Grimdark vs. Eucatastrophe

Noisms has some interesting ideas in this post about his desire for some depth to his grimdark, and turns to Gene Wolfe and Tolkien for relief.  Now, it can be argued that he’s watering down, even spoiling his grimdark by twisting the universe to actually be caring and not indifferent.  And that’s true, but it sounds like Noisms finds the nihilism of grimdark to be hollow, all shadow puppets without depth or impact.  And I totally get that.  I don’t think his preference for a greater truth that bends the universe towards benevolence if only someone dares to reach for it is the only way to solve the issue, but it is an interesting one.

He follows that up with an elevator pitch that’s rather like something he’s done before with a dark science-fantasy twist.  And then he lays three conditions, or design pillars, on the idea: 

The task is to provide maximum campaign flexibility and maximum player agency combined with an institution-based mode of advancement.

Now, straight up, I’m not sure how I see these design pillars necessarily intersecting with this theme, and I’m not entirely certain they do.  They might only be challenges Noisms thinks are interesting to tackle in RPG design.  I certainly think they are.  

I think the core of making this work is building towards one or more eucatastrophes over the course of a campaign.  The challenge is that they can’t be random; just as Bilbo and Frodo sparing Gollum's life results in the destruction of the Ring, so do the eucatastrophes in the game need to grow from the actions of the PCs and the choices of the players.  The benevolent universe only puts its finger on the scales when courage and virtue invite it.  

There are a number of ways you could do this.  You could give the players points when they do something that invites eucatastrophe that they get to spend for rerolls or power-ups, but that feels cheap to me.  You could use Progress Clocks a la Blades in the Dark; as the PC knights exhibit virtue in the face of a hostile world, the Progress Clock fills.  Once full, Providence takes a hand, and by “miraculous happenstance” our heroes get their fat pulled out of the fire or stumble across a clue or tool necessary for their success.  

To truly make this work, I think the GM would need to keep the Progress Clock (or Clocks, as you could have one for each PC or tied to different threats or different virtues; I myself favor different clocks for different virtues) so the players would have no idea if the clocks are full or not at any time.  Heck, the GM might not know; perhaps the GM rolls each time the progress clock gets a tick to see if it’s full or not, with the odds rising for each tick but never quite reaching 100%.  

This way, the players know that acting in accordance with virtue is beneficial, but they never know quite how beneficial.  And since a full Clock doesn’t necessarily “go off” as soon as it's full, they can never know if the risk they take for virtue’s sake is actually benefiting them, or if it’s “wasted” on an already full Clock.  Which only feels right to me.

I think this is ringing for me in some part because I’m reading Pendragon 6e’s Player’s book right now.  I’d be tempted to use the virtues from the old Ultima computer RPGs, especially since those come into conflict with one another in beautiful ways, challenging not only one’s commitment to the virtues as a whole, but to individual virtues in relation to the others.

The Light Dawns

THIS!!!  Yes, a thousand times, this!

 

Back in the day, I referred to this as “neo-classicalgaming,” which is to say, the sorts of games that came out of various deep dives into older games to see what was actually going on under the hood, rather than what everyone assumed was happening.  (The ‘90s were a terrible time where dumb “conventional wisdom” ruled conversations about RPGs, but much of the thinking from those days still lingers, especially in professional spaces.)

 

Anyway, point is, if the core of gaming is making interesting decisions, rolling the dice isn’t playing the game; it’s putting the game on pause while a random element is introduced to force the players into potentially rethinking their approach and how they value their various resources.  So the more a game has rules about a thing, the less it’s potentially about that thing. 

 

This creates weird mechanics that kinda sidle-up to their topic.  On the one hand, if you want the players to be making decisions and talking around the table about a particular subject, you can’t gloss it over with a dice roll.  On the other hand, what rules you do have should encourage conversation about the topic.  Mothership wants you to spend time on being stealthy, so it has rules that make combat very dangerous, and creating spaces where you’re going to be chased by critters that want to engage you in combat.  So the game’s mechanics encourage stealthy activity and conversations because the alternatives (touching the dice) are much worse from a mechanical standpoint.

 

Granted, these games require a LOT of trust all around the table; lack of skill and lack of trust can ruin a game like this.  Luckily, it only requires a modicum of social skills to be able to put together a good group and engage in this sort of gaming.

Mad Mashup: One Roll Combat?

Ok, not a single roll to cover the entire fight.  But a single roll by each player to adjudicate not only the success or failure of their attack, but also how much damage they did to their foe and how much, if any, harm their foe did to them.

This should grant us a number of benefits:

• It’s faster!  And when playing online (something I do a lot of lately), this is important.

• If you roll high, you hit hard; no more rolling a 19 and then rolling a 1 on damage.

• Often, both you and your opponent do damage to each other, which makes fights shorter.  

• Something will happen every time, and we won’t go round after round where you miss, and your foe misses, and you miss again, and your foe misses again…

• No rolling for the monster attacks.  Roll poorly, and the monsters will maul you!  Roll great and you’ll send your foe reeling.  This is great because:

• It means a lot less rolling, so things move along a lot faster.

• We don’t have to worry about initiative and fights can flow more dynamically.

• Large solo monsters don’t get whaled on by lots of PCs, while only being able to target a single one in reply.  This makes big scary monsters big and scary, instead of dying in the first round to a massive alpha-strike from the PCs.

• Things this doesn’t mean:

• It doesn’t mean that monsters won’t attack if you don’t attack; they’ll still try to chew off your face if they can.

• It doesn’t mean surprise doesn’t happen; if you get the jump on the baddies, you’ll get a full round to have your way without them getting to reply.

• It doesn’t mean shooting someone with an arrow allows them to hit you with their claws from across the battlefield; ranged attacks will work a bit differently.

Parley?

I’ve been too busy to keep up with the RPG blog-o-sphere lately (more on that later), so I missed this excellent article at Goblin Punch on negotiations between PCs and monsters/NPCs.  It makes a nice compliment to these two articles I’ve written on the subject:

Honey Cakes For Cerberus

More Honey Cakes for Cerberus

I’ve also got this handy-dandy random table for monster motivations that’s definitely in the top ten for things I’ve posted on this blog that I use most often. 

Magical Magic That Feels Magical

14. Heart Of The Beast:  Cast this spell on a slain monster’s heart (or reasonably equivalent organ or portion), then consume it.  At any time, you may take the devoured creature’s shape, once, for 10 minutes.  You will retain some physical mark of this transformation afterwards.

Once again, Taichara hits it straight out of the park!

UPDATE: Ok, I posted too quickly.  Here are some thoughts:

Heart of the Beast is clearly meant to allow you to assume the shape of creatures, but "monster" can be an ambiguous term; could the truly unscrupulous use this to mimic a murdered person?

Can you use Skyclad in conjunction with The Stars to Guide You?  I'd certainly allow it.  

Bill Willingham on Polite Society

 Face it, if you want something in this harsh and unforgiving world, you have to do unto others as the royal and filthy rich have done unto you: you gotta steal it.

-   Mark Finn

 

Mark Finn, raconteur both extraordinary and professional, has a ‘zine in this year’s Zinequest.   Polite Society is all about heists and big-time capers a la the greatest heroes of Sword & Sorcery.  What does Mark Finn know about Sword & Sorcery?  Mark literally wrote the book on Robert E. Howard. 

 

Yes, it’s that Mark Finn.  So you know it’s going to be good.

 

But don’t take my word for it.  Here’s what Bill “Fables” Willingham has to say:

Let me tell you some of the reasons you should consider buying Mark Finn’s new ttrpg zines called, POLITE SOCIETY: The Zine for Thieves, Scoundrels, and Ne’er-Do-Wells. 

First of all, Mark writes good rules. Like him, they’re aged in fine oak casks, and go down as smooth as 20 year old scotch. No critique intended against every year’s new crop of hot young gunslinger rules writers – you all have your place keeping the games fresh and alive – but give me rules by one of the old guard rpg guys with nothing more to prove. He’s already spent a lifetime behind the dice, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and we reap the rewards.

Polite Society works. And, believe me, as one of its playtesters (along with Bill Williams and Brad Thomte), I tried in every way possible to wreck, ravage, and undermine those rules, because trying to get away with all kinds of sabotage is part of a playtester’s remit. Test To Destruction is the operable term. No destruction occurred, and instead we had a wonderful extended campaign. I’ve playtested many a game (including, but not limited to TSR’s Star Frontiers, and Top Secret, and too many D&D modules to count, and the original revamp of Jeff Dee’s and Jack Herman’s Villains & Vigilantes), and this is the first time the system being tested didn’t need a ton of work, just to make it minimally playable.*

But a set of cool rules (to quote Spicoli) isn’t enough. That’s the same as admiring a well-written recipe and actually eating the dish that results from it. Can you plan and execute a good, workable caper with Polite Society? The answer is unequivocally YES. Not only can you run a good heist, and maybe even a great one, but you can do so with only a few minute’s preparation. One of the best parts of every playtest sessions was after the fact, when Mark would run down the checklist of what went into planning that day’s caper. The job, the twist, the unexpected complication, and so much more – it’s all in there, every time.

So then, without reservation, or hesitation, I invite you to back Mark’s crowdfunding campaign, and/or buy the zines as they appear. In this brave new age of larceny-themed fantasy role playing games (and movies it seems) this is an addition to the popular new subgenre that’s guaranteed to stand out.

Thank you for listening,

Bill Willingham

Former TSR staff artist; lifetime gamer; creator of the long-running comic series Fables.

*For example, in Top Secret did you know there was originally a defensive fighting position one could get into during Hand to Hand Combat in which you could not possibly be touched? Of course you didn’t, because we found it and fixed it. And the hand grenade damage rules were flummoxed by us playtesters by taking turns swallowing each grenade thrown. Since it only did a single d10 of damage, but did it to everyone in its area of effect, we’d just take turns taking the hit for the team.

 

And yes, it's this Bill Willingham:

Mad Mashup: Elves

Elves represent the greatest deviation I’m making from the classic classes.  B/X elves are warrior-wizards.  My elves are much more Tolkienesque.  They’re an excellent alternative to Clerics for a party healer and have some nice synergies with the Ranger.

The Elf Spell-list isn't detailed here.  In a more Tolkienesque world, they would actually use the Druid list instead of the traditional Magic-user list.  Which I use depends on the flavor we're looking for.

Millenia ago, for mysterious reasons, the Elves migrated from Fairey to this world.  While they still maintain more than a touch of their Fey ancestry, they are now also very much creatures of this world.  Today they guard the wild and beautiful places, and try to maintain balance in the struggle between Order and Chaos by championing the side that’s weakest.  For this reason, most of the gods find Elves very annoying, and few will accept them as priests. 

Requirements

• Elves roll d6 for their hit points.

• They may use any armour, shields, and weapons.

• You use the Elf’s Saving Throws.

• They may only cast spells if they are at most Heavily Encumbered.

• Elves must have a DEX of at least 13 and a WIS of at least 9.  An Elf with both scores 16 or above enjoys a 10% bonus to all EXP earned.

Abilities

• At every level, an Elf may add a spell from the Elf spell list to their repertoire.  The levels of spells they can pick from depend on their class level.  They may cast each of these spells once per day.  

• Elves have strong rapport with animals.  A group with at least one Elf in it enjoys a +1 on reaction rolls with normal animals.  If an Elf spends an entire Round (10 seconds) talking to an animal, they can radically shift its mood.

• Elves are also known as excellent healers.  When an Elf casts a healing spell, roll twice to see how many hit points are restored and take the higher roll. Those convalescing under an Elf’s care regain double the hit points they normally would (before any other bonuses are applied).  

• Elves can see by dim light like starlight out to 60’.  In total darkness, they can see dimly out to 15’.

• Elves cannot be put to sleep by magic, and the touch of ghouls does not paralyse them.  

• All Elves speak both High Elvish and Vulgar Elvish as well as Common.

No Dice for You! (And a Question About Mechanics)

What are you general thoughts about rules that don't have the GM rolling any dice.  For instance, if a monster attacks a PC, instead of the GM rolling on behalf of the monster, the PC's player rolls for the PC to resist the monster's attack.

On the plus side, I'd think combat would run more smoothly this way, and the GM can focus more on tactics and making the fight fun, rather than juggling dice.  

On the minus side... GM's don't get to roll dice?  I'm having a hard time coming up with negatives on this.

There are a few games that run this way already, with Numenera/Cypher probably being the biggest.  I wasn't a big fan of how Numenera pushed so much of the mechanics onto the players, but that had more to do with burning stats than having the players roll the dice.

What say you?

UPDATE: someone on the Book of Faces pointed out that the GM can't fudge rolls.  Man, it's been a long forever ago since I fudged a roll.  

A Little FUDGE

A player in my weekly face-to-face game mentioned that they’d hardly played anything other than D&D, and 5e at that.  I couldn’t let that stand, so I promised to run something for them after the holidays.  That was this past Thursday, and the game I picked was FUDGE.

I chose FUDGE because it has three virtues.  First, its flexibility allowed me to create a setting that was space opera; a nice change of pace from the usual fantasy.  Second, it’s easy to pick up and play; the player in question already mentioned how much simpler the math is.  Finally, and most importantly, the core mechanic is about as not-D&D as you can get while still using dice and not going deep into Forge-esque territory.

For those not in the know, FUDGE is a descendent of GURPS, and like GURPS, eschews the randomness of a single d20 for a bell-curved core mechanic.  The result is a very not-swingy game, where your stats and skills are very important.  GURPS uses 3d6, but FUDGE uses proprietary dice that have six sides with two marked +, two marked -, and two left blank.  You roll 4 (or sometimes 3) dice, add any modifiers, and compare to a target number.  Each + adds 1 to your total while each - removes 1.  It’s extremely rare to get outside the range from -1 to +1, so if you can’t reach the target number with just your stats and modifiers, you’re probably not going to reach it at all.  

This actually makes FUDGE a decent intro to Old School play since you can’t rely on the dice very much; if you’re going to accomplish the difficult thing, you’ve got to find a way to really rack up the bonuses or (better yet) find a way to succeed without the dice entirely.

On the DM’s side of the screen, however, I discovered how much I’ve leaned on random tables and the dice for inspiration.  Letting the dice describe elements of setting or situation has been a great boon in introducing elements that are different from my own usual go-to stuff.  But when the usual range of a roll is only three possibilities, that doesn’t leave a lot to hang randomness on.  

Labradorite Fudge Dice from URWizards.

DUNGEON23: Which Monsters?

 

I was flipping through the 2e monster manual, looking for inspiration as to what will be under the ziggurat, when I realized there’s no reason I need to use the monsters in there.  I didn’t use the usual stats for the bandits based around the ziggurat, I have in mind one area that will use completely unique monsters, and another area where I’m using a traditional monster but mutated (no promises on either of those; these are ideas only, and when I get there I may have thunked up better ones).  And I’m already using ascending ACs, so I may as well wallow in my blasphemy.

 

Therefore, you’ll recognize names, but the stat blocks won’t be the same.  I know that’s going to be an issue for some, but it’s one that’s easy to fix, so I don’t feeling a burning need to include the “official” stats. 

 

This also gives me the opportunity to contemplate new spins on traditional monsters, which can be a lot of fun, if much slower.  And while I truly intend this to be a megadungeon, I’m going to continue to err on the side of quality over quantity.

Leveling Up the Old School Way

I've discussed this before, but I'm seeing a lot of new folks in the conversation who have no memory of D&D before 3rd Edition/Pathfinder, so I figure it's worth going over again.

Here's an example of how leveling-up worked in AD&D (aka 1st edition, and what the kids in Stranger Things are playing). In order to get to 2nd level as a Fighter, you'd need to accrue 2,001 EXP. Killing the average orc nets you 14.5 EXP. So in order to gain 2nd level, a Fighter would have to slaughter 138 orcs. And they'd have to do it by themselves, because if they have help, the EXP are divided evenly. So if the Fighter has even just three companions (a small party by 1e standards, though considered average in 5e), a total of 552 orcs must be slain. This the equivalent of over 3 average orc tribes (according to the Monster Manual). As a practical example, the classic adventure Keep on the Borderlands has an orc tribe with only 23 "average" orcs plus a bigger, badder chieftain. Your total EXP for slaying all of them would be roughly 400 EXP. But the treasure they have includes 830 GP (and so 830 EXP) in gems and coins. If you sell their weapons and armour, that's another 195 GP. (There's also another 2,500 EXP worth of magic items, but the PCs only get those EXP if they sell the magic items, and they'll probably keep them and use them. So by AD&D rules, they'd get 550 EXP for the magic items, and 100 of those would only go to a character who could actually cast the spell on the scroll.) And here's another wrinkle to the rules from 1e: most encounters didn't result in immediate combat. Unless the adventure dictated otherwise, when the PCs first encounter a monster, the DM would roll a d100. Only on a 5 or less would combat immediately ensue. A roll of 6 to 25 meant "Hostile, immediate action." Which meant combat was only likely (and not even guaranteed) in one out of four encounters before you adjust for a high Charisma score. And the way the Caves of Chaos in Keep on the Borderlands are set up implies the PCs will ally with some tribes against other monsters.

But wait; there's more! Even if a fight did start, it wasn't necessarily to the death. Every monster had a morale score. You'd check morale when 25% of the monsters were slain, when 50% of the monsters were slain, and when a leader was KOed or slain. If the monsters failed their morale check, they might try to retreat or even just surrender. Orcs had a base 50% to keep fighting when morale was checked, so most fights would likely end before more than half of a group of orcs was slain. And orcs who'd failed their morale check would happily part with treasure in exchange for getting to run away. (A note on morale; not everyone played with it. It was an easy rule to miss if you started with AD&D. But it was a big deal in the Basic rules, so you were more likely to use it if you started with that set.) So it's entirely likely that the PCs will kill only enough of one tribe of monsters to extort them to leave the area and surrender some of their treasure, and be paid by another tribe to do it. (There's also a very mercenary ogre in the caves who is willing to fight with others in exchange for gold.) And that would be a much more economical way to earn EXP than just slaughtering everything they came across. This is why many consider combat in TSR-era D&D to be a "fail state." If you're fighting, you're expending resources that are not easily recovered (natural healing only returned 1 to 2 HP per day spent doing nothing but resting, for instance) and for uncertain gain (if you were not in a monster's lair, there likely wasn't much treasure to be had; the orcs mentioned above have only a handful of coins each on them, and none of those coins is a gold piece). This was why wandering monsters were such a pain. They typically had no treasure at all, making them a resource sink rather than an opportunity to earn EXP that they are in 5th edition.

Coins made with Stable Diffusion and GIMP. Sad Manticore by JB Murphy.

Mad Mashup: Weapons

I’ve decided to start my dive into my mad mashup of various D&D and OSR sources with weapons because they may give the broadest range of examples of rules I’m pulling from.  The goal was to keep the math simple but also give reasons for picking one weapon over another.  The inspiration was the fact that weapons are, in fact, tools for getting various jobs done.

 

Every weapon is designed to allow you to kill that guy over there, when that guy over there has done things to keep from getting killed.  Maybe they’ve got their own weapons, or they’re mounted on a horse, or they’ve wrapped themselves in protective metal.  Western Europe during the Middle Ages saw an amazing flowering in the design of weapons and armour.  And every single one of them was designed to solve the problem of doing unto the others before they had a chance to do unto you.

 

(If you want a deeper look into what I’m talking about here, check out this guy’s videos.  He does a great job discussing the historical uses of weapons and spends a lot of time talking about the context that lead to the individual designs.)

 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what I did for my B/X mashup game. 

 

(This just didn't want to upload properly. If it's as unreadable for you as it is for me, go here for a Google Docs version.)

In original B/X, all weapons did 1d6 damage.  That keeps things simple, but utterly flies in the face of my “a tool for every job” philosophy on weapons.  Still, I like that simplicity, and just giving weapons different ranges in damage doesn’t really get where I want to go either.  So I compromised.

 

If you’re wielding a weapon in one hand, it does 1d6 damage.  If you’re using two hands, it does 2d4 damage.  Some weapons can be used either way.

 

The next column is Oversized.  This is for the LotFP encumbrance system, where a single oversized item gives you a point of Encumbrance straight off the bat.

 

The prices I’m pretty sure were taken from 2e D&D.  I love 2e’s equipment lists as they’re just huge across the board.

 

Notes is where the magic happens.  I gave most weapons a special ability.  Under “arrows,” for instance, bodkin arrowheads (narrow, stiletto-like heads designed for armour penetration) give you a +1 to hit if the target is wearing armour or has a thick hide.  Broadhead arrows, conversely, add +1 damage per arrow shot.

 

And that brings up a thing with arrows.  In traditional D&D, a round of combat can range in length from 6 seconds to a full minute.  And in all of that time, an archer can only get off one or two shots.  This is supported by assuming that the targets are moving around defensively, so the archer has to take their time lining up their shots.  I’ve always been meh on this.  So instead, I allow the archer to fire up to four arrows in my 6 second rounds.  All arrows are fired at the same target, and every arrow after the first increases the likelihood of landing a telling shot.  So instead of doing more damage, every arrow after the first gives the archer an unmagical +1 on the attack roll (for a total of +3 from the arrows). 

 

You still only roll one d20 for all for arrows to see if the target loses hit points, and you still roll a single d6 or d8 to see how many hit points are lost.

 

And so we can go down the list to see how weapons differ.  The bill, for instance, is good at unhorsing opponents.  Flails ignore shields, hammers and maces give you a +1 on your attack roll if your foe is wearing armour, shuriken only do a single point of damage but the target suffers Disadvantage on whatever their next attack roll (because shuriken are traditionally more about distracting people than killing them).

 

Advantage/Disadvantage is what I ported over from 5e, and it works the same here: you roll an extra d20 and you take the higher if you have Advantage and the lower if you have Disadvantage.  You can’t stack multiple Advantages or Disadvantages on top of each other, and if you have one of each they cancel out.

 

The special abilities of the two-handed sword are based on the montante bodyguard techniques.

 

And that’s all there is to say there.  None of these are terribly complex and each has its role.  Also, since they are individual to weapons, I can leave it up to the players to remind me of what special thing their weapon of choice does during the fight.

 

 

Quick Thoughts on Thirsty Sword Lesbians

 It mechanizes things I don’t normally want mechanized but doesn’t get stupid about it.  The rules are simple and not overbearing.  They mostly focus on individual personal relationships, and while they’re lacking a bit in nuance (there’s basically friendship and being “smitten” and nothing else) this also means you don’t feel railroaded by them.  

In spite of the art and the examples, there’s really nothing here insisting that the PCs be thirsty or lesbian.  Heck, there’s even a section on replacing the swords with anything else that inspires personal, one-on-one combat, like wrestling or mecha (Achilles Shieldmaidens, anyone?)  That said, characters who are not “thirsty” for romance and messy interpersonal entanglements will be missing a lot of the fun.

It would be dreadfully easy to run this as Lesbian Stripper Ninjas: the RPG.  Even one of the example settings involves holy stripper warriors who use their polearms as dance poles.  You’re going to want the right group to play this with.

The mechanics work best in a “hothouse” environment, where they’re forced to encounter the same individuals over and over again.  Which kinda works contrary to the free-wheeling, swashbuckling mood the game is aiming for.  The result is probably like a French novel, where no matter how far the characters travel, they just keep encountering each other again and again.  But I can’t help thinking it would work best in a constrained setting like a generation starship, a prison, or a harem.  

The game really wants you to acquire insights about your foes and then use those insights to either seduce them towards goodness, or help them find true love (and, it’s assumed, they’ll start being good after that).  It’s got a lot to recommend it as a gameplay loop but leans very, very heavily on the GM to bring novelty to each iteration and doesn’t provide much help in doing that.  

What does mitigate this somewhat is that the “classes” of the game (playbooks since this is a PBtA game) are all based on a personal conflict, mostly revolving around the individual’s relationship to society.  A player who’s getting bored can resolve their character’s conflict and either retire them to a happily-ever-after, or transform their conflict into another (and thus start playing with a new playbook).  There are rules for how that would work mechanically as well as suggestions for making it feel organic in the fiction.  

What’s really interesting is what’s not here: no equipment lists, no vehicles, no skills or weapons or treasures (other than, of course, the friends we make along the way), which does kinda run counter to the whole swashbuckling adventure thing.  This game is extremely Old School in its reliance on rulings, and I wouldn’t recommend it as the first game you GM.  I’d want a lot more detail about the PCs backgrounds than the game demands, and would likely include a handful of questions to give me some idea of what the PCs are about beyond their trauma.  This game really doesn’t want to get hung up over how fast your starship can go or how many cannon are on your pirate ship, which means the GM is going to be winging it pretty heavily while trying to steer things towards emotional moments that will have the PCs going through emotional wringers and then turning to each other for support.

Neo-classical Gaming Revisited

It’s been a while since I’ve discussed neo-classical gaming.  The basic idea is made up of two components:

1. -        The core activity of playing games is making decisions, primarily about how you’re going to use your limited resources to achieve victory (however that’s defined).
2. -       Thus, when you’re rolling dice, you’re not playing the game; you’ve paused the game while you wait for random chance to tell you what the new situation is going to be.

So while lots of RPG design theory says, “If your game is about exploration and danger, you should have an Exploration and Danger stat,” neo-classical gaming is more about building mechanics around exploration and danger so the players are making decisions that lead to exploration and danger.  (To see a good modern example of a neo-classical game built around exploration, check out Numenera.) 

 

What’s brought this to mind recently is discussion around WotC new upcoming book, Strixhaven.  The book is odd, to say the least.  Strixhaven is a wizard’s school, and the adventures revolve around the PCs being students.  There are no villains, but your characters might find an NPC classmate is a “frenemie.” 

 

It’s a far cry from crossing wits with Count Strahd or banishing kaiju-sized demon-princes back to the Abyss.  Even Hogwarts had its Voldemort.  Still, I think the idea is that you’ll drop Strixhaven into existing campaign worlds that already have their own epic villains.  The ad copy certainly implies that one suggested use of Strixhaven is as a level 1-to-10 prequel to a full-blown campaign. 

 

But what would a darker, more adventurous version of Strixhaven look like?  I ran a campaign using 2e D&D where all magic-users got their powers from pacts with demons and devils, and the school where these pacts were made was a recurring element.  Starting from that, what would a neo-classical game about such a place look like?

 

The classic tropes of the pact-with-a-devil genre, from Dr. Faustus to Elric of Melniboné, include the tug of temptation to give more and more to the devil and the dangers associated with that.  Slippery slopes and dangerous assumptions abound, as well as pitcher-plant style traps that are pleasing to fall into but difficult to escape from.  (Now that I think on it, these stories have a lot in common with the American gangster genre.)

 

So what springs to mind is something akin to Numenera’s mechanics, which use a death-spiral to push the characters to use their Cyphers.  But instead of Cyphers, the students of the Shadow University would instead be tempted by sweet-but-poisoned deals. 

 

Our stats are going to be the sort that define college students: Athleticism (to cover everything from physical combat to how much you can drink without passing out), Wits (native intelligence, book-learning, and cleverness), Intuition (seeing beyond the surface of things and ferreting out lies and half-truths), and Charisma (charm and deception).  There will also be a class-ranking number which measures both your academic standing versus your classmates and social position in campus culture. 

 

The bulk of the game would be opportunities to raise your Ranking or threats to it.  If it ever falls too low, you’ll likely end up being sacrificed by one of your classmates to a devil.

The Eyes of Satan are Upon You...

 

The stats are represented with a die; d6 is average, d8 is noteworthy while d12 is exceptional.  (We’re skipping the d10 here.)  There’s one lower, the d4, which represents an impaired stat.  When you try to use one of your stats to overcome a challenge, you roll you die and try to beat a target number:

 

2+ : a routine challenge; you’ll succeed unless luck, exhaustion, or some other outside influence trips you up.

 

4+ : an educational challenge; this one might stretch you a bit.  It’s akin to a pop-quiz in a class or a game versus an equally-skilled opponent.

 

6+ : a daunting challenge; for most, it’s possible to succeed, but only with a lot of hard work and maybe a little luck.  This is the final exam from that prof who brags about how many students fail his class every year. 

 

8+ : crushing!  Native talent is unlikely to be enough, and you’ll have to exert yourself to even have a chance at success.

 

10+ : harrowing!  Only the most gifted or foolish will tackle this challenge with out prep and support. 

 

The higher the challenge, the better the chance that success will move your Ranking. 

 

If you roll and fail, your character can exert themselves to put in extra effort.  This causes your stat to reduce to the next smaller die, but you get to add the max roll possible on that smaller die to what you rolled.  So if your character’s Athleticism is d6, and you roll a 5, your character can exert themselves, lowering their Athleticism to a d4, but also automatically adding +4 to the 5 for a final score of 9. 

 

If your stat is down to d4 already, your character is too spent in that area to exert themselves effectively. 

 

Replenishing your stats involves wallowing in vice.  Wrath might involve smashing something expensive or useful, Pride might require you to abuse a hireling or sacrifice a relationship, etc. 

 

And thus our death-spiral trap makes you exert your character’s stats to keep from falling in the Rankings, and then engage in self-destructive behavior to replenish those exerted stats. 

 

Or you can make a pact and sell your soul for power. 

 

And just to twist the knife, the longer you can go without making a deal, the better a deal you can make.  It’s push-your-luck all across the board.

 

Then we just sprinkle the calendar with all those school-fun events, from freshman initiation streaking to midterms to dances.  And all will be twisted to either challenge the PCs or give them chances to indulge their vices.