The many rolls of Mythras

I'm not sure how much I have to say on this topic, but prompted by Seraphim Seraphina's Write More Short Blog Posts here I am.

For the past few years I have not rolled to hit. I have just rolled for damage. This evening I played in a game of Mythras. We rolled to hit. We contested those rolls with parries. We used the contest results to choose special effects. We rolled saves to avoid the special effects. We rolled for damage location. Only then did we roll damage. And sometimes we rolled to endure the damage.

We call this simulationist because maybe hitting and maybe not and maybe parrying and maybe not and maybe specially affecting and maybe not and where you hit and how hard you hit and maybe enduring and maybe not are all parts of a real fight. Real fights are also fast, and this is not particularly fast.

Wrapping all this up in one roll captures the flash of action, the impact that can't be undone. Unfurling it into components lays out the brutal effects in detail. They're both powerful and dramatic in their own ways.

We had an interesting conversation afterwards. The rules light games we usually play are clearly faster. But there's something to be said for slowing down, zooming in, and having the system generate the texture that we're used to narrating with less scaffolding.

I don't have a conclusion here except that I'm grateful for the diversity of experiences that the hobby provides (yes, I know I've just given examples of diversity in characters bashing each other with clubs - but like I said, this is a short blog post).

Presenting mysteries like Uketsu

I recently read Strange Buildings by Uketsu. I'm used to mystery stories that writers try to embed in a realistic setting. They'll add some drama around the mystery - a family traumatised by loss, an investigator losing everything because of their single-mindedness, mismatched partners struggling to work together. Uketsu instead seems to say, "If you're here for mystery, I'll give you 11 case files, each with multiple questions, and with overarching connections." The heightened reality where all of these questions exist is game-like. How could all these weird things be going on? Well, we're here to solve mysteries so we have a stack of them.

As a GM, I'm wondering what I can take away from this book. This is what I'm come up with.

1. The GM can also be a note taker.

2. List the unanswered questions. 

3. NPCs have their own theories. 

4. Have multiple mysteries. 

5. Leave room for a second interpretation.

The GM can also be a note taker

Uketsu includes diagrams in his mysteries. He repeats them and highlights different aspects. When the investigator is trying to work out the order of events, he often uses little boxes with flow diagrams like this:

At first glance this may seem like spoon feeding information to the reader, but I think of it more as an invitation to try to solve the puzzle. The mystery is tough enough without scattering the key elements across multiple paragraphs.

In an RPG, the facts are spread across conversation. Details are easily missed. Many players make notes and share them. Here I'm suggesting the GM writes or draws simple snippets at the table. For my group, I think that would quickly become a shared note, with the GM and players all adding to it.

The important information is shared in conversation, but so is a lot of flavour and chit chat. Writing a quick shared note highlights the importance of information. Character names. Where they were at certain times. Known grievances between them.

Solving the mystery isn't just collecting puzzle pieces. That's just step one and, crucially, if investigators don't get that right it's hard to progress. So why not make it collaborative?

List the unanswered questions

This is pretty basic, but - what is the mystery?

Uketsu states the questions clearly. If there's any ambiguity about it that will be a big stumbling block. I usually play RPGs where players choose their own goals. Stating the central questions of a mystery is more about saying "This is what is unknown here" rather than "This is your objective here".

NPCs have their own theories

Uketsu's supporting characters frequently have their own explanations for events, even as they ask an investigator for help. That seems very natural. If they're invested in the solution they should already be trying to work it out. It's also a secondary source of information: What biases and grudges are exposed by their theories?

Have multiple mysteries

Consider a party of PCs trying to cross a river and finding the ferryman murdered. If they're inclined to investigate, the obvious question is "Who killed the ferryman?" Taking a lesson from Uketsu, I'd try to add further questions:

"Why is there a sign next to the crossing STRICTLY NO CATS ON BOARD?"

"Who painted the exquisite portrait of the ferryman hanging in his cabin?"

"Why did he choose this place for the crossing, when there is a narrower section of the river nearby?"

These individual mysteries may be related to the murder or they may be independent. If related, they help break the challenge up into increments. If unrelated, they still may have some reward, or may just be red herrings. Misdirection may sound like a frustration in an RPG, but for investigative play the decision making is focused on which leads to pursue in what order. As long as the cul-de-sacs aren't too time-consuming, they allow for variation in outcomes. If all leads are successes, where are the meaningful choices?

The other benefit of adding additional questions is that there is no guarantee that the players will solve everything. If they solve part of a mystery, it gives them some sense of achievement.

Leave room for a second interpretation

This might be the trickiest lesson to pull into a game. I'm thinking here about investigations that are closed, the solution seeming to fit all the evidence, and then a small doubt is raised - Is there something more?

A classic version of this is where the killer is identified, but then it is revealed that the accused is covering for someone else, taking the fall on their behalf. It is sometimes a darker twist to the events, something even worse than was initially revealed. This extra element can be the icing on the cake of a mystery.

Running RPG mysteries, we tend to worry "Will the players be able to solve this?" Building a mystery with (at least) two valid solutions and expecting them to find both seems like a stretch. But I think a better question is not "Will they solve it?" but rather "Will this be a good experience in play?" which may be closely linked to "Will this feel fair?" It feels fair if you had all the required pieces, and you understand now how they fit together in a logical way. It feels unfair if clues were never revealed, or if the solution is overly elaborate such that you would never have arrived at it.

I think there's probably more RPG tips to glean from Strange Buildings than I have done here. (I haven't even discussed the maps, of which there are many.) But with Uketsu's work it seems fitting to leave some loose ends to follow.

Being online

Among Cats and Books' Death of a Hobby (and the linked posts at the end of it) prompted me to think about my own relationship with creativity and being online.

I first built a website to share my writing in the 90's. Since then, I've had a bunch of different projects ‐ fiction, essays, poetry, videos, podcasts, games, comics. Shared in different ways, not linked to each other (mostly). In most cases, I didn't sign the work or identify myself. In some cases I had numbers to look at, and could see how many people looked at the work. In other cases, I didn't have that.

I'm proud of most of the stuff I made. Much of it isn't online anymore, but I have my own copies backed up. I sometimes feel a pang of regret that I don't have all this gathered together, showcasing everything, with my name on top inside a <blink> tag. And sometimes I am relieved that I chose not to do that.

I've been on and off social media sporadically. Again, sometimes with my full name published and other times without.

I'm a private person. I also like to make things and share them. There's a strange tension there.

Also, and this is one of the hard parts of social media, a part of me gets too caught up in engagement numbers. I try not to pay attention to that. I have used (and really liked) a browser plugin that hid all those numbers on social media. Everything was just "a thing someone said", rather than "a thing someone said with 10,000 up-blorps and 2,000 re-blorps". But ultimately, I think blogging and other slowly produced work suit me better.

I have been active on Discord to varying degrees. The best outcome of that has been making genuine friends who I have played games with and collaborated with, one of whom I met recently and others I'll hopefully be meeting later this year. Though most of my activity on Discord has been chatting to strangers who I may never interact with again, often taking part in a recurring conversation about an aspect of a game. Sure, there's a blog post somewhere that says most of whatever needs to be said on the topic of the recurring conversation but (a) it is not particularly easy to find blog posts and (2) people want to connect - they want to feel like they talked it over rather than just read it. I get that.

Years ago, I was involved in a meditation group. I attended twice a week for a long time, and it was really good for me. One interesting aspect of that time, was that once I became a regular attendee, I began to see patterns in how other people attended. Some people would come to meditation (a valuable and worthy past time which is also frustrating and boring) in need of a tool to deal with an immediate problem. A quick fix. They might attend only once, and often with intense enthusiasm before and after the session. And then they'd be gone.

If you hang around an RPG Discord long enough, you also see people coming and going, extremely excited about games and their plans to play. Maybe talking about play (rather than contending with organising a group, scheduling, risking sessions that may disappoint) is the quick fix solution to wanting to play. I've certainty spent time and energy talking about play, prompted by wanting to play.

I think the Internet is too quick for some things. Some experiences are naturally slow, and don't really fit the acceleration that the Internet applies to all things.

This post is in danger of sounding like advice. I don't mean it to. I sometimes struggle with being online, and knowing how much to engage. I'm working these things out for myself and I wish the best to anyone else trying to navigate this stuff.

✌️❤️🎲

Regicide and the travel campaign

As mentioned in the last Smiling Fox episode, I've been travelling this summer. The trip has been amazing but we're here to talk about games 🎲🎲

I got into Regicide shortly before leaving, playing a few games solo and a few 2-player games. I was instantly impressed with how the standard 52-card deck could be used for this type of game. I grew up on card games with rules like "the 5 of hearts is the best card, unless someone has played a club" where there is little or no mnemonic support for players. And yet the royals present some obvious characters, and the suits (numbering only four, and with fairly evocative designs) can be easily associated to memorable concepts. Regicide takes this idea and runs with it beautifully - the rules are a little tricky at first, but the familiar designs of the cards support learning and remembering them. And even without a strong narrative element, the feeling of defeating the Jacks and then seeing the Queens deployed hits the mark just right. Also worth mentioning - the scoring in Regicide is straightforward to track, but there's also a companion app that offloads the arithmetic and is very well designed.

My wife and I are traveling together, and it has been such a nice addition, having a coop game along with us that we can easily break out and play. On top of that, we haven't won a single game. (This is a good thing!) Each game of Regicide is separate. There's no campaign play (though that might be a cool hack), and yet it is so natural to want to beat this thing before we end the trip. Even between games, we'll be walking around an unfamiliar town discussing when is best to play hearts, the only suit without an immediate payoff. I'll be on the lookout in future for other games which are (1) coop, (2) quick to play a full game, (3) tough to beat.

On the roleplaying front, I've been playing a solo game of Midnight of the Century on the trip too. It's been a nice change of pace to play a modern setting (I am old enough to not think of the 1990s as ancient history). I'll write a post about that when my investigator catches the killer (or falls prey to them...)

I should have an episode of Luck Roll out soon after I get back. It is recorded and mostly edited. Looking forward to getting back to Knotte and co.

Keeping it real

The Cairn principles for wardens says:

"NPCs don’t want to die. Infuse their own self-interest and will to live into every personality."

I saw two movies this summer that connect with this idea. The first was Mortal Kombat 2, which I really enjoyed. The second was Masters of the Universe, which I did not. Both transplant people from our familiar reality into far-fetched fantasy worlds. Both make attempts at comedy to keep the tone light. I thought MK2 was successful and that MotU fell flat.

In RPG terms, most of the NPCs in Mortal Kombat 2 are committed to their reality. They believe in the premises and the stakes that they are experiencing. There are a small number of characters who serve as comic relief - but to me, they read as people who are part of the world and who make jokes within it. So there are people who shoot off wisecracks, but there are also people who are wholly devoted to their principles and take them seriously. For me, that works. There can even be something quite authentic about a jester in the midst of a great threat.

Masters of the Universe on the other hand, seemed more like the RPG where any or all of the NPCs can make a fart joke whenever the GM wants to make a fart joke. It seemed like there was no character on screen who was fully committed to their reality. In that case, it ceases to mimic any reality and is just a CG backdrop.

When running an RPG, you don't have $200 million to fall back on to make an outlandish world feel substantial. One of the best tools you have is the attitude of the NPCs. Ideally, something in the game should be meaningful to the players: protecting someone or something, ending an injustice, pulling off a heist, just keeping each other alive. You may not know at the start of a game what that meaningful thing may be (maybe it's best not to know at the outset), but it's far less likely that the players will find meaning in a world if the NPCs don't believe in anything.

Liberating a giant cannon

This week we played session 45 of our Mythic Bastionland campaign. This was a rare occasion where I had a good idea of what the Company would be doing next. In session 44 they followed strange tracks in the desert that led them to a warband with a huge artillery cannon (unfamiliar technology to the knights). They're looking for ways to protect the realm against two other military threats, so when presented with a new weapon they thought, "Let's have that!"

We usually do theatre of the mind combat, but given the advanced notice, I decided to make a battle map for the virtual tabletop.

Before thinking about the map, I knew I wanted an image for the cannon. I found this online and wanted to use it. I modified it slightly in GIMP, to remove the background and concrete support under it. Also added some thorns on the side to make it look nastier.

Rather than using an aerial-view battle map (I did look at a few desert maps online) I decided to use an approach that I used once before and liked: I take a image which sets the vibe for the location, even if it isn't a suitable viewpoint / angle, and layout the battle grid / zones on it. It's more abstract, but I like the result.

Here's how it looks:

I found the original here.

There's an hourglass token at the top to indicate the phase of the day (just before nightfall). The background gives a feel for what the area looks like. I added hexagonal zones (one move action to move to a neighbouring hex), but I didn't fill the entire image with them, mainly because I thought it looked nicer to not overcrowd the space, but that comes up later and I'll talk about it then. In the bottom right, there's a key to explain that some hexes are higher ground, and that gives a bonus attack die for ranged attacks, and it is one move slower to move uphill. (For anyone keeping track of rules-as-written vs homebrew, I consider the bonus for ranged attacks to be a reasonable application of an existing rule, and the slow movement uphill is just something simple I've added here.)

The PCs (and some NPC allies) are lying prone at the top of a hill, looking down at the group with their cannon. (The players' side hasn't been observed yet.) The three knights are Aurelius, Archibald, and Raegar. I won't go into detail on the others. Behind them is their own warband - the Jizamurai - a fairly bloodthirsty lot that were established by Aurelius over an Age ago.

I often use chess pieces as tokens. I think it's a nice touch for the knights, but it also gives a quick visual indicator of how formidable someone might be (a pawn or a capital piece). There are also some "plate wolves" represented by one of the default tokens in Owlbear Rodeo.

Incidentally, plate wolves are a creature that come from one of the Myths. In the book, they're called "iron hounds". When the Company first encountered them, I didn't name them, and later asked the players how their characters would name them. I think that's a fun way to name things. I'm sure that idea has been described in many places, but I first came across it in Trophy.

The map isn't too complicated. Most of the hexes have no features, and it did occur to me that it might just lead to everyone moving towards each other, colliding in the centre hex, and dispensing with the need for a map. I wasn't worried about that. Firstly, I know the combat in Mythic Bastionland well enough to know that it would still be interesting and fun, and secondly, I'm spoiled by having players that do this:

This is the map after meeting the players. The red lines are from planning how the enemy may move, and possible lines of attack.

If you look closely at the bottom right, you can see another hex has been lightly drawn in. This followed a question about what is there, and I just said it's similar to the neighbouring dark hex. The map is abstract enough that you can extend it pretty easily (or even just place the tokens in the rough area of that hex), and I didn't want to introduce some kind of hard boundary that would have a tactical impact on things.

On the high ground, where the PCs and their allies are, they have marked in blue boxes with notes about cover. This followed a discussion about places to hide up there, and I used luck rolls to determine what was available. The results weren't too favourable: two hexes with options to conceal a single person, and one with an option to conceal half a warband. (Not wanting to make things too complicated, I said that if their warband was split between half hiding in a trench and half exposed, and there was a fight, then their attacks would be Impaired.) This addition to the battlefield reminded me a little of Fate, where players can contribute to the environment. In our game, the players asked what was available, and I left it to chance. I could have used GM fiat to say "Nope, nothing here", but I had deliberately chosen that background image which I think implies more than just a featureless sand dune.

 

Maybe having a sparse battle map encourages some collaboration. If I had gone to greater lengths to add features in various hexes, maybe there wouldn't have been that same search for terrain aspects to leverage.

They planned how to proceed: Wait for nightfall. Archibald and Raegar would circle in from the North, under cover of darkness, while Aurelius would create a diversion to draw the plate wolves uphill to him. Then the Jizamurai would charge in. (Re: the diversion - Aurelius can breath fire, which is the sort of thing that comes about when messing around with Myths since his days as a squire.)

Let's jump ahead to the final state of the map:

Almost everyone did end up in the same hex, but not until the final round, and there were attacks made and enemies defeated in four hexes. Archibald and Raegar had a riding battle against the plate wolves, both risking Fatigue to Deny attacks made against their steeds. Aurelius created his flame diversion and lay in wait for another plate wolf (more on that below). The green and red tokens are a quick addition that one player helpfully cooked up to track who had acted on each turn. Owlbear Rodeo makes it pretty easy to add statuses (like the plate wolf who lost an eye) straight into the token names. Quilfrey, an elderly NPC, is tucked away at the bottom left of the map, as he was sent back to the seat of power with the Story Knight's (Archibald) book of stories, in case they all died in battle.

You might also notice one additional creature - the snake - on one of the high ground hexes. Just before sunset, the Story Knight used his Ability to say that he'd heard of tales of two strange creatures in this area. One is a kind of explosive firefly, and the other a snake that is attracted to (and unharmed by) fire. The Ability means that one of these tales is true. This led to the fun situation where Aurelius lit a diversion fire, and hid for an ambush, and then unexpectedly had a snake slithering on top of him while he had to remain silent and unseen.

The allied warband, the Jizamurai, charged in and were able to surround the enemy commander. They had been ordered to take him alive, but their battle rage (and an unfortunate roll) led to a bloodier outcome.

Near the end of the battle, Raegar the Horn Knight blew his horn, which doubles Vigour loss from all attacks. (He used to do this at the beginning of fights, but he's learned from experience on that!) This made it possible for Aurelius to finish the battle with a mighty Smite attack against the warband, reducing them to 1 Vigour.

It played out favourably for the players. The enemy force never hit too hard, but the tension held up throughout. I particularly liked how this one battle played out more as three separate engagements: (i) the diversion and fight on the hilltop, (ii) the horseback fight with two plate wolves, and (iii) the warband charge. Splitting up meant that units were isolated and had a couple of rolls gone another way, things could have gone very differently.

 

There's a Chekov's Gun element to the whole thing - They planned for the cannon to take aim and fire at them, and had it done so, I think anyone in the targeted hex would have been in serious danger. They tried to get as close as possible while maintaining the element of surprise. Also, when Aurelius killed a plate wolf on top of the hill, the gunner in control of the cannon cried out in pain (for mysterious reasons) and didn't recover quickly.

 

Later, we had a little discussion about whether this battle is significant enough to earn them a point of Glory. I think some stuff I've said on The Smiling Fox makes it sound like I am stingy with Glory, but my players seem to have an "All in a day's work!" attitude, where they don't push for it at all. Some more discussion to be had on this anyway, as it all links into a Myth as well.

TTRPG Cryptic Crossword

I've been solving cryptic crossword clues recently on Parseword and Minute Cryptic so I've tried making my own one.

Across

5. Men or rats kneeling before old reliquary ghosts, initially (4,4)
8. Quiet! Commotion, Westward. Bring torches. (10)
9. Why fear ending? No machine can run forever, even in Sweden (4,4,6)
11. "Who, me?" ask around, meander selflessly, to process trauma (10)
13. Financial Times coverage is missing secret skirmishes (4)
14. Look inside, be Sharp, be talkative, spawn a thousand games? (4)

Down

1. Unfair abusers, chopped up with singular ease, and beheaded by bestiary salespeople (4,3,5)
2. Not an only child, but with the biggest share (6)
3. Explore the forest? Old mood, new remix (10)
4. Monsieur Sephiroth upset by corporate horrors (10)
6. O! Non-writers transformed into storytellers! Just add out-of-this-world oracles (9)
7. A misguided villain sensed in possible topics? We've got that covered. (5,3,5)
10. Disrupt the nation's lad behaviours heading for failed careers and debt (11)
12. Considering all the aspects, where would Dad be without Human Resources? (4)

There's an interactive version here.