Zoning Out

Instead of giving wide-ranging player advice for Prismatic Wasteland's blogwagon, I want to focus on one specific - um, sorry, what were we talking about?

You're reading a book and suddenly find that you need to reread the last paragraph, or the whole page. For a moment you were there, casting your eyes across the words, but nothing was sinking in. This isn't particularly disruptive while reading, but the same experience at a TTRPG table can be more problematic. Suddenly all eyes turn to you, you know you're expected to do something significant, but you actually have no idea what is currently going on in the game. In a tactics-heavy game, maybe you can look down at a battle map, get a reasonable sense of the state of play, and jump back in. In theatre of the mind play, the description of the scene is ephemeral and you zoned out during it. What do you do?

Calvin and Hobbies by Bill Waterson

Option 1: Fake it

Take your best guess. When you were last paying attention, the party was negotiating with the village mayor to borrow his hot air balloon. You know the group - these things always take time. Of course that's still going on.

"I get tired of all this chatter. I pull out my dagger, 'Listen bub, we're taking your balloon whether you like it or not.'"

Now you wait and see whether that works, or are you about to be told that you are already in the balloon floating over snowy mountain peaks.

Option 2: Minimize it

What is the smallest possible input you could give at this moment? What's the in-game equivalent of nodding and throwing it back to the other players?

"Hmm... I'm not sure what's best here. What do you guys think?"

Now you hope that the question was not "Hey, does anyone have some rope?"

Option 3: Own it

Zoning out isn't ideal, but it is also perfectly normal and can happen to anyone. Maybe it's due to random thoughts popping up, but it can just as easily be enthusiasm for the game (thinking back on some snippet of lore or planning for an upcoming encounter) that causes you to lose the thread. Even so, it may be hard for the GM and other players not to roll their eyes when you zone out. It seems like you're not paying attention and you're not interested. Options 1 and 2 can deepen that view. You didn't know what was going on, and you seem happy to continue like that, bluffing your way through.

So I say own it. Tell the group you missed something but you want to get back up to speed. That's engagement, which is what we're always chasing.

"Oh, I actually missed some details here. Can we do a quick summary to get me back into it?"

Unless this is happening every time the spotlight moves to you, a reasonable group ought to have patience for it.

Directed attention

I don't think there's any way to completely remove those moments of wandering attention, but I'll wrap up with a few suggestions for active engagement.

• Acting is reacting - when the spotlight is on another player, but your PC is present, consider what you can offer in the scene. This isn't making it all about you, it's about making sure their PC isn't passing through their big moments alone.
• Build the world - maybe you're playing a game where anyone can add details to the world, which is a great way to engage rather than spectate. But even if the GM is the only one painting those details, you can still contribute with questions. "Can we still see the town we left in the morning?", "Are there any other tracks on the road?", "Is there much wildlife here?" When you're reading a book, the author may have been in a distant country, they may have been writing in another century, their words may have been translated through multiple languages. These may be obstacles between the author describing the world and the reader interpreting it. TTRPGs are a live conversation, and are far easier to engage with actively.
• Check the game - Are you playing a game that facilitates everyone being engaged? Is it very turn-based, at the expense of the group experience? Do you find it boring? Maybe you zone out because this isn't the right game for you. Maybe you should offer to run a game for the group, to get a different experience and perspective. (Is this "player advice" post a stealth "become a GM" post? Apparently so.)

Rollenspielgedankenexperiment

When describing his theory of gravity, Einstein considered the thought experiment of a man inside an elevator. If the elevator is falling freely, the man seems to be weightless and his pocket change floats beside him. The man can't tell if his elevator is floating in outer space or falling down a shaft on Earth. Similarly, if he feels the sensation of gravity, he can't tell if the elevator is sitting on the Earth's surface, or if the elevator is in outer space being pushed with constant acceleration.

Let's apply this to tabletop RPGs!

A party loot a dungeon, stealing the priceless Termite Sceptre. The miners' guild had hired them to retrieve the sceptre, but the greedy party keep it for themselves and run away. The GM announces that the senior quartermaster of the guild is the sister of a renowned tracker, and now that tracker is in pursuit of the party.

Like the man in the elevator, the players can't see the origin of the forces applied to them. Behind the GM screen, there may be reams of paper, elaborate biographies and interconnected family trees. The tracker may have been an already prepared character, ready to drop into the campaign at this perfect moment, or the GM may have improvised them on the spot.

Also like the man in the elevator, the players may be hard at work trying to determine which case applies to them. And they have more information to work with than Einstein's unfortunate captive.

1. They can just ask. It would simplify physics greatly if we could just shout questions about fundamental forces into the cosmos and get a response back. For ttrpgs, the players can (and often do) ask "Did you just make that up?"
2. They can look for patterns. If every time they break an agreement, they are immediately told about a renowned tracker, fearsome bounty hunter, or relentless constable hot on their trail, they could reasonably conclude that this is just a habit that the GM has.
3. They can question the consistency. It's reasonable to think that a carefully planned setting, with clockwork components, will operate logically. A world driven by improv may be more likely to have loose ends, twists, or reversals of fortune that beggar belief.

When we talk about low prep, I think we often have the goal of creating something that feels indistinguishable from high prep. To continue the analogy, we want to put the players in an elevator in outer space, apply a gentle acceleration from a cobbled-together engine, and make them think that outside their opaque box there is a whole world working its gravity on them. This may sound deceptive, as though I'm suggesting that the GM tricks the players. But I think there's another layer to this, where the analogy gets more complicated.

There's a really fun experience that sometimes comes with running a game, where the session ends and the players are thinking "That was cool - I wonder did the GM plan that, or was it improvised?" and the GM is thinking "Wow, that was cool. How did that happen?"

I think that the players' elevator, sitting on a world built by an exhaustively prepared GM, or being pushed through space by an engine built by a seat-of-the-pants GM, is enclosed inside another bigger elevator. One big enough to hold the GM and their world or their engine. And that outer elevator is experiencing forces too. What's causing those forces? Is it an intricate game system tuned precisely to tilt the balance at particular moments? Is it hundreds of pages of lore that implant their subtle tones in the reader? Is it pages and pages of random tables covering every conceivable situation? Is it something from another game, half-remembered at just the right moment? Is it the group just getting in sync with each other? Is it an appointment in 15 minutes, and something big better happen to end this session?

I've read and listened to commentary from people who've been playing RPGs far longer than I have. From time to time there will be a note of "I've seen it all before." This dungeon has X, this system has Y, these players have the wild idea to play a party made up entirely of Z - and this very experienced player has a story from 35 years ago where that exact situation already happened. And it was fun. But they don't feel the need to do it again. The more time you spend inside the elevator, the more you feel like you know exactly what's happening outside of it, and what's about to happen next.

I don't think my conclusion is "Don't try to understand your fun, because maybe it will not be fun anymore." One of the reasons ttrpgs are special is that they have generative elements. There is something in every game, at every table, that is generating something new and unexpected. It can happen that, after awhile, whatever is being generated no longer seems new and unexpected. Then it may be time for a shift. But there are so many shifts possible - the combination of the game system, setting, players, play environment are extremely complex and it's hard to see and know how all of those parts will interact. It is hard to play without being inside some kind of moving box, wondering who or what is pushing you around. And if you eventually understand how that box works, you can swap it for another. 

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.

 

 

 

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.

Earth Resists

I've been thinking for awhile about how to make an X-COM like experience in a TTRPG. I played a lot of the 1994 original back in the day, and the emergent aspects of play left a huge impression on me. I might dig into the detail of that in another post.

(I know there is already a board game based on X-COM, though I've never played it, and I would imagine there is some kind of similar RPG out there already, but I think it'll be fun to make my own stab at it.)

Here are the principles I've been trying to bring to this:

1. I don't want this to be a bunch of spreadsheets. Video games are great at simulating complicated stuff, but I want something very light. Vibes over formulas.
2. A feeling of being up against the odds, maybe even that you only have a slim chance of victory.
3. Investment in characters - surviving a dangerous mission is a big deal.
4. Extraterrestrials not being used as a stand-in for otherness among humans. I don't want to tell stories about people being scared of other people coming to their homeland. The working title, Earth Resists, is a nod to this - focusing on a united effort from humanity.
5. Expanding on the inspiration. X-COM is about resource management and tactical skirmishes. I want to explore some other possible aspects of resisting an invasion - uncovering plots through investigation, as one example. Maybe also exploring ideas about the organisation breaking apart but still functioning in some form.

The world sheet

Front and centre is a page showing a map of the earth divided into six regions. (I'm leaning into d6s for everything, unless something steers me towards introducing other dice.) A d6 can be placed on a region to indicate the threat (0 - 6). When you need to generate an event in a region roll d6 + threat (for a value from 1 to 12).

Reconnaissance (ETs studying Earth and humanity)
1. UFO sightings
2. Evidence of incursions at key locations
3. Reports of individual abductions

Panic (Direct contact, civilians under threat)
4. UFO landings
5. ETs sabotaging facilities
6. Mass abductions

Foothold (ETs establishing bases of operations on Earth)
7. Destruction of satellite / radar monitoring of an area
8. Construction of ET facilities
9. Xenoforming of environment

Total war
10. Military capability of a country destroyed
11. Critical infrastructure lost
12. Complete occupation of a region

One pressure on the players will be trying not to let the threat level increase in any region. But there may be times when they have to choose between protecting a power station in one location or rescuing civilians in another location. When they don't respond to an event, the threat is likely to increase there.

Morale

The second function of a region's threat is that it contributes to the morale of characters from that region. The best morale score is 6. When creating a character from a region with threat 3, roll 3d6. For every 1 rolled, reduce their morale by 1.

During play, events can trigger a morale check for a character. This is typical stress / insight type stuff, from games like Cthulhu Dark.

Character creation

Speaking of characters, I want them to be mechanically simple, but to have the potential for players to grow attached to them. I'm borrowing from Lasers and Feelings to have a single number for character stats. I think a lot of L & F hacks go for something cute with the labels for the number, but currently I'm going with Force / Precision. I think that can be meaningful when dealing with skirmishes and also stuff like a diplomat trying to convince a government not to withdraw funding.

So characters will have a morale score, and a single stat to cover all rolls. They'll also have a couple of skills (just words for things they are trained in).

There's no health points. I think injuries will be represented as a number of weeks to heal. (Ticking down healing clocks during an upkeep phase is sliding into spreadsheet territory, so maybe I'll try to simplify that - maybe no upkeep, but when you want to check if they are ready to come back into action you can do a roll for it.)

Missions

This is the bulk of the thing. One thing I'm currently considering is running two types of missions at the same time. Something like a skirmish, but cutting back and forth to a separate mission of espionage or research. Rather than having phases of play with very different focuses, mush it all together with some guidance for managing spotlight.

I'm also trying to resist my normal bias towards long-running games. This game could be well suited to a short campaign, where tension ramps up quickly, and you have to make a big swing at the end or lose the conflict. If it's shorter then the missions can be a little more directed / curated, rather than trying to have lots of generators for coming up with countless missions.

More on all this next time.

A tool for pacing

This is a half-baked idea for managing the pacing of RPGs. You have a restricted amount of time in a play session, and plenty of flexibility in how much in-game time that can represent. (Consider something like Microscope, for the extreme example of covering eons of in-game time in a single session.)

Groups form habits about when to zoom in for detailed scenes or zoom out for montages. Maybe they read cues, spoken or unspoken, to make those decisions. Maybe the specific game gives direction on it.

I'm aiming here to have a modular mechanic that can be thrown into any game to handle this.

On the table, place a sheet with three circles marked on it. One circle is marked "play the scene", another is marked "resolve the scene", the third is marked "cut away".

During play, when a clear idea of the next scenario/scene has formed, each person places a d6 in the circle of their choice.

Putting your die in "play the scene" is a quick non-verbal communication of "I like the sound of this, let's zoom in and play through it".

Choosing "Resolve the scene" is a way of saying "I'm interested in the outcome of this situation and I want to get straight to the consequences. Let's use some mechanics of the game to quickly resolve how this turns out."

"Cut away" says "This is not what I want to focus on right now, let's skip onwards."

A player may also not place their die, which I think communicates "I'm just going with the flow," which is fine too.

What I think this would achieve is a really quick declaration of how people want to manage the next chunk of session time.

The most gentle application of this idea, is that the GM glances at that, and uses the polling data to inform (but not dictate) their decisions. (Or if it is a more democratic style game, the group do the same thing.)

To be more directed - go with the majority. If there's a tie, roll the dice to see which comes out on top.

I think everything so far is kind of not very useful. It is all equivalent to just having a quick chat. It is *maybe* a little quicker.

Where this *might* become more useful is that, while playing through a scene, you could move your die. It is a silent (hopefully non-disruptive) way to say "I think we've actually just answered the important question here, and I'm ready to move on". (I'm conscious that silent forms of communication aren't accessible to all players, maybe their are other subtle cues that could be used.)

In practical appearance, it might look something like a safety tool, but with an entirely different purpose. It is purely for the pacing of the session.

Maybe, because it's a die with numbers, you could also rotate it to show emphasis. A 1 for "I'm happy to move on, but also happy to hang out in this scene," and higher numbers for "Come on, let's move on." (I imagine that 1,2,3 give enough granularity for those opinions, and if you ever use a 6 you are banned from the group for life.)

Could this be a way for people to be rude and basically give a thumbs down anytime they don't like someone roleplaying in depth? Yes, that sucks, and I can only suggest to be cool.

I probably don't read enough games to know whether there is already something like this in use. Do let me know if there is.

Woland hexflower 6: every book is a hexflower

William from Half a Worm and a Bitten Apple has designed a collaborative realm creation project for Mythic Bastionland and it's my turn to add some weirdness to Woland.

As an experiment, I've decided to explore the idea of "every book is a sourcebook". I first saw this phrase in the FKR (Free Kriegsspiel Revolution) Discord. (They made a zine about it here: The Neverending Drachenschwanz.) The idea is to draw ideas from any source and homebrew them into your game.

I recently read The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami and I'll be using that to build my part of the realm.

Big ideas

The novel begins with a man looking back on a teenage romance, and the imagined town which he and his girlfriend talked about when they were together. It has three ideas which I think could work well in Mythic Bastionland:

1. An imaginary place can become real, and can be visited by those who are enchanted by it.
2. An individual human can be split into multiple independent conscious beings.
3. Certain animals can thrive in summer but be vulnerable in winter.
   

I'll be looking for ways to apply those ideas across the region of my hexflower. For lower level detail, I'll be trying something else.

Random sentence sparks

This is inspired by regular spark tables and by Tana Pigeon's "Deconstruct the Known" method which I heard about here Playing Published Adventures with Tana Pigeon. I pick two sentences at random from the novel and combine the ideas (or just use them as vague inspiration) for any prompts I need. I initially planned to use dice to pick pages and locations within a page, but it was much easier just to flick through and put my finger on a sentence without looking. Once or twice I stepped on to the next sentence if it seemed helpful to do so.

The hexflower

I rolled a d20 and got hex 6. I was pleased to get one without a holding, as I wanted to try focusing on wilderness.

I'd like to name the whole region. I find naming places hard, but I'm turning to Murakami again here. Before he was a novelist he owned a jazz bar which he named Peter Cat after his wife's cat (maybe he also finds naming things hard). Welcome to Peter's Lowlands. Who is/was Peter in this realm? I'll leave that unanswered.

The lore of Peter's Lowlands is inspired by the first Big Idea from the novel (an imaginary place can become real). In the past, the daughter of a wealthy family had poor health. She spent much of her youth bed-ridden, with a maid from Peter's Lowlands for company. Throughout the long hours of each day, the maid would tell stories of her homeland while doing her needlework. The young girl added fanciful elements and descriptions and the maid would simply say, "Indeed, that is also true."

Years later, the girl having grown into a healthy adult, she traveled to Peter's Lowlands for the first time. She was stunned to discover that every detail of their shared descriptions were true. The place was just as she had imagined it, perhaps because she had imagined it so.

Since I don't have a holding in my region, I won't say who that character is, but someone later in this project may like to add her to a council or something.

I'll step through each hex now, starting at the top and working downwards.

D4: The North

Spark sentences:

• 'As winter deepened, their golden fur turned a bleached white, making them one with the snow.'
• 'And the girl in the library used the apples to make a sweet dish for me.'
  

There are mountains in the northern part of the hex. In the Grey Season, herds of golden buffalo turn white and migrate to the mountains. When the grasslands are frozen over, the scrubby plants of the mountains sustain them. Some herds are joined by nomadic people who spend the Grey Season with the animals, protecting them from predators. The people brew a hearty cider for vitality during the winter nights. In the Green Season, the people shear the white fur from the buffalo and travel to holdings where it is a prized resource. The buffalo are not tame, but they allow this shearing after building trust through the season.

Threat: Poachers want to kill the buffalo in the Grey Season, to take their white furs. (The golden fur of other seasons is not valued.)

Valuables: A skinful of the cider, along with ritual heating and serving, is a Remedy for restoring Vigour. The nomads wear heavy white coats of buffalo fur. They are warm and offer excellent camouflage in a snowfield.

C5: The Northwest

Spark sentences:

• 'This is merely my imagination, of course, and I have no way of knowing what sadness is.'
• 'Your bare, slender shoulders under the strap of the green dress trembled under my arm.'

These are so focused on people that I think it has to be a Dwelling Landmark.

Dwelling: lovers' escape

A simple cabin, home to a couple whose love was forbidden by their families. The area is mostly grasslands with some lightly wooded areas. The couple gather flowers, mineral rocks, and even forest beetles to extract pigments for dyes and paints. They travel to the nearest holding to trade these, hoping never to be recognized by those from their former lives.

Threat: Repeatedly handling the forest beetles, from which an exotic purple dye can be made, slowly drains a person of their ability to feel emotion. The couple are in the early stages of this and they are unaware of it.

D5: The Centre

Spark sentences:

• 'As I entered the room some of the dark knotholes in the wooden walls looked at me, as if sending out a warning.'
• 'The hallway made a series of complex turns until we emerged in a dimly lit spot that I could hardly recall seeing before.'
  

A dry barren plane. The surface is fractured by countless cracks. There is little hope of traversing the plain without descending into these cracks and the network of labyrinthine canyons below. (If the Company choose to remain above, add a phase to the travel time for finding places to cross the cracks safely.) Very little vegetation grows but in the shadows of these canyons you may find patches of glarewood - stubby trees that produce eyeball-like knobs on their bark. The rock walls of the canyon are, here and there, marked with symbols by previous travelers.

 

Threat: The symbols scratched into the canyon walls do not always guide travelers to safety. (Consider using a Luck Roll to determine whether the marks are helpful or misleading.)

Area of interest: With a map, a guide, or pure luck, travelers may find their way to a nexus point among the canyons. The area is ringed with glarewood. Here, the wooden eyes turn and blink. An altar at the centre indicates this place has been used for Eldermass ceremonies.

E5: The Northeast

Spark sentences:

• 'Usually it was the job of someone else on staff, not Mrs. Soeda, to bring over tea for the boss, but I predicted that she'd bring over the tea and muffins herself.'
• 'This sense of freedom reminded me of something I'd experienced before, and I tried to remember.'

A pleasant forest, filled with birdsong. In the Gold Season, a tea-like aroma may lead travelers to a natural hot spring. Leaves of many plants, falling into the heated waters, fill the air with rich flavours. In the Grey Season, small primates relax in the waters, taking little notice of visitors.

One who eats a meal at this spring may experience a vivid memory of another meal:

1. The first meal with a current companion.
2. The last meal with a distant (or lost) loved one.
3. A great banquet.
4. A much appreciated meal, after a long hunger.
5. A reluctant meal, shared with a rival or enemy.
6. A foreign memory, from the mind of a previous visitor to this place.
    

C6: The Southwest

Spark sentences:

• 'There were lots of things about the town where my memory was fuzzy.'
• 'The moon was beautiful that night, and I was still a bit tipsy from the whisky and beer.'

(I've gone a little wild with this one.)

This hex has the appearance of the surface of the moon. Lifeless rock, craters, stark areas of light and shadow. At night, one can see an earth-like planet moving across the sky. There is no wind, nor weather of any other kind. The air is chill and motionless. Footprints and other tracks remain in place unless they are disturbed by other travelers.

Threat: It is peaceful here. Impossibly peaceful. Knights who tire of the demands of their oaths may wish to remain here and pass from all tales of the realm.

Valuables: Roll for a Knight, and choose a single item of their property to place here. It rests on a grave with an inscription on the headstone: 'I gave all I could, and they asked for more.'

D6: The South

Spark sentences:

• 'One rainy afternoon, when I was finally starting to regain full awareness, the old man sat down on a chair by the window, and as he sipped an ersatz coffee made from dandelions, he told me some stories of his past.'
• 'For various reasons, we couldn't see each other more than once or twice a month.'

(The aspects I'm focusing on here are dandelions/history and visibility/seasons.)

Vast meadows of grass and wildflowers. In the height of the Green Season, the ground is vivid with colour. As Gold Season approaches, the air is so thick with dandelion seeds, that travelers can lose sight of their companions. In the Grey Season it rains here constantly (weather rolls determine the strength of the rainfall). Mud slides down the gentle slopes of the low hills, sometimes revealing old ruins and bones.

Threats: In the Green Season, poisonous caterpillars (1d4 VIG loss if sleeping on the ground). In the Grey Season, sinking mud (impossible to Gallop and attacks made while mounted are Impaired).

Seasonal barriers: The barriers surrounding this hex appear in the Grey Season. Shifting muds reveal old unholy sites that cannot be crossed. They are hidden again when the season turns, unless someone disturbs them.

E6: The Southeast

I don't have sparks for this final hex - I'll make it an area of small mountains with sparse tree cover - but I do have a second landmark I want to use, inspired by one of the Big Ideas from The City and its Uncertain Walls (a person can be split into multiple independent conscious beings).

Hazard: The Soul Splitter

A piercing wind, recognized by its high-pitched whistle and the accompanying dizziness and headache. Most travelers flee from the Soul Splitter, or take any shelter they can find. Those that choose to push through risk being changed completely. For many ages, philosophers have speculated that the human soul is composed of three Virtues: Vigour, Clarity, and Spirit. This dread wind seems to confirm this, as one person facing it may leave as three people.

Mechanics: A character with VIG 11 CLA 8 SPI 13 GD 4 is exposed to the Soul Splitter wind. There is a 2-in-6 chance that they will be transformed into three characters, identical in appearance and knowledge. Their Virtues are:

• The self of Vigour: VIG 11 CLA 1 SPI 1 GD 4
• The self of Clarity: VIG 1 CLA 8 SPI 1 GD 4
• The self of Spirit: VIG 1 CLA 1 SPI 13 GD 4

Common clothes and items are duplicated. Special items are not duplicated, and remain in possession of the character whose Virtue seems most fitting or is allocated randomly. Each character's personality is similar to the original, though with their particular Virtue being more dominant. An affected player and the Referee should decide together who takes on the role of each of the three characters.

Art

I tried drawing something digitally but I didn't like how it was turning out, so I broke out the pen and pencils. There is a mix of aerial views and scenes from the locations. I haven't tried that approach before, but I think it's an interesting result.

Player-facing map

Referee-facing map (barriers in red)

For the other drawing, I tried to do something in a medieval style, to associate with the Soul Splitter hazard. The figure is bearing his soul to reveal his three Virtues. (I recommend trying to draw in this style for anyone who usually worries about proportions and realism! It is quite liberating.)

Wrap up

That's all for this part of the realm! Thanks again to William for running this project. I'm excited to see what comes next.

Feel free to let me know in the comments if any of these ideas make it to your table.

The Endies 2025

I like a good end of year wrap up, so I was happy to see the idea for a personal awards post "The Endies" by Lady Tabletop. First things first, I have used one notebook to keep my notes for (almost) all my games this year, so gathering this info has been relatively easy and fun. I'm pretty good at noting the date and game (the remainder of my notes are often more opaque). 📘 For folks who are interested in such things, my RPG notebook is a LEUCHTTURM1917 medium A5 hardcover.

Here's everything I played, in alphabetical order. For each I have completed the sentence "play this game if you..."

1. Age of Vikings - like the combination of a grounded historical world with a touch of the supernatural
   
2. Blades in the Dark - want to run a heist and like getting straight into the action
   
3. Cthulhu Dark - like atmosphere, investigation, and super-light but effective rules
   
4. Dialect - want a complete story in a one-shot, with thought-provoking ideas about community and language
   
5. Dolmenwood - want a huge area to explore, completely packed with adventure hooks
   
6. Fully Automatic - want to jump into fast-paced modern tactical action
   
7. Ironsworn - dabble with solo or GM-less play
   
8. Ironsworn: Starforged - like sci-fi world-building and narrative tools
   
9. Kala Mandala - are inspired by great, flavourful art
   
10. Mausritter - like the idea of exploring the day-to-day world but where everything bigger than a mouse could be a danger
    
11. Midnight of the Century - want a dark and character-driven story about a manhunt for a killer
    
12. Mörk Borg - clicked on the link to the Mörk Borg website and thought "YES!"
    
13. Mythic Bastionland - have listened to me talking about or playing this game on The Smiling Fox or Luck Roll for hours and hours and wondered "Why is this guy talking about this so much?"
    
14. The Unofficial Highlander II: The Quickening Roleplaying Game - are either interested in Highlander or have absolutely no interest in Highlander (in other words, a game for everyone!)
    
15. World of Dungeons - want to play D&D without reading a book
    

 Here are some stats:

• Live sessions ran as a GM: 22
• Live sessions as a player in a group: 12
  
• Play-by-post games ran as a GM: 1
• Play-by-post games as a player: 2
• Solo sessions: 23

And now, on to the awards 🏆

• Most played / least surprising inclusion: Mythic Bastionland
  
• Funniest game: The Unofficial Highlander II: The Quickening Roleplaying Game
• Best achievement in delivering on a (not straightforward) goal: Dialect
  
• Most memorable ending: Cthulhu Dark
• Most satisfying crunch: Age of Vikings
  

Tabletop intentions for 2026:

1. More frequent Luck Roll episodes. I've done 6 episodes this year, and expect to get a 7th released in December. The pace is pretty slow and I'd like to speed it up (without making it too onerous for myself, as it is very much a hobby). But I've kind of worked out my process for it, and I think it will come together a little more smoothly next year.
   
2. Stay focused on ongoing stuff! The TTRPG space has a lot of distraction fuel. It's very easy to have my attention pulled in many different ways, so I want to find a better balance of concentrating on projects I have started while also having some time to explore new things.
3. Get better at connecting threads together. I have plenty of experience now with using RPG tools to generate new story threads and characters and locations, but I think I would benefit from using a little more GM fiat (or something more random) to start pulling those disparate parts together.
   

Play to (incrementally) find out

There are RPGs that ask you to think of complications, setbacks, plot twists etc. in response to certain results. I've sometimes experienced fatigue with this. It feels difficult to keep coming up with complications, even when the game provides prompts for doing so. I think I've worked out the fatigue problem, in my case, and at the root is the idea of playing to find out.

"Play to find out" is one of those things that I've heard and read so often that I took it for granted that I had internalised it when actually, I don't think I had.

At first impression, "play to find out" means "don't plot out a complicated story before the game starts". But there's a risk that you take that advice and focus on the timing element. So, during play, you get to a moment when you're asked to introduce a narrative element, and you start plotting something complicated. You may think you're still playing to find out, because the complicated plot you are devising is being added during play rather than before it.

I think this interpretation can easily lead to fatigue. I've done this, and essentially it is taking the challenging work of plotting a story and moving it from the low pressure context of prep to the higher pressure context of in-game improv.

A fuller interpretation of "play to find out" is freeing and less likely to cause fatigue. At those moments when you need to introduce a complication, you don't need to approach it as if you are writing a story, where disparate threads are tied together in a satisfying way. You just need an incremental change. And you don't need to understand what that change means yet, because you'll play to find out.

Here's an example. I was playing a solo game where my character was tracking a thief who had taken something valuable. At the outset I didn't define what the valuable thing was, or any details about the thief. That all sounds reasonable from the perspective of playing to find out. My character entered a building during the pursuit and I rolled a result that prompted a new story element. I then did the work of defining the faction that had hired the thief, and some detail on what was stolen and what they want it for.

That was just traditional prep, moved from before the session to during it. It's a lot of decision making and consideration to be prompted by one die roll.

Consider this alternative: The character pursues the thief into a building and there is a complication. The complication is "you hear them talking to someone else". That's an incremental change that ultimately may lead to the same plot, but it's mentally easier and it is more playable. The PC now has choices about confronting the other characters or waiting to assess who they are first. Instead of thinking about information unknown to the PC, I'm just presenting them with the next thing they are aware of.

The writerly instinct may say "Yeah, but I'll still need to come up with who that other person is. Why not do it now?" Not necessarily. Maybe the PC will think they are outnumbered and retreat. Maybe they'll go in guns blazing and this new character won't last long enough to do anything. Maybe the pursued thief is just playing a recording, Home Alone style, to make it seem like they have reinforcements. Play to find out!

The other type of fatigue that can arise here is a kind of repetitive distortion and twisting of the story itself. If you introduce an elaborate narrative element every time you roll a complication - new characters, factions, plot twists - then the result is a story that becomes so twisted that it's like a worn piece of metal ready to snap. Incremental changes or hints at new circumstances, are far better at maintaining the integrity of the story.

The writerly instinct may pop up again now and say "Yeah, but eventually you have to do some work of tying things together." Yes, I think so too. But (I hope) the longer you hold off on "writing to find out" the more pieces will have fallen into place. The mental energy required to complete the puzzle should be lower. Remember, I'm not trying to solve the problem of how to write the best story, but rather the problem of how to spend mental energy while playing a game.

One more example that I think is useful is from the Ironsworn move Pay the Price. The move gives you the options of suffering the most obvious negative outcome, rolling to choose between two negative outcomes, or rolling on a d100 table to choose the outcome. In the past,  I tended to shy away from the first option of the most obvious negative outcome. It seemed like the lazy option with the less twisty and interesting outcome. And, I suppose, it is that. But sometimes lazy and less twisty means things progress smoothly.

At some point, when you're always reaching for the more challenging answer to a question, you've got to ask who is actually Paying the Price. Ahhhh.