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.

 

 

 

New podcast episodes and general rambling

Here's a quick post with some rambling updates.

I released episode 8 of my solo actual play of Mythic Bastionland today. (You can find the links for subscribing here.) As I said on the episode, it's been several months since the last episode. I am making plans to get onto a more frequent schedule and I actually recorded episode 9 today. This game never goes where I expect it to. When things settle a bit (end of an in-game season maybe) I may write a longer post here about the state of the campaign and characters.

In other podcast news, we put out episode 8 of The Smiling Fox on Monday. This episode is all about spark tables and I really enjoyed this one. Pop on your headphones and immerse yourself in the hot fog. 

Recently, I've run two sessions of the playtest of Intergalactic Bastionland with the Smiling Fox guys. It is already a fun game and I look forward to seeing it develop further. We're planning a third session to round out the experience of life aboard the starship.

My Mythic Bastionland group game is still going strong. I mentioned a few interesting things that have happened in the Smiling Fox episode mentioned above. I have some prep to do to flesh out some of the weirder things that are simmering there. I have several half-baked sites that need a bit more detail.

I am interested in learning some layout stuff, and I'm planning to explore Typst. It may not look very suitable for RPG stuff at first glance, but someone has made a DND 5e template for it which looks quite nice, so I think plenty of other things should be possible. I plan to make a one- or two-page adventure site to learn how to use it. If it seems interesting to share, I'll write about it here.

In other tabletop news, I've been playing some board games recently: Concordia and Pax Pamir. They are complicated! There's plenty to learn from them, about rules giving rise to tactical depth, and about historical settings and themes being quite engaging. I backed the RPG Gallow's Corner recently and I could definitely see myself running a game like that which doesn't have fantasy elements.

Stonetop has been on my mind recently. There's a good interview with the creator here, and Quinns released his deep dive on it this week. This probably falls into the category of "Sounds great! Will I ever get time to play this??" for me. I am definitely drawn to long-form play, and digging into relationships and community. Though I probably do elements of that in any games that give space for it.

I'm not playing any solo game other than the podcast one at the moment. I'd like to change that soon. I'd like to try something loose and flexible, and I think Everspark might be a good one for that.

 

Earth Resists: Site recipes

“Craggy cave mouth” by Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0

As a design goal for Earth Resists, I want to think of adventure sites as recipes. The written description is not a prepared meal, it is a list of ingredients with some simple instructions. In fact, I want the site to have almost no instructions - the instructions are general and apply to any site. I'm hoping this will make sites for skirmishes easy to write, read, and run.

Here's an example. This site for a skirmish mission is a huge sinkhole and cave system in a tropical forest.

Locations:
(Would be shown as a simple diagram map, but I'm writing this on my phone)

Forest (cover 5, threat 1)
Sinkhole edge (cover 3, threat 1)
Sinkhole floor (cover 2, threat 2)
- trap: auto turret (2P)
Tunnel A (cover 4, threat 2)
Tunnel B (cover 3, threat 1)
- hazard: falling rocks (2P)
Cavern (cover 3, threat 3)

ET objective:

Protect the worm eggs in the Cavern location until they hatch (6-part clock)

ET units:

Snakehead (1P, 1HD) × 3
Spiderbot (2P, 3HD)
- special: drag away wounded (3P)
Grey worm (4P, 3HD)
- special: burrow (3P)

(Incidentally, I want ETs in the game to have descriptions but no names. It's left to the players to name them - maybe later in a campaign, if there's a linguistic breakthrough, that would change.)

What to do with all this?

After all PCs have taken a turn, the GM takes a turn. If all PCs are in 0-threat locations, the GM may choose any other location on the map and make a threat roll. Otherwise, when one or more PCs are in non-zero threat locations, the GM rolls for each of the occupied locations.

If the threat level is 2, they roll 2d6. If the threat level is 3, they roll 3d6, etc. Take the highest number (N), and the GM may use that to:

1. Deploy N points worth of ET units to the location. (Example: If the number is 3, the GM may deploy three 1-point units, some kind of minion type, or a stronger 3-point unit).
2. Check the map location for any special action which can be activated for N (or lower) points. This could be a trap or an environmental hazard.
3. Check any already deployed unit for any N (or lower) point action. Generally, already deployed units can be used freely on the GM's turn, but they may also have special abilities that require spending these points.
4. Hold some or all points of the total N in reserve, to spend on a future turn.

For a threat level of greater than 1, it is possible to have matches on the result (e.g. rolling 2d6 and getting 4, 4). Matches advance the overall ET objective in the area by one mark of progress (Example: repairing a crashed spaceship, or hatching ET eggs in the example above).

I know some folks may bristle at using a metacurrency for the GM to spend on moves and conjuring quantum ogres, but I'm thinking of it differently. I want to achieve the same outcome as running a more carefully prepared site, but without the same level of prep. The GM can glance at their ingredients and jump right in, without needing to know details about any particular location. (This may just reflect my GMing style, where I sometimes misread that kind of detail anyway, when things come up in play.)

I have yet to play test this, but it is coming together in my head, and I think I'll be able to try something soon.

There and Back Again

There was a conversation recently in the Bastionland Discord about a Mythic Bastionland  session which the referee felt didn't go well. It sounded like they had fought a climatic battle, won, played through the return journey to the nearest holding, but didn't have the best time with the events that the return travel triggered. Of course, only the people at that table know exactly how it went, and I'm not going to talk in depth about that game because I wasn't there. But it got me thinking about the balance between tension and downtime.

I've also been reading a sci fi novel recently, which has prompted some similar thoughts. Cowl by Neal Asher is about a conflict between time travelers. Characters, who initially don't know the factions involved, get drawn into the conflict. This isn't a review, but the book didn't really click with me. It felt like too many action / survival scenes without enough downtime to break them up. (It probably would've helped to read it over a couple of days rather than spreading it out over a few weeks.)

When I say "downtime", I don't necessarily mean characters hanging around in a town and learning a skill or upgrading weapons or whatever. I just mean a shift in the tension. There may still be important stakes, but with a change to the pace or the level of threat.

If you're writing a story you can just say Bilbo Baggins travelled home and skip across half of Middle-Earth. If you're playing an RPG, and the group wants to play through that journey, then you play through it. But it helps to be on the same page about what that means:
 

- Is a fresh journey, like the outward one, filled with random encounters?
- Is it a revisiting of those locations, maybe dealing with some consequences from before?
- Is it a quieter time, to spend some time with the characters and unpack what they've experienced?

I'm sure there are other possibilities too. My experience with the sci fi novel suggests to me that I don't want the next stage of most stories to have a similar texture to the last. I like the tension to have highs and lows, and to have changing circumstances.

The question this boils down to, in Mythic Bastionland, is "Do I ever want to turn off the Myths?"

Do I get to points in the game where I feel there is enough happening and don't want another injection of weirdness to proceedings?

I think my answer is "No, but".

I have never skipped a travel roll, or ignored an omen result on a travel roll. But I do check in with the players, asking if they want to travel to their next destination in the next session, or do a short time jump (days or weeks, maybe to the next festival) to start the session there. Another aspect of the "but" is that I have, once or twice, folded an omen into ongoing matters so that it is not an entirely new thread to pull on.

I consider all of the above to be playing rules as written. But, as a thought experiment, let's make up a house rule to handle things differently.

After a dramatic resolution, or a harsh defeat, or generally any time that the Company are ready to pack up and go home, make a single d6 roll for the entire multi-hex return journey:

1. The original purpose of the journey is still not resolved, and the Company come face to face with it. This may mean twisting the meaning of some earlier event.
2. The Company encounter a new troubling issue. Something unrelated to the outward journey's purpose. Maybe an Omen, or some crisis from the spark tables.
3. A sign of new trouble. Not directly encountered, but new information to consider at home. I'm thinking spark table dramas and crises rather than Mythic stuff.
4. Encounter a feature of the realm changed by your recent actions. 
5. Same as 4.
6. Encounter a blessing, for example a character grateful for your recent actions.

After rolling, pick one of the hexes on the return journey to play out the result. These are pretty vague and would need to be fleshed out with spark table rolls.

Between hidden roles and sandboxes

I've played two games this week that involved secret information.

First was my regular Mythic Bastionland game. The company of knights had planned to visit a town where one of them grew up. Although he's from there, this was our first session in that town. Before the session, I chatted with that player about his character's history. We decided, among other things, that when he left the town twenty years earlier to become a squire, he abandoned his fiancée. The fiancée character appeared in this week's session as a member of the town's council. We roleplayed some tension between them, but he chose not to share the background information with the other players until near the end of the session. It's was a fun note to add, but it didn't change the direction of the session.

Second was Cluedo Conspiracy. It's a hidden role board game which involves some players trying to stop a murder plot while others secretly try to execute the plot. We played with five players, so there were three good guys and two conspirators. In our first attempt at playing (we were all learning the game, and I was reading and teaching the rules) one player misspoke early on and revealed their role. We decided to reset the game and played through on the second attempt. (I quite like the game, incidentally. It's like a simplified version of Battlestar Galactica, much quicker to play.)

I think it's interesting to compare these experiences because they both involved hidden information, but they are at two ends of a scale:

• In the RPG, some information was hidden which informs roleplaying. When the information was revealed it didn't have much impact, except as a dramatic beat.
• In the board game, the hidden information is at the core of the gameplay. Much of the strategy of the game is based on concealing or trying to reveal that information. When it's revealed, it shifts the focus of play and impacts what choices players have afterwards. If the secret is revealed too early, because of a simple mistake, it diffuses a lot of the fun of the experience.

I'm curious to consider what might lie between these two ends of the scale, so I've been trying to deconstruct them a little.

In the Cluedo Conspiracy game, there is a binary division: Some players are tasked with killing Mr Coral and some with protecting him. It's adversarial and all-or-nothing. After the secret is revealed you have no common ground with the other team.

In the Mythic Bastionland case, you're playing in a sandbox so there aren't strict goals. Revealing that a knight once ghosted his partner could conceivably lead to some new objective, or influence how the group respond to a problem, but it is less likely to redirect the flow completely. Rather than the binary, team A or team B, it's team "here is some new information, do whatever you want".

One way to extend this is to have more than one strict objective. In the Cluedo case, you could have kill/protect Mr Coral and also steal/protect Mr Coral's treasure. You go from two opposing teams to (potentially) players with four different objectives:

• Kill the guy, steal his money.
• Kill the guy but because of another motive. Leave the money for his heir.
• Protect the guy, steal the money (I'm a thief not a murderer).
• Protect the guy, protect the treasure (we're trying to have a society here!).

In this extension, a secret could be revealed about a player without necessarily breaking the game into a completely adversarial contest. When you have some goal in common with another player, there is room to negotiate and coordinate.

Another extension, into the space between the two ends of the scale, is to make the secret information itself more complex. 

• I want to kill Mr Coral because his true identity is a war criminal.
• I want to protect Mr Coral so that he can be put on trial for his crimes.

This idea (more complex information) seems to tend towards play where players choose their own goals. But I'm trying to find the middle ground, not going as far as a sandbox, so maybe it looks a little more like this:

Your character has beliefs / alignment / bonds. Initially, you work with the information you have, and work towards the goal that fits those. As hidden information is revealed, you filter that through the beliefs / alignment / bonds and it updates your objectives. (This is very like roleplaying in a sandbox, but I'm imagining it as a little more mechanical / board gamey - character traits overriding player choice.) That might mean you switch from team "protect the guy" to team "kill the guy", when you get more information.

I had some more thoughts about why bothering with secrets at all, but that's kind of a tangent. Wrapping it up here!

Earth Resists: Skirmish map

 

A test map for Earth Resists (ignore the text on the bottom left)

(I believe this may be mappy enough to count for Prismatic Wasteland's map bandwagon.)

I first mentioned my X-COM inspired game here. This post collects some ideas about how I intend to handle the skirmish missions in the game. As I said before I want to lean into feelings of tension and drama rather than simulation.

The map above shows 6 locations in a North American city. This is the GM-facing version. The player-facing one would show the layout but the labels and numbers would not be present at the start (details are added to adjacent locations when they move around).

At each location there are two numbers – the top is Threat and the bottom is Cover. The Subway Station, for example, has Threat 0 and Cover 5. These numbers are known to the players (added to the player-facing map) for the location they are at, and for adjacent locations. It's information that helps them make meaningful decisions.

Cover

If a PC is at the Subway Station and wants to take cover, they roll a d6. If the result is less than or equal to the Cover number for the Subway Station (5) then they are in cover. Players can glance at the map and have a good sense of what the opportunities for cover are. But it's also not guaranteed, so there is an element of risk to balance. I'm hoping to create meaningful tactical decisions without needing a grid or defining a bunch of terrain detail in advance. There may be some ways to increase your odds of getting into cover (dedicate more time to it, have a relevant skill).

Threat

The world sheet mentioned in my first post also uses a number for Threat. I'd be tempted to use a different name for this idea in the skirmish map, but I kind of like the mirroring of things at the big scale and little scale.

If the PCs are at the Subway Station they can see the Threat is 0. This essentially means the Subway Station is safe. They won't be attacked there. Why include a safe location in a skirmish map? There are plenty of other things that could happen there – they may find civilians who need to be escorted out of the area, or interviewed for intelligence, or they may find some discarded alien technology that could be collected for research.

At the Subway Tunnel the Threat is 2. My current thinking is that after the PCs act, the GM can then roll 2d6 (one d6 for each point of Threat) and the result determines how the GM can act. The higher they roll the harder the move. Maybe a 1 is a sound of an ET moving nearby. Maybe a 6 would see the PCs coming under fire. This is kind of an initiative system, but I think if an ET shows up and is in an ongoing firefight, they won't have to rely on a Threat roll to take a turn – it's more about the unseen threats building.

Again, I like the idea that the players can see this Threat number and know what it means. They can plan an approach that tries to manage the risk.

This is a deadly game. Walking into a dangerous place, failing to get into cover, and getting shot, will likely cause a PC to be out of action. I need to do testing to see how likely that is, and how frustrating it is. But it's also designed so that new PCs can be generated very easily, so you could quickly dispatch another character from the entry point into the map (if you have enough personnel to allow for that).

Scene Transitions

I'm not sure how this will play, but I want skirmish missions to be played in parallel with other types of missions which I'm tentatively calling Shadow War missions. The skirmishes are the open warfare part of the game, and the Shadow War stuff is more focused on investigation and espionage. In a game session the GM will lay out the details of the two scenarios, players will select or roll up their characters (players will routinely be using more than one character), and then they deploy.

In the skirmish, when the PCs move from one location to another, we put the skirmish on hold and switch our attention to the Shadow War scenario. At an appropriate moment in the Shadow War scenario, the spotlight will move back the skirmish.

Example:

Seb and June are soldiers searching for ETs in the Subway Station. They see blast marks from energy weapons on the walls, and in the tunnel ahead they can see sparks and blinking lighting from a damaged train. The players look at the Subway Tunnel on the map, and see that the Threat is increasing in that direction. They decide to proceed. The GM then lays out the scene at a power plant in Australia where several engineers have gone missing. Two investigators, Dahlia and Rickard are talking to the plant director who seems likes he's hiding something.

I can imagine some players wouldn't want to shift attention away from a scene when things are getting interesting, but my hope is that multiple things will be getting interesting alongside each other. Might be tricky to work out, but I think it could be quite neat.