Under A Ruined Mall: Weird Occultronic Flora and Candlesnuffers

Planning out the dungeon for Gygax 75 Challenge using the weekend prompts from #RPGaDAY2020:

SHADE & light

The dungeon is the underground structures below where the mall used to be, amidst the ruins of the cyberpunk dystopia. A bunch of these steps are not done but that's fine, the Gygax 75 booklet specifically says that unfinished stuff each week is ok and you just move on and come back to it later, citing Hemingway's technique of ending writing sessions in the middle of a sentence so it's easy to start up again when you come back to it.

Tasks:

i. "Describe the entrance to the dungeon in 7-10 words".

Collapsed ramp into parking garage overgrown with metallic thorns.

ii. "Set aside at least one page of your journal for a point-to-point map."

I did this as well as drawing a quick sketch of the overall structure for myself just to keep the relative locations of things straight in my head. Also I'll probably run it as a pointcrawl anyway.

iii. "For each level, include d6+6 rooms/areas and connect them"

iv. "Include d3+1 ways up or down per level"

v. "Come up with three themes (one per level). Roll d3+2 for each to generate a budget"

So each level has some randomly-determined numbers. I rolled em all and kept track in a table:

Dungeon Level:	Parking Garage	Subway	Sewers and Undercity
Rooms/Areas:	12	9	10
Exits:	3	2	2
Theme Budget:	3	5	3

The themes for each level--if this is an introductory dungeon in this setting then I want it to explore some of the core aesthetics of the setting.

Level one: the parking garage. Theme: cursed vegetation. The occult calamity did all sorts of weird things, but one of the most omnipresent is the fusion of electronics with nature. Wiresnakes, electric berries, metallic thorns. The parking garage, being the level closest to the surface, will have the most contact with the "natural" world above and so will be overgrown and infested with weird occultronic flora and fauna.

Level two: the subway. Theme: technocultists. This is a way to explore the "occult" part of the setting. There is opportunity for some truly strange imagery, not just hooded figures and electric devil skeletons but also rituals and bargains and maybe an actual evil computer. Plus maybe the cultists are in the subway area because the connection to "transit" is important--are they trying to get somewhere else? Bring something here? Change something?

Level three: the undercity and sewers. Theme: shade and light (ha, there's the #RPGaDAY2020 prompts!). I'm basing this on my memory of the Seattle Underground Tour, of the city underneath the new one built on top. A cyberpunk dystopia absolutely would have layers of old buildings at the bottom. This idea of a huge futuristic neon world sitting on top of the ruins of the past literally left in the dark is very evocative. I was thinking things like areas of magical darkness, and bottomless pits, and will-o-the-wisps-but-they're-tiny-drones, and some kind of creature called a "candlesnuffer".

vi. "Make a list of 11 different monsters and place them".

TODO but for a start, there's: wiresnakes, technocultists, electric devil skeletons, candlesnuffers, wispdrones, rats, sewercrawlers, underdwellers, memory ghosts, empty spines, and man-eating plants.

vii. "Spread d6 features throughout the dungeon."

I rolled 4.

viii. "For each room/area, note whether there is treasure."

TODO

ix. "Name three wondrous items and locate them in the dungeon."

What kind of stuff can I pull from the source material to use here?

x. "Spend any remaining theme budget adding detail."

What kinds of sensory details fit into the areas of this map? And specific things to see?

Extra Credit:

"Map out all three levels on graph paper."

No that's hard let me just do a pointcrawl.

"Create a wandering monster table."

11 slots, probably different from the ones I stocked the dungeon with in step vi. WELP time to reskin a bunch of random monsters from the old books.

Lots of things to come back to!

Crooked Considerations: #RPGaDAY2020 7 - Couple

I've been doing the #RPGaDAY2020 daily blogging prompts, which this year come in the form of a dungeon map:

Today's prompt is

Couple

On and off over the past decade or so I've run a one-on-one game for my partner. I think the way an rpg plays with one GM and one PC is really fascinating and still an underexplored space. I've taken to calling them "duets", after a series of articles by Kirk Johnson-Weider on RPGnet several years ago.

Part of what is really interesting about duets is the close relationship you build during play. The focus is always on the PC--there are no other players to share the spotlight! It demands full engagement from the single player throughout, and a singular focus from the GM. It is very easy to build attachements to characters when the player-GM relationship is that close, and that leads to some difficulties when gameplay is stopped by PC death or other incapacitation. I think it's what I was trying to capture when I wrote guiding principles for developing Crook and several started with "there is only one player". If the PC dies, there is nobody else to continue the adventure. Even if the player rolled up a new PC on the spot, how would that new PC get involved in an adventure that was driven by the unique narrative of the previous PC?

Most systems assume that there will be multiple PCs. This is a big deal when play is assumed to be heavily combat-based or co-operation based--D&D for example, but really in most RPGs that aren't narrative-led. One way to account for this is to simply adjust the difficulty level. D&D 3 and up has CR calculations that can help; the OSR has Scarlet Heroes' clever way of translating ranges of damage into single digits based on hit dice. It also has the "fray die", which essentially gives the PC a way to taking out low-level baddies each turn for free. This generalizes into giving the PC extra powers, or increasing their power level. Heck, you could just "cheat" and give the player multiple PCs to control, or hirelings and henchmen.

But what if you don't want to change the power dynamic of the PC compared to the game world? I think in general, out of an instinct for self-preservation, most PCs that are on their own will try to avoid combat or difficult team-based challenges. Solo PCs will avoid situations where they could be taken out of play through death or otherwise. And that's not just out of self-presevation, that's to keep the duet game going!

Now that's not to say that the threat of death can't still be omnipresent. Foolish actions can (and if you're playing in an OSR style, should) still lead to dire consequences. But if the PC will be avoiding mortal peril, how else can you bring conflict into the game? I think it can come from risk-reward decisions, moral choices, and consequences for actions which lead to new adventure opportunities. Situations where it's unclear what might happen, and where potential outcomes drive the story further. To borrow from several modern rpg systems, we want the PC to fail forward: failure shouldn't throw up a wall that stops them from continuing, but it could throw up an alternate, more difficult, path.

I think (to clarify my own thoughts here explicitly), I'm saying that "you die" is the same kind of play-blocking as "you fail to pick the lock".

So for Crook, I want to have something that avoids blocking, something that has specific rules for failing forward or success by degrees/with consequences. Something in the realm of games Powered by the Apocalypse and its progeny (Blades in the Dark for sure), or Mouse Guard. Fate Accelerated is quite good for this too! NB these are games where the player is given some more narrative agency over things external to the PC, but I don't think that's strictly necessary to have a mechanic that avoids blocking play upon failure.

SO: In Crook, failing means that things don't go the way the PC wanted (whether that's slightly or catastrophically), but the PC can die only if they really deserve it AND if the player agrees to it.

2d6 Electric Devil Skeletons: Gygax 75 Challenge Week 2

I've been working through Ray Otus' Gygax 75 rpg design challenge, making a post-apocalyptic setting where an occult calamity brought a cyberpunk dystopia to ruin (and it takes place about 150 years after the cyberpunk setting a friend's making for gygax75).

SPOILERS FOR PLAYERS

Tasks for Week 2:

i. "Get a sheet of hex paper."

I drew one by hand in a children's lined exercise book. 17x13 hexes, points to the sides. Will probably redraw on a different scale in Hex Kit.

ii. "One settlement of significant size."

The Dolmens. Central. Based on a dangerous area in Sean's gygax setting that features recently-built megalithic structures. Well several generations later they aren't recent anymore and the area isn't dangerous anymore--people just live in amongst these ramshackle stone slab lean-tos.

iii. "Two other settlements."

Trading Post. West edge of map. Situated conveniently between several large settlements, this village of tents and market stalls is a great place to arrange a meeting, get mods repaired, fill up on fresh water and greasy vendor food, and hear rumours from other parts of the world.

Wind Farm. North northeast. You got to charge up your powercells somewhere. Rusty old blades spin atop patched-up towers. This is like a community garden--everyone maintains it because everyone uses it. Doesn't stop some people from trying to own it though.

iv. "One major terrain feature."

Malfunctioning Solar Forest. South edge of map. I read somewhere that in the future we'd have fake trees covered in solar panel leaves that rotate to face the sun, atop trunks full of filters that remove CO2 and toxins from the air and produce algae. This forest's broken though. And full of wiresnakes.

v. "One mysterious site to explore."

Memory Garden. East. This is like a graveyard, but there are no bodies and the markers are things. Old coats and handwritten notes, abstract sculptures and grafitti and bicycle wheels with candy wrappers tied on the spokes. Nobody knows how it started, but tradition dictates that visitors leave a memory for someone or some event gone by. The memory guardians ensure that the esoteric traditions are followed.

vi. "One main dungeon entrance."

Abandoned Parking Garage. Southeast. Amongst the ruins of a cyberpunk sprawl there's a way to get into the old parking garage system that served the downtown megamall and associated office tower blocks. It probably connects to sewer systems and old subway tunnels that haven't been used in over a century. Early survivors probably stashed things down there, but people and creatures and other, nastier, things have moved in probably.

regarding scale.

I drew it with 3-mile hexes in mind but the scale of things doesn't seem right so I'll probably redraw with the recommended 1-mile hexes.

extra credit.

"Pimp your map."

I didn't do anything to my physical map but I'll mess around with Hex Kit. I wanted more stuff on the map though I added another area:

The Dominos. An area of old residential towers that have collapsed in such a way that it reminds folk of tumbled dominos. Its surrounded by dunes of grey ash--the eroded remains of concrete and ashphalt. Somewhere in the grey wastes is an enormous abandoned arcology-pyramid with a huge spherical chunk missing out the side.

"Create a random encounters table."

Hell yeah. I used the old advice of "2 is always a dragon and 12 is always a wizard", interpreted through this setting lens.

2d6	Encounter	Description
2	Cryoleviathan.	Sleeping. It hoards power sources, and collects people. It puts them into the hundreds of cryogenic pods inside of its body.
3	Ritual circle.	Unholy computing stuff is wired all wrong. In the centre of the circle, someone is wearing a cyberhelm, jacked into the beyond.
4	Patrolling fascist drone.	Will beat anyone who isn't an upstanding citizen of New Haven (which stopped existing over a century ago).
5	Technocultists.	1d6+1 cultists on the hunt for materials. They need blood and power.
6	Wiresnakes.	2d4 hide somewhere they could be stepped on. Attracted to power sources: they want to attach their prong-teeth and suck them dry.
7	Travelers.	2d4-1 fellow survivors. Wary of strangers. Don't want no trouble. Will trade if reaction roll goes well.
8	Riders.	1d6+1 antagonistic folk. Probably on horses, though 1 in 6 might have an electric mountain bike. They don't believe in laws and want to take stuff.
9	Electric Devil Skeletons.	They want skin to cover their chrome. 2d6 skeletons lurk here.
10	Cyberghouls.	1d6+2 people who modded so much they've lost their minds.
11	An abandoned campsite.	They left in a hurry--stuff's still lying around. A corpse is in one of the tents; it's missing its blood.
12	Ritual hacker.	They're setting up equipment and aim to call a rogue AI for "favours".

Technoccult: Gygax 75 Challenge Week 1

A couple of months ago Ray Otus released the Gygax 75 Challenge, a 5-week workbook guiding one through making a small campaign setting based on the advice of an article Gary Gygax published in a zine less than a year after D&D came out.

It looks super fun so I printed it out and bound it with a pamphlet stitch and flipped through and saw a one-line suggestion that it could be a cyberpunk setting instead of standard fantasy. I shared my excitement about this with Sean Smith (creator of such wonders as Quarrel & Fable, Gully-Toads, and Exuviae), who it turns out had -also- decided to do the Gygax 75 with a cyberpunk setting.

WELL

I decided it would be fun to do a setting linked to his.  Mine takes place 100 years after a calamity destroys whatever cyberpunk civilization existed, and might even feature the same location as a ruin. Fuck knows if this will actually realize in that way but it's a hell of a good idea to start off running with.

What would the the post-apocalypse be like after a cyberpunk future?

Anyway, Gygax 75 Week 1:

i. "Get/create a notebook." This blog is it!  also the simplenote app on my phone. I did consider using a physical notebook and I might do that for maps, but I find it easier to capture ideas in text digitally.

ii. "Develop your pitch." So it's a kind of post-cyber-occult-pocalypse. Here goes:

    1. A century ago, the technologic future suffered an occult calamity.

    2. Humanity scavenges for survival in the ruins of a cyperpunk dystopia.

    3. Electric devil skeletons animated by technocultists lurk in collapsed arcologies and burnt-out server farms.

    4. There is a belief that if the dark ritual that caused the calamity can be discovered, it can be reversed. Not everyone wants this.

    5. Power sources are valuable because old cyber-tech still exists and can be repaired and run; batteries are sparingly traded for other goods; "if it runs a current it's currency".

    6. Forests of broken solar-panel trees snaked through with exposed wires; vast expanses of grey ash made of former office tower blocks.

    7. Technoccult magicks are accomplished through rituals that blend blood with computing; sorcery is just another kind of hacking; demons are indistinguishable from rogue AIs.

iii. "Gather your sources of inspiration." Not to be viewed by players, so close your eyes I guess.

    1. Mad Max series (George Miller). Post-apocalyptic settings full of freaks in gonzo costumes roaming around a ruined landscape owe much to Mad Max.

    2. Dangerous Days (Perturbator). The visual aesthetics of dark synthwave are just right on in general but Dangerous Days in particular--I mean there's one image that literally says "SATAN IS A COMPUTER"

    3. Polybius (urban legend). The idea of a satantic mind-control arcade game released as a psychological experiment in portland in the 80s is THE BEST. also other games where demonic forces bleed into the real world like Pony Island and Undertale

    4. The neon graveyard (Las Vegas). What would the bright neon cityscape of a cyberpunk dystopia look like post-collapse? I reckon it'd be like the vegas neon graveyard.

    5. The Matrix trilogy (the Wachowskis). Specifically the real world outside the matrix with that wild underground city and giant vat-walls full of dreaming battery-humans.

    6. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott). What if this society collapsed? Those giant pyramids and video screens, dark and abandoned?

    7. the occult origins of personal computing (Al Robertson). This cyberpunk author has spoken on the idea that the pioneers of the internet, virtual reality, and mass technology were inspired by occult and psychedelic movements. Never mind if it's true or not, that idea's cool as hell.

extra credit. "Assemble a mood board" yes good

That'll do for now I think! Maybe a hack of Mutant Future could run this pretty good.

Crook: Fleshing Out Clients and Jobs

In Crook, the start of any story is our protagonist looking at their list of job offers and choosing one to pursue.

I have been thinking of this like a more focused version of the rumours a party of adventurers might hear while playing in a sandbox game. These are the hooks that lead them to interesting, potentially pre-prepared places (stocked dungeons, bounded explorable locations like forests or swamps, small towns with secret cults, etc). In Crook, because we're narrowing our focus to jobs that -patrons- offer, a way to still capture a similar sense of freedom, exploration and discovery like in a "true" sandbox game is to make a -really engaging- job board.

So what details make a job listing interesting?

The generator I detailed in a previous post provides details that allow the player to make some risk/reward decisions--the outcome literally tells you how risky the job is and what the reward will be--but aside from a very brief description of the type of patron and the kind of job, there are no evocative details to actually act as hooks.

I think the details that do the most work in this regard would include:

    -the patron: their profession/occupation, and their relationship to the crook and any factions (and potentially their personality quirks).

    -the job: the key people or objects involved, an interesting location, the obstacles, and a theme.

My instinct as always is to turn to random generators to create some inspiration for each of these factors that the GM can flesh out into details. However, that's not strictly necessary. In the same way that you can stock the rumour tables in your sandbox game with hooks leading to prepared dungeon crawls and encounters and other already-existing stuff, the crook's job board can have listings that would lead the crook to prepared adventures. Pretty much any "find this item" or "interact with this person" job can easily be fitted onto any existing adventure module.

BUUUUT it's pretty fun to create a whole adventure from just a few random prompts that then interact both the GM's setting knowledge and with the decisions of our motivated crook.

The structure I used as a starting point to make jobs for Penny was:

    patron-type occupation; descriptor descriptor place; job-type; risk; opposition; distance; reward

A lot of this is provided by the job generator: ie patron-type is criminal/noble/merchant/etc and job-type is theft/smuggle/escort/etc--risk, distance, and reward are settled too.

Sometimes I would use the "Sample Crimes", "Location" and "Potential Foes" tables at the back of Scarlet Heroes to generate some of these details, but those crimes are more for the PC to -investigate- rather than commit (the list includes crimes like "forced marriage", "treason", "dark worship", and "rape"--I'm not going to include those as jobs for the PC to do in my games and I recommend you don't either).

But mostly I'd generate the details from scratch using several different tables:

The patron's occupation came from a list of "101 fantasy jobs and professions" made by Ennead Games (now no longer available individually, though it -is- part of a $500+ bundle)--which I liked not only for the huge list of occupations but also because each one included a short hook this kind of NPC could offer (ie a gravedigger mentions that bodies are being dug up, a blacksmith needs a rare alloy for a special weapon, a teacher asks for help locating a missing child...).  This would combine with the patron-type from the job generator, ie "criminal lore master", "noble/merchant musician", and "military blacksmith". This provided a really good jumping-off point--you can already imagine the kind of work each of these combos might offer. The rest of the patron's details would come from numerous other generators that would provide personality quirks, names, ancestry/culture, etc.

The details of the job beyond just whether it's theft/smuggling/etc is a pair of descriptors, a place, and the opposition. Most of the time I would generate these using my favourite GM tool ever, Instant Game (another product that was -almost- not available anymore, as its creators and their publishing imprint Animalball Partners have vanished from the internet--but a copy of the original freely-available PDF is on RPGGeek). It had d100 tables for all the relevant categories and would result in evocative prompts like "gloomy ritual correctional system, opposition mythical legend", "steady tough government office, opposition mindless horde", and "awesome secret armoury, opposition invaders/outsiders".

These prompts about the job, in combination with the details of the patron, are enough to create a really evocative hook for our crook, and gets you about 80% of the way to what you need to run the session.

I would refine the results into a more specific job offer, using details of the world that were established through play in previous sessions.  For example "awesome secret armoury" was part of a job offer that turned into:

    "Maganak Five Names, elven diplomat, wants a wand delivered to a secret city defense armoury. but city is overrun by oozes. reward: some coin, and whatever you steal."

The city overrun by oozes was just an offhand comment in an earlier session of the game that I jotted down to keep for later.  Meanwhile "gloomy ritual correctional system" combined with other prompts to become:

    "Cotme Ower, halfling ferryman. smuggles contraband and people to/from island prison of Glama-worshipping cult of liars. wants help to con prison guards of a particular shipment. reward: standard fee and one set of enchanted armour"

Don't those sound like fun jobs to get involved in? Not only that but they give pretty clear direction for what the GM could prepare for the session if the crook chooses to do that job.

Now the question is, as I develop Crook into a Thing: should it have its own tables, or can I just recommend the use of these kinds of tables? I don't think I could do a unique job of filling a d100 table better than the tables I use, but also -none- of the tables that form the core of the job generator are widely available anymore. Should Crook include its own generators to provide prompts, or just include guidance on what makes a good job hook?

I haven't decided yet, and out of cowardice will put the question aside and work on something else entirely for the next several posts!

Another Job for Penny: Detailing Jobs for Thieves, Interpreting the Value of Favours, and the Concept of Notoriety

Last time, I wrote about how hacking a sci-fi OSR mission generator for a tabletop duet game led to discovering a recursive random table that alters itself.

This time I want to flesh out in more detail how several random tables combined to generate interesting jobs for Penny the thief, and try tweaking the way some of the tables work.

The results of rolling on the job tables gives you only this information: a type of patron, a type of job, and its risk, distance, and reward. The patron table was detailed last time, but I'll include it here with the other tables (which I hacked from the sci-fi generator):

***

Thief Job Generator 0.2

Patron: 1d6
    1-2: criminal
    3:  noble/merchant
    4: government
    5: military
    6: former patron

    (if 6, roll on Former Patrons subtable. every time a job is accepted from a new patron, they're added to the Former Patrons subtable.)

Job Type: 1d10 (criminal: -1 to roll; military or government: +1 to roll)

   

    1: piracy

    2: theft

    3: confidence scam

    4: smuggling

    5: bizarre

    6: bounty

    7: escort

    8: delivery

    9: rescue

    10: disaster relief

Risk Level (ie; Number of Encounters/Challenges): 1d6

    1-2: three

    3: four

    4: five

    5-6: six

    (add Notoriety level to the roll)

Distance from Current Location: 1d6

    1: current location

    2: nearest village

    3: nearest city

    4: 1 weeks' travel

    5: 2 weeks' travel

    6: a months' travel

Reward: 1d6 & based on Risk & Distance rolls & Notoriety of thief:

        X = (risk+notoriety)*distance

    1-2: wealth worth X*40g

    3-4: favour (proportional to X)

    5: gear worth X*60g

    6: add 1 to Notoriety and roll again

***

There's a couple of things I want to point out and work on:

Changing the range of results on the Patrons table so that "criminal" happens on 1 and "former patron" happens of 5-6 would make jobs from existing patrons more likely, which can allow fleshing out those characters from interacting with them more often--which seems like it would be pretty fun.  In practice when using the table, sometimes a new patron would be generated that seems similar to an existing one, and so I'd just make it a job from that existing patron.

Shifting the range of outcomes on the Job Type table by just adding or subtracting 1 from the roll to make the extremes unavailable is a cool idea. I wonder what it would be like if it was a roll with a "normal" distribution like 2d6?  That would be a way to make certain types of jobs more likely and certain types of jobs more rare. I might do this and set "theft" to the centre of the distribution at 7 to make it the most likely kind of job.

You could make certain types of jobs -only- offered by certain patrons by assigning them an outcome outside of the normal range and using the +1/-1 trick. For example, 2d6 can give you outcomes ranging from 2 to 12. If you want only criminal patrons to offer an assassination job -and- make it really rare, you can assign that to an outcome of 1, and give the criminal patron a -1 roll modifier on the Job Type table.

The Risk Level can be interpreted differently based on the type of job. If it's a dungeon delve to retrieve an item, then the number of encounters could be the number of "interesting" rooms in the dungeon (ie a fight, a trap, an environmental challenge, etc). If it's a mission involving navigating the treacherous relationships between a number of gangs, then it could be the number of parties involved. It could be the number of locations that must be visited to collect parts of a document.  The Risk number could even be more abstract and refer to increasingly dangerous random encounter tables (ie; if it's Risk 1, roll on the Basic Encounter table, 2 roll twice, if it's 3, roll on the Challenging Encounter table, 4 roll twice, 5 roll on Deadly Encounter, 6 roll twice--or something like that). Note that the roll is added to the thief's Notoriety level--more on that later.

The Distance table is interesting. I adapted it for the kind of travel scale that made sense for a game where a thief goes from place to place doing jobs for patrons. This encourages travel from point to point on the world map, and this travel can either be abstracted away entirely, made into a ration-using navigation minigame, or turned into a full hexcrawl, as per the preference of your duet.

The Reward table needs tweaking to help with interpreting the results. I really like that it's based proportionally on the Risk and Distance results (and Notoriety--we'll get to it!). This is easy to understand for wealth and gear worth some multiple of the number, (and this multiplier should be set sensibly for the currency of your game: probably some fraction of the cost of a sword or potion, or of the debt your thief is paying off) But what does it mean for "Favour Owed"--the most interesting result on the table?

Before tackling that, I wanted to understand the way the results work. The result of multiplying Risk by Distance ranges from 1 to 36, but it's skewed--the most likely results are 6 and 12 (rather than the 18 you'd expect from a balanced distribution). On a graph, the peak is to the left and there is a long tail to the right.  This means that our thief can regularly expect low-to-middling value rewards but allows for a wide range of surprises to occur. You can get a little as 40 g, which is a job a thief probably wouldn't take just for the money, or as much as 2160g worth of gear, which could completely re-outfit our thief--but most likely you're looking in the 200 to 900 g range. However, a bunch of results just aren't possible to get, because you're multiplying two d6 rolls--you can't get 35, or 19, or 7... this results in less round numbers for currency value rewards, which is great for avoiding round numbers. Why offer a reward of 250 g when you can offer 240 g? And if you end up with 480 g worth of gear, some if it will be fun weird filler stuff because most equipment lists cost round numbers.

The question then becomes how to interpet this result as the value of a favour. An easy way to get around that is to treat it just like wealth or gear, but delayed or specific to certain context. Ie; the patron can pay off a bounty on your head worth X*50g, or source a special potion you need, or get you a specialist hireling for job you're doing, or a place worth that much to use as a safehouse, or perhaps a permanent discount at a particular merchant.

But the thing that makes favours interesting as a reward is their potential non-monetary value and their flexibility.  You can forsee our thief calling in a favour to arrange a meeting with an elusive clan leader, or to get safe passage through a warzone, or to hide in the secret basement of the shop when the royal guard is sweeping the town, or store something in the count's personal vault. And the thief will certainly come up with unexpected favours to ask of their patrons. Ultimately it might not be possible to "quantify" the value of such a favour, so probably the best we can do is ballpark the range of outcomes, provide some examples and leave it to the GM's discretion.

Lets say for now we carve out the range thus:

  

Patron Favour Value:

    1-6: Small Favour

    7-19: A Favour

    20+: Extraordinary Favour

This is probably the thing that needs the most work. It would probably be easier to just add Risk+Distance and centre this on a normal 2d6 distribution. OR I could just collapse it entirely! A result of "favour" is exactly that, no monetary value considered, and it's up to the duet to figure it out.  I kind of like the simplicity of that, but maybe there's an equally elegant way of still using the Risk*Distance number.

Finally: Notoriety.  Notoriety was my way of figuring out what "Reward Risk" meant in the original sci-fi mission generator I hacked for this. The really interesting recursive result on a 6 to "roll again and add 1 to Reward Risk for all future missions" felt like an abstraction that could be made specific and meaningful in the world of thiefy adventuring. We could take that number and store it separately from the Reward table and make it matter elsewhere. My solution was to make it a kind of reputation mechanic: as the thief does more jobs throughout the world, their Notoriety increases. As they become more Notorious, the jobs that patrons offer are more dangerous--and more rewarding. Not only that, but successfully completing a job gives a chance of Notoriety increasing, as part of the reward!

There is scope for Notoriety to interact with other game mechanics. If there are morale checks, perhaps rando bandits are less likely to stand their ground against a notorious thief. If there are recognition checks, perhaps merchants are more likely to provide a discount, or share the secret menu--but so too are town guards more likely to see through a hasty disguise. Depending on the amount of record-keeping you want, Notoriety can vary in different regions of the world based on where jobs are completed.  Perhaps certain patrons no longer want to offer jobs to a thief that everyone has heard of. And of course, depending on your particular thiefy exploits, GM fiat can award a point of Notoriety as the result of doing something particularly public. There's even the opportunity for the thief to do things to -lower- their Notoriety because it's making things difficult for them.

It turned out to be quite a meaty way to use a single number!

Anyway: here's a sample set of outcomes from rolling on all these tables:

> criminal, piracy, risk lvl 6: six encounters, two weeks travel, gear valuing 1800g

> noble/merchant, bizarre, risk lvl 5: six encounters, next village, +1 Notoriety and a favour

>noble/merchant, theft, risk lvl 1: three encounters, current location, a small favour

These starting points leave quite a bit of fleshing out to do. Who actually is the patron, and what is the specific nature of the job?

Next time: MORE TABLES

A Job for Penny: Discovering Recursive Random Tables

In a period of time in which it was difficult to play tabletop games with our friends due to time and distance, my partner and I made up a game where I GM'd her adventures as Penny, a master thief who would take jobs for fun and profit. We used Scarlet Heroes, whatever maps I could find, and a large amount of random tables to allow Penny to play in a fairly open sandbox.

The name of this blog comes from this game.

Many of my interests in RPG design and GMing were developed, if not sparked, by Penny's Ventures: one-on-one games (which Kirk Johnson-Weider, in his excellent series of columns on RPGnet, called -duets-), player-focused prep (ie; trying to create only what would matter to the player--especially important when there is only one), timer mechanics for pacing (very much related to fronts from Dungeon World and the clocks in Blades in the Dark) and--most enduringly--the use of several random tables mashed together to quickly generate a number of hooks and encounters.

Penny would receive criminal job offers in dead-drops she had secreted throughout the world. Each job would be from a patron (that she either knew already or was someone new) and included broad details of the nature of the job, potential rewards, and how far it was to travel from her current location. She could choose whichever one caught her interest, at which point we would use the selected job, a few more random tables, and the current context of the gameworld to set up the details of the game session--either right there at the table (in a quick and dirty manner), or well beforehand if I had texted my partner with a list of jobs and they picked one for the next session.

I want to dig into how I generated Penny's job offers, because it was key to make them interesting and fun as well as tie in to Penny's background and the gameworld.

It started with researching patrons and jobs as used in sci-fi freelancer games like Traveller. The patron-job structure needed for Penny was a clear analogue and I figured I didn't need to reinvent the wheel when I could just reskin a sci-fi one for the generic fantasy realm Penny played in. I ended up choosing the Mission Generator from Thunderegg's OSR Sci Fi GM Screen they made for running White*Star--it was freely available (at the time--I'm unable to find the pdf they offered now but the blurb on the RPGGeek page confirms my memory), very simple, and very hackable.

It boils down to 5 random tables:

1d4 to get a patron. (Corporate, Criminal, Government, or Military)
1d10 for what they want. (ie; Smuggling, Escort, Con, etc)
1d6 for the risk (how many encounters it will entail).
1d6 for how distant the job is. (your current planet, in the next star system, etc)
1d6 for the reward.

I liked that the "what they want" roll was modified by the type of patron. -1 for Criminal, +1 for Military or Government. The table is written so that the extreme outcomes (and therefore, certain kind of jobs) are more or less likely depending on the patron. Some of the tables made certain outcomes more likely by giving the same result for a range of rolls (ie; a roll of 1-3 gets a certain result).

Also, the reward was a) not always monetary (one outcome was "favour owed" which I LOVE), but also b) proportional to the Risk roll+Distance roll, which is a neat way to automatically ensure that harder jobs are worth more.

The thing that -really- caught my attention was the reward table result for rolling a 6: "Roll again, plus add +1 to Reward Risk for all future missions". Over time, missions get more difficult and take a longer time, in a way that is disconnected from the PC's level. That is, on the assumption that this is actually permanently increasing the Risk roll (AKA nudging upward the likey number of encounters the mission will entail), and not just inflating the Reward on its own (because "Reward Risk" is not explained).

In any case, the idea that the result of a roll on a random table could alter future rolls on that table is -very cool-. The use of nested random tables is long-established, where a certain result on a top-level table gets you to roll on a different sub-table. There are also results like "roll again on this table" or the more interesting "roll again and combine". But here we have random tables that are -recursive-; that not only refer to themselves but can -alter- themselves.

Has anyone seen recursive tables before? Let me know--I couldn't find any in a cursory skim of bookshelf.

***

The table determining the patron offering Penny a job is as follows:

1d6: Patron
1-2: criminal
3:  noble/merchant
4: government
5: military
6: former patron

If the result is 6, we roll on the Former Patrons subtable. Every time Penny accepts a job from a new patron (1-5), they're added to the Former Patrons subtable.

As the game progresses, Penny's list of former patrons grows, and she will receive job offers from people she's worked for before. This gives a nice sense of continuity, and the potential for some interesting decisions and mechanics. What if refusing to take enough jobs from a former patron culls them from the table? Or if choosing between two former patrons will cause conflict between them--say, if one patron asks Penny to steal from another?

Next time, I'll talk about how I flesh out the patrons and their jobs, and experiment with the structure of the tables.

In My *DREAMS

After some time away (during which OSR turned within and G+ died), I wanted to see what was going on, and found SWORDDREAM (which for my own reference, tounge-in-cheekly backronyms to Second Wave of RPG Design, DIY Rules Everything Around Me).

(I found this post most helpful in understanding what *DREAM is and might be and what it isn't and shouldn't. Also the splat is there because not everyone dreams of swords.)

There are nine principles that people have pinned to the door and I wanted to put them here (again for my own reference have you seen how many fucking blogs are in my roll I can't keep track of anything) and jot down some thoughts on each one if I had any.

Copied from a post on Fish in the Pot, with my notes under each one:

THE NINE PRINCIPLES OF *DREAM

1. *DREAM stands against hate & prejudice in all forms. We seek to actively oppose bigotry & harassment in gaming communities. We create kind spaces.
        The less people like Pundit and Zak in the scene the better, and the more diversity among designers and players the better. Even if this started as a kneejerk reaction to the shitheads (which it really doesn't feel like), it's important to make this value crystal clear.

2. *DREAM works to be radically inclusive. We seek support and encourage creators, GMs, Players, and organizers from marginalized groups. And we seek to get better at this all the time.
        Same as above thought. Also: how can -I- be better at this?

3. *DREAM encourages the use of sensible tools for communication and consent.
        The X Card comes to mind. Are there other tools?

4. *DREAM opposes harassment and strives for non-toxic discourse. We value best intentions, we call in before calling out, and we start discussions before we make accusations. We seek to empower everyone to curate their spaces.
        Thoughts 1 and 2 again. Curating our own spaces is important. Nobody has to listen to shitheads if they don't want to, especially not in their own house. This isn't some rationalist agora. I feel like Principles 2-4 are ways of implementing the broader value expressed in 1.

5. *DREAM values creators & their work. We support equitable pay for professional creators and fair treatment for hobbyists.
        "Fuck you, pay me." But also, fair treatment for hobbyists means that if people hack your work, or criticize it--don't go after them.

6. *DREAM values a DIY approach to creation. We question gatekeeping, we take alternative approaches when traditional publishing models fail, and we believe anyone can make great games.

7. *DREAM values experimentation in game design & world-building.
        I like this a great deal.

8. *DREAM isn’t defined by, but is interested in: anti-canons, emergent story, generative worlds, kitbashing, non-violent play options, and more. And it is fine if some of these things contradict each other.
        So much of these specific interests are my own that I really want this scene to persist (and of course I should contribute to the pile if I really mean it), but to pick out one that challenges my preconceptions: -emergent story-. I have used Fate a bunch and enjoyed many so-called "storygames", but this feels like something different. Is it in the OSRian sense, where the story comes out of what the players actually do in response to the neutral-abiter-DM's in-game situations -as opposed to- having written out a plot and characters etc? Not like to railroad the PCs but like... are emergent narratives the opposite of adventure paths and box text? This, above all, for me, warrants exploration. A delight of OSR/DIY/artpunk(and now *DREAM) is the rich, dense items in random generation tables. For improvisational purposes, a detailed-yet-brief prompt is a strong start... for emergent narrative? I have usually defaulted to very neutral items in my tables (but was I using those for generative worlds? or what even is that if I misunderstand?) and let improvisation and the depth of the setting inspire details. Anyway, there's loads of stuff to explore in this space.

9. There is no one *DREAM. Anyone who commits to these principles is *DREAMing.
        Excellent.

I look forward to seeing what comes out of the *DREAMJAM so we can see what up in this scene.

Reasons to Do Gamethings: a calendar of narrative game design challenges and writing prompts

A seasonal calendar of recurring game jams, blogging prompts, design competitions, and challenges to spur your work on narrative and tabletop games.

You might find it useful too.   UPDATED July 25th 2020

This is fairly extensive (but necessarily incomplete). It includes board games, RPGS, storygames, and interactive fiction. I have deliberately excluded game jams focused on graphical video games, but if that's your jam (HA) then you can check out the calendar at Indie Game Jams. I've tried only to include -active- competitions that have happened more than once. There are loads of new game jams on itch.io going on all the time as well--and Max has a collection of current physical game jams on itch.  I've guessed at the likely date of some competitions based on previous years. Some long-running competitions have ended or are no longer updated, but have extensive archives of games worth looking at--they are listed at the end.

(Also, someone should host another Threeforged because that was a great idea, and the One Room Game IF Competition was great and should come back in some form. Even more also, I'm surprised at how many individual, unrelated One-Page RPG competitions have been started and fizzled out. I want there to be a big official one. There is a One Page RPG Jam again, on itch.io! But now I'll hope for Game Chef to return.)

Do let me know if I've missed any regular things!

ONGOING / TRY ANY TIME

    The Gygax 75 Challenge    https://rayotus.itch.io/gygax75 (make an rpg campaign setting in 5 weeks, working through a booklet)

    RPG Blog Carnival    https://ofdiceanddragons.com/rpg-blog-carnival/ (monthly topics hosted by active bloggers)

    RPG Generator    https://sadpress.itch.io/rpg-generator-alpha (randomly generated game idea)

    Meta Prompt Generator    https://crateredland.blogspot.com/2020/07/meta-prompt-generator.html (write an rpg post about...)

    Boardgame Geek Monthly 24hr Challenge (anytime w/in month)    https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2307821/current-contest-info (also several other rotating contests are listed in this post, including faves like the Mint Tin Challenge and the 9-Card Challenge)

    Game Crafter Community Contests    https://www.thegamecrafter.com/contests (boardgames, roughly every 3-4 months)

    One Month Story Challenge    http://howtomakeanrpg.com/a/one-month-story-challenge.html (nobody has used the hashtag since 2015, but the challenge is self-guided for creating a bunch of narrative ideas)

WINTER

    Secret Santicore/Santicorn     http://santicore.blogspot.ca/ (OSR rpg content, now mostly run on the OSR Discord but archives up to 2017 still online. 2018/2019 collected on various blogs)

    Cardboard Edison submit (Jan 31 deadline)      http://cardboardedison.com/award/ (unpublished board games)

SPRING

    Spring Thing (Mar 1 deadline, submit by Apr 1)       http://springthing.net (interactive fiction)

    Secret Jackalope (an Easter-ish version of Secret Santicorn for OSR rpg content)

SUMMER

    NarraScope Game Jam (May-Jun)    https://narrascope.org/ (interactive fiction)

    RPG Superstar (deadline June)    https://rpgsuperstar.com/ (rpg content design competition)

    One Page Dungeon Contest (deadline Jun/Jul-ish)    https://dungeoncontest.com/

    IntroComp  (deadline Jul 31 but pre-register in Jun)    http://introcomp.org/ (first room of an interaction fiction)

    #RPGaDay (August)    https://melestrua.wordpress.com/category/rpgaday/ (daily prompts for blogging/game design)

    Saga Forge Scribe (August 24 deadline)    https://www.wearesaga.com/sagaforge (one-shot module competition, Halloween theme)

    One Page RPG Jam (deadline Aug 31)    https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2020

    200 Word RPG (did not run 2020 but claims it'll be back)    https://200wordrpg.github.io/

(and ongoing submissions at reddit.com/r/200wordrpg)

AUTUMN

    The Mega RPG Jam (ran in Sept 2019)     https://itch.io/jam/mega-rpg-jam/community (creator says will be another one in 2020)

    IFComp (deadline Oct 1 but pre-register in summer)    https://ifcomp.org/ (interactive fiction)

    ECTOCOMP (deadline Oct 31)    https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp-2019-english (Halloween/horror interactive fiction)

   NaGaDeMon (November)    http://nathanrussell.net/naga-demon/# (national game design month)

***

DEFUNCT (but archives available)

    BGDF Game Design Showdown    http://www.bgdf.com/forums/game-design/design-contests (last thread was posted august 2018)

    One Game A Month    http://onegameamonth.com/ (officially ended in 2018)

    24 Hour RPG    http://www.1km1kt.net/cat/24-hour-rpg (last entry was august 2016)

    XYZZY Awards     http://xyzzyawards.org/ (last awarded for 2018)

    New Year's Minicomp     https://intfiction.org/t/eleventh-hour-new-years-minicomp/12848 (last ran in 2017)

    Game Chef      (no archive or website anywhere! I just thought I should mention this great little competition that appears to have completely vanished)

Digging A Hole

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.

It's halfway through November now, and I should probably actually stop researching, planning, ideating, etc., and just got on with it. Getting to the point of making something is always a hard transition for me. Luckily, I'm far from the only person to have to deal with this. Em Short has an excellent post on how to get from idea to implementation. The method that looks the most doable is to actually, in your chosen medium, implement the most basic but complete and working version of your game.

This reminds me of advice in other fields to make a working prototype as quick as possible and then iterate it. Applies in any time of game, any kind of art or design project, any kind of experiment--no theoretical plan survives contact with the real world, so get it into the real world as quick as possible. I hope I get better at doing it quicker with time.

Anyway, this begs the question: what is the minimum viable version of my game? I think an almost totally linear version of the story will do for this. Here's the answer I'll implement (it doesn't have to be right or good or accurate because the whole point is to add to it and change as I go!):

ONE:
     newspaper. town name, family names, suggestion of bad things, suggestion of investigation.
     always goes to TWO

TWO:
     newspaper. corpses are being dug up. flesh out bad things. information on ritual. reveal that protagonist is NOT investigator, but perpetrator.
    goes to THREE

THREE:
     graveyard. look at specific graves, epitaphs. dig up some for ritual.
    goes to FOUR

FOUR:
     graveyard. confronted by real investigator.
     CHOICE: kill investigator--go to END1
                     kill self--go to END2
                     give up--go to END3

all ENDs are a final newspaper page.
END1: ritual completed. bad things avoided--but at what cost?
END2: ritual completed? (interesting idea for full game--depends on how many/which corpses dug up, state of relationship with investigator?) ambiguous/unclear.
END3: ritual incomplete. bad things happen, but conscience clear?

Righto, let's get cracking!

Content Warning

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.

I have been feeling dark since the election results, and the subsequent consequences.

Perhaps that's why I've had some heavy thoughts about the climactic choice in the graveyard game, and the context in which the choice is made.

The protagonist feels trapped. They are doing something awful, something they don't want to do, only because they believe they are the only one who can do it and if they don't: not only will it not get done, but there will be terrible consequences. Not only that, they have realized that their strategy of digging up corpses will ultimately fail, and the only way to move forward is to kill a living person for their blood.

In this context, the PC is confronted by the Investigator, who wants to stop the PC. The PC has an impossible choice. They could complete the ritual by killing the investigator, who was been dogging their every step and caused the corpse strategy to fail. Or they could complete the ritual by killing themselves, a surprise realization in the moment that suicide would end both the ritual and all the horror and guilt they have to experience. Or finally, they could decide to give up, that the ritual is too much to deal with and that it is better to turn themselves in and allow the consequences.

I hope that I will be able to write well enough to give that moment the appropriate weight and care. I also think it would be unethical to blindside players with this, so I need to build up to it and perhaps also include a content warning on the front page. Possibly I will ultimately decide that I can't do this justice and will try a different choice.

Grave Consequences

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.

I tried out the tutorial for Texture and found it pretty simple and intuitive to use. I don't think there will be much trouble making it work for the core interaction of the graveyard game, reading a newspaper and learning things (which will be stored as flags). However, this design has consequences: as the game progresses, later choices all need to respond sensibly to every possibly combination of choices made up til that point. I've successfully mocked up a test of newspaper reading in Texture, but I'll definitely need to try out a multiple-choices structure that stores the results of previous choices as flags.

In an attempt to see the story in a way that would help map it onto such a structure, I've given a first stab at a design. It's hung on a simple three-act narrative and has some more specifics about what screens there should be and what sorts of things the player can do on them.

Primary gameplay: Each day, read the newspaper, and then decide how to proceed with respect to the blood ritual.

Plot structure:

Act 1: Introduction of town, major elements of its history and old family lines, the POV character, and the graveyard.
    hits: weird troubles in the town. corpses being dug up from graves. investigation begins.

    transition: it becomes clear that the POV character is the perpetrator, -not- the investigator.

Act 2: Exploring the need for the blood ritual. Dark past of the town, actions of the families. Something bad will happen if the ritual isn't completed--or at least, that's what the PC believes. AMBIGUOUS. PC is -reluctant-, feels forced into ritual.
    hits: patterns of blood drawn in graveyard. link corpses to town events and history. investigator antagonist gets closer.

    climax: choice! to kill investigator to complete ritual now, or continue with corpses to avoid murder but possibly fail at saving town.

Act 3: the ritual either succeeds or fails. either way, there are consequences: for the town, for the PC, for the investigator. it's never quite clear if it really worked--but there are clearly different endings for the results of major choices.
    hits: differently depending on choices, but... PC faces peril and -survives-. investigator resolves relationship with PC. town lives on, changed.

likely necessary screens:
    newspaper;
        pages include headlines, weather, funnies, horoscopes, and obits.
        verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...
    graveyard;
        pages include individual tombstone texts, cemetary overview, possibly a shack, ...
        verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, dig, bleed, paint, ...
    library???;
        pages include the catalogue, individual books, ...
        verbs include read, contemplate, note, leave, ...

Next: more writing! I need to develop the setting and characters.

All Souls Day

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.

Before I dive right into writing a game in Texture, I want to get a sense of the setting, characters, and plot I could work with. A lot of my creative energy recently has gone into preparing material for the Xenoarchaeology game I want to run, and I don't want to use that for this game project.

My favourite tools to inspire some creative thinking are random generators, and one I like in particular when thinking about setting is Instant Game by Mike and Kyle Jones. The pdf was available for free from the Animalball games website, but that has gone offline and now it's available from archive.org. It's a rules-lite game system that comes with an incredibly useful set of d100 tables with titles like "Tones" and "Things" and "Other Things".

To generate an instant setting, you roll on the tables {Setting, Tone, Thing, Thing}, which I will do below and see what ideas the results spark.

Setting: 19--Contemporary
Tone: 77--Realistic
Thing: 11--Blood
Thing: 55--Mysterious Energy

Well, I'll admit that initially I'm a little disappointed... but there's definitely some interesting stuff here. The first three elements immediately put me in mind of police procedurals, and serial killers, of crime or horror, involving some kind of investigation. Maybe I could twist that: perhaps this takes place in a blood bank, or a hospital, or a slaughterhouse. Maybe it's somewhere that involves blood in a less direct way: out hunting in the woods, or in miniature, inside a body.

The final element of mysterious energy adds a nice feel. Perhaps the police are investigating cultists who might be conjuring something up. Perhaps the blood is part of or being affected by some energetic phenomenon (like mutations, or superhero origins). Maybe the blood is the source of magic, in some ritualistic way, or maybe in a sort of druidic/natural/life-force way.

This is a rich vein (ha!) to draw from, but maybe another roll on the tables will help narrow it down. I'll roll on the Descriptor table to modify one of the Things, and on the Places table to narrow down the setting.

Descriptor: 31--Extravagant
Place: 36--Graveyard

Crime and horror it is, then. Lets say that "extravagant" goes with "blood". Some kind of intricate pattern of blood is necessary for a ritual, and it all culminates in the graveyard?  What if it -begins- in the graveyard? What if the player is not investigating a cultist/murderer, but actually IS one? Maybe a reluctant one who doesn't want to kill anyone, so instead digs up graves to acquire the necessary blood.

Alright! We have a game. The player chooses bodies to dig up in a graveyard in order to collect blood which must be arranged in a certain way to accomplish a ritual involving mysterious energy. Darker than I thought I'd go, but I suppose today IS All Souls Day...

Next steps: play some games in Texture to familiarize myself with it, and flesh out this graveyard game by adding some plot details and obstacles.