I won a copy of Cthulhu Dice at a con, and it's become an obsession to try and find an actual use for this goofy die covered in Cthulhoid iconography, given that CD, as a game, ain't that hot. So I figured hey, what game appreciates a good bit of randomness and occasional hilarious unfairness better than 2210? So here's a new threat to add to your amoebas and zombies and alien conquerors, the mythos cults, with the twist that it's quite possible (and occasionally beneficial) to coexist with them. Right up until ol' tentacle-face eats you.
Setup: Draw a number of land territories equal to the number of players, or a minimum of 3, after all players have claimed their territories but before the 3-unit fortification begins. Place a cult marker on each territory thus drawn. Cult markers coexist with any units in a territory, and have no effect on that army until the end of the year. No territory can ever have more than one cult marker.
Roll: At the end of each year, roll the Cthulhu die.
Yellow Sign: Spread. Cults attempt to spread to adjacent territories.
Tentacle: Seduce. Cults attempt to seduce units both in their own territories and in adjacent occupied territories.
Elder Sign: Dark Power. All players gain energy equal to 1/2 the number of territories they share with the cults, rounded up.
Eye of Horus: Dark Reinforcement. All players gain MODs equal to 1/2 the number of territories they share with the cults, rounded up.
Cthulhu: Rising. Destroy 1 unit in every territory with a cult marker. Roll again.
Spreading: When a Yellow Sign is rolled, draw a number and type of territory cards equal to the number and type of territories with cult markers. If any of these territories are adjacent to a territory that already has a cult marker, but does not have one of its own, the cult attempts to spread. Roll 1d3: If the result is higher than the number of units in the territory, the cult spreads. Place a cult marker on that territory. Unlike invasions, the player who controls the territory may choose to voluntarily fail this roll, inviting the cult in. If a territory drawn has no adjacent territory with a cult marker, or already has a cult marker, it has no effect.
Assisting the cults: On their own, the cults may not spread to water or space territories. Players may opt to assist the cults, either to infiltrate rivals, because they hope to take advantage of the cults' very occasional generosity, or because they just want to make it somebody else's problem. A player with a naval commander and a territory with a cult marker may replace one land territory card the cult would otherwise draw with a water territory. A player with a space commander in play and a space station in a territory with a cult marker may replace one land territory the cults would otherwise draw with a space territory. Only one such substitution (either water or space) may be made per player. The cults, being reckless and in league with dark powers of both ocean and space, do not need to limit themselves to the prescribed landing zones and coastlines that limit traditional armies, and cards drawn from such assistance do not need adjacent territories to support the attack (in later turns, such assistance cards should be separated from water and space territories drawn normally). However, water and space are difficult for cultists to survive in, and their rolls to spread to such territories are made at -1 (thus a 1 always fails). If successful, the cult establishes itself in the new territory, and on future spreading and seduction results, draws a card from the appropriate deck. The cults may spread into water territories adjacent to coastal land territories with a cult marker, or any of the normal space landing areas if there is any land territory with both a cult marker and a space station.
Seduction: Seduction works similarly to spreading: When a tentacle is rolled, draw a number and type of territory cards equal to the number and type of territories with cult markers. However, there are several differences. If a territory drawn during seduction is entirely unoccupied, or only has a cult marker, or has no adjacent territory with a cult marker, it has no effect. If a territory drawn is occupied, has no cult marker of its own, but is adjacent to a territory that has a cult marker, the cult attempts to seduce the army there: Roll 1d3, and if the result is higher than the number of units on the territory, destroy one unit and place a cult marker (this can entirely depopulate a territory except for the cult marker). Again, the player who owns the territory may voluntarily fail the roll to invite the cult in, but they still lose one unit. If a territory drawn is occupied and already has a cult marker, roll 1d3+1: If the result is higher than the number of units in the territory, destroy one (again, this can entirely depopulate a territory except for the cult marker.
As with spreading, players may choose to assist the cults' seduction by replacing land territory cards drawn with water or space territories, with the same restrictions and the same exception to the need for an adjacent territory (an empty territory, or one with a cult marker alone, still has no effect). However, seduction does not have the same -1 penalty to expand to such territories as spreading, since they are co-opting the existent survival structures (and the cults roll 1d3+1 as above if the territory drawn already has a cult marker).
Dark Power: Rolling an Elder Sign provides a pure energy benny for those willing to put up with an occasional ritual sacrifice and the possibility of monstrous rising. All players gain energy equal to half the number of territories they occupy that have cult markers, rounded up.
Dark Reinforcement: Likewise straightforward, rolling the Eye of Horus means the cults lend their military power to those good enough to turn a blind eye to their doings. All players gain MODs equal to half the number of territories they occupy that have cult markers, rounded up. These MODs may only be placed on territories with cult markers, but may otherwise be placed freely
Rising: But it's not all gravy trains and bloody sacrifice. One unit is destroyed in every territory with a cult marker, and the die is rolled again. And yes, it is possible to roll Rising repeatedly.
Fighting the cults: Considering the nastiness of seduction and the always-present possibility of the big guy's rising, players may be justified in wanting to exterminate the cults. This is done during a player's turn as an invasion, including any bonuses for commanders, territory type or Command cards. Cults defend using a single d8, and win ties as normal. Cults cannot be purged from a territory with only one unit. A territory's surviving units may still invade as normal after purging a cult, and an attacker may purge a cult in an invaded territory as a continuation of the original attack (the defending player cannot use the cult to defend, and the attacker is not obligated to destroy the cult before occupying the territory).
The only way to be sure?: Nuclear cards only destroy a cult if they have already destroyed all other units in the territory and there is still at least one unit worth of overkill. Thus, the continental weapon cards cannot kill a cult unless the territory was already otherwise unoccupied; ditto scatter bombs. Other Command cards have no effect - Cults cannot be removed by MOD Reduction and are immune to Death Traps.
Potential variants being considered:
Weaker cults: Change the cults' defense roll to a d6. Makes them less of a hassle to wipe out, and thus less of a strategic concern.
Monstrous rising: When a Rising is rolled, 1d3 units are destroyed in each territory with a cult marker. Multiple risings are catastrophic, and cleansing cults becomes a major concern.
That is not dead: At the end of a year in which all cults have been destroyed or when there are fewer than three cult markers in play, draw three land territory cards and place a cult marker in each, then roll as normal.
Multiple rolls: At the end of the year, roll once for every (5/7/# of players in the game) cult markers in play, resolving each roll completely before the next is made. Risings (or multiple Risings!) and the following roll count as one roll.
Wiped themselves out: If a Rising is rolled and there are no other units in a territory with a cult marker, remove the cult marker.
These were the most loyal: In conjunction with the above, every time a cult marker is destroyed by a Rising, place it aside (on a doom track, if you will). It now counts as permanently in play for purposes of the number of rolls made if using Multiple rolls, above, or raises the minimum number of cult markers that must actually be in play for That is not dead, above, or adds an additional territory card to those drawn for That is not dead, or adds to any rolls made by the cults still in play, or if you're exceptionally masochistic, all of the above. For slightly less masochism, restrict this to one marker per Rising rolled, or one per year.
The End is Here: If at any time a cult marker would be placed and there are no more cult markers available, Cthulhu rises and nobody wins. The viciousness of this is dependent on how many markers are available (I have 21).
Oh, and for those of you who don't have the overpriced novelty die this is based on, you can replicate it with a regular d12:
1-5: Spread
6-9: Seduce
10: Dark Power
11: Dark Reinforcement
12: Rising
Showing posts with label a poor use of paper-writing time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a poor use of paper-writing time. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Young Nerdhood of Studs Lonnigan: Dragon Magazine
Of course, I started with Dungeons & Dragons, just like everyone else. I found a set of old red-covered D&D books in my aunt's basement, abandoned there by my much-older cousin, and that was pretty much the end of it for a life of quiet dignity.
I don't know why I started buying Dragon mags specifically. They were reasonably priced and well within the range of a young nerd's allowance, and offered a wide variety of supplementary material - Almost all of it for D&D, but of course at that point I was only barely aware that there were other options. The then-current issues often focused on the arcana of Second Edition which was strange and baffling to my first-ed mind, and so I skipped over them and went straight to the back catalogue. Of these back issues, I favoured the Halloween and April Fool's editions, which offered opportunities for horror and comedy gaming, strange, alien ideas at the time.
One particular Halloween issue (1994, to be precise) was the tipping point. There was an article on resurrection magic and its impact on the imaginary world - In particular, how it fucks around with the quasi-medieval milieu that, as mentioned, is D&D's default arrangement (The King is dead! Long live the King! The King is back!), and how, given the hefty but by no means impossible cost of magic, for wealthy merchants and the like being assassinated was closer to a fine you had to pay than an actual corporal punishment. Pretty standard stuff by the standards of modern gaming, but it blew my young mind because it presumed a few things: An internally consistent world, and actually working out every possible impact and effect of the changes of that world.
Another article, which it turns out came from six months earlier (1994 was a good year, I guess), enhanced this idea with an article breakdown of a short series of books and pamphlets of what I would later refer to, with much gleeful elbowing and knowing looks, as "controversial knowledge". Specifically, these materials conveyed Thomas E. Bearden's spectacularly loopy theories about how the Soviets were totally developing Tesla technology, guys. In addition to the usual Tesla fun, Bearden's version of the tech kicks physics in the balls in a whole new way, as any energy transmitted through hyperspace is massively magnified through pure magic*. Thus, by transmitting nuclear blasts through harmless-looking transmitters, the dastardly Reds had access to planet-cracking bombs with no need for satellites or missiles! And shining a flashlight through hyperspace creates lasers! And the devil is in my water supply! This was my first encounter with CK, but even to a 13-year-old, the author, Gregory Detweiler, was a bit too credulous (although come to think of it, he was probably just adhering to TSR's general "please, please don't sue us" attitude, which they held for pretty much the entire 90s**). Anyway, this set off a lifelong fascination with crazy guys and their vanity-press frothings, a fascination all the more enabled by my later discovery of Kenneth Hite and his whole rich galaxy of WTF. As for Detweiler, he went on to write Blood Brothers, the greatest idea for a Call of Cthulhu supplement ever***.
The Reviews section was another favourite, as it was often written by Rick Swan, whose breezy manner made them more interesting than a lot of the (usually ponderous) regular articles. Swan had done a lot of freelance work on Paranoia and it showed in his writing style. The reviews tended to make everything sound great (although nothing was ever quite as good as good old TSR**** products), and it was through that column that I learned about this crazy game called Over the Edge where "PCs can be anything from Green Berets to talking cats". Of course, it was also in the review column that I found my first mention of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, so in a sense it's Rick Swan's fault that I spent a lot of 1999-2001 statting up fomori and not realizing what an absolute knob I was being.
And finally, in the pages of Dragon I had my first real glimpse of how awful gamers could be. My gaming groups had had our fights, our games had been cancelled on account of rules disputes and nerd drama, but I had assumed that was us and our youthful inexperience - Surely real gamers didn't have these emotional freakouts. In Dragon, in the Forum and Judges' Guild columns, I learned that it never really gets better, it only gets sadder. Judges' Guild was people writing in for Official TSR Rulings on rules questions, and you could tell that behind every one there was a seething argument about how my halfling totally would have survived that green ooze pit if my dick DM hadn't rounded up for encumbrance, and now TSR themselves are going to show him he's wrong so nyah. But even that was relatively mild compared to the Forum section, in which the overpowered/underpowered nature of the cleric was endlessly debated in multi-column screeds, as were other weighty issues like gaming outside your gender. Yeah. Exactly like an internet forum. Nothing ever changes, it seems.
* Actually, there was a technobabble explanation for why the Laws of Thermodynamics not only don't apply but appear to be actively reversed in hyperspace, but it's about as convincing as everything else Bearden wrote.
** If the words "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri" mean nothing to you, you dodged a bullet.
*** A series of short, light-hearted adventures based on classic horror movies, from teen slashers to silent films. I know, right?
**** Hey remember when the internet loved spelling it T$R? Man, that never got old!
I don't know why I started buying Dragon mags specifically. They were reasonably priced and well within the range of a young nerd's allowance, and offered a wide variety of supplementary material - Almost all of it for D&D, but of course at that point I was only barely aware that there were other options. The then-current issues often focused on the arcana of Second Edition which was strange and baffling to my first-ed mind, and so I skipped over them and went straight to the back catalogue. Of these back issues, I favoured the Halloween and April Fool's editions, which offered opportunities for horror and comedy gaming, strange, alien ideas at the time.
One particular Halloween issue (1994, to be precise) was the tipping point. There was an article on resurrection magic and its impact on the imaginary world - In particular, how it fucks around with the quasi-medieval milieu that, as mentioned, is D&D's default arrangement (The King is dead! Long live the King! The King is back!), and how, given the hefty but by no means impossible cost of magic, for wealthy merchants and the like being assassinated was closer to a fine you had to pay than an actual corporal punishment. Pretty standard stuff by the standards of modern gaming, but it blew my young mind because it presumed a few things: An internally consistent world, and actually working out every possible impact and effect of the changes of that world.
Another article, which it turns out came from six months earlier (1994 was a good year, I guess), enhanced this idea with an article breakdown of a short series of books and pamphlets of what I would later refer to, with much gleeful elbowing and knowing looks, as "controversial knowledge". Specifically, these materials conveyed Thomas E. Bearden's spectacularly loopy theories about how the Soviets were totally developing Tesla technology, guys. In addition to the usual Tesla fun, Bearden's version of the tech kicks physics in the balls in a whole new way, as any energy transmitted through hyperspace is massively magnified through pure magic*. Thus, by transmitting nuclear blasts through harmless-looking transmitters, the dastardly Reds had access to planet-cracking bombs with no need for satellites or missiles! And shining a flashlight through hyperspace creates lasers! And the devil is in my water supply! This was my first encounter with CK, but even to a 13-year-old, the author, Gregory Detweiler, was a bit too credulous (although come to think of it, he was probably just adhering to TSR's general "please, please don't sue us" attitude, which they held for pretty much the entire 90s**). Anyway, this set off a lifelong fascination with crazy guys and their vanity-press frothings, a fascination all the more enabled by my later discovery of Kenneth Hite and his whole rich galaxy of WTF. As for Detweiler, he went on to write Blood Brothers, the greatest idea for a Call of Cthulhu supplement ever***.
The Reviews section was another favourite, as it was often written by Rick Swan, whose breezy manner made them more interesting than a lot of the (usually ponderous) regular articles. Swan had done a lot of freelance work on Paranoia and it showed in his writing style. The reviews tended to make everything sound great (although nothing was ever quite as good as good old TSR**** products), and it was through that column that I learned about this crazy game called Over the Edge where "PCs can be anything from Green Berets to talking cats". Of course, it was also in the review column that I found my first mention of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, so in a sense it's Rick Swan's fault that I spent a lot of 1999-2001 statting up fomori and not realizing what an absolute knob I was being.
And finally, in the pages of Dragon I had my first real glimpse of how awful gamers could be. My gaming groups had had our fights, our games had been cancelled on account of rules disputes and nerd drama, but I had assumed that was us and our youthful inexperience - Surely real gamers didn't have these emotional freakouts. In Dragon, in the Forum and Judges' Guild columns, I learned that it never really gets better, it only gets sadder. Judges' Guild was people writing in for Official TSR Rulings on rules questions, and you could tell that behind every one there was a seething argument about how my halfling totally would have survived that green ooze pit if my dick DM hadn't rounded up for encumbrance, and now TSR themselves are going to show him he's wrong so nyah. But even that was relatively mild compared to the Forum section, in which the overpowered/underpowered nature of the cleric was endlessly debated in multi-column screeds, as were other weighty issues like gaming outside your gender. Yeah. Exactly like an internet forum. Nothing ever changes, it seems.
* Actually, there was a technobabble explanation for why the Laws of Thermodynamics not only don't apply but appear to be actively reversed in hyperspace, but it's about as convincing as everything else Bearden wrote.
** If the words "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri" mean nothing to you, you dodged a bullet.
*** A series of short, light-hearted adventures based on classic horror movies, from teen slashers to silent films. I know, right?
**** Hey remember when the internet loved spelling it T$R? Man, that never got old!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Agents of FATE: Sideline
So we're back to Agents of FATE, which now stands for something other than Fancy Acronym; Totally Empty. The Agents will be working for the Fictive Attachment for Tactical Espionage, with credit going to IRL friend Greg and the mysterious internetty Chris1 in 3-to-1 measure.
I'm also wild about Chris' idea to have FATE be presumed fictional within the context of the setting2. A series of books seems too low-key, though, and besides, nobody reads any more. I'm running with the notion of a syndication-length TV series, made with obviously low production values and sold on the cheap to cable channels with a lot of dead air to fill. This series, "Agents of F.A.T.E." 3, follows the adventures of F.A.T.E. superoperatives Clarinda "Blackbird" Shuter and Hank "Depthcharge" Laskey, and mixes vaguely accurate, fragmentary descriptions of the real FATE agency and its modus operandi with plentiful disinformation, ridiculousness, terrible acting, yawning plot holes, and baffling breaks with the tone, setting and style of the series in general4. FATE ensures that the show is aired in slots which maximize peripheral awareness; most people have had an episode of "Agents of F.A.T.E." playing in the background at some point in their lives, but couldn't tell you the plot to save their lives. Of course, there are also the fans, collecting minutiae and merchandise and maintaining wikis, fansites and the annual AoFCon in Atlantic City. As far as the mundane world is concerned, claiming to work for F.A.T.E. is the equivalent of saying you're with the X-Files - or, considering the chintziness of the show, the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research. That F.A.T.E. uses the same fictionalizing tactics within the show's continuity just makes evidence about the real FATE all the more unbelievable5.
There's some fun to be had here. While real FATE missions are deadly serious, carry the potential for betrayal at any moment, and often involve weighty decisions that can change the course of world events, the show is a goofy bit of CG-heavy pap in which the chemistry-free will-they-or-won't-they between Shuter and Laskey is given precedence over any possible consequences of a mission6. PCs who try to invoke the agency's name will be presumed cosplayers or worse. After a particularly harrowing or betrayal-ridden mission, I could switch it up and run a game in the morally duochrome metafiction of F.A.T.E. - Perhaps as the heavily fictionalized but sole remaining record of an early FATE operation with relevance to the FATE group's next assignment.
... Then again, this kind of over-the-top doesn't really mesh with the life-or-death, trust-no-one mood I originally set out for with FATE (Well, to the extent that I set out anything - Greg Stolze, eat your heart out7). It's a neat idea, but it'll take a lot to make it work right. I think I'll try and clever up some actual mechanics first, and maybe take another stab at it afterwards.
 |
| Shuter and Laskey |
There's some fun to be had here. While real FATE missions are deadly serious, carry the potential for betrayal at any moment, and often involve weighty decisions that can change the course of world events, the show is a goofy bit of CG-heavy pap in which the chemistry-free will-they-or-won't-they between Shuter and Laskey is given precedence over any possible consequences of a mission6. PCs who try to invoke the agency's name will be presumed cosplayers or worse. After a particularly harrowing or betrayal-ridden mission, I could switch it up and run a game in the morally duochrome metafiction of F.A.T.E. - Perhaps as the heavily fictionalized but sole remaining record of an early FATE operation with relevance to the FATE group's next assignment.
... Then again, this kind of over-the-top doesn't really mesh with the life-or-death, trust-no-one mood I originally set out for with FATE (Well, to the extent that I set out anything - Greg Stolze, eat your heart out7). It's a neat idea, but it'll take a lot to make it work right. I think I'll try and clever up some actual mechanics first, and maybe take another stab at it afterwards.
- I've known a lot of Chrises in my time, so you'll forgive me if you know me IRL but I can't identify you from ten sentences. If you're a total stranger, well, thanks for reading my blog and contributing to this thing of ours. You're a rad dude.
- I have a total boner for secret agencies maintaining their secrecy by loudly declaring themselves fake, as obliquely hinted by the MALARKEY1 designation in the Changeling Cold War setting I posted back in the hoary mists of around this time last year.
- Which is, natch, more or less a lock stock and barrel steal from Charles Stross' A Colder War, in which ultimate top secret materials are marked BOOJUM. Oh Charles Stross, you were pretty okay before you started running your mouth about the singularity.
- Note the ellipses - their presence distinguishes between the fictional F.A.T.E. and the real FATE.
- The latter two are exemplified by "Operation Daggerblade"1, the episode where Laskey "retrogresses" into a literal goblin and vanishes into the New Jersey Pine Barrens as Shuter weepily bemoans his "incurable" condition. He is back to normal in the next episode and no explanation is ever provided.
- And yes, all the series episodes have titles like this.
- Annnnnd I do believe my secrecy-through-fictionalization boner just went fractal.
- The continuity is intentionally and irrevocably mangled: For example, other events of "Operation Daggerblade" are often referenced in later episodes, but never the 'goblinization', leaving its status in canon a source of constant flamewar. FATE did this intentionally, as the canon arguments keep the fanbase occupied and off the trail of the real organization.
- Stolze bemoaned how other writers for Unknown Armies had written material that contradicted certain rules he thought the setting required, while acknowledging that he never actually made those rules explicit. Here, I've managed to do the same thing to myself.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Public Domain Super Heroes
Oh, and this guy⇨? He's the Sparkler. He can turn invisible, and when he becomes visible again, "sparks caused by the broken light rays coming together leap about his body". And, of course, all the pink. So yeah, pretty much gayer than that time I had sex with a dude.
Why it sucks being a gamer
Trying to write an essay focusing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the war machine makes it extremely easy to slide into thinking about Warmachine, with the result that time better spent trying to root out what the hell those French bastards were on about ends up being spent on "Seriously, there aren't any Trollblood channelers?".
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday Character: Asim Nicostrato
Asim Nicostrato ("Nico" to his friends) is a well-built man with a neatly trimmed beard. He enjoys jazz, reads detective stories and is a zealous Corporatist. Corporatists worship the various megacorporations as deities, believing that the corporations have transcended whatever profit motives they may have begun with the way that humans transcended purely genetic drives, and are now guiding their human employees to greater things. Nico, a lifelong corporate citizen of TRI Interstellar, has reasonably enough chosen it as his patron, and is fervent in his belief that TRI has a plan for him.
Corporatists tend not to get promoted - their loyalty is unquestionable, but most psych evaluations mark the belief as a significant delusion, and irreligious corporate drone-types get uncomfortable around them. That Nico is the leader of a tactical squad is proof that his beliefs have in no way hindered his skills - If anything, his belief that he does the will of TRI drives him to excel. He's long since given up on trying to push his beliefs on his fellow troopers, choosing instead to lead by example. This has had mixed results - A few soldiers have taken interest in the source of Nico's calm, particularly considering the alien horrors that he regularly encounters, but the only genuine believer he managed to find died on the very next mission after his conversion. A lesser man might have had his faith shaken - the other potential converts certainly did. Nico considers it all part of TRI's plan, and soldiers on.
Man, did I really say this was going to be a weekly series? Shows you shouldn't presume that inspiration is going to strike with any kind of regular frequency. Also, this was the result of reading far, far too many of Dark Horse's Aliens comics.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Agents of FATE: Groundwork
So I've been watching Archer1, and it has once again given me that itch to run a spy game that I tend to get after any series focusing on international cloak-n-daggerery (Cf. The Sandbaggers, Burn Notice, Queen and Country, The Prisoner), but which inevitably seems to fade once the inherent challenges of crafting a properly back-stabby scenario rear their ugly head. A ways back I picked up thirteen books worth of first-edition Spycraft, which is a pretty decent implementation of d20's better bastards (complete with ACTION POINTS!!!! and a vitality/wound system cribbed from d20 Modern and Star Wars respectively) but which nevertheless suffers from d20's general problem with specialization and situational advantages. It can be best summarized with a single feat: Rocket Launcher Mastery. Aside from niggling simulationist questions about how you get enough field experience with a highly situational weapon to be considered to have mastered it, and the pain in the ass of remembering every little bonus the feat gives you when you use it, there's the point of how to please the player who has taken this feat (and the other feats before it in the tree) and made it a part of his character. Working situations that can only be solved by rocketry into the plot is simple enough, even if bringing in a helicopter or a tank every week smacks of FPS or Metal Gear - The real trouble is when, having focused on this element of the character, the player attempts to solve all problems with high-speed explosives, turning every climactic encounter into the one from Invasion USA. Add to this the remarkably 'spergy system for creating villainous organizations, and it's clear that Spycraft's a little too close to its parent for comfort. I would, however, love to use it as inspiration - the Shadowforce Archer2 setting is pretty nifty, though I may just be saying that because it appeals to my love of Magic Nazis and goofy gadget stuff like fake money that can be chewed up and turned into an adhesive.
So instead, let's take my much-beloved FATE system and toss some tweaks in there to make it sing. A lot of what follows assumes a familiarity with 2nd and 3rd-edition FATE, available for free from Evil Hat Games, but should be simple enough to follow along - Call it FATE 2.5, or FATE Un-Stunted. Other sources include John Wick's Wilderness of Mirrors, Greg Stolze's A Dirty World and my eternally recurring inspiration, Ron Edwards' Sorcerer.
So, let's start with Aspects. These would be pretty much as in FATE 3, as the limit on uses-per-session from FATE 2 always seemed weirdly arbitrary and reminded me of the most annoying part of GUMSHOE. Fuelling Aspect invocations with Fate points makes considerably more sense. The full ten aspects seems a bit much, though - Maybe a mere seven, to have characters that are broadly capable but not as omnicapable as the standard Spirit of the Century characters. Of these, two would be required, or at least given a skill point benny: One a belief or motivation that a character considers vitally important, be it commitment to country, agency, democracy, no killing women, etc. - And the other, something for which the character would be willing to betray that belief. Hey, trust's a bitch in spy fiction.
As far as skills go, I'd want characters to be highly skilled, meaning a relatively small and expansive skill list. I'd probably port the FATE 2 skill system directly, including the pyramid, although tying the skills directly to the aspects might be overdoing it. As in FATE 2, if you're willing to take a hit on skills, you can buy plot-important objects with skill points, allowing you to have the fancy car or the favoured gun or what have you. You can also spend Fate points for these in-game, of course, but then they're set dressing - Improbably explosive set dressing, in many cases.
No stunts. I don't care for them. The idea of a cool move that you can do all the time, at will, just seems dumb and ironically uncool. You want a neat trick, invoke an aspect and justify it and we're off to the races.
As for actual resolution, this is where the Sorcerer bit comes in, kinda. Under normal circumstances, without description, characters only roll 3 dice instead of the FATE-standard 4, making for a slightly smaller range of possible results. But, if they describe the action well, they get an extra die. If the description is really good, they get two. If it's absolutely amazing, they get three, but that should only happen once per session, if that. Now, clever readers familiar with FATE will note that, unlike Sorcerer or Exalted or Wushu or other systems that give bonus dice for description, this doesn't make you more likely to succeed - It just makes the range of possible outcomes wider. This is intentional. Playing Wushu, I was frustrated by loquacious players filibustering absolutely every move they made regardless of actual narrative importance, just to get the dice. Describing a scene under this system doesn't make you better at it, it makes the scene more important and more pivotal, for good or bad. Since players are going to have a lot of Fate points, they can probably turn a failure into a success (with, yes, even more description), and a regular success into an overwhelming, suitably awesome victory (a +5 result is pretty badass, and +6 is worthy of Bond at his best) - but mere description isn't going to guarantee it, and a really well-described action could result a failure so massive that even Fate points couldn't fix it. If that did happen (say a player tosses a -4 or worse on a five-dice roll), I'd definitely consider giving the poor schlub a a Fate point or two just so his grand description didn't go to waste. And then, of course, I'd work out the worst possible way for such a big, important action to go wrong. The GM is also well within his rights to simply declare an action climactic even if the player is trying to play it safe by not describing it, so the player might as well go all out and get the benny if he fails.
Okay, now for the other two gaming sources. From Wilderness of Mirrors, there's the notions of planning, timing and betrayal. In WoM, the GM just details the basic goal of the mission and players fill in details like security arrangements, opposition, locations etc, getting points from the GM for every detail they provide and extra ones for particularly diabolical scene-setups. This seems directly portable to FATE - The opening loadout of Fate points is dependent on the scenario the players set up, and allows them to more or less describe the mission they want. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, etc. and so we move on to timing. For every, let's say, ten minutes of real time that pass, the GM gets a point to mess with the players, change some element of their planned arrangement, etc. I'm not sure yet if these would be additions to the NPC Fate point pool or separate - Certainly it seems most logical, since it keeps down the number of variables.
Finally, there's betrayal, and here's where WoM crosses over with A Dirty World. PCs in ADW can get points both for being cruel to each other and having cruelty done to them. A similar arrangement here would mean that a character who screws over another in-character (Remember that inspiration-for-betrayal Aspect? Yeah, that came back) gets Fate points both for himself and the player they're dumping in the soup - Probably two or more, just to make it extra appealing. Along those lines, perhaps I should add the option to leave an Aspect undefined, so that the player can just reveal his perfidy at the moment rather than having DOUBLE AGENT on his character sheet the whole game.
There's the start of it - If any of you six people who check my blog have suggestions as to how to make it even more convoluted, or of obvious flaws I should patch, feel free to weigh in. And if anyone's got a suggestion for a good spy-agency backronym from FATE, so much the better.
So instead, let's take my much-beloved FATE system and toss some tweaks in there to make it sing. A lot of what follows assumes a familiarity with 2nd and 3rd-edition FATE, available for free from Evil Hat Games, but should be simple enough to follow along - Call it FATE 2.5, or FATE Un-Stunted. Other sources include John Wick's Wilderness of Mirrors, Greg Stolze's A Dirty World and my eternally recurring inspiration, Ron Edwards' Sorcerer.
So, let's start with Aspects. These would be pretty much as in FATE 3, as the limit on uses-per-session from FATE 2 always seemed weirdly arbitrary and reminded me of the most annoying part of GUMSHOE. Fuelling Aspect invocations with Fate points makes considerably more sense. The full ten aspects seems a bit much, though - Maybe a mere seven, to have characters that are broadly capable but not as omnicapable as the standard Spirit of the Century characters. Of these, two would be required, or at least given a skill point benny: One a belief or motivation that a character considers vitally important, be it commitment to country, agency, democracy, no killing women, etc. - And the other, something for which the character would be willing to betray that belief. Hey, trust's a bitch in spy fiction.
As far as skills go, I'd want characters to be highly skilled, meaning a relatively small and expansive skill list. I'd probably port the FATE 2 skill system directly, including the pyramid, although tying the skills directly to the aspects might be overdoing it. As in FATE 2, if you're willing to take a hit on skills, you can buy plot-important objects with skill points, allowing you to have the fancy car or the favoured gun or what have you. You can also spend Fate points for these in-game, of course, but then they're set dressing - Improbably explosive set dressing, in many cases.
No stunts. I don't care for them. The idea of a cool move that you can do all the time, at will, just seems dumb and ironically uncool. You want a neat trick, invoke an aspect and justify it and we're off to the races.
As for actual resolution, this is where the Sorcerer bit comes in, kinda. Under normal circumstances, without description, characters only roll 3 dice instead of the FATE-standard 4, making for a slightly smaller range of possible results. But, if they describe the action well, they get an extra die. If the description is really good, they get two. If it's absolutely amazing, they get three, but that should only happen once per session, if that. Now, clever readers familiar with FATE will note that, unlike Sorcerer or Exalted or Wushu or other systems that give bonus dice for description, this doesn't make you more likely to succeed - It just makes the range of possible outcomes wider. This is intentional. Playing Wushu, I was frustrated by loquacious players filibustering absolutely every move they made regardless of actual narrative importance, just to get the dice. Describing a scene under this system doesn't make you better at it, it makes the scene more important and more pivotal, for good or bad. Since players are going to have a lot of Fate points, they can probably turn a failure into a success (with, yes, even more description), and a regular success into an overwhelming, suitably awesome victory (a +5 result is pretty badass, and +6 is worthy of Bond at his best) - but mere description isn't going to guarantee it, and a really well-described action could result a failure so massive that even Fate points couldn't fix it. If that did happen (say a player tosses a -4 or worse on a five-dice roll), I'd definitely consider giving the poor schlub a a Fate point or two just so his grand description didn't go to waste. And then, of course, I'd work out the worst possible way for such a big, important action to go wrong. The GM is also well within his rights to simply declare an action climactic even if the player is trying to play it safe by not describing it, so the player might as well go all out and get the benny if he fails.
Okay, now for the other two gaming sources. From Wilderness of Mirrors, there's the notions of planning, timing and betrayal. In WoM, the GM just details the basic goal of the mission and players fill in details like security arrangements, opposition, locations etc, getting points from the GM for every detail they provide and extra ones for particularly diabolical scene-setups. This seems directly portable to FATE - The opening loadout of Fate points is dependent on the scenario the players set up, and allows them to more or less describe the mission they want. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, etc. and so we move on to timing. For every, let's say, ten minutes of real time that pass, the GM gets a point to mess with the players, change some element of their planned arrangement, etc. I'm not sure yet if these would be additions to the NPC Fate point pool or separate - Certainly it seems most logical, since it keeps down the number of variables.
Finally, there's betrayal, and here's where WoM crosses over with A Dirty World. PCs in ADW can get points both for being cruel to each other and having cruelty done to them. A similar arrangement here would mean that a character who screws over another in-character (Remember that inspiration-for-betrayal Aspect? Yeah, that came back) gets Fate points both for himself and the player they're dumping in the soup - Probably two or more, just to make it extra appealing. Along those lines, perhaps I should add the option to leave an Aspect undefined, so that the player can just reveal his perfidy at the moment rather than having DOUBLE AGENT on his character sheet the whole game.
There's the start of it - If any of you six people who check my blog have suggestions as to how to make it even more convoluted, or of obvious flaws I should patch, feel free to weigh in. And if anyone's got a suggestion for a good spy-agency backronym from FATE, so much the better.
- Seriously, I could sit and listen to H. Jon Benjamin yell all day.
- What is it with the name Archer and spy fiction? The eponymous jackass agent in the aforementioned Archer, this setting, Cate Archer from No One Lives Forever; is it a reference I don't get, or just a coincidence?
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Obliviax and Wonder Overload
Less is more. Consider our creaky old friend1 Dungeons & Dragons. High fantasy is a genre where anything can happen, and then everything does and it turns out it's all pretty dull. I've been saying for years that Yahtzee Croshaw nailed it when he bitched about the very concept of a generic fantasy setting, and D&D is the purest essence of that trope - A whole galaxy of interchangeable settings with the same kitchen-sink cast of races, magics, items, and Eternal Ren Faire politics and technology2. Hell, some of them even share gods. There are some exceptions, and these are often considered the best of the breed, but even the most wackity-ass worlds still carry over a lot of the generic baggage of fantasy. There are so many of the old marvels to be accounted for before we can even get to the new stuff.
Of course, my smugness on this matter isn't completely justified - I love Over the Edge, and it has this exact kind of kitchen-sink "everything is true" arrangement, but even more so because it includes the modern world and all its postmodern mythologies; ditto Conspiracy X, which covers X-Files knockoff ground from Greys to wizards to Atlanteans to werewolves to psi, albeit with a pretty good rationale tying it all together (which I'll spoil in a later W.I.L. post). But for all that I enjoy those games, I admit that their overstuffed worlds miss out on the subtleties of simpler premises: If everything's possible, nothing is interesting, and other such cliches. As an example of what I'm on about, I'll to steal a random3 monster from D&D and extrapolate the changes its could ring on an otherwise mundane world.
Obliviax is an "evil4 black moss" that absorbs memories, and, if eaten, can potentially give those memories to the eater (or just make them sick as dogs). In D&D, it's a minor annoyance, yet another wad of hit points with a boogah-boogah face and an unusual power which amounts to stealing spells from wizards and confusing everyone else for a few hours. If attacked, it sprouts a little "mossling" man to cast stolen spells. Just another day in the dungeon. Meanwhile, in a world less demon-haunted, where miracles and magics aren't a dime a dozen, this shit is crazy.
Let's say we dump the bit about forming the spellcasting mossling, which is legitimately stupid and really just D&D fulfilling its obligation to provide a Big Dumb Fight Scene at any opportunity. What we have here is a single organism which changes the world in a number of major ways:
Of course, my smugness on this matter isn't completely justified - I love Over the Edge, and it has this exact kind of kitchen-sink "everything is true" arrangement, but even more so because it includes the modern world and all its postmodern mythologies; ditto Conspiracy X, which covers X-Files knockoff ground from Greys to wizards to Atlanteans to werewolves to psi, albeit with a pretty good rationale tying it all together (which I'll spoil in a later W.I.L. post). But for all that I enjoy those games, I admit that their overstuffed worlds miss out on the subtleties of simpler premises: If everything's possible, nothing is interesting, and other such cliches. As an example of what I'm on about, I'll to steal a random3 monster from D&D and extrapolate the changes its could ring on an otherwise mundane world.
 |
| Very upset about something. |
Let's say we dump the bit about forming the spellcasting mossling, which is legitimately stupid and really just D&D fulfilling its obligation to provide a Big Dumb Fight Scene at any opportunity. What we have here is a single organism which changes the world in a number of major ways:
- Psionic powers are real. This is big, but done. The capacity to alter the world with nothing but your will and rubber face is the cornerstone of a lot of existent settings. A thought here is that perhaps prolonged exposure to obliviax's telepathy can trigger psi abilities in humans: Cue hideous government experiments, or eager beavers forgetting weeks at a time trying to unlock their inner potential. Certainly memory moss is going to be at front and centre of psi research.
- ...and plants can have them. And suddenly we've taken a hard left into Batshit County. To quote Hermes Conrad, "That just raises further questions!". Our normal understanding of telepathy is kind of dependent on the critter in question having an actual brain and intelligence, usually quite a lot (human level or better5). A psychic plant leads to a questioning of our whole concept of will and intelligence, to say the least. And where there's one psychic plant, there are most likely more. Can they communicate with one another? Do they form a hive mind6? Greenpeace is going to go apeshit.
- Memories can be stolen. And then there's this. Why would a plant evolve the capacity to steal memories at all (robbed as we are of the "crazed wizard" all-purpose explanation)? That's a hell of a long way to go for self-defense that could be had just as easily by becoming poisonous. Maybe the brainwave patterns of animals are a part of the moss's diet or reproduction cycle - It's a fundamental assumption of any world with psi that psionic energies are just that, energies, so it's probable that obliviax draws nourishment from them, perhaps even emitting a low-level psychic lure to draw in prey.
- Ahem. Memories can be stolen. "Basic" obliviax as described above just drains your memories of the last 24 hours, which is not going to be a major concern for your typical D&D party, aside from throwing off the goblins-slaughtered count. Surely, there are plenty of other strains of obliviax - ones which take weeks, or hours, or maybe even years before being satisfied. Perhaps there are strains that feed on your most important memories, or your least important, or your name - If there aren't, our scientists are doubtless working day and night to create the most flexible arsenal of memory-erasing mosses possible, for their dire and inscrutable purposes. Or maybe to help treat victims of horrible trauma. Mad science doesn't have to equal evil science, you know.
- Memories can be stolen. And of course, like any means of memory-editing, this just reeks of potential Prisoner-style mindfuckery: Stealing memories and force-feeding new ones, the whole brainhacking thing. People could even sell their memories, like a biopunk Strange Days. It'd be fun if the PCs investigate their couldn't-think-of-a-back-story missing time and, instead of finding Greys or government conspiracy, just find a gigantic naturally-occurring obliviax patch out in the woods. And then get zapped, forget it, and wander off confused.
- "Friend" here in the sense of a guy you knew back in elementary school who has since turned into a total knob.
- A big part of this is that it means characters from one world or campaign can be easily ported to another, which is a double-edged sword in a hobby where everyone has at least read stories of campaigns completely destroyed by such transfer PCs. Despite this, with the ascendancy of the "running encounters at the game store" model of 4E (and WotC's new, staggeringly evil plan of actually selling fucking booster packs of power cards to play in said encounters) the need to balance out everyone will make sure that this interchangeability isn't going anywhere.
- Heyyyy Stewart!
- Yeah, evil moss. Neutral evil, to be precise. Because a moss with an understanding of order and chaos would just be silly
- This is as good a chance as any to mention the Dogpocalypse setting I conceived in the old /tg/ days, in which testing on animal psi led to a Collie name Sandra getting scared and telekinetically nuking Salt Lake City.
- Like an even-more-bizarre version of Kult's Pazuzu, which is the collective consciousness of all insect life on Earth: A truly alien, ahuman consciousness which is constantly consuming itself. Pazuzu is one of those ideas (of which there are many in Kult) that you could build an entire campaign world around (with a tip of the hat to Philip K. Dick's "Expendable"), but in that game's incredibly overcrowded cosmology, it's strictly a third-string threat at best.
- Actually, some gomer apparently decided to name his band that as well. Since it's an 80s fantasy metal band, I doubt that the D&D connection is a coincidence.
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