Describing Shadowfell

Yesterday, I was looking over some of the discord servers I frequent and stumbled upon a message on the discord server run by a YouTuber called Holstic Dungeon Master. He wanted some inspiration for the descriptions, atmosphere, monsters, and challenges of this realm. I started writing and didn't stop for a while, because it seemed the inspiration was just flowing out of me. In the end, his group ended up going to the ocean's depths instead. That's why I decided to compile what I wrote here and share it with anyone interested. I should add that these are all things I came up with on the spot, they don't necessarily fit the D&D canon.

More game design articles coming soon. For now, indulge me in the brooding moods of Shadowfell by reading on, and have a great day!

Unchanging, eternal.
A screenshot from Death Note.

Colors

All colors are less saturated in this world, including the colors of those not native to the plane, and the magic they use. Think of it like someone applying a sepia or grayscale filter partially to everything everyone sees. Grays, beiges, and other muted colors dominate the realm, though you can still distinguish the shades of formerly highly saturated colors.

Weather

It's almost always overcast. Rains are common, snow only in cold regions. Sometimes, the rain could be toxic. In some extreme areas, the rain could age anything it touches, just like in Death Stranding.

Slopes

Most of the time, you are encouraged to move downhill in the realm of Shadowfell. Going uphill without equipment is almost impossible, even if in the Material Plane it'd be easy to walk up that kind of hill. Meanwhile, Shadowfell feels deep, like one could go lower and lower indefinitely. Its depths feel just as gloomy as the surface, so it's hard to tell how high up or how low you are unless you keep track of it.

Buildings

Since it's an echo of the Material Plane, the buildings and cities could exist in this realm, but they'd be warped by the plane's influence. In this case, the buildings are a bit bigger and therefore emptier. They are big enough for their walls to be in contact. If there are doorways on the inside, or one uses the spell passwall, you could traverse an entire city without ever going outside.

Emotions

The native creatures mostly express low-energy moods here. Boredom, sadness, and hopelessness are way more common than anger, fear, or joy. Non-native creatures will have a harder time expressing high-energy emotions too.

Exit

This one is quite dark, so read at your own risk. In some places, it's possible to leave Shadowfell by taking your own life. Once you pass such a place, though, you never know if you left it for sure.

Nameless

It's normal for the native denizens of Shadowfell to not have a name. It's hard to care about such unnecessary things in a realm like that and makes passing away easier.

Hunger

Anyone in Shadowfell feels less hungry than they otherwise would, but this doesn't mean they are less hungry. One would starve themselves to death without knowing it if they were to only eat in Shadowfell like they normally would when they begin to feel genuine hunger. The natives are used to eating less, and their biology allows them to survive longer with lesser sustenance.

Plantlife and Mushrooms

The plants of Shadowfell generally either don't have leaves, or all the leaves are dead and shriveled. One could in theory grow mushrooms or even fruits in some rare places. The taste is reduced significantly though - a fantastic meal would taste okay, an okay meal would taste rather bad, and a rather bad meal would taste outright awful here. Like sand and sawdust.

Shinigami apple from Death Note.

Water

Nobody is quite sure what's wrong with the water, but non-natives should not drink it without purifying it first. Natives are unaffected, assuming they need to drink water.

Passage of Time

The time passes as normal, but psychologically it feels like the time is not passing at all. Unless one would enter and leave Shadowfell within an hour or keep track of time while inside, you could spend any amount of time there and exit feeling like you've been there only for an hour. You will always be surprised about how much time passed when you leave Shadowfell.

Sleep

The denizens of Shadowfell need to sleep more than an average creature would. It's not unheard of for them to sleep for 10-16 hours a day, unless magic powers them they need some energy source afterall.

Physical Manifestation

A non-native will reshape their surroundings subconsciously if they reside in one spot for too long. The surroundings will take shape that will remind them the most of their own past failures, guilt, and trauma.

Memories

Recalling memories uncharacteristic of this realm (joy, anger, etc.) requires actual concentration if you spend too much time in Shadowfell. After a while, it would literally break your concentration on spells and effects like that.

---

Most influences are from the Shinigami Realm featured in Death Note, with lesser inspiration from Spec Ops: The Line, Junji Ito's Uzumaki, and Death Stranding.

Anyway, yeah, that's all for now. Have a great day, and thank you for reading!

Incremental Mutation

Here's an idea I believe would make for a pretty neat foundation for a TTRPG. I might work on it someday if I feel like it. Gonna keep this short because I've got other stuff to tend to.

Incremental Mutation

All powers come at a cost. They change and transform you, slowly but possibly completely. You can't stop or reverse this process, the best you can do is slow it down.

To start, we need some stats. How about the stats from Fate, for the sake of an example they will do. Boldly, Quietly, Forcefully, Cleverly, Quickly, Carefully. Let's assume that the conflict resolution is a roll of 1d12 plus some bonus based on your stat, to roll over some difficulty decided by the GM.

Now let's make three examples of powers. Let's go with... pyrokinesis, teleportation, and omniglot. Each of these should improve one stat, debuff another stat, and give powers based on the intensity at which you utilize the power. Add some descriptors, and you get yourself an interesting set of powers.

Does the magic user consume the fire, or does the fire consume the magic user? Fire Elemental, by AAA Game Art Studio.

Pyrokinesis

Increases: Boldly
Decreases: Carefully
Powers:

• 2 - You can produce fire around your fists without it harming you or things worn/held by you.
• 4 - You can shoot the fire from your hands at ranged targets.
• 6 - You can breathe fire from your mouth without it harming you or things worn/held by you, causing damage in a large area close to you.
• 8 - You can shoot fire from your feet without it harming you or things worn/held by you, letting you fly around.
• 10 - Whenever something harms or touches you, you can burn it.
• 12 - You can ignite your whole body without it harming you or things worn/held by you.

Teleportation

Increases: Quickly
Decreases: Boldly
Powers:

• 2 - You can teleport as far as your foot can reach.
• 4 - You can teleport to a place you can see close to you with your own eyes.
• 6 - You can teleport pretty far and even through reflections.
• 8 - You can teleport any distance.
• 10 - You can teleport through images that you can see.
• 12 - Choose another place you could teleport to to manifest an afterimage. Whenever something causes you damage in either position, there's a 50% chance it will miss you.

Omniglot

Increases: Cleverly
Decreases: Quickly
Powers:

• 2 - You can understand a language when you hear or read it.
• 4 - You can speak a language you have heard before and write a language you have read.
• 6 - You understand people's body language perfectly.
• 8 - You can understand and speak with animals.
• 10 - You understand any programming language you can read, and you can write in any programming language.
• 12 - You have mastered physics and mathematics to an extent that allows you to predict with great precision effects on the physical world, including trajectories, people's choices and rough thoughts, and economic developments in the region.

You can choose any number of powers, but you can't have the same stat in more than one of these powers. So out of the examples above, you could choose Pyrokinesis and Omniglot together, but Teleportation can't be chosen with either.

Your starting Intensity with each Power is 0. At any point during the day, you can choose to increase it by +2. You can utilize any of the Powers with a listed required Intensity equal to or less than your current Intensity with said Power. For example, Pyrokinesis with an Intensity of 6 lets you breathe fire, set your hands to fire, and shoot the fire with your hands, but not shoot flames out of feet or anything else listed below it.

Your Intensity almost resets after every day, but there's a catch. If it is greater than its minimum, the minimum increases by 2. This is regardless of how high of a Power you've reached. If you start with Telekinesis of Intensity 0 and increase it to 12 on day 1, it resets down to 2 instead of 0. If you increase it just to 6 on the next day, it resets down to 4 instead of 2 or 0. Even if you increase it just to 6 on the third day, it will reset down to 6. The minimum amount of Intensity grows every time you increase it, the power slowly consumes you.

There's one more neat use for Intensity. Whenever you make a check with the stat it increases and you roll less than or equal to the Intensity, you can roll again and keep a higher number. On the contrary, when you make a check with the stat it decreases and you roll more than or equal to the Intensity, you roll again and keep the lower result. For example, when the Intensity of your Telekinesis is 6 and you roll a 5 on Quickly, you roll again and keep the higher result. If you were to roll a 9 on Boldly, you roll again and keep the lower result.

In theory, this rerolling could be kept up forever, asking the player to keep rolling until they roll higher/lower than their Intensity, but that would take up too much time. So instead, I came up with ways of transforming the dice rolled. This is why Intensity increases and decreases in increments of 2.

Intensity

• 2: Increase is 1d10+2, Decrease is 1d2
• 4: Increase is 1d8+4, Decrease is 1d4
• 6: Increase is 1d6+6, Decrease is 1d6
• 8: Increase is 1d4+8, Decrease is 1d8
• 10: Increase is 1d2+10, Decrease is 1d10
• 12: Increase is 12, Decrease is 1d12

This is also why I made the baseline of the conflict resolution a 1d12 - because if it were 1d20, I'd have to deal with 1d18, 1d16, and 1d14.

Using this power slowly reduces you to a shell of what you used to be. You grew more powerful, but what for?

Anyway, that's about it. I just wanted to write this up quickly to share it with the pals I talked about this with. Have a great day!

Edit: Yes, Arinyl, I wrote it

Draw 2c52 from Inspiration Deck

Roll tables are fun and pretty good at what they do. Painting on a blank canvas is difficult, which is why we turn to random prompts so often. What I don't like about this approach is the chance of repetition. Sometimes it can be a feature, like when you generate random encounters on a travel through the wilderness and you want some things to be more common than others. But at other times, when you want to get two different results and yet get the same result twice, maybe even three times after a reroll, it just slows you down. This is why I came up with an idea: an inspiration deck.

Semi-relevant image included in the article just so it has a thumbnail when linked? Check!
From the Monsters & Co. collection of artworks made by Sana Skorobohatska.

All the downsides I can think of at the moment (save for one) relate to making these tables in the first place. Writing 52 different elements for the table is a lot of work, and sometimes it might be advantageous to have some commonalities across the elements. Then there's also the fact that this is best done with a physical deck of cards, which the GM can shuffle or decide not to shuffle as they wish. Virtual tabletops can provide decks that will produce cards and remember which cards are left in them, for now, I'll just stick to the assumption of a physical deck.

How the inspiration deck works is simple: when you'd like to get a random element from the table, draw an appropriate amount of cards, and see what's the result. Going by the title, drawing two cards would be written as 2c52, but I doubt I'd actually use that notation. That's just a bit of a joke from me unless it catches on by some miracle.

Let's see an example table! These are the name tables I worked on for my Runehack RPG.

Value		♥			♦			♠			♣
A	Al	b	ert	No	r	wood	An	th	ony	Mi	q	uel
	Abi	g	ail	Na	t	asha	Ale	x	andria	Mar	g	reta
2	Bax	t	er	Oli	v	er	As	t	or	Ned	m	und
	Bea	t	rix	Oak	l	ynn	Au	r	ora	Ni	k	ole
3	Camp	b	ell	Pe	t	ro	Clif	f	ord	Ni	ck	olas
	Char	l	otte	Pat	r	icia	Cor	n	elia	No	r	ah
4	Den	h	olm	Quen	t	in	Domi	n	ic	Or	m	ond
	De	z	iree	Quin	t	ella	Dolo	r	es	Oc	t	avia
5	Ed	w	ard	Regi	n	ald	El	l	iot	Os	b	orn
	Elea	n	ore	Ra	m	ona	Es	t	elle	O	l	ivia
6	Frank	l	in	Ste	v	en	Er	n	est	Phoe	n	ix
	Flo	r	ence	Sca	r	lett	Eve	r	est	Pri	m	ula
7	Gor	d	on	Tho	m	as	Fi	tz	roy	Ros	w	ell
	Gla	d	ys	Tra	c	ey	Fae	l	icity	Rose	m	ary
8	Hu	x	ley	Up	t	on	Gar	f	ield	Ru	f	us
	Hay	l	ee	U	l	yssa	Ga	l	ilea	Ro	x	anna
9	Isi	d	ore	Vin	c	ent	Har	v	ey	Sam	s	on
	Imo	g	en	Va	n	essa	He	s	ther	Sab	r	ina
10	Jar	v	is	Wil	l	iam	Ho	r	ace	Sher	m	an
	Ju	l	iet	Wil	l	ow	Ho	n	oria	Su	s	anne
J	Kel	v	in	Xa	v	ior	In	d	igo	Te	r	ance
	Kim	b	erly	Xe	n	ia	Ido	n	ea	Ta	b	itha
Q	Law	r	ence	Yo	r	ick	Jo	n	athan	Tri	s	ton
	Lu	c	inda	Yas	m	ine	Jac	qu	eline	To	n	ya
K	Ma	t	eo	Za	ch	ary	Lu	c	ius	Way	l	on
	Mo	n	ica	Za	r	iah	Lili	b	eth	We	n	ona

You don't want to know just how much of a hassle was it to make this table work as I imagined. For now, I'm gonna call it close enough and move on. I had to resort to using emojis once I found out that the ASCII symbols I relied on until then aren't always guaranteed to be readable, so sorry about that. As for the order of the names, the first 26 are in alphabetical order (to make sure every starting letter is there at least once), and the rest is based on probabilities of letters in the English language.

The table looks complicated, but it is used in a somewhat simple way: draw twice from your Inspiration Deck, one card determines the prefix, and one suffix. The bolded underlined consonant(s) in the middle are kept as necessary to make the name sound good (honestly, it's best to let this bit go by the GM's sensibilities instead of forcing it or trying to come up with some convoluted solution). The top rows are for making masculine names, and the bottom rows are for feminine names. That doesn't mean that all of them are guaranteed to sound masculine or feminine respectively, nor should this restrict you from combining them if you wish to. Finally, sometimes you might stumble upon a name that's just silly (for example, Vinvin), in which case you can resort to switching the order of the cards.

This isn't a perfect 100% tested table, it's a prototype made mainly for the purposes of playtests and this article. Chances are it will change by the time it makes its way into the book.

You might feel concerned that this will just generate 26 or so names. True, you better shuffle the cards well to get new names. But the key factor here is that this deck would be used for generating all sorts of things for the GM: first names, surnames, place names, and perhaps even room or food descriptors if someone makes these. It would be even better if it used a Heckadeck, though that would require a total of 152 carefully chosen entries per table (not 160 because there are eight pairs of cards - four colored arrows, and four colored talismans).

Anyway, that's about it! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Progress Tracking of Plans

There's a piece of GM advice I've been told in the past that I find hard to use. It says that one should make a rich world in which players can't manage to do everything, and then you should apply consequences to things they did not achieve. While I believe there should be consequences, I also don't want to drag my players down by making them feel like they'll miss out on cool things. At the same time, though, I want to create a sense of pressure. A sense that things are in motion. The mechanics described below started as a system of tracking the public opinion of three factions and evolved into something rather different: tracking the completion of plans and counter-plans.

I wanted to put an image of some futuristic presentation here, but didn't feel like looking for one too much longer. I kind of like this image more.
Dream War, by Beeple

Tracker

A tracker is a number between 1 and 12 that tracks which of two opposing sides is winning. If the tracker reaches 12 or more, the players have succeeded in their long-term goal. On the contrary, if the tracker reaches 1 or less, the opposing side succeeds in their plan.

Let's say that in Runehack, there's a company called Nexuspace that's developing an MMORPG entirely taking place in VR. Of course, the faction players are members of - Acumen - are suspicious of this endeavor and investigate it. With every successful mission, the tracker increases by 1, and with every failed mission it decreases by 1. This isn't done just by the one group of characters controlled by the players at your table, though, it's a process that's done many times over and over by all Acumen. Since generating them one by one would be a hassle, there's a simple way of abstracting this.

Once every time period (which I haven't decided yet. For now, I'm going with 5 days), the GM rolls a 1d12 for every tracker. The tracker increases or decreases by 1, going closer to the die. However, to make things more interesting, it increases and decreases by 2 whenever a 12 and 1 are rolled respectively.

Acumen are working on three fronts. First is taking out the Nexuspace's new VR MMORPG launch (tracker: 3). Second is a fashion company with some shady trackers put into their runic clothesline (tracker: 7). Third is a Runebot developing company (tracker: 8). The GM makes the rolls for the end of the period to see how the Acumen progressed. First roll is a [2], putting the tracker regarding the VR MMORPG at a 2. The second roll is a [1], decreasing the tracker for the suspicious fashionista down to 5. The third tracker rolls a [10], which means the Runebot developing company's goal has increased up to a 9. 

This provides a self-balancing way of tracking the ebb and flow of the plan's progress and attempts at countering the plan. A very high tracker number means the company is getting too defensive and protective, which makes it harder to increase the number further. On the contrary, the lower the number is, the harder it is to decrease further because Acumen get far more active. What holds the biggest sway here are the actions of the players: will they decide to protect a counterplan that's already almost failed with a tracker at a 3, or do they want to finish off a job that's at 11 just waiting for that final push? Their missions are not incorporated into the roll, instead, their successes and failures are applied directly to the tracker. This also raises the stakes in these extreme scenarios, where one of the parties is very close to reaching their goal. There would be a limit on how much time must pass between the missions to minimize consequences outside of them, which means the players can only be expected to contribute so much to each plan. The plans will all progress, whether the players manage to do something about them or not.

Nexuspace's plan has succeeded. The tracker went down to 0 after a botched mission by another team while the players were busy dealing with the Runebot-developing company, and now the world has been introduced to the world's first VR MMORPG without a controller involved. It requires a special face-worn device that many people now have in their household. The colors in the game grow more vibrant the longer you play it, making the real world seem dull in comparison to all its avid players. The game is filled with subliminal messaging of politics and ideologies in line with those of Nexuspace. And the microtransactions have set an awful new standard for the industry. 

This might be a lost war, but it is not the end of the world. The world just... changed.

What if we want to make things a little more complicated? Let's involve a third faction.

Third Faction

Nothing happens normally when the 1d12 rolled by the GM rolls the tracker's current number. However, if the GM deems it appropriate and wants to complicate things a little, they can introduce a third faction. This could be the rebellion that wants to destroy the power of corporations and reestablish the monarchies of old, a minor religious group that wishes to take the dangerous product and use it for their own gain, or anything else you deem worthy of having their own side. In doing so, a new tracker is created, and both trackers are at spots neighboring the last one (so for a 7, the trackers would be at 6 and 8). When three factions are involved, roll twice, once for each tracker, following the same rules. In the following scenarios, one of the factions loses and drops out of the plan/counterplan scheme until it is resolved.

• If a tracker arrives at a 1 or less, it ceases to be, and Acumen drops out of this tracking. What happens next is entirely between the company and the third party involved.
• If a tracker arrives at 12 or more, it ceases to be, and the Company drops out of this tracking. The conflict persists, but now only between Acumen and the third party.
• If both trackers are on the same spot, one ceases to be, and the third party drops out of the conflict. The status quo is reestablished, with the conflict continuing between the Acumen and the Company.

Extra note: Players' mission moves the higher tracker if it involves the Company. They move the lower tracker if their mission specifically targets the third party in an attempt to take them out of the picture.

In theory, on another roll equal to the tracker, you could introduce a fourth party with a third tracker and a third roll, or even more. I won't entertain that thought, three factions are complicated enough for me.

But Math

At least, that's what I would have written and posted yesterday. The article was finished, I just figured that I'll take a bit longer to mull it over before I publish it. I was feeling kind of bored, and curious about how it would work out in practice, so I wrote a Javascript code for running it. And... well, the numbers turned out to be awful.

Without players' interference, it would take on average about 160 attempts to resolve on its own. At least, that's what my poorly written code said back then. Right now I don't feel like rewriting it back to what it was to see how far off it was. With an assumption of a weekly game and one roll per session, this would take well over three years. That'd get way too tedious, and it would get nowhere. When I included the players' interference in the equation, it improved the odds a lot (nearly cutting the numbers in half!), but... it still didn't feel good.

So I got back to experimenting. Instead of attracting, maybe the dice could repel the trackers? Nope. Maybe the criticals could be ignored, or have a +3 instead of a +2? Nah. Making the ranges for victory and loss bigger? No. Truth is, using a d12 for this was a mistake because the chances of rolling a 12 or a 1 are quite low. Which is why I switched it to a d6. After a couple more alterations, it works well enough.

The tracker starts at a 3 because usually, the company has already started working on a project for it to be known by the Acumen. Every time period, a 1d6 is rolled. The tracker is attracted by 1 space closer to the tracker. The plan or counterplan is completed when the tracker reaches a 1 or 6 respectively. Players' mission applies before the roll. Rolling a 1 or 6 doesn't have any special effects on the tracker. No third factions are gonna get involved, because there's barely any space for two factions.

With this, it takes on average 10.5 rolls to resolve on its own. If the players are involved every time, and their failure can increase or decrease a tracker by 1, this probability shifts. Calculating it with an assumed success rate of 80% (it's probably gonna be more but for now), we see that on average they'd reduce the average number of rolls it takes down to roughly 2.4, which feels a little fast-paced to me, but then again... that's average. Meaning that some plans could be resolved quite quickly, and some could take more time than that.

Lesson learned, sometimes the idea might sound good, but the math won't math.

I've been busy lately. I got involved in a short-term Blades in the Dark campaign, I've played some other games too as part of my New Year's resolution, and I've been busy with stuff other than the Runehack RPG. I should get back to it and give it some more time so that I have at least the initial draft of it finished. Then... it's time to start playtesting. I hoped to begin the playtests once I'm done with the Blades game, but if it cancels again, I think I'll leave the party and focus on my playtests. Seven games to go, ... who knows how many more rules I need to write to my rulebook. I've been pondering thoughts of making YouTube videos more and more lately. Don't ask me when you can expect something though, that will be as much of a surprise to me as it will be for everyone else. So far, this has been a productive year.

Thank you for reading, and have an awesome day!

Two Heckadeck Games

So I couldn't resist any longer and ordered myself a Heckadeck earlier. It arrived sooner than I expected earlier today. And so I figured "Since February 29th comes only once every four years, I might as well try to make a game with the heckadeck before March begins." By the time I got around to actually writing the game, it was 10 o'clock at night. Let's call this a two-hour leap year one-person game jam.

I actually managed to write two games, because the first one I wasn't satisfied with. It was a tabletop game alright, but didn't feel like a TTRPG. Honestly, I don't feel like bothering with tables in CSS, so I'll just turn them into unnumbered lists for the sake of speed. The second one will be a lot simpler, but I can only do so much in two hours with an item I got earlier today. I'm posting both anyway.

Have a great day!

I might be in a hurry, but I can still afford to slap on a picture of a mage with cards on it. I don't know if I have time to find the source until midnight, so here's a link for my source, seems like someone who does commissions on Etsy.

The Wishstone

Players' characters are on a quest to obtain the Wishstone that can make their deepest desires real, represented by the Omnihedron. Take the Omnihedron out of the Heckadeck and put it in the middle of the table. It can only be taken by the player who discards Talismans of four different colors during their turn. The Omnihedron must always remain face-up on the table, even when possessed by a player.

Divide the remaining cards into two decks. The Character deck contains all Jokers, Jacks, Queens, Kings, Beasts, Hunters, and Travelers, as well as the Crone and the Watcher. The other one, simply referred to as the deck, contains all numbered cards, Arrows, Talismans, and the Darkness.

Each player draws three cards from the Character deck. They select which one is their character, and keep the rest as their Will, representing their close bonds. Once everyone has their cards, they can draw 7 cards from the deck. Before the game begins, anyone who holds a Talisman can reveal it. If any Talisman is revealed, the youngest holder of a Talisman starts the game. If none were revealed, the youngest player goes first.

At the start of your turn, a player by your left side draws two cards from the deck and chooses which one is your Challenge, as per the table below.

• Number: You need to discard cards with a total value of 6 or this card's value (whichever is higher).
• Arrow: There is no challenge. You can choose either the effect of success or failure.
• Talisman: You are overcome with a need to harm one character selected by the player who chose this card for you. To succeed, discard any 3 cards. You can keep this card only if you succeed.
• Darkness: You need to discard cards with a total value between 20 and 25. If you fail, you lose one Will. You can discard any number of cards.

To overcome a Challenge, you must discard enough cards, either from your hand or drawn from the deck. You can keep discarding cards this way until you discard a card that doesn't belong to your suit. Discarding the non-number cards has the following effects:

• Arrow counts as 1 or 11 (your choice).
• Talisman lets you automatically succeed.
• Darkness harms the character of the player who chose this challenge for you.

If you succeed, you can discard any number of cards from your hand. If you fail, you can take the challenge card into your hand. Either way, after a Challenge you can choose to discard cards for any of the following reasons:

• Arrow to attempt harming another Character.
• Talismans if you have Talismans of all four colors to obtain the Omnihedron.
• Darkness to end the game immediately.
• You can also discard cards at this time if a character ability you possess lets you.

You end your turn by drawing cards into your hand until you hold 7 cards.

When a character is harmed, they must discard one of their Will cards. A discarded Will always goes back to the Character deck. When one runs out of Will cards, they are eliminated from the game.

You get a special ability depending on what character you play.

• Joker: Select one additional Character card. You get its ability, but its suits are replaced by the suits that match your color.
• Jack: You start the game with 9 cards on your hand, and at the end of your turn you can draw up to 9 cards into your hand.
• Queen: You can discard one additional time in a challenge.
• King: Draw two additional cards from the Character deck for your Will.
• Beast: During your turn, you can discard two cards of your suit to harm one character of your choice.
• Hunter: Whenever you are harmed by a character, you can discard a card of your suits to harm the character too.
• Traveler: If you succeed on a challenge, you can give another player two cards of your choice from your hand, and take two random cards from their hand.
• Crone: You automatically succeed in a conflict resolution if you discard a non-numbered card (including your Will). You can discard five numbered cards during your turn and choose a player. They must switch their current character with one of their Will cards (their choice).
• Watcher: You can hold no cards. You fail your conflict resolution if the total you drew exceeds 13.

When the game ends, the player who holds Omnihedron wins along with all players whose characters' suits match the holder's.

HeckaRPG

This game requires a GM.

Take all Jacks, Queens, Kings, Beasts, Hunters, and Travelers out of the deck, and they stay out of the deck during the game. Every player chooses two random cards out of these and places them down on the table face up in front of them. The card on the top is their Body, and their Mind is the card on the bottom placed perpendicular. At the start of the game, draw 5 cards from the deck to represent your Determination. Keep them face down beneath both your Body and Mind. When you have 0 Determination, you are unconscious.

When you attempt to do something significant, the GM can challenge your Body or Mind. They tell you the difficulty, ranging from 1 (very easy) to 5 (nearly impossible). Taking someone's Determination away is 3, and giving someone Determination is 4. Draw 5 cards. Your success is measured by counting the cards with suits that match your attributes. You succeed if the number of matches equals or exceeds the difficulty, given by the GM.

• Crone has no suits.
• Darkness has no suits, and it costs you 1 Determination.
• Watcher has all suits, and the GM tells your character some new useful information.
• Omnihedron has all suits, and it gives you 1 Determination.
• Joker has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any single-suited card.
• Arrow has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any Jack or Beast.
• Talisman has both suits of its color. It also counts as a success for any King or Queen.

Replenish all Determination (max 5) when you get enough rest. Set yourself goals. Upon achieving them, the GM can let you draw additional characters and add them to your Body or Mind, keeping them parallel with the original Body and Mind to distinguish them.

That's all for today! February 29th article done, two-hour "game jam" finished, let's go!

Post-midnight edit: The second game is 300+ words too. Oh well!

3 Dice Mini-games

Gambling is part of many TTRPG tales. It's done with an imaginary currency, so how many players can genuinely say they have never enjoyed a good gamble? My go-to is usually the game I found on Reddit called "Kobold Knuckles" which I've also included an iteration of in D6 Feet Under. It's Blackjack played with d12s, but 11 and 12 count as a 10, and 1 can stand for 1 or 11, to reach 21. Simple, clean, good fun time. Well, lately I've been thinking about mechanics for downtime in my Runehack RPG, and my mind got hung up on the fact that rolling 5+ is twice as likely on a 1d12 than on 1d6. I had to get that out of my head to make space for something that would work way better, which is why I've put this premise into a classic game. Out of that was born another idea, and then one more.

In the end, I got three games of chance that are equally uncertain to the player as they are to the GM.

Shells Game

Three shells, one reward. The reward goes beneath one, and shuffling begins. The player rolls 1d6, or 1d12 if they know how the shells game tricks work. On a roll of 5+, they picked the correct shell and win.

Could it be played with more than three shells? Yes. There's a catch to their numbers though. You'll see later in this article.
Shell Game, by Zeon-in-a-tree

Quite simple, and effective. The chance of succeeding for most is 33%, and it's bumped up to 66% if you know the Shells game. Of course, this could be toyed with beyond the measure depicted. How about we go an extra step?

Monty Hall

Three doors, one reward. The player chooses one door, and the organizer opens one of the doors that do not have a reward. The player now gets a choice - swap to the other unopened door, or stay. Roll a 1d12 if they swapped their choice, or 1d6 if they stayed with their original choice. On a roll of 5+, they picked the correct door and win.

This is the shells game with a twist: You get to change your mind if you dare. It's also a probabilistic expression of the Monty Hall paradox, where switching the door is better than staying with the same door. If you don't believe me, think of it this way - imagine there are 10 doors, and after you pick one, I open 8 doors with no reward behind them. Is it better to switch or not? Of course, it is, the chance that you picked the right door on the first try was and still is 1 in 10.

That got me thinking about something else... could other pairs of regular polyhedral dice accurately represent this for different numbers of shells/doors, assuming there's a single prize every time? (In the case of Monty Hall, assume the organizer opens all but 2 doors.) Let's see!

• 2 doors: coin flip, impossible to open any doors after
• 3 doors: 1d6 on stay, 1d12 on switch, 5+ correct choice
• 4 doors: 1d4 on stay, 1d12 on switch, 4+ correct choice
• 10 doors: 1d10 on stay, 1d100 on switch, 10+ correct choice (treat 00 as zero instead of 100)

... and surprisingly, that's all the dice combinations I could find using regular dice. Maybe I could get Matt Parker on this if I send him a message. Until then, let's see how far we could go with irregular dice and a complete revamp of the game's concept!

Russian Roulette

Start by defining the number of chambers C and the number of bullets B. A player rolls 1dC on the turn (replace C by the current number of chambers), on a roll of B or less they were unlucky. Lower C by 1 after each turn, and lower B by 1 after each unfortunate turn.

Buckshot Roulette has been trending recently. I'm impressed at how they could turn the Russian Roulette into a whole game with actual tactical choices.

I don't know if it can get simpler than this. Highly intuitive, the stakes are clear. One would consider using a deck of cards to be easier, and it is. But... a deck of cards can be shuffled badly, or shuffled in a way to "load" it, keeping the top card the same throughout the whole shuffle. I used to do magic tricks, I know how things can be. Dice make it fair unless they've spent some time in the oven.

The disadvantage of using the dice should be clear by now. For a gun with six chambers, you're going to need 1d6, 1d5, 1d4, 1d3, and 1d2 (1d1 isn't a die, and 1d2 could be a coin). It is easy to do digitally, but not so easy in person. I know some companies sell such dice, but I'm not writing this as a how-to guide. This is just an article where I wanted to write down three ideas for tabletop mini-games to gamble with at the table. Well, four technically, since I described Kobold Knuckles at the top, but let this be the secret kept among everyone who finished reading this article.

That's all for today! I hope to get back to Runehack with my next article, but one never knows when a muse kicks them. Thank you all, and have a wonderful day!

Conflict Resolution based on Gatherings

I had another neat game design idea that I wanted to share. This one comes from a conversation with Izzy, Heavy, and the Moon Cell about how to do skills differently. Of course, don't expect this to be a part of the Runehack RPG, so far I actually don't have any plans for a game that would include this. I wanted to share it because I think it's neat.

Conflict Resolution based on Gatherings

A character is defined by a set of attributes with assigned values, as usual. But their purpose is not to be added or compared to a die roll. Instead, they define how many people you can attempt to influence by your attribute. Whether this succeeds is determined by comparing your level with theirs, and possibly a die roll if you want some randomness involved.

Let's make an example. Say you are trying to sneak through a corridor with some guards in it. Your stealth is 4, and there are 5 guards, so you need to select four guards you hide from, and figure out a way in which you could move so that the fifth guard doesn't get to see you. Then, your level is compared to the guards', successfully letting you sneak past anyone whose level is equal to or less than yours. So, if your level is 4 and the guards' levels are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, there might be one guard who you couldn't have hidden from. You better hope it was that one guard who you didn't choose. What if the guards try to search for you together as a team? They add up all their levels, in this case totaling 15, and at least one of them is bound to find you with a skill that's not a zero. But if you make it past them safely, they might not know you were there in the first place.

Upgrading your skills one digit at a time might be boring, so how about we use an exponential here? Imagine if your skill doubles every time you get to upgrade it. You start off by being able to hide from one guard, then two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, and perhaps more eventually. Imagine a master thief hiding from a crowd of a thousand heads.

The biggest flaw I can see here is doing stuff that doesn't relate to people. When you're trying to pick a lock on a door, do you compare your level with the locksmith's? What if you're just trying to push a boulder up the mountain? It will feel like a cop-out, but I'd ask how many average people it takes to do the same task or something along those lines.

Teamwork here would allow one very competent character to carry the whole group, naturally leading to a more diverse group with various specializations. What would be the limit though? Maybe people who you assist with your abilities also count into the number of people that you can affect. I don't know.
Prince of Persia concept art. I will consider this the source for now.

It is a very raw idea, but that's why I'm posting it here. I don't feel like making it into something complete right now, if I did I would turn it into a short game. If you want to, see where you can take it.

Have a great day!

Runehack RPG 0: Goals and Foundations

The time has come. Let's talk about what I've been working on for some time now. Just to be clear, these articles will be focused on the game's design more than on the worldbuilding.

The old cover art for the Runehack RPG was drawn by Kate Chaste. While it's fine work, over the years I changed my mind and ended up not using it for the game. The new cover art has already been drawn by my wonderful girlfriend Arell, but I figured I could use this for the article series so that these would still get a thumbnail of some sort. I'll reveal the new cover art when the game is finished.

Premise

I like the idea of going beyond the usual pillars of experience. I feel like combat has been explored in many games, the exploration is something some games already do really well, and social interaction is something I have my own opinions on (briefly: give tools, not skips). I will have to do something for some of these, but generally, I don't want to delve too much into those. So, how do I plan to go beyond?

This game takes place in my world Runehack which I talked about several times on my blog. In this world dominated by megacorporations, there's a secretive organization with its own goals. The base assumption is that the organization will face the megacorporations, trying to dig up dirt on them by infiltrating their buildings to search for interesting information about them and then sharing it with the public. Imagine whistleblowers but with exciting freerunning and hacking involved.

That being said, this is the base game that I want to publish this year. I'd like to expand on the game after with extra pillars of experience that could be added or removed without anything changing too much. Of course, you would leave out the base premise of the game if you were to remove the hacking and the freerunning pillars. Still, the same can be said about any system - if I remove combat from D&D, it becomes a vastly different game from what most players experience it as. The big difference I'm leading to is that in my game, I want everything I label as a pillar of experience to be something the game could easily focus on throughout a campaign, even if other pillars are dropped.

Goals

I aim to finish the game's first version by the end of this year. This includes the rules for the three pillars I wish to begin with.

The core pillar is the only pillar you can't remove from the game, since it includes the mechanics that other pillars rely on. These include your fantasy species, regular rolls made using your attributes, some additional background-related traits, and the core of the action economy that's shared with all other pillars.

The freerunning pillar is what I spend most of the time developing. The best way I can put it is that it's an upgrade of what I tested with the Fairy Heist: areas connected by passages that some can pass, some can't, and some can pass but they'd get slowed down. Think of this as Mirror's Edge, or Assassin's Creed, but done in tabletop and ideally without the players fighting their opponents.

The hacking pillar is the final pillar that I want to have in the game when it's published, but it's also the one I'd have the easiest time dropping if I don't manage to finish it on time. It's the dice-placing minigame from The Asterist.

Core Pillar

While the core pillar is something I'm largely satisfied with by now, consider it still a bit of a work in progress. It's unlikely that it will change from now on, but it might if I am compelled enough to do so.

This system's method of rolling is a roll-over using 2d6 or 1d12, with the addition of one's relevant attribute. When a character rolls for its attribute, it can choose to roll Reliably (2d6) or Recklessly (1d12). This is a concept I've described before on my blog, and it's to give the players some control over how their die roll might end up. I will happily borrow the rules for advantage and disadvantage from Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition since I want the numbers to stay within their bounds. An attribute has a range of 0 to 4, with some exceptions.

For now, I'm feeling a bit experimental. I want to preserve a proven mechanic from a previous game, which is why I've decided this game will have five stats, but two of them can be replaced by a single one for some characters.

• Might - physical strength. Pushing, lifting, dragging, and so on.
• Agility - dexterity. Sleight of hand, dodging, acrobatics, balance, and so on.
• Training - tools knowledge. Picking locks, making mechanisms, artistic performance, and so on.
• Comprehension - abstract knowledge. Physics, chemistry, psychology, history, and so on.
• Hunch - guessing. Searching for hidden things, intuition, and so on.
• Height - replaces the Might and Agility of characters who are so tiny that their Might and Agility wouldn't matter more than their height. Unlike other stats, this one ranges from 4 to 17, and when one uses it, they roll 3d6 and succeed when they either roll their exact height, below their height when they would use their Might, or above their height when they would use their Agility. Possessing a height stat also reduces the number of acts you can perform in a turn by 1.

Most of these attributes also come with some extra benefit attached to them. For now, since it will be relevant, I will mention just that you get a number of hunches per day equal to your Hunch attribute, which you can spend to make a guess statement towards your GM about a thing your character could reasonably guess. You must make it clear that you are using your hunch, by saying something along the lines of "I have a hunch that..." for example. Your GM then tells you whether your hunch was correct or not. Yes, it's the mechanic I've tested with the Clues and Hunches, I like it a lot.

When it comes to the playable species, there's a plan to include seven of them. I've considered including the digital ghost that I've introduced in Runehack: The Asterist, but in the end, I've realized it might be too powerful for the freerunning pillar. It would be fine as an opponent now and then, but as a player character, it's just too much. As for the rest, here they are listed along with a rough outline of their traits:

• Dwarf. Possesses a touch so sensitive, that they can see anything that's touching a surface they touch with their bare skin. This functions up to 1 area away.
• Elf. Can see in the dark and perform one additional activity per day. Their lifespan is also extra long, but that doesn't really matter within the game itself.
• Fairy. Possess the Height stat, and they can also naturally fly. Once per turn, they can use an act to move twice. I might add one or more traits, since right now a Small Runebot is an objectively better version of a fairy.
• Goblin. Over a week, they can adjust their physiology through a diet, gaining a trait of their choice. I'll be honest, neither do I know what exactly will these abilities be just yet.
• Human. One of their attributes is increased by 1. Furthermore, they can spend 1 hunch after a roll to force a reroll, keeping the new result.
• Orc. One of their attributes is increased by 1. They get an additional act on their turn that they can only use to move. They can also choose one attribute that they can increase after a time beyond 4.
• Runebot. Their body is a puppet remotely controlled by their mind from a safe location. Their body is highly modular, and it can come in a Regular or Small model (the difference being that the Small model has a Height stat). With the increase in level, they get more and more components that they can attach to their body. I will need to find a way of compensating the Small runebots for a loss of an act, but for now, this is it.

Pillars' Commonalities

I don't know yet how I'll work out the progression across all the pillars, but what I do know is that every time a character gets to "level up", they will have to increase one of their lowest pillars by a level.

There are two ways of tracking what a character does in this game: activity and act. A character gets to choose to do 6 activities per day. They could in theory be split up and shuffled around, but I've wanted a way of tracking the activities one does that's somewhat simple, so for now consider them uninterrupted blocks (as unnatural as it may be). Some activities can include sleep, work, mission, or anything else of significant time investment, such as an important social interaction, or research. Matters such as transportation, eating, and so on, aren't tracked and are assumed to be performed as part of these activities. On a turn-by-turn basis (like during a mission), a character can take 3 acts per turn.

I'm quite hyped for this project. It's been a long time coming, and I want to play it. There's still a long way to go though, so for now this is everything I can say here. Thank you for reading, and have an awesome day!