Non-casters Should Be Specialists

I don't like the Martial as a label, largely because I am not as excited about combat as I used to be. Today I went through a lengthy conversation log in one of the discords I'm on, and came to the realization that this could solve two of my problems with D&D on one fell swoop.

Let people be Specialists instead of Martials. People will laugh about a Fighter having skills that are not fighting, but I find it so utterly bizarre that only the typical Rogue would get to be a specialist. Everyone needs to be useful both in combat, but also out of combat. And what better thing could balance that out than skills? If you don't waste time learning spells, you waste it learning skills.

But how could one make several different types of specialists without putting them into very specific niches? Let's see if I can succeed at that. (Bear in mind there can be overlaps in these categories)

Self Specialization

Your body is the only thing you need to resolve most problems you meet. Whether it's fighting, fixing things, getting places, or anything else. Sure a body is limited in some ways, but you've exercised it enough to be excellent in all the things that really matter to you. This doesn't mean that you have to be strong, or sneaky, or anything else. You still pick your specialization for yourself, but it's your body that you do this with.

Tools Specialization

You get things done with the right tools. Hammers, saws, and such are just one aspect of this, don't get fooled by a label of a 'tool', what the label actually represents are things. Physical objects separate from your body. Picking a lock is hardly doable with your fingers, you'll need a set of lockpicks. Fighting a hoard of enemies is easier if you have a long stick with a pointy rock at its end, or a spear if you're more advanced than that. You won't get hurt that easily if you wear an armor, and you won't lose your way if you have a compass. You're gonna be fine as long as you are not empty-handed.

Environment Specialization

Upon entering a room, you can tell immediately what you could use in what ways, conventional or not. That pan would make for an awesome improvised weapon, or you could make a gnarly omelet with it. This table could be climbed under, jumped over, or maneuvered around to get distance between you and a pursuer. Use chairs to reach high places, use a spoon or a knife or a ladle to reach a distant thing. How is this different from using the tools is improvisation and thinking out of the box. A tools specialist has their set of items that they'd like to carry around, which they too could use in unconventional ways. You look around and see what's around you that could be used. It doesn't have to be an item either - a tree could have many different purposes, same for a hole in a ground or another lack of a distinct thing.

Others Specialization

No, this isn't a catchall "everything else" category. This category stands for other agents, other living (and possibly unliving) things. Whether it's your own servants, or other people. You are a manager type of person, who gets other people to do things for you. This doesn't mean that you sit around doing nothing, you coordinate the group so that it works efficiently.

Neeeeeeeeeeeerd!
Art by o.sporin

In Practice

Let's say you are trying to find which way is North. What do you do?

• Self: You think about which way did you see the Sun rise or set last. Maybe you look for the North star or its equivalent for the world. Or maybe you mentally keep track of this all along.
• Tools: You pull out your trusty compass, of course!
• Environment: You check for moss on the trees and other typical environmental signs of which way the North is.
• Others: You ask people, observe the migration of the birds, or otherwise find it out from other people/animal/living/unliving beings.

Maybe you're trying to fight. How do you do that?

• Self: Kicking, punching, headbutts, and so on.
• Tools: Knives and blades, staves and hammers, whatever you feel like wielding this time.
• Environment: That branch over there, this door, that window is perfectly positioned for tactical defenestration, and so on.
• Others: You give out commands and coordinate multiple people for a nasty combo.

Still not convinced? How about they try to convince you instead?

• Self: Draws from their deep knowledge resources within.
• Tools: Books, maps, letters, measuring tools, plenty of ways to show the evidence.
• Environment: Drives a point by making comparisons to people and things that are present. Or, maybe contrary, seeks to understand what's going on in your mind by observing you and the social situation.
• Others: Structures others' arguments into a more coherent whole.

What classes would these correspond to? Well, let's start by dropping Rogue, since that one influenced all four to some extent. I'd say Monk is the closest to being a Self Specialist, with a dash of a non-magical Wizard. For the Tools, Fighter is without a doubt the best, although a non-magical Artificer also would suit quite well. The Environment is a difficult one, I want to say Ranger or Druid if we were to ignore magic. As for Others, Bard most probably, yet again without magic. I don't know if Barbarian fits into any of these neatly without being forced into the role, but that's the beauty of working on my own things - it doesn't have to fit.

Is this a perfect way to do this? Probably not. But it sure seems like a start of an interesting one. I've been thinking about this for months, but never before in a "non-casters should be Specialists, not Martials" way. This could be quite interesting. The truth is, I was saving the Self/Tools/Env/Others as stats for another small game I've been pondering for a long,, long time... and this I think provided me with a push that I needed. Now I think it clicks a lot better.

That's it, the third article! Personal record broken once again. Time for me to finish the Review of 2024, and prepare myself. My 2025 will be quite... productive. Thank you for reading, and have an awesome rest of the year!

Thoughts on Prayers

It's time to ponder D&D once again. I was thinking recently of the Turn Undead and how odd this ability is. Yes, it makes sense because the undead are generally unholy creations, yadda yadda, there are other Channel Divinities too, even more with 5.24e. But you can only do this a couple of times in a day. Plus, there's something that's certainly missing from the Cleric class to me.

Prayer, by Alex Petruk

Prayer

Picture this: at level 1, a cleric gets the ability to Pray. A prayer requires the cleric to keep talking, they can do it any number of times in a day, and for as long as they manage to do this, they get some kind of benefit. My initial thought was +1 AC, but it could be other minor boons too, maybe depending on the portfolio of the deity you pray to. Maybe you could also have multiple possible prayers, or a prayer book. Just keep the prayer itself as a relatively minor thing. I'm so unused to thinking in D&D terms, I'm not even sure whether I'd make this a bonus action, a reaction, or no action whatsoever. But, here's the juicy part.

The monsters could have a trait that reads something along the lines of...

Unholy. You can't willingly move closer to any creature who is Praying to a deity who doesn't have the Death in its portfolio.

Use Praying with a capital P as a keyword. The monsters could react differently to different kinds of prayers. Maybe a fiend is blinded if it looks at the cleric Praying to a Light deity, maybe a celestial can't attack a cleric who's Praying to some evil deity, maybe the prayer to the deity of War makes specifically the giants frightened.

I know what you might be thinking. Isn't this done kind of backwards? Why make it traits instead of just saying these things in the prayers? Well, firstly, because I think that a trait called "Turn Immunity" is kind of weird. But secondly and far more importantly, because this way the player doesn't necessarily know what extra effects their prayer will have, leading to moments of discovery and awe at their deity's powers.

Another thing you might be considering is... why not make this a cantrip? "Divine Protection", bonus action to cast, Verbal component, ... My reason is simple: I don't want this to be treated like magic. I want this to be treated like a miracle. No anti-magic field or counterspell could possibly stop the deity's power. Isn't it too good then? To make a prayer that's unstoppable like this? Not if I remind you of the requirement... the cleric must keep talking. If they stop, during or out of their turn, the prayer is done. How do you silence them? That's the best part: you tell me. You could put a rag in their mouth if they are sufficiently immobilized. You could try to suffocate them. You could shove their head underwater. You could of course also use the good ol' reliable silence spell. My point is that this condition is open-ended, and both the GM and the players could have tons of fun coming up with ways to stop it.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure about the monster traits part and whether it's better than just saying "all the undead run away from you". But it's a neat idea that I came up with recently, and I am trying to overcome my blog posts personal record here, so onto the blog it shall go! Maybe I'll get a cool game idea next year where I could use this without relying on the D&D as lingua franca to communicate this idea.

Thank you for reading my minor rambling, and have a great day!

These Bloody Cells

Quickie today because I am three articles away from breaking a personal record again and I had an idea: What if there was a game, in which the Plan had... hit points?

I won't be back.
Bloodmist Infiltrator, by Wild Blue Studios

These Bloody Cells

You are vampires. You are immortal, technically, and you have been imprisoned. You and your buddies decided to escape.

You get Bite, and two of the following abilities of your choice:

• Animism. Talking to and controlling animals that you could hold in a hand.
• Transform. Turn into an animal.
• Charm. Mind control a person.
• Push. Strength greater than that of the best human.
• Rush. Speed greater than that of the best human.
• Sneak. Move around unnoticed.
• Fly. Soar through the air.
• Bite. Refill your blood fully by biting a living being, killing it. The killed being becomes a ghoul that follows your commands, but it's visibly undead.

Each player rolls 1d8+4 to determine their starting Blood pool. Everyone also rolls a 1d6 that's contributed to the shared Plan pool.

Whenever you do something, you roll a die and reduce the pools by amounts that add up to the rolled number.

• Roll 1d8 by default.
• If you use only the vampiric abilities you chose, roll 1d6.
• If the vampiric weaknesses are playing a role, change a roll of 1d6 into 1d8, and a roll of 1d8 into 1d12.

If possible, you must reduce both your Blood pool and the shared Plan pool by at least 1.

• If your Blood Pool is reduced to or below 0, you are killed. You turn into fine red mist, and travel back to your coffin in your prison cell.
• If your Plan is reduced to or below 0, the reality has diverged too much from your plans, and the guards are now after you, chasing you with guns that shoot silver bullets with wooden stakes imbued in them.

The game ends when every player character either dies or successfully escapes the prison. On every successful escape, you gain one additional vampiric ability. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, it won't be long until you come back.

The GM side would include a couple of roll tables with foreshadowing and obstacles based on the vampiric weaknesses. As a placeholder for now, let's go with...

1. Exit is in a building that surrounds the prison (yes, even above), vampires can't enter it without an invitation.
2. A corridor with laser beams of concentrated sunlight. To a vampire, it's like a lightsaber.
3. Flowing water moat that no vampire can cross.
4. An airlock chamber that gets filled with garlic-infused gas.
5. A human eye scanner that doesn't allow vampires through because they don't show up on digital footage (akin to no reflection in mirrors).
6. Four corridors meeting at a right angle... they form a cross. A cross road, so to say.

Bonus round: Betrayal.

• Super easy mode: Nobody has to betray the rest.
• Easy mode: GM hand-picks one player who is a betrayer.
• Medium mode: The GM prepares a pouch of black and white stones, deciding which ones stand for betrayers and which ones don't.
• Hard mode: Everyone flips a coin and keeps it under a cup until the very end of the game.

Betrayer's goal is to hinder the group. The betrayers win if they are the only ones who successfully escape. They don't have to be all alive for this, if they managed to hinder the rest enough to get it killed before the escape, they all earn their freedom forever.

A vampire can use their Bite on another vampire, draining them of their Blood but not turning them into a ghoul.

Of course, players would catch onto this, so the Betrayer has to be smart about it. Is this Among Us? ... no, Among Us isn't the only social deduction game around, come on.

---

Lessons: One, it's fun to write around vampiric strengths and weaknesses. Two, Plan as a resource works. Three, ... I forgot about three. Four, I make lots of lists in my games, especially when I'm too lazy to make a table. Let's see if I can write two more articles!

Runebots Hungry for Justice

Recently I had an interesting thought. In the world of Runehack, runes can detect phenomena perceivable by the human senses. Humans have more than 6 senses though. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are just the beginning. Northcall is a new one I spoke of in the past, but this isn't going to be about that either. Today, I'll delve into a world of internal senses and what they could be used for in runebots.

Why would a robot ever need to be hungry anyway?
Art by SaraLePew

Hungry Runebots

I started with a thought experiment. If a runebot could be made to sense anything a human can sense, ... what would happen if it were to feel hunger? Obviously, a runebot doesn't have a stomach, or a need to eat. In fact, even having a mouth is optional. I could easily say that it's a hunger for more fuel, and that is one way to resolve this which already belongs to the solution to this issue. What about other internal feelings though? To keep it simple, what about the runebots who feel thirst or pain? These things would likely be qualia, something that a runebot either can't understand, or it would sense these things differently from a human who actually needs to eat and sleep, and who would have actual pain receptors to sense pain.

After some time processing this idea in the back of my thought cabinet, it bumped into an old friend. Years ago, I watched a TED Talk given by mister David Eagleman. It was a talk about the substitution and extension of human senses. It turns out that the brain isn't told about its inputs in some specific way by an eye, an ear, and so on. It just gets used to these inputs, and figures out how to make sense of them. All it needs is to be fed data. He presented in a video, and later on stage, a showcase of his vest equipped with several vibratory devices embedded in it that activated and deactivated based on the sounds it heard through a microphone. Then, he switched it to receive a live feed of tweets from Twitter. The tweets were processed with an algorithm into positive and negative messages, allowing him to (hypothetically) feel what the public thought regarding 2015's TED Talks on Twitter. It was one of those things that stayed with me for years, waiting for its time to shine. I've watched a more recent video of his where he gave the same talk very recently but then continued further since there's a 9-year gap. The vest was replaced by a wristband, which allowed people with partial or complete hearing loss to hear. It apparently also helps cure tinnitus by training the brain to tell apart the beeps that are and aren't real.

These lectures gave me an idea: maybe these sensations could be reused for something else in Runebots. It sure sounds better than suffering pain, hunger, or thirst that they can do nothing about.

Amber Thirst

Let's begin with the most intuitive use case that I mentioned above. Runebots need fuel to continue operating, so repurpose the thirst into a sense of running out of fuel. Let's say that when the runebot has enough amber to last for 4-8 hours, they begin to feel mild thirst. Then, the thirst intensifies when it goes below 4 hours. Simple, intuitive, and neat.

Hungry for Purpose

A runebot is given a purpose that it hungers for. I expect two kinds of responses to this, both saying the same thing but from different angles: I don't need to say that this is because it feels hungry. This is just part of how machines are trained, after all. You find some way to score how well it's doing, and the runebot will learn how to improve by maximizing this score. That is an excellent point, my hypothetical reader and counterargumenter. The reason why I'm saying this is hunger is just because I wanted the hunger idea to go somewhere, and because people in the world would rather tie something to hunger rather than have a runebot feel a sensation it can't really understand or fulfill for no reason.

The proverbial Paperclip Machine would be hungry for making paperclips. Some research runebots could be hungry for discoveries. The Robocop (Runocop confirmed?) could be hungry for justice!. A search bot could be hungry for the satisfaction of its users when they find what they are looking for.

Pain for Damage

Runebots are not indestructible. And while it might seem cruel to make them feel pain if their body is damaged, it's better than making them feel pain for no reason whatsoever. The sensation of pain could tell the runebot what component of their current body is damaged and how badly.

"I'm sorry, buddy. I'm not sure if you'll make it." Now this feels like a terrible way to go. Good thing runebots can stop puppeteering a body and transfer their consciousness (or semblance of it) elsewhere!
Robot is dead, by Waldemar-Kazak

Other Internal Senses

According to Wikipedia, there's a total of 14 internal senses I could draw from. One for respiration, one for suffocation, one for feeling tired, one for throat sensations such as swallowing, vomiting, or acid reflux, receptors in the urinary bladder, blood vessel dilation, and so on... I don't have uses for them just yet. Needless to say, though, runebot's lack of biological functions could allow for many more sensations that it could perceive internally, and reinterpret as something completely different.

As Mr. Eagleman said in both of his talks, there's a word for a world that an organism can perceive through its senses: umwelt. Part of the talks was showcasing the idea that a human umwelt could be expanded through the use of technology. You could literally feel your drone's location and orientation. You could feel the locations of your allies or enemies on a battlefield. You could feel the developments on the stock market. The biggest takeaway for me is thus that a runebot, and non-robotic people too, could choose what's included in the world they perceive. And these choices would ultimately shape what the world is to them. It's a lot more food for thought, and I'm shelving it once more in the back of my thought cabinet to process until I recall this idea again.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and have a nice day!

The Die of Reckoning, Quickdraw, and the Zombies

I need to get this idea out of my head so I can focus on The Runehack RPG again. I made a ton of progress over the past two months, the rulebook is largely done. But the final few parts are also the hardest to write, so inbetween I'm trying to get that pair of fresh eyes by getting sidetracked now and then, thinking of other things. This time, I got a youtube recommendation to watch the legendary confrontation in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I realized that I don't have any rules for a quickdraw in the game, and then I remembered that D6 Feet Under is... rather odd right now. I want to overhaul it, likely in 2025 (possibly a new year resolution?). I have a handful of ideas in which I could improve the system, and while I could write out everything here, I'll keep it down to the two most significant parts: The Die of Reckoning, and the Quickdraw rules.

Rise up, dead man, let the gunshots ring.
Deadlands: Horror at Headstone Hill, by Aaron J Riley

The Die of Reckoning

The tension keeps growing as a gunfight goes on. This is a mechanic picked up directly from 13th Age, but with a more thematic name. Considering other things I'm adding, I feel this might turn out more akin to 13th Age than the first version of the game, it is an inspiring game.

At the moment, the Die of Reckoning adds a number to every attack made in a combat. The attacks are simplified, considered a miss only on a roll of 1 and otherwise either wounding the target, or reducing their Luck by that amount. I'm considering introducing some kind of exploding dice mechanic. Maybe they explode on a roll of 1? Maybe on a roll of 6? Maybe on a roll that's greater/lesser or equal to the Die of Reckoning? This might require a higher Maximum Luck and some other changes too, but it would also allow for higher survivability, so it's something worth considering.

A gunshot (for now I'm working only with this) has four possible outcomes. On a 6, you kill the target. 4-5 would Wound them, reducing their actions by 1 maybe. On 2-3, the target suffers a mechanically non-handicapping wound like a scar or some kind of disfigurement. On a roll of 1 (regardless of the Die of Reckoning), you Miss but your current Luck increases by 1 up to its maximum. At least this is the idea for now. If I want to introduce shotguns, I'll need to think about what can be done when a player rolls 3d6, or maybe even 6d6.

For now though, let's get to the fun part.

I don't have plans to add steampunk technology into D6FU... yet. My mind might change in time, there could already be trains and telegraphs there since those are fitting for the wild west.
Art from Firefly #20.

Quickdraw

Quickdraw is a sacred rite to practice in the West. Only pistols are allowed, and only one bullet per pistol. Wielding two pistols against a single opponent is considered cowardly but allowed. The Die of Reckoning starts at a 0 when the Quickdraw begins. Every round follows these three steps:

1. A participant decides whether they're shooting or waiting this round. They hold a fist in the direction of the person they'll try to shoot (or not), holding 1d6 in it if they want to shoot them this round.
2. All participants reveal their hands, and roll the dice that they held in their hands. Add the current Die of Reckoning to the result. On a roll of 6+, the target dies. (Other results might apply too, I'll see.) All rolls are resolved at the same time. Luck can't be used to avoid the effects of a Quickdraw.
3. The Die of Reckoning increases by 1.

If a player held any die or combination of dice that isn't 1d6, their gun jams upon being shot. Either they can't use this gun anymore, or they need to first unjam it by skipping the next round's step 1. Cheating isn't cool.

If a weapon had more than one bullet loaded, every bullet shot after the first one decreases the shooter's Merit by 1 (Merit being the measure of morality that decides their fate after death). Using a non-pistol weapon like a shotgun would also reduce the Merit. Quickdraw is about honor and equal grounds.

Important note: not all combat would be resolved this way. Quickdraw is a specific way of doing it.

She might be a zombie, but she can be saved.
Made by Thanh Tuấn as part of a Submission for Wild West characters design challenge.

Zombies

You know, it's weird that the zombies in so many TTRPGs do not spread through the bites despite that being a trope. I wanted to make that a thing, but I also wanted to make the zombies in D6FU not-stupid, since they could be player characters. They need a reason to turn others into zombies, and I think I have a solution now.

Being a Zombie is a curse that can affect a Mortal or a Beast through a bite. If either of these is bitten by a Zombie, they must mark it on their character sheet. You can't be bitten more than once at the same time, and if you kill the Zombie who bit you, you can remove this mark. If you die while bitten, you turn into a Zombie. If a Zombie dies and it has turned someone into a Zombie through a bite followed by a death, the Zombie is resurrected into their formal body. If a Zombie died and it never managed to turn anyone into a Zombie, their soul is gone forever.

Could I involve revenants into this somehow? Perhaps. But for now, it's not worth considering. This is just a quick something that I wanted to write out so I can get back to the Runehack RPG and so I can make a claim of coming up with these ideas right away.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Encounter Deck 2: The Two Powers (of cards)

Spent more time thinking on this one, so I'll expand it. This is a sequel to the Encounter Deck I wrote last time, but I'll likely include writing points from that here too. I'll add that I still don't have this entirely thought through, this is just a stream of ideas I'm still processing into something more specific.

Note: I don't have anything specific on mind for "The Two Powers", I just wanted to do a riff on The Two Towers instead of Electric Boogaloo this time.

While I largely focus on encounters of creatures in this article, this could be done with events and maybe even buildings too. I just tried to keep it within some theme for this article.
Screenshot from Hand of Fate 2. The article doesn't have anything to do with the game, I just wanted a cool fantasy card dealer on the article's cover.

Card Themes

Give each suit a vague theme to follow. You don't have to follow it all the way through, of course. For a start, I suggest that the red suits could be friendly and black suits could be unfriendly encounters.

Card Structure

Get a cheap deck of cards and a permanent marker. Find a way to fit all of this onto each card:

• Foreshadowing
• Encounter
• Environment
• Consequences

Instead of a single card, you're drawing two cards for every random encounter: one just for the environment, one for everything else. Why a combination of two? Because if you will be forced to repeat encounters, a different environment could freshen things up hopefully. Mark each card that's supposed to be in the starting Encounter Deck somehow (maybe a dot in the corner?). Try to make each Foreshadowing, Encounter, and Environment unique. As for what the stand for...

Foreshadowing

This is something you tell the players before they arrive to the random encounter's location (from now on just called hex seeing how this could work in a hex crawl). Perhaps in a neighboring hex. Something along the lines of "you see large footprints with claws on the ground, headed North".

Encounter

This is where the interesting thing happens. For the foreshadowing above, it could be "a group of owlbears". Ideally it would be adjustable for different tiers, but I don't know how much could you fit onto a single card.

Environment

This is the environment in which the encounter happens. I feel like this would be the biggest hurdle, seeing how there are 52 cards and ideally you'd avoid copies. Something like "a rope bridge over a ravine", "a narrow crevace between two boulders", or "three big trees". Ideally something that would make the encounter interesting in case it's a fight, or maybe even not.

Consequences

This makes the biggest difference, and it's also the thing I mentioned last time. It's the consequences of dealing or not dealing with an encounter. Something like "add [card] to the encounter deck if they were killed", "add [card] to the encounter deck if you made a trade", all depends on what kind of encounter it is.

Alright, but now onto some more new ideas.

Randomly Added Specific Encounters

The title is clumsy, the point is simple. Remember how we assigned specific meanings to the card suits? Let's actually do it to a color instead of a suits. Let's say, for example, that the clubs (mostly) represent the bandits. And now, imagine that as long as there are bandits in the forest, more will come once every three days, or some other regular time interval. You have all the clubs cards representing bandits on a separate pile, and add one randomly into the encounter deck regularly.

But remember, we want every encounter to be unique! These aren't just different with the numbers of bandits or what ranks they are. Let's make their fighting styles different. This group uses tamed wolves. This group has pyromaniacs with bottles of alcohol that will spray fire at you. That group has a powerful warlock serving the Asmodeus. And this group of bandits is gonna rob the city if they aren't dealt with in a week (more on this later).

What if we want to have multiple decks like this behind the screen, though? Won't it become confusing? Not necessarily, let's just make a quick adjustment - let's take the Ace out, flip it over, and place it underneath the deck as a label. If you need to draw a card but the deck is empty, it's time for the Ace to be added into the deck. The Ace is the most powerful or influential of random encounters of its type. In the case of the club bandits, their leader.

Let's move away from the bandits, how about traveling merchants? Diamonds are suitable for them (pun intended). But instead of just your average regular merchants, how about making them all weird? A man who sold his face to a fey, and how he has access to an infinite supply of magical masks. A woman who has no shadow, selling light sources in a dark forest. A man with no name selling magic rings. And their leader? How about a tradesman with no wares? He'll sell you any kind of information you seek, for a mere price of a precious memory.

Change the World

How about we look at the ways in which we manipulate the deck next? Let's establish a base procedure.

1. Previous Foreshadowing cards are put back into the Encounter Deck (or discarded if the card's Consequence says so), except for the one in the players' chosen direction. The kept card is used as an Encounter.
2. The GM draws a card for the Environment used and uses it with the Encounter.
3. When the players investigate what's in a specific direction, the GM draws a Foreshadowing card for it. This can be done once for each direction (6 on a hex grid).

Seeing how this means there are 7 cards drawn for every step of the procedure, this is quite inefficient. This would mean you spend the entire deck of cards in less than 8 moves, and that's not considering the fact you don't start with a complete deck! You could in theory keep all the Foreshadowed cards that neighbor the chosen hex, but that would still use up a lot of cards. Maybe instead, you could only foreshadow like two or so directions, and if the players pick a different direction you draw a completely random encounter that's unforeshadowed.

Here's the important part though: The composition of the deck informs you about the current state of this region! Imagine for a moment that the Club bandits make up the majority of the encounter deck. That tells you straight up that they hold a lot of influence over this place. Maybe there's a cap on how many Clubs bandits and Diamonds merchants can be in the forest? Maybe defeating a group of bandits lets you draw from the Merchants deck automatically? And so on, and so forth. Players' actions and inactions shape the world.

But now comes the fun part: Let's expand this procedure with some extra rules. I'm not sure yet if these would be special Consequences, player abilities, or "GM moves", so I'll leave that space blank for now.

• Eventful. Instead of a single encounter card, draw two cards. These two creatures (or groups) encountered each other before the players arrived.
• Curious Place. Draw two environment cards instead of one.
• Territorial. This encounter won't leave until something gets rid of it.
• Show Me Your Best! I'm imagining this is a barbarian ability. After defeating an encounter that belongs to some faction, use this ability to instantly force the most powerful of them (the Ace) to appear somewhere.
• Silence before the Storm. Nothing happens. Shuffle all discarded cards back into the deck.
• Not Today. Pick one card from a hex the players are not on and shuffle it back into the encounter deck.
• Wait It Out. Draw another card. The GM decides which of these wins the encounter and ends up occupying that hex.
• Growing Influence. Every X days, draw another card for this faction and add it to the encounter deck.

No Dice

Why am I so hung up on this idea? If you've read my previous post (can't blame you if you didn't), I mention that cards remember stuff. A random encounter table sounds good on the paper, but the dice make for a cruel mistresses. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the two eponymous characters start Act 1 by betting on flipped coins. They get heads 92 times in a row. Supernatural forces or not, a chance of 1 in 5 octillion isn't zero. There's also an encounter of this in the Bioshock Infinite that never fails to make me smile. Dice don't remember a thing, you could in theory get a natural 20 ten times in a row, that's a chance of 1 in 10 trillion. Cards remember, and they won't repeat themselves, unless you either shuffle the drawn cards back, or have copies in the deck.

Of course, you could avoid repetitions by using a bigger deck. It'd be hard for me to draw stuff on it, but you could always resort to listing the things in a table instead if you want the deck to be reusable. That's why I recommended a cheap deck. Oh, you could also just combine multiple decks into one and find a way of distinguishing them.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on the topic for now. I hope you enjoyed this read, and wish you a great day!

Encounter Deck

Cards have memory. Don't believe me?

Get a cheap deck of cards. Write an encounter on as many of these cards as you want. Shuffle them. When you want a random encounter, draw a card and use it. Do not return the card back into the deck.

Upgrade: By including instructions as to what cards could be included into the deck, you can create random sequences of events. For example:

• Ace of Spades: traveling merchant who was robbed by bandits (add 4 of Hearts)
• 4 of Hearts: bandits who robbed the merchant (add 8 of Diamonds and 6 of Clubs into the deck)
• 8 of Diamonds: the bandit leader
• 6 of Clubs: the guards who were looking for the bandits, willing to reward those who dealt with them

The biggest upside is that you don't get repeated events, unless you return the cards back into the deck or unless there are multiple copies of a single event. The cards will remember what happened, and unlike your regular roll table, they won't repeat themselves.

That's all. Have a great day!

Preserving the Agency in Social Interaction

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

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

Request, Offer, Threat

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

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

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

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

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

The Choice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Request

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

Offer

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

Threat

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

The King's Choice

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

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

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