Preserving the Agency in Social Interaction

This is sort of a continuation of my Social Mechanics article. I played recently another oneshot using the City of Mist system, and its Convicne action has kind of opened my eyes. In the previous article, I focused more on information gathering. Right now, it's time to focus more on how to use this information.

"No, it turns out gifting him a new puppy didn't stop him, he still wants to talk to you."
Bad Guys 4, by Z.W. Gu

Request, Offer, Threat

In a social interaction, you can make statements made up of three basic components:

• Request is what you want from another NPC (leave this town, let me into the castle, give me a discount). Reasons to do make this request happen could be a part of this, but I'll talk about that later.
• Offer is a beneficial thing that you offer to the NPC (I'll give you 50 gold pieces, I'll praise you in king's presence, I'll advertise your shop).
• Threat is a detrimental thing that might happen to the NPC, caused by you in some way (I'll fight you to death, the world will end, I'll stop shopping here).

The line between an Offer and a Threat is a blurry one, since you could word a Threat as an Offer ("Let me into the castle and you won't get your teeth broken"), and maybe this could work vice versa too but right now I can't think of an example. This is fine, though, because this is where the GM comes in - the GM could tell apart Offers and Threats on the spot better than three detailed pages of rules just by using their own judgement.

There's another aspect to this that I'll need to bring up before continuing, and that is a Bluff. Any of the three components of a statement listed above, or any part of it, can be a lie. You could lie about what you want ("I didn't want just a thousand dollars, I want one million dollars. You have 24 hours to bring it."), you could lie about what you could do, whether it's positive ("And you'll never be bothered by my clan again.") or negative ("Or else I'll blow up this city.").

Okay, that's nice and all, but how does this play a role in a social interaction? Where do the stats come in, and what do you roll to convince or threaten people? Here's the trick... you roll to see what can be trusted, not to see what the person chooses.

The Choice

First, roll on any part of the statement to see if there's a lie involved. For the D&D 5e, it'd be an Insight roll opposed by a relevant Charisma skill (Intimidation for Threat, Persuasion for Offer and maybe Request, Deception for anything that's a Bluff). For The Runehack RPG, I'm considering a Hunch roll opposed by Comprehension, with a range of successes that decides how many of the components you can identify as trustworthy. The roll should somehow be modified depending on the statement's credibility. To rephrase it, "would they do this, assuming they can?" Anyone could say they will destroy the planet, and that's quite a bold claim. Can this be trusted? How could they possibly destroy the world? And even if they can, would they? Same could be asked about the Offer (Will they let my kidnapped relative free?), or even about the Request (Do they really want just one thousand dollars?). So, you roll to see if their Request, Offer, or Threat is credible. On a success, you can tell without a doubt whether they are bluffing or not. On a failure, you are left in the dark - it could be anything.

Once all the rolls for bluffing are finished, it's decision time. The character chooses their next course of action. ... That's it. What, do you expect a die to get involved in this? I mean, this could be resolved Pendragon style by giving the character some ideals or personality traits they roll for to see what they'll choose, but I don't think that's necessary. Make a choice the character in question would want to make.

How would a GM know what does an NPC want? Well, look at all the components, and ask yourself:

• Do they want to go along with whatever is requested of them?
• Would they want whatever is offered in return?
• Is it bearable for them to go along with the threat involved?

Now, a social interaction isn't about dice mind-controlling the characters. No longer is there an asymmetry in how Charisma affects the players and NPCs. Whoever is making the choice makes the choice.

An Example: Kingdom's Riches, or Prince's Life

The king receives a message. "Give me all the money in your royal treasury, and I will release your son, alive. Otherwise, I will kill him." Let's play the role of the king and examine every part of this statement, especially focusing on what could make them more or less credible.

Request

"Give me all the money in your royal treasury" might be a sensible request, provided the kingdom is doing well economically. If the kingdom is poor, the kidnapper will likely be disappointed by the money, and do something unexpected in return, like killing the prince after receiving the money. If the kidnapper has a particularly bad reputation, they could also keep increasing their demands over time.

Offer

"I will release your son" sounds promising. But, again, if the kidnapper has a bad reputation for being vile, they could decide not to release the prince even after receiving the money. On the other hand, if the kidnapper is a good reasonable person who's doing this because of something else pressuring them, they could give in and release the son regardless of receiving all the money from the royal treasury. The credibility of this offer would decrease if the prince was in the castle all along, not kidnapped at all, safe and sound (unless you want to say that high enough level threats could teleport in and out of the castle).

Threat

"I will kill your son" is a rather significant threat, even bigger if it's the heir to the throne. What could increase the credibility of this threat is learning that the kidnapper has no issues killing people without a second thought. A decrease in credibility could come with learning that the kidnapper is secretly in love with the prince.

The King's Choice

After making the relevant rolls, the choice falls at the end of the day on the king. He has all the information he can get now: the worth of prince's life, the amount of money in his treasury, whether the Prince will be released if he complies, killed if he declines the request, and whether the kidnapper demands only the money in the kingdom's treasury. All of this mixed with the king's personality and priorities leads to the choice. If the king is an NPC, the choice is made by the GM, if it was a player, the player makes a choice, unless someone else makes this choice for him (like paying the kidnapper with all the money from the royal treasury without consulting the king).

Social interaction can be quite complicated, which is why I've thought about this problem for years. Turning it into a minigame feels weird and inhumane, trying to list all the rules is a lot of work both for the designer of the game, but also for those who wish to use the rules, but it could benefit from some structure. I think this might work, splitting the statement into a Request, an Offer, and a Threat, rolling to see if any of these is a bluff or if they can be trusted, and then leaving the choice up to the character, and the player who controls them. Does the impact of this decision play a factor? Yes, but only in processing things as your character. Is saving your loved one worth it if you kill another person while doing so? How about two people? Five? Ten? A hundred? What choice your character makes in a situation says about them a lot. It would be a shame for this to be wasted because dice and randomness.

That's all just my opinion, though. If you want to, you can end up with rolling a die to decide I guess. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Design of Everyone Slays the Princess

Got inspired to make a game that would combine Everyone is John with Slay the Princess. It's not an adaptation or a hack of either, it's just inspired by both. I aimed for a format of a business card, and I think it went well. Here's what I learned.

Note: This article might include minor spoilers to Slay the Princess.

You're on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world.
A screenshot from the video game that inspired this game, Slay the Princess.

You're On a Path in the Woods

The idea came to me spontaneously when Toyo mentioned that one of his first systems he GMed was Everyone is John. Just like that, something in my mind sparked and went "mix it with Slay the Princess". I looked up the rules though, and I realized... that I will have to approach this differently. See, in Slay the Princess, the voices do not fight for control over the Hero. Then again, they don't take turns either, but here I wanted the players to be voices that do not fight, so I figured they'll be taking turns controlling the Hero. A key factor worth mentioning is that I made it so that every Hero's Act lasts at most 15 minutes in real life, so that other players get a turn too and there's some sense of urgency.

A key factor for Slay the Princess is the Princess' attitude towards the Hero that keeps shifting, usually to worse and worse attitude. I had the brilliant idea for it to measure it with Threat that increases whenever the Hero does something suspicious, starting at a 0.

As for the rolls, I figured I could just use the Threat as the difficulty for the rolls. I had skills in the system also, and the players rolled a 1d12 with an intent of rolling more than the Threat. It all sounded great in my head, though written down like this the issues might look obvious.

I managed to scrounge up 3+1 volunteers, two ditched hours before the playtest, I managed to find one more. It was time to play, and the game was... well...

Everything Goes Dark, and You Die

So... let's talk about the Threat.

If you've played Slay the Princess, you know that the first proper choice you get to make is once you enter the cabin: do you take the Pristine Blade with you or not? In my playtest, I decided to replace the blade with two items of my own creation: keys that unlock the Princess' shackles, and a small vial with a strange liquid inside. The two items were on a pair of pedestals, just far apart enough that they can't be touched at the same time. Also in the room was the pristine blade hidden, which could be taken with one of the other two items if it was picked up first. Once you pick either from the items on the pedestals, the other one vanishes. The player asked to make a roll to search the room on the first or second Act, and that's when I realized the problem. The difficulty for this roll... was zero. The difficulty for all rolls would be zero, as long as they haven't been seen by the Princess. Not to mention the fact that it didn't scale up as fast as I wanted it.

After finishing the playtest, the players were satisfied, and I knew I need to rework the system from the ground up. No skills for the voices, no Threat that goes up when the Princess sees the Hero acting all sus. But I really liked the idea of a static difficulty for everything. I gave it a lot of thought, and I realized something: the timer. Just use the number of minutes left as a difficulty!

Roll a number of d20's, and take the lowest roll. If it's less than the number of minutes that remain on the timer, you have succeeded. Since the timer starts at 15 minutes, and saying anything takes a moment, the best difficulty for a player is 14. This translates to rolls of 13 or less succeeding, so 65% if you roll a single die. You roll an additional die if some Voice is relevant, and yet another die if your own Voice is relevant to the action. Failing an action that relates to your own Voice in the first minute of the game has a chance of less than 5%, and you have a good chance of succeeding on things with your own Voice even in the last 6 or so minutes of the game.

The Blade is Your Implement

What would the game be without an implement of some kind. While the original game kept it very simple with a blade that can hurt and kill and cut things, I wanted to give my game a little extra oomph, to let people who know Slay the Princess already discover something new every time. Sadly, I couldn't fit details onto a business card, and I didn't want a situation where there are merely three detailed items. Instead, I tried to go for ten evocative items. Just for fun, I'll come up with at least one use for each of these for this blog post (I already had an use in mind for most of them).

• a pristine blade (obvious - cuts and kills)
• a weird potion (kills whoever drinks it after 5 minutes pass)
• a red brush (things written with it carry over to the future Acts)
• a brass key (unlocks the Princess's shackles)
• a shiny coin (the Princess becomes vicious if she witnesses it)
• a blank book (a new word appears in it the first time it's opened in every Act)
• a fancy ring (whomever wears it can't hurt another person)
• an old note (it's a list of adjectives, when a slip of the note is torn off, another Princess appears next to the original, with the adjective(s) on the torn off slip)
• a bright veil (makes its wearer invisible)
• a hazy mirror (swaps Princess's role with yours)

To inspire the reader of the GM side of the rules, I also listed 5 effects that are quite minimal - kills, charms, conceals, upsets, transforms. There's also 5 locations that the GM can roll for or choose from: cabin, tower, dungeon, cave, castle.

It's All Part of Her Manipulation

On the Narrator Side, I also feature three bullet points of things that should be prepared, and five guidelines. The most noteworthy guidelines are numbers 2 and 5. According to the number 2, the Princess is the only NPC. I've thought about this long and hard before running my oneshot, thinking up various scenarios that could happen on the way to the Princess. Maybe an old man who's at a well and needs help, and will reward the Hero with an item, maybe a monster of some kind, and so on and so forth. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that will just dilute the plot, confuse the player, and give them many more outs. If the Princess is the only NPC and the only thing that the players can interact with in a significant way, the players will be drawn towards her. Unless they just want to act like contrarians and avoid the Princess every single time.

The guideline number 5 states: make supernatural happen when in doubt. While the original game is rather down-to-earth, here I didn't shy from things getting a little supernatural, as seen above with the items. I'm not sure if this guideline is something someone will need, but it is what it is.

The final two things worth mentioning are Death and the Princess's stance. A character who gets severely hurt twice dies. If either character dies, a new Act begins, with a different Voice being in control of the Hero, and all NPCs forgetting that the previous Act had happened. An Act ends automatically after 15 minutes with the Hero's death (because if they wanted to kill the Princess by that point, they would've.) Princess's stance, or should I say attitude, shifts between four states depending on the player's actions: Cooperative, Distrustful, Defiant, Hostile. There isn't any math to this or specific rules, it's just something I figured would be a helpful guideline for the GM to keep in mind. The Princess won't just go from trying to kill the Hero to wanting to help him for no reason, that kind of shift should be gradual (assuming it can happen).

And that's about it! Like I said, the game is business card-sized (or at least I hope it is), and it could be played multiple times, assuming the GM comes up with a new finale for the future playthroughs. ... Yeah, the hardest part about this process is something I've left up to the GM. I'm not proud of it, but honestly that's the part I struggled with myself as well. Since it's based on a property that I do not own, I didn't want to put it up as Pay What You Want, and so it is completely free.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Design of Runehack: Express Deliveries

I know I said I don't have to participate, but when I found out that One Page RPG Jam 2024's theme is Transportation, I couldn't help myself. Besides, maybe it will help in my big game I want to actually write.

Swerving

Months ago, I came up with an idea for a core mechanic in a driving TTRPG. Easily the most important aspect of driving is making turns, so my idea was: the higher the roll, the more you turn your car. Going straight is fairly easy, deviating 45° is somewhat difficult, 90° more difficult, and so on, even allowing for U-turns. I left that mechanic simmer in the back of my mind for months, and then I realized it kind of sucks. Turning should be easier. Once the game jam began and I got back to pondering the vehicles, I realized... maybe it should just depend on the vehicle's speed. Roll over the vehicle's speed to succeed.

Cargo and Rating

Next up is the management of cargo space. You know, one of the most fun parts of any TTRPG (sarcasm). But in this case, I had a decent idea from the get-go: grids. Yes, I know, inventory grids are nothing new in video games or TTRPGs for that matter, here though I wanted it to take one step further. An inventory doubles as a twinned roll table. For every point of Durability your vehicle loses, you roll to see which row and which column of the cargo gets damaged. If no item is located there, you're going to be fine. If there is some item, or worse yet, a person, it will reflect on your pay and rating.

That's right, there's a rating system in this game. To keep it simple, ratings go from 1 to 5, and determine how many orders are available for you (rounded up).

One more thing worth mentioning - vehicles come in three types with different cargo sizes: bikes (6x6), cars (6x12), and vans (12x12).

Law

I didn't put speed limits into the game, though a GM could enforce them if they wish to I guess. What is in the game though are gangs who go after you, a chance for any order you make to turn out to be illegal when you pick it up or when you deliver it, and the police chasing after you if you're doing something illegal (like making an illegal delivery). The upside though is that an illegal delivery always gets the best rating it can get, and the credits you earn from it are multiplied by 10.

Actions

Midway into the first playtest of this system, I realized something. I don't have nearly enough actions for it. Back then, I had only four of them: Speed, Swerve, Take/Deliver, and Move (on foot). And it was... not enough by far. The player ended his turn several times without taking all the actions they could have. Back then, I also had acceleration be a factor in the game. That was quickly tossed out of the system. Over the course of the second playtest, I came up with several new actions:

• Reverse that's usable only if your vehicle's speed is 0.
• Swerving for free if the speed is 0, and adding to swerving a new option - moving the vehicle 1 space to the side.
• Attack because your chasers might not leave you alone.
• Small Talk lets you try raising the rating your customers will give you at the end, provided you're delivering them somewhere.
• Radio to listen to something that will make your next roll better. Whether it's a fast tune for making better swerves, a radio station that tells you where the cops or gangs are currently posing danger, playing some chill music to make talking with your customer more pleasant, or something else, honestly an explanation could be made for anything here.
• Improvise is a universal action for using the driver's stats. I didn't detail it much because this is a game focused on the vehicles. If these rules make it into the game I'm working on, pretty much everything else will be focused on the player characters, so I'm okay with boiling it down to a couple of lines for this one-pager.

The last noteworthy thing is that this game also contains a rolltable for generating surnames for Runehack, and it's the first game I made with landscape pages instead of vertical ones. There's more to it, but I don't know if the rest is worth going into details about. Driver types, purchasing vehicles and managing their upkeep, the length of a workday, how the credits and rating are calculated, and so on. I'm satisfied with how this game turned out, though I do recognize there might be imperfections I am not aware of yet. For the visuals, I went with a very simple dark gray, mixed with yellow squares that evoke an image of taxi in my mind. Minimal, effective.

Gelt and Sand; and The Hungering End

I wrote two games and didn't get to post them here. So, why not post them today?

Gelt and Sand

On a desert planet populated by giant sandworms and masses of microbiologic aliens, people do their best to mine the Gelt that allows for extraordinary feats.

Success is decided by flipping a coin. Every heads counts as a success. Flip additional coins depending on your stat.

A coin on its side allows you to glimpse the future briefly, but the character doesn't enact its action. You can ask a yes/no question and receive a true answer from the GM.

You have three points that you can assign into the following stats (max +2):

Strength, Senses, Smarts, Socializing

Depending on your class in society, you can add an extra coin when performing duties characteristic to it, and you gain one of the following features:

• Artist - Consume 1 Gelt to make someone believe a fact.
• Merchant - Can buy anything for 1 Gelt less.
• Philosopher - Once per session, you can place a coin on its side for free.
• Warrior - Can kill a creature with 2 successes.

Gain Gelt by defeating the aliens, bartering, and serving.

You can consume 1 Gelt to place 1 coin any way you choose. Furthermore, you can consume 10 Gelt to permanently increase one stat by 1.

---

I wrote this game after a presentation I had on D&D Slovakia on April 29th regarding writing 200-word TTRPGs. I followed all the steps I outlined during the presentation while making this. (Please ignore the fact that the list should start with a 0.)

1. Reason for me writing it (demonstration of the process)
2. Concept (a game heavily inspired by Dune)
3. Conflict resolution (coin pools)
4. Things that distinguish the players (stats, societal class)
5. Extra stuff (managing Gelt as a resource, visions, advancement)
6. Keep cutting down stuff until there's merely 200 words.

I don't think I've written a game with dice pools ever before. I wanted it to retain some of the inspiration from the Dune, hence the giant sandworms and visions, but I was trying to come up with something that's not outright Spice. I've received a suggestion for Gelt, so I rolled with that. I especially like the placing of a coin on its side that a Philosopher can do once per session for free, or that anyone can do by spending Gelt. Can it happen in an actual coin flip? I mean, possibly. I don't think I've seen it happen yet, but there are videos of it online, so... why not have a bit of fun with it?

The Hungering End

This was for another challenge on JFace Games' discord server. According to the random rolls, we had to go with:

• Period: Renaissance
• Genre: Cosmic Horror
• Tone: Grimdark
• Playstyle: Theatre of the Mind
• Resolution: New design with anything

I published this game on March 4th, and back then I was quite fascinated by the Heckadeck. I still am, don't get me wrong, it's just that my focus has shifted on other things. I still await the day though when I'll be able to incorporate the heckadeck into some game proper, perhaps even in a not-so-distant future... hint-hint nudge-nudge.

I will admit, it's been a while since I wrote this. Upon rereading it, it honestly doesn't even feel like a proper TTRPG, but that's up for a debate I'm too lazy to have. What I really like about this though is the fact that all of the archetypes the players can play use different resources for different purposes. Back in the days when I played World of Warcraft, the classes I found the most interesting were those that deviated from the Mana norm. Rogue has Energy which lets them use their abilites a lot more frequently, Warrior has Rage that builds up the more damage they take, Rune Knights have three pairs of runes (and more with some talent tree, iirc?) with a simple recharge, and Runic Power that charges up the more runes they use. You get the point. Ever since writing D6 Feet Under, I couldn't stop thinking about replacing the "hit points" with an actual resource that explains somehow how you survive attacks: Energy, Power, Protection, Will, Plan, Luck.

Honestly, I don't know if the game is even playable. Right now I'm having a hard time finding how many cards is a player supposed to hold in their hand. And with a condition of destroying all GM's cards in the deck? That would make for quite a long campaign, if it can be called that. This all feels more like a board game with some story bits inbetween, but I still wanted to post it here for completeness' sake.

Back then I wasn't entirely satisfied with calling this "renaissance", but honestly? What better way is to do a renaissance cosmic horror is there than with a tale of an actual inevitable rebirth of a world?

The game is serviceable I suppose, and there are some neat ideas hidden within. But I wouldn't call it a great game. It's just made for a challenge.

Recently I counted how many games I've published, and I believe the number is 29 for now. The One Page RPG Jam 2024 is here. I know I said I don't have to participate this year, ... but with a theme like Transportation? It's hard to resist the call.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!