in their shabby-chic apartment in Derelictus. From there you might just ask them what they want to do next and, when they tell you, just try to keep up with them! This is a valid way to play the game, I think, as long as you have either an exhaustive knowledge of the landmarks, adversaries, plot hooks and people of the Heart, or an effective and suitably weird set of random tables. If you approach it from this direction, the players are going to have the most input but the GM is going to have to improv a lot and do a great deal of work on the fly. It also presupposes a certain degree of setting knowledge on the players’ part, I think. This can be stressful and a lot to expect of everyone but I am pretty sure this is the preferred method of a lot of Heart GMs.

A portion of an illustration of Derelictus, the City Between by Felix Miall. Heart: The City Beneath, page 136.

Another option, of course, is to plan everything, start, middle and end. This is totally do-able. The book provides plenty of fodder to feed your hungry campaign. It describes dozens of landmarks and provides you with lots of plot hooks to get the PCs interested in pursuing the thing you want them to. So you can have them all meet in a Derelictus tavern where they overhear something about a plot by some Gryndel to pursue a valuable quarry into the Heart, plan the first delve to take them after the Gryndels only to find the quarry in Grip Station, near death but with a dire warning for the whole city that an army of Angels rises from below and a request for the delvers to spread the news to the Temple of the Moon Beneath, plan out the next delve to there, etc. etc. This sounds very much like a traditional adventure module for the likes of D&D. And that is all well and good. It allows a very strict control on the part of the GM and makes for a plot the PCs can uncover. But it will certainly lead to some railroading and could well make for potential dissatisfaction for the players and the PCs as they feel they have taken a back seat to the narrative planned out so perfectly by the GM. This method will ignore the great strength of Heart, it’s freeform potential, the loose structure inherent in the Beats system and the story being told by the delvers’ choices and their rolls and the Fallout that comes out of them.

A portion of an illustration of delvers planning a delve by Felix Miall. From Heart: The City Beneath, page 103.

So, how about somewhere in between? It seems sensible to meet in the middle. You make your weirdos, then you all discuss what sort of game you would like for them, GM and players together. Or you could take those two steps the other way around. Either way, you have an idea of the sort of story you all want to tell together and you all take responsibility for making that happen. This is with the understanding that what you think you want at the start might very well change after one or two or five sessions. That’s when you realise that, while you thought you wanted to help out that Haven you came across at the end of your first delve, it turned out what you actually wanted all along was to physically explode in such a way as to take out as much of the surrounding entities as possible so you could all travel to the afterlife together, an offering to your Goddess. And in pursuit of these elastic goals, the GM comes up with a loose web of places, people and objects that the PCs might have a chance to interact with. The GM will probably do this, at most, in between each session, with several ideas of where the story might go in the two or three sessions afterwards, but with no expectations.

A portion of an illustration by Felix Miall, of Grip Station, a Tier 1 Landmark. From Heart: The City Beneath, page 138.

Here’s what Messrs Howitt and Taylor have to say about it under the section entitled, “Stop Planning” on page 109 of the Heart core book:

Flexibility and adaptiveness are the keys to success. When you prepare, think in terms of characters, broad concepts, motivations, snatches of ideas that you want to play with. The world doesn’t exist until you speak about it at the table. Sure, you might have thought about it – you might even have written it down in a notebook – but until the players interact with it, it’s in total flux. The players just turn up every week and make it up as they go along. Why can’t you?

The quantum campaign made up of Shrödinger’s delves. And this about sums up the type and degree of prep I have been doing before each Heart session more recently. It’s more fun for me to do it this way too. I get to be surprised by what the players do and I get to discover the Heart along with them a lot of the time.

From Haven to Terminus

Yeah, that’s the name of our Heart campaign. It’s coming to an end this week. I guess the name gives away quite a lot of my thinking behind it. I was finding it hard to let go of the traditional module style of prep at the start. Yep, I decided to make a bold statement about, not only where the campaign would start, but also where it would end up. Now, this wasn’t as bad as it sounded. I had a very vague idea of a Campaign Frame for the game, that’s all. I used one of the plot hooks described in the Derelictus section of the Heart core book. Verrex, a retro-technologist with his tumble-down workshop situated on one of the platforms of Haven Station wanted the delvers to track down his robotic double, V01. The construct had expressed an interest in visiting all the Vermissian stations in the City Beneath, so he suggested the PCs use that as a guide to finding him. That was it. Everything in between was entirely up in the air, but it gave them a loose path and a potential final goal.

A portion of the illustration of a Gnoll Incursion Team by Felix Miall. From Heart: The City Beneath, page 188.

That was, of course, until I decided to employ the adventure presented in the Heart Quickstart guide, Drowned. Now, I am not going to spoil any of this adventure here but what I will say is that it lays out a very particular path ahead of the PCs, with the havens they will reach at the end of each of the numbered delves, the NPCs that will push them on from one place to the next and a big old final set piece. Now, since all I had before making this decision was a loose Campaign Frame, a little concreteness was actually welcome. It allowed me to see how to do things like come up with my own delves, use Haven NPCs to best advantage to help drive narrative and try to attach the PCs to someone or something only for them to find a way to betray or deceive them. But, after five or six sessions of following the adventure, I became aware of how the campaign had ended up on rails. I wasn’t providing them with options, I was forcing them down the path laid out by Drowned. I have found it hard to get out of this frame of mind since then, although I have tried to follow the advice from the book that I quoted above.

The delvers just reached Terminus, having taken a near-lethal shortcut through The Source, one of the Eight Heavens. The Junk Mage is banking everything on a meeting with a gnoll in Terminus who can teach them how to use the Nexus Device there to enact their will upon the entire city, The Vermissian Knight has pumped his mystical train armour full of soul power, the better to resurrect the entire inter-dimensional subway network, and the Deadwalker has just had his Zenith wish to combine his essence with that of the Heart itself thwarted by the Vermissian Knight who says he will not stand for his “human servants” abandoning him until his work is done (he’s an aelfir obvs.)

How will it end up? We’ll find out soon. But whatever happens, I am now pretty sure that these amazing players are going to surprise me yet again.