My Facebook account is rarely frequented and pretty much just a mechanism for keeping in touch with a couple of friends who I don’t see a lot of these days. (They introduced me to it)

Recently however, I’ve been drawn into playing Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Rippers Facebook game, which is about Victorian monster-hunting and the “Horror War” against the evil Cabal, and I have to say that as a minor diversion it’s not at all bad. Like most such games, it’s fairly limited and the missions are rather repetitive after a while, but the promise of character advancement has kept me plugging away and overall it seems fairly well thought out.

The Heart mechanics in particular are of interest to me, since they are a minor application of a concept I rather loosely discussed in a post some time ago. Basically, making the character’s resolve/conviction/heart a value that can be eroded, so that physical damage points and thus combat are no longer the only character resource limiting their ability to continue towards their objectives. To my mind this opens up other avenues for challenging the characters i.e. you might have the strength to overcome this obstacle but do you have the mental fortitude? Can I persuade you to desist? Can I intimidate you into withdrawing?

From observation only, the Heart mechanics employed in Rippers work something like this:

• Your Heart is twice your Courage attribute and represents a pool of ‘resolve’ which underpins your actions.
• Heart is consumed when you are daunted/challenged by horrors or failure e.g. “the werewolf strikes terror into your heart (Heart Damage 3)” or “Critical failure (Heart Damage 1)”
• Failing certain skill challenges which you have to overcome in order to advance through the mission is typically more costly e.g. failing to decipher a coded message may lose you a whole bunch of Heart. I’m not sure exactly how this works, perhaps dependant on the extent of your failure?
• Once your Heart reaches zero you are defeated and cannot continue with your mission. For the time being you must withdraw to lick your wounds before returning to fight another day.

These mechanics seem to work fairly well within the limits of the Rippers game, though for application in a tabletop RPG I’d also want to see things like:

• Heart damage from social conflicts e.g. persuasion, intimidation
• Heart tied into stated character “beliefs” or inspirations
• Heart bonuses for following beliefs/inspirations i.e. it is harder to undermine/dissuade characters from performing actions which are in line with their “beliefs”
• A Heart replenishment system based around scenes being devoted to a character’s inspirations (In Rippers Heart merely replenishes over time)

There’s some food for future thought there anyway.

Thankfully my extremely understanding other half, Emma, has volunteered to help me with a playtest of Bill White’s The Perilous Realm; which is great because it’s a game I’ve really wanted to try for some time now. Granted the backdrop of continuous baby-care is a somewhat unsuitable arena for this but I felt The Perilous Realm seemed robust enough to handle the kind of piecemeal play dictated by our present circumstances.

The Setting (summarised from Bill’s description here):

The time is the 12th century. The place is the Kingdom of Prester John, great and wise Christian monarch of the Far East, Lord of the Four Indies. Into this world, it has been foretold by the apostle Judas Didymus that, “a star called Wormwood” will fall, unleashing beasts of war, plague, famine and poison to devour the people. Heroes from far off lands will rise to oppose these beasts, at great cost to themselves, and ultimately to little avail, for both they and the kingdom of the Four Indies will perish. This game is the story of that time.

Pleasingly, despite the interruptions, Emma and I have succeeded in completing Act One, which is basically setting the scene by generating a map of the kingdom and creating the protagonists.

Character Creation

Character creation entails rolling on a series of tables to generate elements around which your character is built. I’m a fan of such tools for prompting ones imaginings and certainly, on this occasion, the process worked really well for us.  The resulting ’key words’ provided a very nice basis for developing the protagonists, suitably stimulating our imaginations and encouraging collaboration as we tossed around ideas for how they could be incorporated.

Like all ‘oracular’ type mechanics, there were times when the randomly generated elements positively reverberated with meaning and other times when they were rather less fruitful but without doubt the characters were all the more interesting for being woven around things that we almost certainly wouldn’t have come up with ourselves.

Although only Emma and I are playing (and I’m notionally the GM) we decided to create two principal characters, as we thought it would be more enjoyable that way.

We came up with the following:

From the above elements, which we generated for the first character, we got Urraca Sombra del Alba, an emissary from a sect of Spanish women who work in secret to thwart the pending Apocalypse. Urraca is currently charged with travelling to the Court of Prester John, in the grand and glorious city of Nysse, with a warning from the sect that the end of days is near. The star Wormwood has fallen and agents of the Apocalypse are now in motion.

Combining ideas prompted by the key words associated with her alchemical archetypes we decided that Urraca was going to be a woman with a troubled past. As a young girl she was orphaned when her mother and father were executed for practicing witchcraft. She herself escaped, fleeing from the purusing authorities, staying alive purely through her grit and determination. Eventually she was taken in by a benevolent Sister who initiated her into the secret order of which she is now a part. Throughout that time she has hidden a dangerous potential, for should it ever be discovered that she inherited her mother’s aptitude for the Magical Arts then she would surely be put to death like her parents.

Her traits are:

Determination – life’s a struggle (Sange)
Eldritch potential – witchcraft inherited from her mother (Melanche)

The character also gets a gift associated with one of the key words from her zodiacal aspect, which are death, old age, failure and destruction. For this Emma chose:

The ability to talk to the dead (Melanche)

Her resulting humours are Chole 5, Sange 5, Melanche 3, Pneuma 3

From the second set of elements we came up with Alma Tormenta de Otoño, another emissary from the same sect of women that Urraca Sombra del Alba belongs to. Emma and I liked the idea that both protagonists had been despatched to the Kingdom of Prester John to undertake missions associated with thwarting the Apocalypse. To facilitate this we changed Alma’s Origin to 11: Leon & Castile, the same as Urraca’s. This change has no mechanical effect.

Alma is charged with delivering a second message to the Castle of Gathonolabe, a mountain fortress where a rich and evil sorcerer trains an order of assassins, rewarding them with hedonistic and sybaritic pleasures.

Using key words associated with Alma’s alchemical archetypes we decided that she had trained diligently to achieve mastery of the blade and that she was an exceptional judge of people’s body language. Speak falsely and she will know that you have lied to her.

Her traits are:

Blade mastery – wind of knives (Chole)
Good judge of people - reading body language (Melanche)

Her gift is associated with one of the key words from her zodiacal aspect, which are worldly power, justice and leadership. From this we decided that Alma doesn’t undertake her missions alone. She is the leader of a small team of specialists; a visible envoy who is accompanied by unseen cohorts aiding her covertly from the shadows.

Leader - accompanied by unseen cohorts who aid her covertly from the shadows (Chole)

Her resulting humours are Chole 5, Sange 4, Melanche 5, Pneuma 2

The Kingdom

Finally we generated the following map of the kingdom by drawing cards to form an eight by eight grid and then rolling randomly to determine the locations of the six destinations:

Also rolling randomly, Urraca will start the game at (8,2) and Alma at (1,5)

Note: It took three tries to randomly generate start locations where one or other of the characters wasn’t either adjacent to or collocated with their destination. I don’t know for certain that this is an issue but it seemed to limit play somewhat so we changed it.

Act Two to follow…

One idea I particularly like is ‘Inspirations’

Characters have inspirations such as “love of Isabella the miller’s daughter”, “fear of rejection” or “loyal to the king”. A relevant inspiration can be used once per scene to add the character’s HEART die as a bonus, or to magnify a roll (i.e. increase the size of the die being used). I won’t go into the details here, as this is pretty similar to various drive and belief mechanics used in other games.

Now the really neat bit in Spellbound Kingdoms is that a character can never be killed while they have an inspiration of 4 or more (3 if it’s a love inspiration). They can plunge over a cliff or be left for dead in a pool of their own blood but when all is said and done they will have miraculously survived. The only way to finish them for good is to harry them and break them, perhaps by forcing them to watch their loved ones die one by one before moving in for the kill.

Play is set up to revolve around character inspirations rather than direct conflict. Scenes are devoted to raising inspirations or assaulting them. A villain might kidnap and murder a son, torture a friend or set fire to a home; while a player might devote a scene to wooing his love in order to increase his associated inspiration.

You can also:

• Exploit other character’s inspirations
• Impose or suffer inspiration penalties in conflicts as a result of inspirations being mocked or threatened
• Force inspirations upon other characters as a condition of beating them in a contest
• Inflict or suffer mood damage
• Find True love
• Acquire fear inspirations, which are the easiest inspirations to gain but also the easiest for enemies to exploit.

This all looks like really good stuff to me and I’m very interested to see how it works in actual play. Though, given that my home-life is almost entirely focused on baby-care at the moment, it may be some time before I can try it out. 

Anyway, if you like the sound of this I’d recommend you go take a gander. Based on what I’ve read it looks like a good buy. Even more so if a mix of zeppelins, courtesans, feral children, alchemy, sorcery, engineering, politics, dragons and slavering undead appeals to you. The pdf is currently on sale at DriveThruRPG for $7.99

At 11:35am GMT on 12th August my other half, Emma, gave birth to our beautiful baby daughter, Mahala Lilith.

Since then both Emma and Mahala are doing really great. I couldn’t be happier!

Before our tiny bundle of joy was born people warned me about the poo and the sleepless nights but, though looking after Mahala is proving to be a full-time job, it seems to be sitting around with her flopped peacefully snoozing on my tummy or me watching the little adorable expressions she makes that takes up the majority of my time Nappy changing doesn’t seem so bad and the nights have been pretty good – though still fairly knackering.

Anyway, it might be a while before I surface from the deluge of visiting relatives and dirty nappies, but all is great here. We’re all doing really well and Emma and I are loving it.

Just wanted to share our happy news.

Not to mention the fact that the operation worked a treat and, though I’ve been feeling a bit tender, I’m finally getting back to my old self. The restricted diet, discomfort and painful, sleepless nights from the last six months are a thing of the past and I’m not missing my gallbladder, even slightly. Yay!

Anyway, a discussion with Bill White over at Consensus Games has led to the following thoughts, which seemed worth posting about here.

Cycle of Situation Generation and Resolution

In practice, a roleplaying game consists of a series of imaginary situations/scenes, each of which players are expected to react to and resolve (in some fashion) before moving on to the next.

Hence games are a repeating cycle of:
Pretty much without exception, RPGs provide extensive support to Situation Resolution, through mechanics that determine success or failure of imagined actions and/or arbitrate conflicts. However, aside from pre-scripted adventure modules and guidelines such as “threaten PC beliefs”, it’s largely down to the participants (typically the GM)  to come up with interesting situations which advance the fiction.

This is usually done through a combination of preparation and improvisation, both of which have their problems; either railroading or the GMs version of writer’s block.
So, given that Situation Generation and Situation Resolution are both fundamental to play, why is all the mechanical support focused on Situation Resolution? And do effective ways to support Situation Generation actually exist?

I have some thoughts on why Situation Resolution gets all the attention but I think I’ll save those for another post as I want to focus on the second question, ”Do effective ways to support Situation Generation exist?”

Well, certainly for me, I’ve realised that a major appeal of Bill White’s oracular approach to RPGs is that the techniques he employs do in fact support situation generation during play. In these games the participants aren’t asked to decide “what happens next?” they’re asked to interpret the cards, which is easier somehow. Switching the focus to reading the cards prompts the imagination, encourages collaboration  and works surprisingly well considering there’s no overall ’architect’ guiding the story. As Bill himself says:

People’s minds naturally want to impute meaning to patterns: random noise plus human perception equals deep significance.

Another approach, which has been employed in some games, is to mechanize aspects of GM play to the point where opposition to the PCs can be played to the hilt (within the limits of the rules) e.g. something like, if a PC blows a certain roll the GM is entitled to threaten the PC’s relationships or property, or to place them at a disadvantage but cannot actual do them any physical harm.

With this technique the players and GM “advocate” for their respective characters and situations are generated as a consequence of the conflicts arising between them. Once again there is a subtle shift of focus as the GM is being asked not “What happens next?” but “What’s your next move?”

For the time being these are the only techniques I have in mind but I’m wondering if there are others? And, if so, how effective they are? I’ll be giving it some more thought and will probably expand on this post at a later time.

Certainly I’ll be continuing to look out for oracular mechanics since, as anyone reading this blog will know, they are of great interest to me. 

Anyway, any thoughts or comments are most welcome. Thanks for dropping by.

In a game that is set up for advocacy the idea is basically that while one player might be the GM, the majority of the players run their own characters, often created by them just like in any old roleplaying game. These players have two jobs in the advocacy model: a) to express an interesting, sympathetic character and b) to utilize the rules mechanics to enforce the character’s will on the setting. To say the same thing slightly differently: the player creates a protagonist (a sympathetic viewpoint character) and makes sure that the character strives in the game for his own benefit. The important bit of the advocacy model is that we find two things: the first is that a properly designed game (for this purpose, understand; there are other things you can do with roleplaying) will not require the players to take on any other responsibilities. The second is that the primary source of enjoyment in an advocacy game actually comes from the very fact that the players have no other responsibilities but to advocate for their characters.

The reason for why I’m constantly dragging advocacy up as a concept nowadays is that I’ve been encountering a lot of storytelling games that I haven’t been entirely happy with for the very reasons identified by the advocacy model. An alternative method for creating a highly dramatic game, you see, is to expect the players to take a high degree of responsibility for the dramatic outcomes of the game; this is typical of games that include verbiage about how the players should feel responsible for the fun of the game and thus regulate their characters to not make difficult choices that “ruin” the story. The point of the advocacy model is that we don’t need to make this sacrifice if we want story: it’s possible to both get an exciting story and advocate for your character fully.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

Consensus Games, Bill White’s roleplaying game design blog, has returned to life after a good few years of silence. I’ve been keeping vigil all that time because I’m a big fan of the kind of oracular techniques that Bill seems to favour for stimulating the imagination during play.

If you don’t know what I mean by this go see Bill’s (and Dave Petroski’s) games Ganakagok, Rune Saga, Technolust and his latest posts on Fourth Age: D&D.

Basically it’s drawing cards, interpreting their meaning and weaving that meaning into the story as part of play. It’s an idea that I first encountered in Jonathan Tweet’s Everway RPG which seems to have been relatively under-utilized since then.

Anyway, I’m very pleased to see that Bill is back posting again and hope he continues with the juicy oracular goodness.

His latest contribution is a really nice quest system that turns D&D into more of a pick-up game (Fourth Age: D&D), the basis of which could easily be modded for use with pretty much any game. It’s well worth checking out.

I’ve been following Sepulchrave’s Tales of Wyre since back in 2003 when Colin, a roleplaying buddy of mine, drew my attention to them in the story-hour at EN World. I was soon captivated by Sepulchrave’s accounts of the adventures of Eadric, Mostin, Nwm and Ortwin(e) in what has to be the most compelling story-hour of all time.

It’s epic. Really. I can’t recommend it enough.

Updates to the tales are rather infrequent these days but the latest thread, Viridity and Saizhan, was last updated earlier this month, i.e. March 2009.

So don’t miss out. Treat yourself.

What are you waiting for? Go take a look.

Links to both the EN World threads (where still available) and some handy pdfs I’ve created follow:

01 – Lady Despina’s Virtue – Part 1  [pdf]
02 – Lady Despina’s Virtue – Part 2  [pdf]
03 – The Heretic of Wyre – Part 1  [pdf]
04 – The Heretic of Wyre – Part 2  [pdf]
05 – The Rape of Morne – Part 1  [pdf]
06 – The Rape of Morne – Part 2  [pdf]
07 – Divertimento  [pdf]
08 – Soneillon – Part 1  [pdf]
09 – Soneillon – Part 2  [pdf]
10 – The Mesalliance  [pdf]
11 – Viridity and Saizhan  [pdf1] [pdf2]

last updated 26/12/09

Enjoy.

Finally to Sepulchrave, the author, should you ever drop by my humble blog: 

1. I’m a huge fan. Respect and many thanks for sharing this amazing story.

2. What the hell are you doing here man? Why aren’t you writing?