Runehack RPG 1: Freerunning Pillar

I've taken too long with this article. With 10 articles written in the meantime, it's been enough time to process most issues I had with writing this down. This won't be perfect, there are already things I changed from the first article, it's better to just go ahead and do it so that it's out there.

Vault, by thegryph

Freerunning Pillar

This is a pillar focused on mobility and action-packed scenes. Their focus is to deliver or retrieve information, items, or even people, moving them between a safe place (local hideout, team's van, etc.) and a dangerous place (megacorporation's offices, etc.). Optimally, you'd do this without getting noticed, but getting noticed is an inevitability. However, in this process, you can't remove your pursuers.

Let's begin by defining the environment. I've already talked about the areas and passages in the first article briefly, and they are described in greater detail in Runehack: Fairy Heist. Areas are discrete locations that could contain one or more characters, and passages (sometimes called routes) connect them. Since the pillar is all about navigating this space, several types of passages are introduced, mostly described as obstacles. Some examples of these include:

• Around is an obstacle that you navigate by making multiple turns (such as a crooked alleyway, a crowd of people, etc.). It doesn't require hands to be passed through, and it blocks sight.
• Low is an obstacle that you navigate by slouching slightly (such as a low ceiling, etc.). It doesn't require hands to be passed through, and it doesn't block sight.
• Water is an obstacle that you must swim through. It requires hands to pass through, and it doesn't block sight.

A resource energy is featured in this pillar. It equals three times your highest tier, and it can be spent on navigating obstacles (see below), as well as on avoiding attacks. Whenever you are attacked, you can choose to either take 1 wound, or spend an amount of energy that your opponent rolled, provided you have enough energy. When your energy is reduced to 0, you gain 1 wound and your energy can't be increased until you rest after the mission.

By default, when a character tries to move through a route with an obstacle on it, they must either spend an extra act or 1 energy. Through the player options offered in this pillar, players can learn how to master these obstacles and navigate them for free without being slowed down. Each of the obstacle types also has an advanced obstacle (for the examples above it's Around -> Between, Low -> Below, Water -> Underwater). An advanced obstacle can only be mastered after mastering the base obstacle it's derived from. There are additional types of routes that aren't obstacles, and therefore can't be mastered:

• Glass is a passage that can't be passed through, but one can see through it.
• Door is a passage that can be seen and passed through only when it's opened. It takes an act to open, close, and in some cases also lock or unlock.
• Hole is a passage that only tiny characters can move and see through. Others can see through it only by taking the Search act.

During a freerunning mission, players can build up momentum by passing through routes without being slowed down. Momentum can be spent to take the Call, Open/Close, Read, or Search act. When you reach Tier 3 in Freerunning, you can spend 3 momentum to take a Move action (which can produce further momentum). You lose all your momentum either when you take an act that's not Move or spends your momentum, or when your turn ends.

Senses are an important factor during the missions. A character can see clearly anything in their current area, with the exception of the contents of the hiding spots (they can see their contents only if they use the Search act). Each character can be looking in one direction of their choice, which can be changed during their turn, or at the end of any turn. They see clearly anything in that direction until an obstacle blocks their line of sight (some obstacles could maybe allow the Search act to let someone see through, like Hole), and they have a peripheral vision in directions perpendicular to it: it lets them see shapes, colors, and motion, but not specific details.

When it comes to hearing, it's determined by the volume of every sound. For every two routes the sound has to cross, its volume decreases by 1. You can hear all sounds that can reach your area, but you can only choose to hear clearly one of the sounds with the highest volume to you. You can try to focus on a sound with lower volume by making a Comprehension roll with a difficulty of 4 * its volume. A route that dampens the sound (like water) reduces the volume by 1, echo increases the volume by 1. Sounds produced by Tiny people or items built for Tiny people produce sounds with a volume that's 1 less.

Example volumes:

0: whispering
1: talking, rainfall, walking
2: swimming, flying, talking loudly
3: shouting, multiple vehicles
4: loud vehicle

(I don't know how viable the sounds will be in practice, for now it just sounded interesting enough on paper, so I'm including it here. Worst case scenario, I'll need to simplify it, and everyone will get to learn from my mistake.)

The other senses, usually labeled auxiliary, are mostly less refined than hearing and sound. One can sense the temperature and smell in their area without being able to trace its exact source or distribution. Touch can work on anything a character can reach, while taste can work on anything a character can taste. A character can always tell which way is the north.

An important part of this pillar are the Apps, which you can use as an act. An app is software installed in your runecard for assistance during a mission. Since these are rune-based, they do either telekinesis, illusions, detection, or a combination of these. What apps your character gets depends on your character's role.

Let's see an outline of an example role below. Apps are written in italics, and the current format is more elaborate than this.

Masker

Tier 1

• You can choose whether your footsteps can be heard as long as you have one hand free.
• Master Water obstacles and one other obstacle type of your choice.
• Illusory Item allows you to create a static illusory item. Make an Agility roll to determine how close does one have to examine it to determine if it's real or not.
• Silencer lets you pick one target person that can't be heard until the start of your next turn.

Tier 2

• Choose your specialization: Tinker or Veiler
• Tinker masters the Low obstacle and gains the Illusory Fairy app that lets them make an illusion of a fairy for 1 hour. The illusion can be moved twice on each of your turns.
• Veiler masters the Slope obstacle and gains the Virtual Mask that lets them mask themselves until the end of the current turn, preventing others from seeing or hearing them.

Tier 3

• You master either Around or Over obstacle, as well as one advanced obstacle of your choice.
• Distract lets you pick one target who can't see or hear until the start of your next turn. If you spend extra (TBD) credits, they fall asleep for 1 hour. While asleep, they can't see and are incapacitated until woken up by someone or a loud noise. The app can't put another target to sleep until the last target wakes up.
• You can spend extra (TBD) credits when using the Illusory Item to animate the item, letting its appearance change. Furthermore, you can have up to 8 illusory items present at the same time.
• The Silencer app lets you target any number of people.

Tier 4

• You master one obstacle of your choice, and gain any one app of your choice from Tier 2 or below from any role.
• Depending on your specialization, you gain one of the following upgrades:
• When you use the Illusory Person app, you can make a person of any species, not just a fairy. You can consider it a disguise if its size matches yours.
• When you use the Virtual Mask, its effects last until the start of your next turn. Alternatively, 1/day, you can instead make it last until the end of your next turn.

Tier 5

• You master one obstacle of your choice, and gain any one app of your choice.
• On your turn, you can use your act or spend 1 Momentum to focus on something and ask the GM whether it is an illusion. The GM must answer truthfully.

Tl;dr structure

• Tier 1: unique ability, 2 obstacles, 2 apps
• Tier 2: 1 obstacle, 1 app
• Tier 3: 2 obstacles, 1 app, 1 upgrade
• Tier 4: 1 obstacle, 1 app, 1 upgrade
• Tier 5: unique ability, 1 obstacle, 1 app
• Total: 2 unique abilities, 7 obstacles, 6 apps, 2 upgrades

The roles are mostly written already, the rules for freerunning are pretty much ready. I will admit I got sidetracked by going after my 12 Good Games new year resolution for a bit, and I actually got inspired to run a D&D 5e trishot themed after One Piece. I keep delaying the actual playtest, because I dread finding a group of people to play with regularly, plus making up the story and everything. I feel like I should talk about the hacking next when it comes to the Runehack RPG, but to be honest, everything I have for that has been already featured in Runehack: The Asterist.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Inherited Powers System, MHA Style

I need to get another idea out of my head so I can focus on things more urgently, let's do this.

Superpowers are fun. Superheroes are fun. Though you could also maybe have these featured in non-superhero-centric games, but that's beside the point. Ever since binging My Hero Academia with my wonderful girlfriend, I've wondered how would I translate stuff like this into a tabletop roleplaying game ruleset. To give a brief overview, the powers (called quirks) are mutations that keep getting wilder over the generations, there's a large variety of them, and most people seem to have one quirk each. Just to be clear, for this thought exercise, I'm ignoring the cases of more than two quirks in one person, like the blonde guy from the 1B class or some spoiler characters. No meta-quirks that manipulate the quirks.

Now that the summary of the anime's premise is done, I'm gonna go back to calling them Powers, because I prefer that name. Quirk is fun, but in TTRPGs it tends to stand for something else. I hope you'll enjoy this, and have a wonderful day!

Sidenote: Anything below isn't set in stone, it's just a proof of concept for now, barely functional for a game.

Superpower, by Dan Su

Inherited Powers System

The Powers are generally inherited from the parents, though sometimes they can be manifested completely spontaneously. Since they are genetically based, they are made up of several components:

• Trigger
• Ability
• Limitation

In a usual approach, you'd just get a bunch of points to spend on each of these, and be done. Boom, there, you got your Power, now you can go fight crimes. But as it is becoming obvious to me, some people love to gamble by rolling the dice, if there's a chance they could get some kind of an advantage out of it. So let's mix the game design with worldbuilding. Here are guidelines on how you could inherit your Power from your parents.

Everyone has two of each of those, one dominant and one recessive. There isn't any ranking as to which traits are more dominant than which, this is all just about pure luck of what one is born with. So, get a pair of color-coded dice, let's say 2d20's: one for dominant traits and one for recessive traits. Roll them for each parent's every trait (Ability, Trigger, Limitation). The higher roll defines which gene is passed onto you from that parent. If both rolls are equal, congratulations, the gene mutated and you instead get to roll on a random rolltable for that trait! (If I weren't busy with other stuff like preparing for a One Piece trishot, I'd make one, but I'll leave that for another day.)

After this is done, you should be left with a pair of Abilities, a pair of Triggers, and a pair of Limitations, one from each parent (unless they mutated). Now, assign the colors to your parents, and roll once for each pair. The higher roll determines which of the traits is considered dominant for your body. If both are equal, congratulations - you get to keep both somehow! ... look, anime makes it work for Todoroki, so I might as well include it in this ruleset.

If you want "quirkless" (or in this case Powerless) to be an option, that will occur when both rolls are a 1 on either Power or Trigger. You have a gene for it, but alas - the dominant one turned out to be a blank.

I did say that I don't have rolltables or energy to make them, but I might as well leave you with some examples. Of course, these are not complete in any way, I'd spend a lot more time if I wanted to make them complete.

Trigger

1. Always active (Invisible Girl)
2. Line of sight and focus (Eraser Head)
3. Voice and focus (Present Mic)
4. Touch and focus (Uravity)
5. Consuming something (Sugarman)
6. Focus (Creati)

Ability

I write them broadly, but with more time I'd make them extra 

1. Boost a personal characteristic (strength, speed, senses, ...)
2. Produce something (fire, sticky spheres, ...)
3. Manifest traits of an animal (frog, seal, ...). Maybe this one could come with limitations on what triggers are allowed with it.
4. Manifest a supernatural characteristic (invisibility, weightlessness, locking something in place, ...)
5. Transformation into and back from some substance (dust, paper, ...)
6. Area influencers. Not sure how this would be different from numbers 2 or 4, but I wanted there to be six items on each list.

Limit

I'm not sure if these shouldn't just come prepackaged with the Abilities and/or Triggers. For now, they are separate.

1. Time limit
2. Line of sight
3. One target at a time
4. Fuel consumed
5. Knowledge
6. Environmental condition

That's all for today. This could make for a neat core of a system. That being said, there is also a downside to this: One power per character can work well in a TV show, but it might not be ideal for a TTRPG. Depending on your Power, your character could fall somewhere in the range from "can resolve any situation on their own" to "one trick pony that needs support". 

Runehack RPG 0.1: Pivoting in a New Direction

It's time for the truth to be revealed. Maybe I never really wanted a game that's action-filled in the first place. I have always dreamed of a D&D game with an all-bards party, where they'd go on a world tour. Or something similar for another system. I lost this dream of mine somewhere along the way to Game Dev years ago and have forgotten about it... until today.

It's time to showcase how the musical pillar will work for the Runehack RPG!

A quick musician doodle redeemed from Mishroomarts

Music Pillar

There are four qualities that the music can have:

• Intensity can range from Calm to Strong, describing how loud the music's loudest tones are. It utilizes Muscle.
• Tempo can range from Slow to Fast, describing the general speed at which the music is played. It utilizes Agility.
• Authenticity can range from Bright to Dark, describing whether the music is more upbeat or emotional. It utilizes Comprehension.
• Creativity can range from Stock to Fresh, describing whether the music is predictable or if it's unafraid to experiment outside of the music theory's range. It utilizes Hunch.

Training isn't represented as a musical genre because it defines your expertise with musical instruments. You can play a number of musical instruments equal to 1 + your Training, and they can have a total number of unique properties equal to your Training.

Note: You can select a musical instrument in place of one of the expert areas that your Training gives you in the Core Pillar. If you do so, you will have expertly knowledge in how this instrument works, its history, maintenance, and significant artists who primarily played this instrument.

The musical instruments can have the following properties:

• Pedaled. Advantage on rolls for Intensity.
• Two-handed. Advantage on rolls for Tempo.
• Multi-tonal. Advantage on rolls for Authenticity.
• Contiunuous. Advantage on rolls for Creativity.
• Static. Advantage on rolls for both Intensity and Tempo.
• Custom-made. Choose one of the musical qualities. You can use Training in place of the original stat when rolling for that quality using this instrument. You can take this property multiple times.

Musical Performance

When performing, it is important to appease the crowd's demands. The GM begins by secretly rolling 4d6 and dividing the numbers between the qualities. The highest roll stands for a preference for high rolls in that quality, the lowest roll stands for a preference for low rolls in that quality, and anything in between begins neutral. If multiple numbers are the highest/lowest, it's applied to multiple qualities. If all four numbers are the same, they correspond to low (1-3) or high (4-6) rolls. The GM keeps them in the order of Intensity, Tempo, Authenticity, and Creativity behind the screen.

At the start of every round, the GM rolls 2d12 without adding them together to see which preferences flip. If they were neutral so far, they get tipped either way at GM's discretion.

• 1-3: Intensity
• 4-6: Tempo
• 7-9: Authenticity
• 10-12: Creativity

These preferences can be represented in crowd actions. These are, on purpose, ambiguous to keep the band guessing. For convenience, each is listed twice to be easier to reference. The GM should mention ideally two of them (one if there aren't two) at the start of each round to clue the players in on what the audience demands.

• Intensity (low)
• or Tempo (low): swaying
• or Creativity (low): whistling
• Intensity (high)
• or Tempo (high): head-banging
• or Authenticity (high): stomping
• Tempo (low)
• or Intensity (low): swaying
• or Authenticity (high): lights above heads (e.g. lighters)
• Tempo (high)
• or Intensity (high): head-banging
• or Creativity (high): playing air instruments
• Authenticity (low)
• or Creativity (low): screams
• or Creativity (high): crowd wave
• Authenticity (high)
• or Intensity (high): stomping
• or Tempo (low): lights above heads (e.g. lighters)
• Creativity (low)
• or Intensity (low): whistling
• or Authenticity (low): screams
• Creativity (high)
• or Tempo (high): playing air instruments
• or Authenticity (low): crowd wave

The DC for all music-making rolls is 8 unless said otherwise. However, the players must either roll above the DC as usual, or under if the audience demands low for some musical quality. Whether a player is trying to roll over or under 8 should be announced before the roll along with the musical quality (e.g. "I'm trying to go for low Tempo). Due to this, any musician can choose to roll with a disadvantage at will, and they can choose whether their stat is ignored, added to, or subtracted from a roll after it is made. The goal is to play according to the crowd's preferences, confirmed by the reactions described by the GM. If a musician succeeds in playing according to the crowd's preferences two times in a turn, or when they roll exactly 8, they get a Starpower Point.

Starpower Points are a way of performing extra actions while keeping up the performance. The pillar will feature some special actions that can be performed by spending an act or a number of Starpower Points. The details aren't worked out yet, but for now, examples could include:

• getting the crowd to sing in your place,
• dance moves,
• musical instrument tricks,
• activating special effects such as fireworks,
• jumping onto the crowd and letting it carry you,
• tossing a keepsake into the crowd.

Each would have its effect, but right now I don't have any further details worked out. Maybe some could coordinate their preferences or something like that.

---

That's about it for now. Of course, once finished the pillar would feature its own roles, their features, and so on, but that all should be done on another day. All that being said, ... it should be obvious this isn't what I want my game to be about, but I do want it to be an actual part of the game. It's not on my priorities list, but I had some time to spare during Easter and thought of working this out before I get to the final details of the core system I want to release this year as a way of relaxing. It might not come off as all that funny of an April Fools joke, but I came up with it not too long ago. The article was written in about 2 hours, most of this isn't set in stone yet. Obviously, it borrows some ideas from Play It by Cheer!, and that's because I really liked the foundation I've laid out there. Its stats map nicely onto this system's stats, Training is an awesome "ace in a sleeve" stat that'd work universally elsewhere, and... I think when I get to making the roles for this system, I'll make it so that the roles are named differently. Writing all this out made me realize that the roles probably should have different names in every pillar.

Anyway, writing the Core Pillar article took me too long, I wrote like 5 or 6 articles since I mentioned it last time it, so I can't promise I'll publish it before I begin the playtests. I'll see what I can do though. I like the way the game's development is going, and my 12 good games resolution is going to be finished soon enough. Or, it would be, if Witcher 3 wasn't still ahead of me.

That's about it! Thank you for reading, and happy beginning of April, everyone!

Extra Actions

Two articles in one day? That's right. I'm catching up with what I wanted to write these days. The Shadowfell article was supposed to come out yesterday. Anyway!

In Opposed Rolls Combat System, I wrote of a different way to run combat. The core premise of it is a focus on actions either happening on your turn or as a reaction to others' actions. It felt bland and dry to me, but it got the point across. The other day, Izzy brought up a video he called a perfect example of what he'd want the combat in his ideal game to feel like (paraphrased). After a couple watches of the video and analyzing it by writing out what would the actions of it look like, I realized what's the missing element. The system needs more actions.

This happens a lot in cinematic fights. Why didn't I think of it sooner?
League of Legends: Clashing Winds, by ae-rie

Clashes

Let's first make an example using the Opposed Rolls Combat System. Let me first clarify, that's not its "official name", I'm just using the article title for now. ... though looking at the abbreviation, ORCS is kind of genius as a coincidence.

A clash occurs when one creature attacks, the other creature reacts by attacking also, and the two rolls are within 5 points of each other. It's that moment when the two blades meet and there's tension between the two combatants. At this point, the higher roll (if any) doesn't deal damage, it can instead take a "mini-action". I'm not sure if all of these would be general or some would be granted as class features, but examples could include:

• knocking the opponent prone,
• shoving the opponent away from you,
• breaking the opponent's weapon,
• casting a spell,
• attacking him without using the weapon that's involved in the clash,
• tossing some grainy/powdery substance in the air, possibly at the opponent.

The key concept here is that this wouldn't cost you a maneuver. It'd be an extra action on top of your action economy but with fewer options. It's you taking the opportunity to do something to the enemy.

There are two other things, unrelated to the clashes, that I want to add to the system since I'm already writing a minor 'update' to it here. The video inspired me with two more possible things one could do. A reaction to catch an ally that's about to fall within your reach, and an action to toss an ally some distance. But that's beside the point of this article.

My Theory

Things clicked together when I realized... I wanted to do something very similar in my freerunning system for the Runehack RPG. For months, I've known how I want to do the Momentum in that game. Momentum is gained by traversing routes without being slowed down (so either a clear route or a mastery of the obstacle). Momentum also lets you take "mini-actions" immediately after you move.

This is what has led me to my theory.

• In a mobility-focused tactical game, it would suck to just move and have no option to do something else on every turn. But movement is essential, so you are assumed to move on each turn.
• In a combat-focused tactical game, it would suck to just attack and have no option to do something else on every turn. But attacks are essential, so you are assumed to attack on each turn.

The only difference here is the focus of the game, otherwise, the statements are identical. This is why I propose my theory:

A game should provide the player with an option to do something extra when the focal action of the game fulfills some conditions.

Think about it. It'd suck if your attack dealt just 3 points of damage, so let's make it worth more. And traversing the routes that you've mastered or clear routes to gain more Momentum just makes sense in a parkour-themed game.

That being said, I would advise against combining it, since that would get too cumbersome to keep track of. Especially if clashes let you move, which would let you build up momentum that you could use to try to make more attacks possibly and keep the clashes up. The risk of an infinite action economy increases the more of these Extra Actions you introduce into the same system, so... I'd urge you to keep it down to a single type of Extra Actions. I don't know if I'll follow this advice myself, I might give it a go in my playtests, but I'll have to be extra careful to avoid any case of infinite actions.

I wonder what would be the reasons behind these mini-actions in other minigames I have on my mind. You'll have to wait to see that when I get to those games.

Until then, thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

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!