Category Archives: Game Design

Wayward Sons – What’s It About?

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teaser

Wayward Sons is a hack for the Vincent Baker‘s Apocalypse World. As I have already posted the GM prep and the Basic Moves for this hack I decided it was time to tell a bit more of what the game is actually about.

The stories of Wayward Sons take (by default) place at 1980s in a fictional South Dakota city much like Los Angeles and New York. It is a game on neon noir atmosphere, conspiracies, esoteric secrets and horror.

Since X-Files and the first seasons of Supernatural I have planed on running something similar to them but never got around to do this. When Aki GMed some tremulus to our group during this summer I knew I was hooked with the AW engine and wanted to build a hack of my own to suit my needs for the game.

Premises for the Wayward Sons differ a bit from most AW hacks. The characters are not the best of the best, or moves and shakers. They are just average (or pretty near to it) people who are drawn to the world of supernatural horror by events they could not avoid.

During the game it is possible for them to achieve closure or to become one of the most famous hunters of supernatural. But it is much more likely that they will die, go mad or even turn into inhumane monsters they used to hunt. The threat of Taint is ever present on their stories, forcing them to balance between what needs to be done and what they are willing to do to achieve it.

The world where the characters live in is wrapped in paranoia and secrets. They know that most people wouldn’t believe them and have to act under the threat of being locked up in a mental institute. This means that one of the key elements will be trust.

Trust acts a bit like Hx in Apocalypse World or Trust in tremulus, but it is actually inspired by ColdCity. It is used to measure the trust between the character (and some NPCs they regularly interact). But as opposed to tremulus it does not stand for the secrets you know about another character it simply means how willingly you would place your life on their hands.

In addition to this Wayward Sons must be pretty simple. I have had my share of over complicated rules and that is one of the reasons AWengine worked for me. This also means that I will be able to use it to run games set in various different times than just the 80s – our current campaign has had adventures in wild west, 1940s, cyberpunk and in space and I want this hack to allow us to continue on that line.

The picture used in the teaser is from Supernatural and used without permission. No challenge to the owners of the franchise intended.

Exiled: Planeswalkers and Activation Costs

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Exiled is my own MtG-set I’ve been working on for a while. You know, just for the heck of it. Its taken a step or few back, because I had a mechanic called adaptive, which resembled monstrosity from Theros quite a lot. I’m not sure I want to have that and if I take it away it’ll set me back a whole mechanic.

Well, here I am talking about it. I haven’t talked about it at all on this blog, but some guild members will be somewhat familiar with the background. I probably should talk about it here at some point. Anyhow, today I’ll talk about my Planeswalkers.

According to MaRo, the activation costs are based partly on how happy the planeswalker in question is to do it and how much energy they need to expend. Basically, they are your friends, and they are glad to help you, but they have their limits.

Now, apparently, based on this, we tell a lot about the planeswalkers just based on their abilities. So, based on this, Jace really, really liked imparting information and having discussions (or something), but used to want to see that everyone gets their share. His tastes have since evolved somewhat.

  • Beleren has +2 Each player draws a card, and -1 Target player draws a card
  • Mindsculptor has 0 costing Brainstorm
  • Memory Adept has +1 draw a card, mill a card, and at -7 any number of target players draw 20 cards
  • Architect of Thought has his mini-Fact or Fiction at -2

Jace’s attitude towards messing with peoples brain has also evolved:

  • Beleren would mill target player by twenty cards, but only with -10.
  • Mindsculptor would get rid of the whole library at -12, leaving the player scrambling for sanity (and some people seem to think Jace is the good guy), or have fun just looking at what’s close to the surface and maybe getting rid of it (+2)
  • Memory Adept would mill ten and think nothing of it (0)
  • Architect of Thought will dive into the mind of all opponents and extract the best information there, but won’t do it happily (-8)

Ok, so based on this, what if my white planeswalker is basically optimistic and friendly gal, who enjoys helping her friends, whereas the black planeswalker is looking out for herself and only works with the player for her own purposes.

So, basically our white planeswalker will only do stuff which ups her loyalty, the black one will only do stuff which lessens her loyalty.

Andara Nula 1WW
Planeswalker – Andara
+1: You gain 2 life
+1: Target creature gains first strike until your next turn
+1: Andara Nula gains a loyalty counter for each other planeswalker in play
Loyalty 3

Karana the Hatemonger 1BB
Planeswalker – Karana
0: All planeswalkers lose loyalty counters equal to the number of planeswalkers in play.
-1 Target creature gains intimidate (this effect does not end at the end turn)
-2 All creatures you control with intimidate gain lifelink (this effect does not end at the end of turn)
Loyalty 7

MaRo would not like many of these abliites, as they require more memory than usual or extra bookkeeping which are both big no-nos. On the other hand, these cards are mythic rares and mythics should be doing extraordinary things. Forgetting this, would people get the flavor? Karana just isn’t that interested in working with anybody, but won’t mind messing with some people (although I’m not really happy with the third ability).

Andara, on the other hand, will become more attached to the people she’s working with, because she’s like that. Maybe the third ability should be something like “put one loyalty counter on all planeswalkers you control”, which would better represent her ability to inspire loyalty.

Granted, these two aren’t very flashy, unlike most planeswalkers, but they are at least very different. They are also have a good contrast, showing very different views of the world. What I do dislike, is that they seem too much like stereotypical good and bad guy in their own colors, where I like to think that white can be evil (white is the color of organization, like the Nazis) and black can be good or at least work towards good goals (like Iron Man when he was just getting off on being a superhero).

I was also thinking that if I ever get to the third set of this block, I’d make new versions of these two, where they have changed. Andara would be more inclined to use force to make people act the way she wants them to and Karana would have learned not to burn all her bridges, but to work with other beings, at least those powerful enough, instead.

Since this world has plenty of elves, who need help, I’m going to bring back Nissa:

High Guardian Nissa 1GG
Hexproof, all elves you control have vigilance
+1: Target elf with no hexproof gains hexproof (this effect does not end at the end of turn)
-5: Exile all other planeswalkers.
Loyalty: 3

Note: Her first ability is a static ability, not an activated one. She’s pretty narrow, but that’s just going with what the original Nissa is like. She likes her elves and doesn’t care about anything else. She’s there to protect her own, who are stranded in this strange place.

Another Design Lesson from MtG: Bestow

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Bestow is a new keyword from Theros. It can be only on Enchantment Creatures and it has the following reminder text:

If you cast this card for its bestow cost, it’s an Aura spell with enchant creature. It becomes a creature again if it’s not attached to a creature.

Now, what happens if you cast it with bestow and before resolving, the targeted creature is destroyed? The reminder text is not explicit, but MaRo says, the following about this (paraphrasing): long-time players will probably read the ruling, newer players will be optimistic in interpreting this as they want it to work.

Since our Commander games often include some younger players and I sometimes play newer players in FNMs (well, everyone’s younger than I am), I know this to be true: if there’s room for interpretation, they will try to interpret it in their own favor. Older players know games like to screw players and make things harder just for the sake of leaving no room for exploits, but this often means exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. Complexity of rules is not good when you’re trying to reach a mass audience, such as the around 12 million people who play Magic, although the game itself can still remain quite complex.

I think this is a good approach from Wizards. Granted, their resources are on a whole different level from most games, as they have fully dedicated teams of people, working on sets for many, many years, so they have the opportunity to put an effort on this sort of thing. On the other hand, the instinct to be the cruel master when designing the game, is often very strong, but should be avoided. The point is to draw people in with good experiences.

AW-Hack: Basic Moves

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After surviving the birthday party that was held during last weekend I noticed the complete lack of second part of my input for Demon Week. I’ll probably get back to it in some point but for now I’d like to present the revised basic actions for by Apocalypse World hack.

These basic moves are mainly inspired by tremulus though browsing through some other hacks has also given me some ideas. As stated previously these might change a bit at some point. Any ideas and suggestions are more than welcome.

Act Under Pressure (Roll + Stat)
When you take an action that risks failure or opposition, roll with one of the basic stats.
On a 10+, You succeed.
On a 7-9, the GM offers you a worse outcome, hard bargain or a cost. If agreed upon, you succeed.

Assist/Interfere (Roll + their trust to you)
When you Assist or Interfere on someone’s action, roll their Trust to you.
On a 10+, They take +2 (Assist) or -2 (Interfere) to their roll.
On a 7-9, They take +1 or -1 to their roll, and you are exposed to the outcome of the roll.
On a miss, They lose of point of Trust to you

Fight (Roll + Violence)
When you attack someone or something, roll+Violence. The roll stands for the entire combat. Every participant in a combat inflicts its Harm to the other.
On a 10+, Choose 1
– You deal Harm as established
– You deal +2 Harm but suffer Harm
– They change behavior and do what you want.
– Choose one from below
On a 7-9, They choose 1:
– Flee
– Fall back to a secure location
– Back off calmly
– Give you what they think you want

Influence (Roll + Presence)
When you want someone to do something for you, you may use your wits, charm, looks etc. to ask someone to do it.
On a 10+, they’ll do it but might ask for something in return.
7-9, they’ll do it but will ask for something in return.

Instinct (Roll + Discipline)
When you need to know what others are thinking, meaning or thinking you need to trust on your Instinct. Asks are directed to the GM.
On a 10+, Ask something, GM gives a relevant and usable answer.
On a 7-9, Ask something, GM gives you something interesting, build on that.

Investigate (Roll + Intellect)
Looking for clues in a scene.
On a 10+, choose 1:
– You find something hidden
– You find something lost
– You find something forgotten
– You find a Good item (GM’s choice)
– You find a Minor item (your choice)
– You find a Clue (+1forward)
– Pick one from the following:
7-9, choose 1:
– You find a Minor item (GM’s choice)
– You find a Clue (+1forward), but the situation escalates
On a 6 or less, there either is nothing else to be found or the GM may hold 1 against you.

Reason (Roll + Intellect)
When the clues are gathered, the libraries visited and the old dusty tomes read the player may use Reason to tie in the knots.
On a 10+, Ask something, GM gives a relevant and usable answer.
On a 7-9, Ask something, GM gives you something interesting, build on that.

Spark of Taint (Roll + Discipline)
Whenever you commit an inhuman act (kill someone in cold blood, work magic, eat human flesh etc.) make roll+Discipline.
10+ You remain unaffected by the Taint
On a 7-9, You are fighting the Taint. You may choose to advance it.
On a miss, your Taint advance a step.

GM Prep for Wayward Sons

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As stated I started to work on a Apocalypse World hack this week. The GM prep was actually quite easy to write as I have been planing this kind of campaign for quite a long time.

Now I do not make the mistake of calling what I have written ready. Actually I believe it will go through some changes still. But I do see this as an interesting opportunity to share the writing process to gain futher ideas and to hone it.

Again – I used the Simple World structure when making this.

Wayward Sons
An Apocalypse World hack

The characters are ripped from their conventional lives by some unnatural event that forces them on the move. They dedicate their lives to investigate the strange and unexplained in secrecy. For they know that hidden forces are always working against them and that the general public would judge them insane. What they do not know that they are all on the road to turn into the very monsters they hunt.

Stats:
Fitness: physicality, endurance, agility
Presence: influence, charm, looks
Violence: aggression, fighting, shooting
Intellect: knowledge, education, rational thinking, reason
Discipline: willpower, mental strength

Assign to stats: +2, +1, +1, 0, -1

Trust
Set Trust to other characters at the beginning of the game by distributing points equal to the number of characters. Trust can be set from 0 to 3.

When you Help or Hinder a character roll THEIR Trust to you +roll.

Additional Stats:

Experience

Gain experience for:
+1 for invoking own Trait to escalate the situation
+1 for each Condition gained
+1 for each esoteric secret learned (from old tomes etc.)
+1 after each session
+1 after each session when the group votes for “who made the game most interesting”

Using experience for:
-1 to re-roll
-1 to activate a Sigil
-1 to gain narrative leeway
-n to power up a ritual (depends on the level of the ritual)
-2 gain a new Trait (up to maximum of 12 Traits)
-2 to reduce Taint level by one
-4 to mark an advance

Taint
Each character starts with 0 points of Taint and a Taint Move:

Spark of Taint
Whenever you commit an inhuman act (kill someone in cold blood, work magic, eat human flesh etc.) make roll+Discipline.
10+ You remain unaffected by the Taint
On a 7-9, You are fighting the Taint. You may choose to advance it.
On a miss, your Taint advance a step.

Character Concepts:
Journalist (pushing for extra info, gaining influence with public writing, heavy drinking)
Medium (contact to ghosts, sensing weird stuff, being mysterious)
Collector (weird collections, trivial knowledge, extensive connections)
Cult Member (access to occult lore, backup from cult brothers, being in danger)
Biker (looking menacing, having biker contacts, breaking stuff)
Dealer (getting illegal things, being paranoid, all talk)
Private Eye (noticing hidden clues, getting it on with dames, shadowing people)
Boxer (hitting stuff, getting hit, abandoned boxing studio)
Ex-Cop (hangover, strained relationships, no-nonsense mood)

The Agendas:

  • Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.
  • Play to find out what happens.
  • Drive the characters to turn into monsters

The Principles:

  • The devil is in the details.
  • Introduce a believable world of (supernatural) secrets.
  • Give the world more depth through play.
  • Come up with interesting mysteries, not interesting adventures.
  • Make your move, but misdirect.
  • Make your move, but never speak its name.
  • Use NPCs to introduce constancy, then destroy them.
  • Name everyone, make everyone human.
  • Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
  • Respond with challenging circumstances and occasional rewards.
  • Be a fan of the players’ characters.
  • Think offscreen, too.
  • Occasionally, let the players answer the questions.
  • The fight is in vain, for humanity means little on the grand scale of things

GM Moves

  • Separate them.
  • Capture someone.
  • Put someone in a high-stakes situation.
  • Harm someone (as established).
  • Trade harm for harm (as established).
  • Announce off-screen badness.
  • Announce future badness.
  • Take away one of their Things.
  • Demonstrate one of their Things’ bad sides.
  • Give them a difficult decision to make.
  • Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
  • Turn their move back on them.
  • Make a move from one of your Dangers or Bigger Pictures.

Starting a New Hack for AW

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I am awful when it comes to RPG rules. I dislike reading them, cannot remember them and have (and quite likely will) changed them always to suit my preferences. I was almost certain that coming up with my own system would solve the case.

Of course it didn’t.

The past months have been a bit dry for me as a GM. I certainly have had ideas and the will but when it comes to choosing or creating the system I get overly complicated. I actually explained this in the first edit quite a lot. But it too got too complicated.

When Aki brought out the tremulus I was quite eager to try it out. Call of Cthulhu kind of games are close to my heart. My gaming group have been playing and enjoying the Apocalypse World and I had wanted to try it but I just do not get anything from post-apocalypse games.

As stated previously I enjoyed tremulus enough to give it a try as a GM. It was almost what I had been searching. But naturally (for me) not exactly it. After brooding over it for a few weeks I decided to try something new.

Joe McDaldno had an interesting thing called “Simple World” on his blog. It basically gives you a blueprint of writing your own Apocalypse World hack. So what the hell, I decided that this was what we should do.

As I write this I have gone through the first steps of the guide (MC Prep). It needs a little re-wording and proofreading but I will present it as I’m satisfied with it. I think I need to map out a little extra for the rules along the ideas represented by tremulus and Urban Shadows RPG (both Apocalypse World hacks). But hopefully we can get this game up and running during this month.

We’ll keep you posted!

More on Terra Mystica (and Just a Bit on Eclipse)

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We played it again yesterday, as some people seem to like it and some people want to try it.

My earlier assessment still stands. I played with the Auren and again knew exactly what I’d do throughout the game. Some details might have become imporant only later, but mostly the decisionmaking was done up front and not much changed. I also knew I couldn’t win right away, although I did try to make an effort to. This was because there weren’t much points available from the turn tiles due to their very poor order. This gave a definite edge to those players who had points available to them on their boards, which meant they would get a headstart I couldn’t match with my points from the cults.

.. but today I’m talking about something else.

What the people making Terra Mystica got right, was the gameboards. At first, it seems a bit crowded. Especially after all the pieces are there. However, after I was explained what everything means, it was very easy to read and everything just made sense. Eclipse also had a very good layout, although its graphics are quite repulsing in their grayness.

The gameboards often include some instructions, but they aren’t necessarily placed very intuitively. On this Terra Mystica shines. Also, its very language independent with only the name of the race written in too languages.

This is where games need to go. Besides M:tG, I don’t really play any games very regularly, so it always helps that there are easy reminders to get me quickly back into the game. They also help new players understand how the game works.

Of course there will be a part of the audience who feel all this dumbs down the games, but they fail to see the big picture. Lower bar for access brings more people to the hobby. There will always be the hardcore games, like Twilight Imperium or various Martin Wallace designs. Not all games need to be like that. We don’t need to scare new players with 12 hour sessions of games they barely understand if we can make things easier to learn.

Terra Mystica has a lot of options, but due to the way they are presented, they are easy to get and easy to remember.

Frameworks

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Continuing with the major theme of one shots in this blog, lets talk a little about tremulus (yes, that’s a lower case ‘t’) and how it handles these.

First, I find it great that a game has this aspect of focusing on one-shots in it. On top of that, the way they are handled encourages improvisation, but helps with keeping things together, which probably helps new GMs with their confidence, which is a huge part of GMing this way (or GMing in general).

To facilitate this, tremulus introduces the concept of frameworks. A framework consists of a few hazards, usually three or four. Then you just give them hazard tracks, which basically means things these hazards will do when certain things are triggered. Hazards can be lots of things, like people, objects or the setting itself, as long as it presents dangers or obstacles to the characters.

playing_tremulus

So, yesterday we had a session of so-called “random rpg” and I was going to run a game of tremulus. The night before I sat down and thought about it for a while. First, I decided I was going to use an old idea of mine, which never came to fruition, where a young girl murders her employers. There was one hazard behind that, which became the “linchpin” or the hazard everything else revolves around. Then I thought maybe the townsfolk aren’t that interested in helping the characters, but I decided against making them townies, and made the village a landscape instead, and a maze at that. I separated the sheriff from the rest, who became and elder, or protector to be more precise, and then I decided to put a painting with extraordinary powers in to the picture. That’s a weird.

All these terms (townies, landscape, maze, elder, protector, weird) are shortcuts to a set of moves they can make, if players fail rolls.

The end result: Bell End

Note that lots of things are left open. That’s the point. You have something to rely on, but mostly you have to think on your feet. The game itself is almost completely player facing, meaning the GM never rolls anything and in this case, the GM can’t even act unless given a chance (the players ask something, the players fail at something, a hazard is triggered from the track, the GM expends a hold, or the players remain quiet for too long).

This results in players as the driving force behind the story. In our group, this usually means intense conflict, which ends in someones death. As Lauri / doc_cthulhu mentioned yesterday in his post, all you need is a few PC in an enclosed space and the story will emerge. That’s pretty much what happened.

I highly recommend tremulus. I enjoy it, as I have enjoyed Apocalypse World and MonsterHearts before it. Different emphases, but its still great and lots of fun for me as the GM, as I try to find places where I can mess with the players. Most of the time I don’t have to. They’ll mess with themselves and each other plenty.

Writing a Oneshot

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A while back I decided to write a oneshot as an writing exercise. I haven’t written a full adventure in ages (last one being the Hand of Glory for Liber Fanatica 9) so I am fully aware about being a little rusty.

I just recently sold my collection of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd edition I decided to try the 1st edition to revisit the game that mostly started the hobby for me.

As a GM I have had a hoarded my ideas for a long time. In most resent campaigns my group hasn’t even reached the main idea of the game before it dries up. Aiming to change this I now used an idea of a game I have wanted to run for a long time.

A zombie invasion.

Photo1

Ideally writing this kind of scenario should begin with the characters. You have a group of certain characters you want to use. This time I went the other way around. I wrote a short structure of events that would happen during the adventure, planed the surroundings of the events, and only after that got into the most interesting part – writing the characters.

What I have learned from playing and GMing oneshots is that most players just want to get the game rolling. Long backgrounds for the characters are easily forgotten and thus mostly unnecessary. Keeping them short and simple is the way to go.When writing a character for a oneshot I tend to aim them as for people who have never played the game before. This way I have an introduction scenario I can throw at people in convention (not that I have actually done this anyway). It also means that the characters should be easy to learn.

Aside from that the most important thing for the characters is that the have conflicts with each other. Aki (MustaJumala) has talked about his ideas of how an (ideal) oneshot should be played. But I doubt that even he can contradict me in this: give the players conflicting characters and they will rip each other apart without ever needing a firm story line.

We played through the adventure a couple of weeks ago. It was a fiasco (but no in a good way). I had completely forgotten the most important game system problem with this kind of adventure. Fighting characters froze in fear when a single zombie shambled towards them. From that point on it was just a game of failures and though we had some fun we never achieved what I had actually planned.

I have done a lot of rewriting for the adventure since. I tried to include the comments of the players as well as those of Strike-to-Stun community that were (once again) eager to enough to give comments. It is mostly finished now and will hopefully see the light of the day (well light of the internet anyway) quite soon.

It was a great exercise and thought me again a couple of things.

  1. It is all about the players and their characters.
  2. Build the characters so that they WILL be driven into conflicts whit each other.
  3. Keep in mind that when everything falls apart the players must still be entertained. This includes the GM as well.

Sorcery Speed and Other Subtle Teaching Tools

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For clarity: When I’m talking about discard in this context, I’m talking about effects where the target makes the selection, such as Disrupting Scepter, Raven’s Crime and such.

Ever wondered why discard is generally sorcery-speed? There are some exceptions (such as a couple of charms), but this seems to be the rule. It probably started as a safeguard back in the day, but the rule has remained.

Think about it this way: In most cases, you are better off using it on your turn, when the opponent has less choices. Assuming your opponent has four cards in hand. One of them is the worst card. If you let your opponent draw another card, that might be the worst card and he will discard that. If it’s better than the worst card, you’ve gained nothing. Only your opponent has something to gain here.

Of course, if your opponent has no cards in hand, it would be better to force him to discard during the draw phase, since that would deprive your opponent of his only card for the round, but that would be both unfun and it’s a not a common situation anyway.

I’m not saying discard effects are better at sorcery speed than they would be at instant speed. What I’m saying is that keeping these effects at sorcery speed helps newer players. Seems to me, this is not the only place where Wizards tries to help newer players.

Let’s take exalted, a mechanism most recently seen in M13. It’s not the best mechanism for this, but it encourages attacking. A problem with many less experienced players is that they will often play as defensively as possible. Perhaps they’ve seen a haste-creature once or twice and are willing to exchange doing a few points of damage to possibly evade a few points themselves. But exalted says, maybe you aren’t willing to go all out, but at least this one creature should attack. After all, most decks can’t win without being proactive. Although exalted doesn’t really change that much, it has a psychological effect which might make a difference for those who are not accustomed to thinking ahead and planning ahead to victory.

Of course, at some point, this kind of strong-arming into playing well becomes unnecessary, but I’m willing to bet most players have never thought about why using discard is better during your own turn. On the other hand, once you learn to attack, you’ll never go back (says the aggro-player in me).