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3/27/2019

Age of Ravens: The Final Hack-down

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HACK THE TABLE
I talked about fast hacks in my last two posts, now let's talk about what comes next. In the past I would have tweaked, edited, and likely put my hacks away in a drawer. Jason Morningstar stated a thread on this on the Gauntlet Forums recently. I have lots of games that rightfully never saw the light of day (Rolemaster FFT, True20 Wuxia, Steampunk Evangelion, etc). But with online gaming spaces I can try games out—literally as a playtest. Playing to test if the game functions.

In these plays I don't look for feedback so much as ear-drum rupturing distortion. Are there places where the game doesn’t work at all? If not, we keep going. We hit difficult passages, we keeping playing through. I’ll get that in post. I try to be clear about the state of the game to the players and what I expect from them: play and a chance to decompress about it at the end.

I’ve put several things through their paces online. Crowsmantle, for example, I consider a noble failure. It taught me about PbtA and I love the core concept. But I know to make that stronger, I’d have to do some serious, non-lazy hack work. Another game I’ve iterated a couple of times online and at conventions is Magic Inc. It has legs, but after several plays, I suspect Fate isn’t the best option. But my other Fate hack, Reign of Crows, while not perfect, ended up being kind of awesome. At first I thought SCUP and Legacy: Life Among the Ruins would cover that ground, but they’re adjacent. On the other hand my zombie supers reskin didn’t work as I wanted. I’ve run a lot of Masks: A New Generation since then, and I think I could tweak it to work.

HEDGING MY BETS
Today I want to present a game I cobbled together desperately over a few weeks before we sat down to play it: Changeling the Lost PbtA. My original version unabashedly hacked Urban Shadows. I ran four sessions of that in mid 2017. It worked—not perfectly—but it clicked along and we got a solid story. Afterwards I took what we'd seen and retooled the game for another try in early 2018. Since then I've run a dozen and a half sessions over three campaigns. More importantly, Tyler has run it a bunch and given me insight about how it went at his table.

You can see the earliest version here.

A great deal has changed since that. The biggest shift came in moving away from the original stat arrays to The Veil’s emotional states. It makes sense given how Changeling the Lost connects to feelings; each Seasonal Court represents a strong emotion. I revised it to stats based on the four Courts, plus two associated with humanity (Calm) and Arcadia’s dark temptation (Power). Originally I used The Veil’s idea of spiked out emotions, but later made that a damage system—with harm represented by marking stats so you can’t roll them. But this week I made more tweaks.

Here's the most recent version.

Entanglements
Originally I had relationship questions connected to Debts. That Urban Shadows mechanic has weight in a Changeling setting. CtL includes ideas and mechanics surrounding promises and pacts. But in Urban Shadows, actions generate debts, not intent. But the fae need contracts. So in CtL PbtA you can only establish a debt if you’ve made an offer which has been accepted.

In play debt mechanics fell to the back. Players invoked them from time to time, but mostly they acted as flags for the fiction. So I shifted those relationships into triangular Entanglements, a mechanic which worked in Hearts of Wulin. These connect characters, drive the story, and act as an XP source. Debts remain as several moves key off of them. The most recent version gives PCs a standard entanglement, a romantic one, a debt they owe, and a debt they’re owed.

Simplifying relationships meant I had to cut one of my favorite bits, Rivals. I put it off until today. Originally each character also had a rival, someone they hated in the Freehold. I built cool custom lists for each playbook with names and reasons. But in play rivals rarely came up. Entanglements had energy, and they crowded out rivals.

Conditions and Harm
Originally I borrowed the idea of conditions from Masks: A New Generation. I had it worked out nicely. Each Seeming had a unique condition they had trouble clearing, like Ogres had a harder time not being angry. Each condition affected two moves and I had a distinct harm track for physical damage.

But when I shifted to emotional states as stats, conditions became superfluous. Weirdly I kept the term. When you marked a stat, you “took a condition.” I had some color text on the character sheet about what that looked like. In play that never really mattered. Players played from what made sense rather than checking how a condition changed their outlook. So I cut that and the extra harm mechanics.

That had some ramifications in the design. Many of the moves I’d hacked from had drawn on the idea of harm, armor, AP, etc. Cutting that required changing lots of moves. I had to find new and interesting ways for combat-focused characters like Beasts to be effective.

Consolidating Moves
Over time we’ve reduced the total number of moves, removing many and adding a few in. Originally we had persuasion and manipulation moves. But Patrick Knowles realized those all covered creating a change in a target. So we rolled all of that into the Conflict move and increased the options there. It makes all conflicts parallel and adds new wrinkles. Of course that created move ripples.

But we didn't only cut. One Urban Shadows element I’d left out was Put a Name to a Face. We’d been trimming US elements, but we needed something for interesting and flexible NPC connections. We also added Inner Turmoil as a means of putting pressure on entanglements and relationships. More and more I’d come to realize I ran CtL as a melodrama, so we needed a move to reinforce that.

Perhaps the biggest change came in consolidating the information moves. Read a Sitch and Pierce the Mask became Study. Rather than a list of questions players could ask, I left these open. I also added the option to declare a detail, something which generates great stories in Hearts of Wulin. I debated about this for a long time—not having set questions removes a way of reinforcing setting feel and puts the heavy lifting on the players.

Doing that also constricts the design space. I’m less fond of certain playbook moves, like those that let you substitute stat X for Y, ask a new question, or just give a stat raise. Sure they’re useful, but they’re also less interesting. Question-based moves also suggest these are things others can’t learn about a situation. So I shifted info gathering playbook moves to complement Study (giving additional hold for certain situations or a question they can always ask in addition to their hold) or offering a set of specific questions, but with a better hold payout for success.

Left in the Hedge
I’m really happy with Changeling the Lost PbtA as it stands right now. But I also realize it isn’t a full Changeling the Lost adaptation. Today I cut out the lovely Motley and Trust mechanics I’d built because while they adapted the original, no one engaged with them. They got in the way. I’d originally worked out many ideas about Contracts and Catches, but ended up abstracting all that. Other elements like Changeling the Lost's rich list of powers, pledge bindings, granular Clarity, token items, Goblin Contracts, Entitlements, Fetches, etc fell away as well. They still exist in the fiction and story, but they’re not in the mechanics. Some of that I expected to drop, but others had to be pried from my grip.

VANISHING POINTS
If you’ve made it all the way here, I have a message. Playing and revising this hack have been an absolute joy. I’ve uncovered and refined the play Changeling the Lost always promised me. I found others who connected with those pieces and showed me aspects I hadn’t considered. And that wouldn’t have happened without The Gauntlet.

I have a great f2f group—made up of several interlocking circles of players, with the oldest of them someone I played with in High School. They’re up for experimentation and willing to try out things. But they also strongly prefer long campaigns and fairly trad games. Two of the four f2f games I run are multi-year campaigns; another’s just getting started, and the last will probably push for a long-running game here soon. That makes iterating a challenge.

But the Gauntlet’s been a smart, reliable group, hungry for new games and ideas. I put my time in, running lots of existing games before I felt right about putting something experimental out there. And I still run more established games both to try them out and to balance my hack bombs. In the first post in this series I encouraged everyone to do fast and lazy hacks. In the second, I encouraged trying them out and being cool with them not working.

Now I want to encourage you: find an online gaming community. Build a relationship there, make yourself part of the community, play games. If you have a crazy game idea, eventually you’ll find folks willing to try it and you’ll want to try theirs. That’s a win for you and frankly, it’s a win for me. The more wonderful, crazy games—hacks or otherwise—that are out there, the more vibrant the rpg community is.

For the full backlog of Age of Ravens posts on Blogger see here. 

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3/26/2019

The Golden Shroud Campaign

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by Jason Cordova

In 1984, 16-year-old Taylor Hartley went missing from their home in Hugo, MN. Weeks of searching and investigation by local authorities turned up almost no evidence of what happened to them.

In addition to the normal sorts of things one would expect to find in a teenager’s bedroom, Taylor also left behind a large box full of Trapper Keepers, each of which contained extensive notes for the fantasy roleplay game, World of Dungeons. Collectively, these notes—which detail a strange and terrifying fantasy world—have come to be known as The Golden Shroud Campaign.

As the years went by, people began to believe The Golden Shroud Campaign contained clues about what happened to Taylor—that the mystery of their disappearance could be solved by closely studying the maps and monsters therein. Some even believe that Taylor had learned something about the very nature of the cosmos itself, and that playing The Golden Shroud Campaign is a sort of cipher that can be used to unlock deep, otherwise-unknowable mysteries.

In the Internet Age, the urban legend surrounding The Golden Shroud Campaign has taken on a new life. Over the years, people have managed to get their hands on different parts of the campaign, and as they play through them, they share their experiences on a forum for so-called “shrouders.” Perhaps together they will learn what happened to Taylor Hartley; perhaps, if they explore every corner of the campaign world, they will uncover darker truths.

Rumors that the world of The Golden Shroud starts to penetrate the real-world as you play are, of course, utter nonsense...

Starting in May, I’m going to run a special series on Gauntlet Hangouts called The Golden Shroud Campaign. During each 4-5 session series, players will be participating in two different stories: the story of the shrouders, a group of modern-day people who are playing The Golden Shroud Campaign in order to learn more about the mystery surrounding Taylor Hartley’s disappearance; and the story of the pre-generated characters they play in Taylor Hartley’s campaign world. The series will use Cthulhu Dark to tell the story of the shrouders and World of Dungeons to tell the story of the campaign world. Mechanics in the the World of Dungeons portion will allow players to uncover an emergent mystery related to Taylor Hartley’s disappearance. Over the course of each series, the world of the Golden Shroud will eventually seep into the modern-day world of the shrouders, which will eventually drive them mad or destroy them, as you would expect in Cthulhu Dark.

I have several motivations for doing The Golden Shroud Campaign. The first is that I just love this kind of nerdy shit; the combination of Dungeons & Dragons, Twin Peaks, and Lovecraft is just too irresistible for me. This series combines my two loves in gaming——horror and dark fantasy——and just generally plays to my strengths. My hope is people who participate in this series are going to remember it for a long time, and I love giving that kind of experience to people.

The second is related to the production of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast, which I co-host. I had been running old school modules on Gauntlet Hangouts in order to support that show——we don’t discuss a module unless either myself or my co-host Tom has played it——but it was getting to be a bit of chore. Given the open table nature of how we organize games, I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with these disjointed adventures that didn’t connect up in any way. With The Golden Shroud Campaign, I can use old school modules as the basis for the adventures inside the world of the Golden Shroud, while the shrouder meta narrative is the thread that runs through all of them. Also, because the shrouder story is the main story being told, and we only zoom into the Golden Shroud story at key dramatic moments, it means I can more easily cut the fat from some of these modules (like all the boring “getting the job” or “traveling to the dungeon” parts) and just do the good shit.

Finally, and related to the above, I think this campaign will be a good way of leaning into the open table nature of Gauntlet play. Each set of shrouders will have a complete story told by the end of a series, but the World of Dungeons characters will live on. This means returning players can jump into a new series, which will be about a new group of shrouders, but can just play their old World of Dungeons character. The in-fiction justification here is that the World of Dungeons characters were pre-generated by Taylor Hartley, and so anyone who plays in his world will be playing one of those characters.

I think all of this is pretty clever, but it could end up being a complete disaster. Fortunately, our culture on Gauntlet Hangouts is to do this kind of wild, experimental play. Even if it’s a total mess, it will at least be a total mess we did together. I guess we’ll find out how it goes in May!

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3/23/2019

The Passing of Paul Edson

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by Jason Cordova

UPDATE: Services for Paul will be held on March 30th, 3:00 PM, at the Clarendon Methodist Church in Arlington, VA. If you would like to send cards or other condolences, you may do so at the following address:

Tony Edson
23 Hoornkill Ave
Lewes, DE 19958

In lieu of flowers, the family asks you consider honoring Paul's life and passion in music by giving to either:

The CAMP HIGHROAD CHORAL SCHOLARSHIP FUND.
Please make your tax-deductible check out to CAMP HIGHROAD, MEMO: EDSON Choral Camp Scholarship
Checks may be sent to:
Camp Highroad
21164 Steptoe Hill Rd
Middleburg, VA 20117

Or

The AGMA Relief Fund
https://www.musicalartists.org/membership/agma-relief-fund/

Yesterday we learned our dear friend, Paul Edson, passed away. He was 51. Paul was the editor and co-producer of The Gauntlet Podcast, Fear of a Black Dragon, and Discern Realities. He was also a long-time member of The Gauntlet community and a friend to many of us.

We don't yet have a lot of details about his passing. His body was found in his home by a friend after he was unresponsive to calls and text messages. We're still learning about the situation, and will update this post as we get more information.

Paul touched many people's lives in our community. He was known to be a very caring individual, and always did his best to make our spaces welcoming to newcomers. If you are a long-time fan of our shows, you may remember hearing Paul's voice on The Gauntlet Podcast promo spots, and he can still be heard on the stinger for +1 Forward. Speaking for myself, I had the opportunity to work closely with him over the last few years on the three podcasts we co-produced together. He was a class act and a professional, and the popularity of our shows was due in no small part to his attention to detail. He was particularly proud of Fear of a Black Dragon, a show he co-created with Tom McGrenery and I, and for which we won a silver ENnie in 2018.

On behalf of The Gauntlet, I'd like to extend our condolences to his family at this time. If you are reading this and have thoughts you'd like to share about Paul, please do so in the comments.

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3/22/2019

Gauntlet Video Roundup - March 22, 2019

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Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Hangouts video roundup! Listed below are links to recorded sessions of online games played under the Gauntlet Hangouts banner and other games organized through the Gauntlet online RPG community. These recorded sessions represent only a small part of the giant selection of games available every week, and anyone can join in the fun! Details on how to become a part of the community are listed at the end of the post.

Gauntlet Sunday

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins (Session 3 of 5)
Lowell Francis runs for Ary Ramsey, Darren Brockes, Patrick Knowles, and Walter German
Hemlock's expedition into the Killing Fields goes terribly awry, leaving others to seek out a cure for the Chad Virus. After loss, devastation, and discovery, the age turns.

Gauntlet Comics

Demigods (Session 3 of 4)
Rich Rogers runs for Alexi S., David Jay, and Sherri
The Demigods stop the tirade of a mortal turned god at the Phantom Nightclub, but then they get stuck in the Labyrinth again.

Gauntlet League Wrestling

World Wide Wrestling: Gauntlet League Wrestling - Road Show (Session 3 of 4)
Tyler Lominack runs for Gerwyn Walters, Greg G., Ryan M., and Sawyer Rankin
Big Texas shows the roster what a "Rodeo Wrangle" is all about. Sparkzz learns more about Mr Monet outside the ring. Danger Dan sees a side of Big Texas that is not too appealing. Finally, our roster spends some time an a Wrestling Con in Houston...and receive some offers.

Gauntlet Hangouts

The Pool Variations (Session 2 of 4)
Robbie Boerth runs for Crom, Fernando "Dolan" Dolande, and Peter Mazzeo
This week, the characters dealt with the mysterious disappearance of Auntie Pine, the ancient hearth keeper of the village of Wayfrint. The adventure led them to another encounter with the Wooden and resulted in a revelatory mystic vision.

The Sword, The Crown, & The Unspeakable Power (Session 2 of 4)
Darren Brockes runs for Fraser Simons, Klint Finley, Luiz Ferraz, and Mathieu
[Content warning: cannibalism.] Phaedra continues weaving her web, bringing in the firebrand House Matek. That firebrand, Savina, starts to brew her own plot, leveraging the strong arm of the city who answers to no true master. Meanwhile, Dusk meets with a noble and then ritualistically eats her.

The Watch (Session 2 of 4)
David Morrison runs for Ashley, Bethany H., and Sławomir Wójcik
The Watch come to the defence of a farming village now on the front line of the war against the Shadow; they save the village, but the mayor is captured by agents of the Shadow. Corporal Athoc drums her squad and the villagers into shape, but attracts the attention of the Shadow. Warden Jorun once again disobeys orders as she searches out the kidnappers. And Initiate Raish uses her uncanny powers to come to the rescue.

Apocalypse World: Lost Vegas (Session 3 of 5)
Sawyer Rankin runs for Alejandro, Erez, Peter Mazzeo, and Sydney
The Spectacle comes and so does a very shocking surprise. Sickness quickly spreads from the influx of people to the Grotto of Glitz and the Laws must be upheld (as an opening ceremony none-the-less)! North 93 remembers someone she loved and desperately wants to see again thanks to the erotic dances of the Skinner. As the end of the Spectacle nears a grand gesture from the Goddess invigorates the world...and the lust for the Grotto in the hearts of others.

Bite Me! (Session 2 of 4)
David Morrison runs for Alun R., Kyle, Rob Ruthven, and Wade Lahoda
Doug the Greypelt teaches Colt the Cub some important lessons about the pack. Mac the Prodigal and Ash the Enforcer are tasked with investigating Claudia's death, though both have ulterior motives. The Pack comes together under the threat of the Howling Wolf MC.

World Wide Wrestling: LAWW (Ladies All World Wrestling) (Session 3 of 5)
Sawyer Rankin runs for David Rothfeder, Greg G., Peter Mazzeo, Puckett, and Ryan M.
WOO! Boston, here we come! LAWW is more chaos than order these days! Mariana gets threatened to silence or may be dragged into the ring by Jackie Thompson. Onyx gains another thrall in her rise to prominence! Maria turns evil, not just a Heel but evil! Calamity Carla finds her finishers just missing a snippet of pizazz. And Dita Von Teaser gets drawn back into the ring of Creative license. All this and more on LAWW!

Spire: The Kings of Silver (Session 10 of 11)
Darren Brockes runs for Fraser Simons, Peter Mazzeo, and Rich Rogers
A day at the races: Altrium wins a bet for Pollax's face and Yvette finds a dangerous lead. Then a smooth infiltration segues into a risky gamble.

The Veil: Holistic Blame (Session 2 of 4)
Leandro Pondoc runs for Alex T., Christopher G., Pawel S., and Sławomir Wójcik
Digital Illusion provides just that - the bliss of the unreal, as our protagonists find out. Bahar strikes an interesting business partnership, Polya witnesses the fragility of human beings, Sawako delivers her brand of justice and Kess confronts a vast conspiracy.

Heaven in the Dust (Session 1 of 2)
Leandro Pondoc runs for David Morrison, Luiz Ferraz, and Sabine V.
Down in Hellenetown, the old gods try to live their lives, even as history is coming to sweep them away. Ares tries to look after his kin, Dionysus is tasked with creating chaos, Apollo just wants to sing and the Fates watch on.

Dark Designs in Krevborna: Hexmoon Sabbath (Session 3 of 4)
Richard Ruane runs for Phillip Wessels and Ren Neuhoff
Resting in Veil before going to meet the strange magician Svasta, Mazen and Nemes encounter a greedy demonic innkeeper with an eye for their sickly friend, and find a group of penitents who've been cast out of Svasta's service.

Monster of the Week: Blues From a Gun (Session 3 of 3)
Gene A. runs for Chris Newton, Eduardo L., and Peter Mazzeo
A clue is found. The strange doctor makes a break for it. Edwin and the reporter get close. Rhys and Agent Cade learn about the mysterious Markus the Great. A lighthouse and a sudden thunderstorm. Edwin disregards Madame Fatima's advice about windows. A stunning revelation. Rhys makes a choice. Agent Cade takes a shot in the dark.

Vigor: Whispers of An Old Name (Session 3 of 4)
Jake Householder runs for Chris Krueger, James L., and Sawyer Rankin
Filling In The Gaps - A spill in the Works has emptied The Forge of most of its forces, including the Lord Governor. While she's away, Sandor scours The Forge in search of his son, and the three Archivists head to the Governor's mansion in search of answers to a 40-year gap in records. But, will the truth lead them to the answers they seek, or only further questions? New alliances are forged, and one Lead's very world is turned upside down.

Masks: Phoenix Academy (Session 3 of 4)
Rory runs for Blaine, John Campbell, and Michael Mendoza
The Silver Masquerade turns into much more!

Alas for the Awful Sea: Kingsport 1851, Part I (Session 2 of 4)
Catherine Ramen runs for Alejandro, Eli, and Seraphina Malizia
Captain Charlotte arrives to take command; Oren reveals his true form to Ali; Carlito hires on as a harpooneer; the Marriage of Sea and Land results in troubling omens; a whale is killed.

The Mustang
Tyler Lominack runs for Chris Newton, Keith Stetson, and Peter Mazzeo
This is a powerfully emotional game. If you want to see great roleplay, a deep micro-story, and you have about 2 hours this is a game worth watching.

Dead Scare (Session 1)
Stentor Danielson runs for Bruce Rusk, Kyle, and Larry S.

Other Games

Sorcerer: Demons are Social Media Junkies (Session 2)
Robbie Boerth runs for Alejandro, Jenny W., and Walter German
The characters discover that social media can unleash dangerous powers that they don't fully understand. But sorcery is all about embracing such forces, so they take the plunge.

Check out all the great videos on The Gauntlet YouTube channel and be sure check out the playlists to catch up on all your favorite games. If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Hangouts Google+ Community where new games are announced! To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon at https://patreon.com/gauntlet. All are welcome to play Gauntlet Hangouts games, and Patreon supporters have extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Hangouts games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events are announced like Gauntlet Games Now. Enjoy, and everyone have a great weekend!

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3/21/2019

Introduction to Online Character Keepers

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by Michael G. Barford, Keeper of the Eternal Chime

When playing RPGs online, there are some obvious downsides. Anyone who has come from a background of playing face-to-face knows this. But there are also some considerable upsides that technology can provide to gaming!

With online games, we can play with people halfway across the world. We can find people who like the games we like, even if the games are less well known. We can attend conventions without exposing ourselves (or others) to germs and other hazards of large meeting places.

If you want to improve your online gaming experience, you should try to maximize the strengths of using online platforms while minimizing its weaknesses. One unique advantage of gaming online is access to online character sheets. Many popular games like Dungeons and Dragons have extensive, advanced character sheets capable of handling the large amounts of information that a player needs to track; often these sheets can be accessed from a service like Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator. Here at the Gauntlet, we tend to avoid those platforms when possible for a few reasons:

We try to avoid asking players to install additional software onto their devices. Browser-based solutions are strongly preferred.
We try to avoid asking players to create accounts for platforms outside of our own services (which usually only require a Google account, a necessary and ubiquitous ask).
Most relevant to this discussion, here at the Gauntlet there are many indie games being played which do not have premade online character sheets (although in the future we hope to see that change!)

With these points in mind, the most practical and accessible solution we’ve found for character sheets is Google Sheets, which are Google’s online, collaborative version of a spreadsheet very similar to Microsoft Excel. Noble Gauntleteers have already created a number of character sheets for various games. We prefer to call them character keepers because they keep all of the characters for any given campaign in one place! You can find the tons of our character keepers in our Player Aids folder on the Community Resources page. The benefits in using Google Sheets character keepers include:

Easy access and sharing! It’s browser based and doesn’t even require a plug-in to operate. You can find/share a view-only version as a template, make a copy for yourself, and then send a link with edit permission for your players.
Everything you need can fit on one page. Being able to see every player’s character sheet all at once is something that paper sheets can’t achieve. This is a helpful way to keep an eye on everyone’s names, preferred pronouns, abilities, etc.
A well-formatted sheet can streamline and simplify character creation.
Different tabs on your sheet can allow you to keep all of your notes and hand-outs in one place. You can have a tab for maps, NPCs, lines & veils, or rules references.

Some people have found Google Sheets so easy to use that they use it to design the rough drafts of their games (looking at you, Hearts of Wulin!). But not everyone has had experience with using Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or other spreadsheets, and at first it can seem overwhelming. In this series of blog posts I will walk you through how to create your own online character keepers.

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3/20/2019

Age of Ravens: Double Visions

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A VISION OF LAZINESS
Today’s post offers a follow-up to my “lazy hacks” discussion. I want to encourage designers to consider reskins they can quickly get to the table, see what others think, and iterate. I’ve dithered over many game ideas, but I’m working to change my habits. A few people reached out about my call to directed laziness and said it pushed them forward. I saw some talk in the new Gauntlet Forums about quick, exploratory hacks. Obviously this won’t work for everything, but it can be a path forward for some designers stuck in their thinking.

For example, close to home it’s gotten Sherri working on an idea she had a couple of months back. She’s scratching together a new Forged in the Dark game. We’ve played our anime cyber-ninja setting, Neo Shinobi Vendetta, previously with Fate and Action Cards. The latter works great face to face, but less so online. On the other hand, while Fate worked, it’s also divisive. Sherri wants the FitD tools—like Stress and Group Management—that super fit with the concept. She’s going to write it and I’m going to put it on the calendar, giving her a deadline.

DOUBLE FANTASY
I have other hacks on my plate as well, mostly with my favorite genre: fantasy. I know some Gauntlet folks don’t dig fantasy; it feels like an uninteresting set of often problematic tropes. But fantasy is what I always return to. I grew up on Michael Moorcock, Tanith Leigh, Roger Zelazny, and Jo Clayton. They, more than the sci-fi I read, shaped my head space. My relationship with the genre in rpgs has been complicated. I dig magic, but I’m not into complicated magic systems. I’m fascinated by unique cultures, but cringe at some game settings. Some popular fantasy imagery—Arthurian, Celtic, and Viking--leave me cold.

Some Gauntleteers do share my passion, otherwise we wouldn’t have Discern Realities or Fear of a Black Dragon. Darren Brockes suggested a fast hack I’m furious I didn’t think of: reskinning Masks: A New Generation as a fantasy road-trip rpg. It could use playbooks like the Outsider to represent “other’d” peoples in the setting (like Orks or Gnolls). Imagine the Legacy as the child of a proud noble or legendary hero trying to live up to their story. While I dig the Ryutama’s light melodrama, I want real heartache and tension in my traveling adventure. The hack could lift elements from Fellowship to make a road trip ala Final Fantasy X or XII.

HACK ONE: VEILED STREETS
A few weeks ago I posted about our Microscope session. Several of us created a unique high fantasy city (which we never got around to naming). I want to run a game set there. I’m a huge fan of city-based fantasy games and settings. The awesome Citybook series remains one of my favorite rpg products. Even if I don’t invest in a game line, I’ll often pick up city supplements. That’s lead me to a few gems like The Kaiin Players Guide and Geanavue: The Stones of Peace.

I’ve run several city-based fantasy campaigns—from mercenaries in Planescape’s Sigil to the streets of Legend of the Five Rings' City of Lies, Ryoko Owari. For our “city guards” campaign, Guards of Abashan, we also used Microscope to craft the locale. Everyone loved the campaign and the collaborative process gave the players ownership and knowledge. But while the city served as a backdrop and source of hooks, we didn’t really *explore* it. We hit notes of daily life but never heard the song of the streets. That’s something I want to do with our new Gauntlet city.

At first I considered Urban Shadows, but that has premises and concepts which would require retooling. The secrecy surrounding the characters’ lives colors that game, as does the real world considerations of ethnicity and marginalization. So instead I opted to turn to a PbtA game that has repeatedly created dynamic and interesting cities with linked character stories: The Veil.

Each time I’ve run The Veil the players created a city with a distinct feel. From a sunken street Disney-managed Los Angeles; to a city on an alien world at war with an encroaching digital jungle; to a massive sea-rig migratory urban center hunting the Pacific. In each case the PCs informed the city and vice versa. As they’ve tried to survive and understand themselves, they’ve dug into what makes the city tick. Fraser Simons’ game pushes players to explore those lives and the streets they live in invariably inform that.

So I’ve started reskinning The Veil, beginning with the playbooks. That required making a few choices:

Mechanize Obligations as Debts a little more tightly.
Remove The Veil as a concept—revise that conceptually into the “beat of the city.”
Leave aside backstory and relationship questions for the moment. I’ll come back around to those. I may use Entanglements from Hearts of Wulin to do this. Related, look at Beliefs and figure out how to handle XP.
Change some terms, like Gold for Cred. Cybernetics becomes magic. Gear gets retooled. Humanity harm becomes Soul harm.
Playbooks are either magic or gear focused. If a playbook has magic casting, the player chooses starting spells and a casting drawback. The drawback is invoked for GM moves.
Gear will be done with a load out approach ala Blades. Characters will be able to pick from a standard list “on the job”. Gear-focused playbooks will have additional options including access to unique and named magical items.

The Playbooks mapped over surprisingly easily. From The Veil base rules,

The Apparatus becomes The Summoned
The Attached becomes The Familiar
The Catabolist becomes The Artificer
The Dying becomes The Cursed
The Empath becomes The Channeler
The Executive becomes The Guild Agent
The Honed becomes the Monk
The Honorbound becomes The Oathbound
The Onomastic becomes The Heretic
The Seeker becomes The Cultist
The Wayward becomes The Druid

From The Veil: Cascade,

The Aesthetic becomes The Bard
The Percipient becomes The Assassin
The Futurist becomes The Oracle

From The Veil: Inheritance,

The Linker becomes The Hunter
The Mirror becomes The Doppelganger
The Sparrow becomes The Wizard
The Custodian becomes The Archaeologist or Scholar (still deciding)

Will those playbooks map over easily? Yes, and you can check out the fruits of my efforts here. Will it work in play? We’ll find out. It’s been the work of a couple of days to put this together and I’m super excited to see what happens. BTW as of this writing, the latest iteration of The Veil, Inheritance is on Kickstarter.

HACK TWO: LOST LEGACIES
The other fantasy lazy hack came to me after our first session of Legacy: Life Among the Ruins 2e. I’ve been running it Sunday mornings in March. I love the potential of Legacy. I ran the original version as my first game for The Gauntlet, well before I understood how PbtA operates. I didn’t do a great job, but I powered through. I loved so many ideas from the rules. Last year I ran sessions of the newer edition, working from the Kickstarter backer pdf. I dug it, but we hit a few rough patches with the mechanics and my own understanding of the play.

I’ve run this series with the final version, and I have a much clearer sense of how the game works. I rebuilt my Google character keeper to make it easier for the players. I used all of session one for world, family, and character building. By adding space in the online sheets for Quick Characters, it encouraged us to explore those mechanics. We’ve done three sessions so far and it’s kind of blowing my mind. If you like AP videos, I highly recommend these sessions.

Legacy offers PbtA generational play in a post-apocalyptic setting. For the new edition Jay Iles also brought in designers to create several other fully fleshed themed playsets like Rhapsody of Blood (Castlevania), Worldfall (Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri), and Generation Ship (Gen 7). Each does an amazing job of tuning the rules and the playbooks to their unique setting. Godsend, for example, deals with deities & heroes, rather than families and characters and uses a diceless mechanic.

It occurred to me that reskinning base Legacy for fantasy would be super easy. Tech would become Magic, Data would become Secrets, Devices would become Relics. Most family playbooks could easily be reframed as fantasy factions. So The Enclave of Bygone Lore become ancient scholars; The Lawgivers of the Wastelands become a Paladin-like order; The Order of the Titan wrangles Dragons instead of Kaiju. Character playbooks map over just as easily, with only a few you might have to seriously tweak or reconsider.

Best of all, this could solve the problem I had with Forbidden Lands. In our recent Gauntlet Hangouts podcast I mentioned the weird world-building at the heart of that game. In FL communities, cities, and peoples have been isolated for 300 hundred years. The text suggests people could only reach the area within a half-day walk of their settlement. A ravaging force called the Blood Mist kills any who wander further. But now that Mist has lifted—that’s the starting point for campaigns. Yet the setting material suggests that almost nothing has changed in 300 years—every faction, people, and settlement is much the same, just less informed about what’s out there. That boggles my mind.

I would use that Blood Mist concept as the starting out point for a Legacy fantasy campaign. The Blood Mist has lifted, new factions have made contact and interacted, but there’s much they don’t know. Old and new threats hide themselves on the map and various forces seek to fulfill their agenda. It would be a little like The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power, but with more focus on factions and less on petty awfulness. I sat down and sketched out a few notes for this.

Of course, the next day UFO Press launched their Kickstarter for Mysthea a fantasy setting using the Legacy Engine. And that is awesome. I’m already looking through the quickstart and I’m super-excited. I can still do my fantasy hack, run from the Mysthea quickstart, and eagerly anticipate the coming of the full version.

That’s the beauty of lazy hacks—no worries, no biggie if someone has or is going to do something you’ve done. You can see if they’ve actually created what you wanted. If they have, great. No big loss of time. If they haven’t, well then they’ve probably provided you with new inspiration and direction for your own hack.

So I say unto thee, get out there, hack lazily, and get it to the table.

For the full backlog of Age of Ravens posts on Blogger see here. 

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3/16/2019

Gauntlet Video Roundup - March 16, 2019

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Special Events

Hearts of Wulin: Podcaster Edition (Session 3 of 3)
Lowell Francis runs for Agatha, Eli Kurtz, Eric M. Farmer, and Sherri
We play Hearts of Wulin with Agatha Cheng from Asians Represent!, Eric Farmer & Eli Kurtz from Jianghu Hustle, and Sherri Stewart of the Gauntlet Podcast-- a dynasty changes in our finale!

Star Wars Saturday

Star Wars World (Session 2 of 4)
Rich Rogers runs for Blaise, David Jay, David Walker, Joe Zantek, and Steven Watkins
The Rebel cell finds out about a new crimelord in Mos Eisley trying to pick up the crumbs left behind by the death of Jabba the Hutt. What do they do? Try to take him down, of course!

Gauntlet Sunday

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins (Session 2 of 5)
Lowell Francis runs for Ary Ramsey, Patrick Knowles, and Walter German
After a meeting of families, they band together to deal with the Kjultivarr threat, but after victory secrets are uncovered and the Enclave moves to take advantage.

TGI Thursday

Hearts of Wulin: Song of Sorrows (Session 2 of 4)
Lowell Francis runs for Chris Newton, Christo Meid, Joshua Gilbreath, and Peter Mazzeo
All four heroes are drawn together to uncover secrets about The Golden Shirt, their tangled loves, and the strange pasts that link them.

Gauntlet Quarterly

Masks: A New Generation (Session 11)
Lowell Francis runs for Chris Newton, Jim Crocker, Michael G. Barford, and Simon Landreville
The future and the present begin to bleed together. Torrent worries about what Shadow Boy will become and Harvester tried to build a bond with the enigmatic Zan, but other forces begin to manipulate our heroes from the shadows.

Gauntlet Comics

Demigods (Session 2 of 4)
Rich Rogers runs for David Jay and Sherri
Demigods Allie and Pillar find themselves in a labyrinth after following a red thread. They meet Echidna and Daedalus the inventor (which allowed me to do my terrible Wallace Shawn impression). Also, Pillar goes on a date!

Gauntlet League Wrestling

World Wide Wrestling: Gauntlet League Wrestling Developmental League: On The Road (Session 2 of 4)
Tyler Lominack runs for Gerwyn Walters, Greg G., Lu Quade, Paul Spraget, and Sawyer Rankin
The promotion heads to Georgia and the Augusta High School Gym. Mr Monet, Princess, and Kandi Roxx enjoy some quality family time; Proctor Sparkz misreads the signals and gets a black eye; Kid A gets fucked up and trashes a motel room; and Big Texas gets lucky. The promotion angles some good press...and a tag match gets a little out of hand.

Gauntlet Hangouts

Macchiato Monsters: Witchburner (Session 1)
Asher S. runs for Ben Adelman, David Rothfeder, Diana Moon, and Peter Mazzeo
Our heros spend their first day in Bridge of Saint Cleareyes! They find: bleeding pumpkins, lots of gander, mutilated dolls, and a suspicious tailor.

Apocalypse World: Lost Vegas (Session 2 of 5)
Sawyer Rankin runs for Alejandro, Peter Mazzeo, Rich Rogers, and Sydney
The world grows larger and smaller. Big Poppa settles that The Spectacle will happen in the Grotto of Glitz. Rue Wakeman comes upon the best pay for an assassination. Hope & Sorrow gets into the thick of it and draws drug chemicals from the psychic maelstrom. North 93 avenges Big Momma and seeks allies in her life. Come and get lost in Lost Vegas.

Trophy: Throne of the Forest Queen (8/3/19)
David Morrison runs for Asher S., Jim Crocker, Julian, and Kevin Marshall
Teodan the woodcutter, Sibil the marionette witch, Vero the goatherd, and Elisio the Groom-to-Be venture into the depths of the forest to seek an audience with the Forest Queen to receive her boons. Braving travail and temptation on the way, ultimately only one can capture the Queen's fickle heart. And in the courts of faery, no gift comes without a price.

Trophy: Throne of the Forest Queen (9/3/19)
David Morrison runs for Darold Ross, Jeremy Strandberg, and Peter Mazzeo
Priya the Bride-to-Be recruits Kasien the Goatherd to guide her to the court of the Forest Queen, and they are joined on their journey by the reclusive Teodan the Woodcutter (probably no relation). Strange magics are weaved in the forest, the Wild Hunt claims its quarry, and we end with a fairytale wedding.

Bite Me! (Session 1 of 4)
David Morrison runs for Alex T., Rob Ruthven, and Wade Lahoda
In Harper's Den, Oregon, tension builds as Mac the Prodigal returns to the pack lodge. Devora the Howl and Ash the Enforcer are interrupted as they discuss the latest threat to face the pack. And the pack Alpha Evelyn Moore learns some disturbing news about the death of her lover.

World Wide Wrestling: LAWW (Ladies All World Wrestling) (Session 2 of 5)
Sawyer Rankin runs for David Rothfeder, Greg G., Peter Mazzeo, and Puckett
Today we see the behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on at LAWW. Has Mariana the Boss shown her true colors? Will Onyx get what she's looking for or has calling an ex left her in hot water? Will Jackie Thompson show the old school is still the best school through applied science violence? Will Maria "Money Wheels" Romero and Dita Von Teaser show their old tag team roots go deeper than what is normal? Find out on episode 2 of WWW: Ladies All World Wrestling!

Flotsam: Below (Session 1)
Bethany H. facilitates for Jason Mills, Jesse A., and Rich Rogers
Disgraced bounty hunter Zen challenges another gang leader for dominance of his new neighborhood, but it turns out the Below's ritualized gang combat has rules. Jasper, the Sybyl, and Lenny, the Spider, are reluctantly willing to help him. Meanwhile, Omega, the cyborg assassin, has his own mysterious agenda, which might involve the squid boy Zen is protecting.

Psi*Run (Session 2 of 2)
Donogh runs for Eike K., Leandro Pondoc, and Pawel S.
Bill, December, and Jack try to escape from the dragnet closing in on the stadium - falling apart under the repeated backlash of their psionic powers. But they're captured just as they uncover secrets as to their identities. These Hemsworths mean business, but the trio escape from the truck transporting them and after resting up, they infiltrate Spencer Corp HQ itself - there they'll find the truth.

Rhapsody of Blood (Session 2 of 4)
Fernando "Dolan" Dolande runs for Owen Thompson, Pat P., and Sawyer Rankin
Alluvion of the Brood, Compass Rust of the Wandering Book, and Navin of the Scales, arrive at the city of Changsha, in china, pursuing rumors of the Castle’s return. Within they find a city quarantined, as people have become infected and monstrous. They move swiftly, to find the source of the madness.

Itras By: Dream of Revolution (Session 2 of 4)
Mikael Tysvær runs for David Walker, Horst Wurst, and Tina T.
Things get weirder in Itras By as the Bluebird of happiness gets killed and tattoos come to life.

Dark Designs in Krevborna: Hexmoon Sabbath (Session 2 of 4)
Richard Ruane runs for Alejandro, Phillip Wessels, and Ren Neuhoff
Altaban, Mazen, and Nemes head to Veil and the Nachtmahr Mountains where rumors suggest they'll find the witch Svasta, only to find other travelers who are seeking her out for healing. Arriving near Veil, a secretive group of church knights are executing a strange young man at the borders of the town, while inside the town, a group of knights from strange lands has also arrived to ask Svasta for assistance.

Masks: Phoenix Academy (Session 2 of 4)
Rory runs for Blaine, Joe Zantek, John Campbell, and Leandro Pondoc
Our PCs delve into life at a school full of teenage supers and get into trouble off-campus.

Alas for the Awful Sea: Kingsport 1851, Part I (Session 1 of 4)
Catherine Ramen runs for Agatha, Alejandro, Scot Ryder, and Seraphina Malizia
In 1851 the whaling bark Tethys equips for a long trip to the Pacific. Oren makes hiring decisions; James receives a promotion; Olivia strikes a deal with a witch; and the captain still hasn't arrived.

The Veil: Holistic Blame (Session 1 of 4)
Leandro Pondoc runs for Alex T., Christopher G., Pawel S., and Sławomir Wójcik
In the highly-stratified, ecologically-balanced city of Prudence, famed scientist Arista Jordan has been killed. To find her enemies, she has brought together an enforcer of the ways in Obligation, an architect of the Veil in a new form, an automaton seeking their origins and a purveyor of memories and tasked them to find her would-be killer.

Masks: Agents of A.E.G.I.S. (Session 2 of 4)
Leandro Pondoc runs for David Morrison, Michael Mendoza, and Rob Ruthven
Old enemies emerge as our Sirius Team move to intercept the remnants of the River Cleansing. Spectre proves himself a nuisance in the best way, L0K1 discovers a new configuration of an old shame and Everlass is confronted by the cult that shaped her life.

Monster of the Week: Blues From a Gun (Session 2 of 3)
Gene A. runs for Agatha, Chris Newton, Eduardo L., and Peter Mazzeo
A visit to Madam Fatima. A crash course in botany. Agent Cade gets hung up in the orchids. Rhys swords it all out. Edwin confronts a strange man with a box. Miles saves a reporter and makes a friend. The MC learns a valuable lesson about physical limits.

Vigor: Whispers of An Old Name (Session 2 of 4)
Jack Householder runs for Chris Krueger, James L., Jason Cordova, and Sawyer Rankin
It Begins - Dylarama and Sandor whisper of rebellion, and a misguided half-hearted assassination attempt brings Sandor face-to-face with an old flame: Frist. (It’s complicated). Meanwhile, the young Archivist becomes haunted by an ancient machine whose lingering influence over him grows.

Other Games

Sorcerer: Demons Are Social Media Junkies (Session 1)
Robbie Boerth runs for Alejandro and Walter German
A social media wiz kid uses demonic powers to lace a news interview with his cult's oath, and an estranged son learns that his family is being stalked. But he then has more pressing concerns as he learns he is holding a possessed smart phone.

Our Mundane Supernatural Life
Barry facilitates for Eduardo L.
Spend a day with Vh'outhl'vhulb (Vow) the cosmic horror and office temp and Vernon Derby the greeting card writer as they get fitted for tuxes for Vernon's wedding to his beloved, Ducky.

Monsterhearts: Rivermill '93 (Session 1)
Pat P. runs for Fernando "Dolan" Dolande, Kurai, Lu Quade, and Roxanne
Sasha asks Victor for a favor. Riley pleads to a friend to go to a party. Hannah lashes out against her drummer. Damien tries to ignore Aaron.

Check out all the great videos on The Gauntlet YouTube channel and be sure check out the playlists to catch up on all your favorite games. If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Hangouts Google+ Community where new games are announced! To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon at https://patreon.com/gauntlet. All are welcome to play Gauntlet Hangouts games, and Patreon supporters have extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Hangouts games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events are announced like Gauntlet Games Now. Enjoy, and everyone have a great weekend!

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3/14/2019

Forbidden Lands: My Pre-Series Expectations

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by Fraser Simons, Keeper of the Neon Veil

Forbidden Lands is a retro open-world survival fantasy roleplaying game written by Free League Games; its core comes from their Zero Engine. I have not done much retro gaming, and what little I have done I honestly don’t remember because I was around 8 or 9 years old. Reading this game was an opportunity for me. Like many RPGs in this space, Forbidden Lands released in two books: a player character-facing (or PC-facing) book, and a GM-facing book.

Expectation management is one of the most important things game writers can do for their players. In Forbidden Lands, the PC-facing book instructs the player not to read the GM-facing book, stating that it would “rob” you of an experience if you did so.

This seemed a unique opportunity to discuss what expectations the PC-facing materials telegraph to me as I read through it to prepare for an upcoming series scheduled to be run on Gauntlet Hangouts by Lowell Francis.

First of all, I really like that, unlike many modern fantasy RPGs, Forbidden Lands seems to signal it is not about killing monsters and looting treasure. Instead, the game describes the PC raiders and rouges as “not heroes sent on missions dictated by others.” Forbidden Lands seems to be more about PCs raiding tombs, make their mark on a cursed world, exploring and, if they live long enough, building up a stronghold. I think this is great; it removes the overused “murderhobo” trope. However, I was disappointed to note that PCs are called adventurers for the remainder of the text. As this is a translated game, I am hoping it is nothing more than a translation issue as “adventurers” are something like “raiders”. “Adventurer” doesn’t have the negative connotations “raider” for many native English speakers who play RPGs, at least in my opinion.

In play the PCs, call them adventurers or raiders, navigate a hexagonal map encountering monsters and obstacles. Within some of the hexes are specific locations called Adventure Sites that PCs interact with. There are a few types of Adventure Sites and the GM chooses which one PCs experience as play progresses. If the PCs can, they develop a stronghold. But the real selling point for me is this notion that my character doesn’t know much more about the world than I do. In fiction, something called the Blood Mist has prevented exploration. The Blood Mist only recently receded enough so that people can go out and discover this new world.

I am personally concerned branching out into the previously unexplored areas could become colonial in a bad way, but the mechanics do seem to give the PCs some control so they do not have to perceive the colonialism as a good thing. The PCs can speak lore and tell a story about the world, adding to the fiction. For example, a PC may recall a legend and can talk about it. But it is not just open narration left to the PCs imagination. Instead, Legends are GM handouts that are discoverable. I think that this, a sort of scaffolding framework for legends, is a good idea for PCs, especially those who don’t want to make up the whole thing but would prefer to contribute to it.

The story unfolds in a nonlinear fashion as the players choose to explore the aforementioned legends. A grander scheme in which PCs hunt for artifacts that have elven gemstones unfolds in the background of the game as well. If the GM uses the Raven’s Purge campaign frame, PCs can amass these things and change the fate of the land.

I like the idea of nonlinear story exploration; however I am skeptical as the implementation of it in previous Free League Games (such as in the new Coriolis campaign book Emissary Lost) leaves something to be desired. The problem I have seen develop is that many scenes only make sense when they were experienced in sequential order. Without reading the GM-facing material, players are just left hoping for the best. I personally don’t mind experiencing someone else’s story (especially if it is a good one) but I prefer there be space for me to contribute to the world and story at least in limited ways.

Character Creation in Forbidden Lands

PCs choice of Kin is between Elf, Half-Elf, Human, Dwarf, Halfling, Wolfkin, Goblin, and Orc. Each of these peoples are pointed at each other with some brief history text. There’s a lot of lore to explore in the text, but my takeaway was that humans are described as the ancestral invaders of these lands; elves were betrayed by humans and were attacked, “with demons in tow”; half-elves are described as the “crown of creation,” and “the best of both kin”; PCs who choose halfling can’t stand their own duplicitous family so they opted adventurer; Orcs were enslaved by elves and dwarves; and finally, goblins, ostensibly, are the dark brothers of the halflings and are sort of wild and free, doing whatever pleases them.

While some of this stuff subverts tropes associated with these peoples in Western fantasy, it’s something that would be more interesting to engage with if each Kin didn’t come with a Key Attribute and Kin Talent associated with it. Reducing the populations of these peoples into these two key things feels weird to me. Every halfling has the Hard to Grab Kin Talent and their Key Attribute is Empathy. Every Elf has Inner Peace and Agility. This all seems like much more like the Western fantasy trope. It begs the question: Why bother with historical flavor text that kind-of sort-of subverts it? How pertinent is this history? I am concerned it means PCs may not be interacting with other Kin based on the history.

Professions seem in line with what I expected, with one exception; the Peddler seems quite novel. The full list of choices for PCs is Druid, Fighter, Hunter, Minstrel, Peddler, Rider, Rogue, or Sorcerer. Professions give another Key Attribute to PCs and it gives PCs access to a list of other benefits. One example of this is Pride which a PC can use in the game to augment a roll with an additional d12. If a PC uses it and the roll fails though, the PC may have to go a whole game session without using Pride again and choose another to redefine Pride, among other consequences.

There are many Talents and Skills, most of which are dedicated to fighting in some way or another. A couple aren’t and that’s nice to see, but unfortunately the non-combat Talents and Skills don’t appear too enticing. For instance, Fisher, which helps during a Survival role when you Fish only gives a +1 at the first step of the Talent. The crafting ones are more interesting, but unfortunately look like they will be difficult to succeed with. One last word on Talents and Skills: PCs learn magic by word of mouth in this game and have to have a teacher, the PC must also have a Talent for one of the four types of magic.

PCs choose a Dark Secret, assign relationship statements to other player characters which serve much like Bonds do in Dungeon World, linking characters together in a backstory.

The core stats are Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. Strength affects PCs stamina and physical strength, as well as how much gear they can carry. Agility affects PCs speed, motor skills, and body control. More interestingly, Wits affects PCs sensory perception, intelligence, and sanity (apparently, we are going to be seeing some shit in this game). Finally, Empathy affects PCs empathy (gasp), charisma, and ability to manipulate others.

A quick side note here. I love that in this game if a PC wants to kill someone who is defenseless that PC must make an Empathy check and fail. If it’s really important to the PC that this does not matter to your character there are Talents which bypass this restriction, but the default state of a character, even an “adventurer,” is that it is hard to commit murder against the defenseless. I truly like the line this draws in the sand for PCs and the implications this rule has for the tone of the game. Slam dunk Free League Games.

Next PCs decide on an Age for their character, which has a surprising impact. Age actually informs how many points PCs can distribute to Attributes. PCs choose between Young, an Adult, or Old. The more youthful, the more Attribute points the PC has to spend. I guess more youth means more potential? On the flip side, the older the PC, the more Skill points and Talents. Do you want to have more Attributes or more Skills and Talents? That’s the trade off between being younger or older, mechanically.

There is bunch of Gear PCs can get which must also be selected at character creation. There are the usual suspects like consumable food, water, torch oil, etc., all tracked with one die. It increases and decreases with use of any of these things. The reason I bring this up is because when one PC shares their stuff, the sharing PC die goes down and the borrowing PC die goes up. I love this idea.

Finally, there is reputation, which could precede you. PCs roll d6s equal to their score and if you get a hit someone has heard of you and your deeds, negatively or positively as decided by the GM. The highest reputation in a group is rolled when PCs travel.

The Reward System: What are the Players Incentivized to do?

What a game is about is, in my opinion, largely defined by the reward system. In Forbidden Lands, experience is the currency of choice. At the end of each session PCs get XP when they: participate in a game session; travel through at least one hex on the game map that they hadn’t visited before; discover a new adventure site; defeat one or more monsters; find a treasure (worth 1 gold or more); build a function in their stronghold; activate their Pride; suffer due to their Dark Secret; risk their life for another PC; or perform an extraordinary action of some kind. PCs spend XP to increase a Skill, move a Talent up a rank, or learn a new one (including magical Talents). In short, PCs are rewarded for showing up and interacting with pretty much everything on their character sheet. I think this is fine but doesn’t unfortunately it does not goal post the fiction as much as I’d like because it’s very broad. What I do like is that it incentivizes use of your Pride and Dark secret. Both of these aspects being regularly utilized could be used to inject some backstory and control over the fiction, even if it turns out a failed roll hurts their own character.

Reputation may also grow; examples in the book include: a predominate NPC is killed or saved from death; a feared monster was slain; a legendary treasure or artifact was found or stolen; a deed will have significant consequences for one of the major powers in the Forbidden Lands; or the PCs build a certain function in your stronghold. The GM decides if your reputation goes up due to these deeds, but a settlement is more likely to hear about it if you are the same Kin as that settlement, so presumably It’s harder for the settlement to notice or care about a PC if they don’t look like you. This seems like a weird mechanic, as presumably everything is spread by word of mouth. People don’t talk about these epic deeds much unless they look like you? I am curious if the cultural ramifications are explored in the campaign.

Rolling the Dice

PCs make a roll when it’s absolutely necessary, forcing a dramatic moment where the PC faces tough challenges. PCs total up their Attribute, Skill, and Gear dice together in a pool, roll, and look for 6s and 1s. Any 6 and the PC succeeds. Extra 6s are spent for more positive effects. If no 6 is rolled, the PC can push their luck rerolling any dice that aren’t 1s and 6s. The risk is that 1s decrease your Attributes, temporarily, and can break your Gear. To remedy broken gear, a Crafting roll is required. Beware though, a failed Crafting roll and the gear is broken forever. Note however that Artifacts are the only Gear not affected by this. In fact, Artifacts have their own larger die to roll, rather than the regular D6. Additionally, if the PC get 1s and an Attribute is reduced to 0, the PC suffers what’s called a Break. Each Attribute breaking does something specific to the PC, often with dire consequences. For instance if a PC’s Strength breaks, the PC dies.

It’s important to note that PCs will likely need to push their rolls frequently to have a decent shot at success. Statistically, for a PC to have close to a 50/50 shot on their roll they need to have a die pool of at least two or more and push the roll. To not push the roll and have the a similar chance, the PC needs to roll four dice. Now, granted, Attributes always have at least two dice.

Interestingly, the GM can modify a PC’s dice roll with a difficulty modifier depending on the task, granting between -3 and +3. Help from other players also give you an increased modifier. If PCs help in combat it will use up their action, but gives a +1 for each PC who gives up their action, to a maximum of +3. Clearly teamwork matters in this system; I like that. I do wish it was an extra die added to the pool rather than a modifier.

Forbidden Lands has Initiative: and I like it!

Initiative is neat. Everyone draws from ten cards, 1-10, lowest numbers going first.But here is the neat part: if the PC makes a surprising action, then the GM may tell them to draw more than one initiative card and keep whichever they prefer. On top of that, Players can spend their turn to swap initiative with whomever or whatever they’re fighting. Even though it costs the turn, it may well be worth it because it is a guaranteed outcome: the PC gets the initiative they traded for. In combat, everyone is encouraged to embellish descriptions of actions; there are slow and fast actions and even an optional, more granular combat with cards sold by Free League Games (which appears to be influenced by Mouse Guard).

Non-Combat Mechanics

There are social conflicts with a custom procedure for negotiating position, reminiscent of Burning Wheel. Everything is rolled with Manipulation and the PCs modifier has mechanical factors, such as if the PC has people on their side or if the PC has helped the opponent previously. There’s a list of positive and negative ones. I like this. It’s better than just roll the one relevant skill and try to hit a target number.

Forbidden Lands has a fair number of rules dedicated to survival as well. Mechanical things happen when a PC is hungry, sleepy, cold, and thirsty. PCs can get frightened when they run into horrifying beasts. There are rules for darkness, falling, drowning, poisoning, disease, medical aid, riding animals, and, of course, the four kinds of magic.

A substantial chapter is set aside for a Journey (including ten types of terrain). What I like from these rules is choosing what your character will do that day from a pick list. Hike, lead the way, keep watch, forage, hunt, fish, make camp, rest, sleep, or explore. Each comes with a specific procedure and interacts with other choices people may select. While granular, it sets my expectations for what exploration looks like and why it’s important to me. The answer is if I don’t care, I will probably die. It’s as important as combat. The abstracted hex map doesn’t do much for me but this is more interesting. There are random tables for mishaps along the way for each activity. I like that a sizeable portion of the book is reserved for what it says its about: the journey.

The Stronghold

Lastly, the rules regarding the Stronghold are detailed. PCs can build a lot of stuff. Libraries, bakeries, and I mean a LOT of other stuff. This appeals to the Sim City addict in me. Most games that are mostly about combat don’t typically have a meta aspect like this where the players get to make a town. There are rules for managing and protecting the Stronghold and sieges when it’s threatened.

Final Thoughts and Expectations

The art throughout game texts is usually indicative of the tone and what everyone should expect to be doing. The layout in the PC-facing text is great; there’s a lot less “see page XX” than other core books in Free League Games’ line, leading me to think that splitting this book into a PC-facing book and GM-facing book was a good choice. Additionally, I think it’s worth saying that they’ve ordered the sections in a way that makes sense and is easily found with the index and table of contents.

I think the PC rules as written is going to lead to a predictable gameplay loop that will be broken up by upgrading and interacting with the Stronghold. I expect a pretty granular experience that doesn’t make much mechanical room for freeplay roleplaying. To be fair, I am less interested in what the game is about and more interested character moments; they’re my favorite part of playing and it’d be nice to see that play more incentivized.

If pages dedicated to mechanics are any indication, then I expect PCs to be fighting most of the time. If PCs are not fighting, they are likely travelling, all the while Gear is in peril of breaking and the PCs are subjected to the dangerous forces of nature and difficult terrain. But, when PCs aren’t fighting or traveling, They may just be building something with the treasure, Sim City style. These all seem like great design choices considering the intended audience.

After I play in the series I’ll write about my experience; the “reality” side of these expectations.

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3/13/2019

Age of Ravens: 21 Seas & Lazy Hacking

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In case you wondered: yes, we live in a golden age of gaming. We have almost too many new games as well as classics given a new spin. Some of those reboots, like 7th Sea 2nd edition, truly surprised me. While the first edition never grabbed me, this one did with its clean presentation, a diverse authorship, and an expansive setting. I’ve written about it before and I’ve run a dozen+ sessions of 7th Sea in Théah, The Crescent Empire, and Khitai. I had awesome times across the board.

LOWER THE BOOM
But wow, I do not like the resolution system. It isn’t terrible or broken—lots of players love it. 7th Sea’s approach works for them. But I wrestle with it every time I run. Something in how it stages order and actions doesn’t mesh with my GMing style. It actively works against how I like games to flow at the table. Each time I’ve run, I’ve reread play examples and rewatched AP videos to make sure I’ve got it right. I do.

It’s weird because 7th Sea is relatively rules light. Most other resolution systems I don’t love have complexity-- from the mechanics (2d20, Scion) or the chrome (Pathfinder, D&D 4e). I won't deep dive into those issues. I think 7th Sea just doesn’t jive with my style. But much of its material appeals to me.

BURIED TREASURE
The Setting: I could whip up a European analogue to set a similar game in, but they’ve done the work. Plus they’ve expanded the material beyond the pseudo-European Heartland. The Crescent Empire, Lands of Fire & Gold, and The New World all offer novel and complete settings. The design team takes cultural touchstones seriously and adjusts mechanics to emulate a place’s ideas and tone.

As important, the game paints the nations and cultures of its setting broadly. It has key ideas and concepts but leaves plenty of imaginative space. You can pitch each culture’s concept easily. Even the Nations of Théah books, which richly describe individual countries, feel like a menu of ideas rather than a tight, interlocking analysis. Mark Richardson’s awesome maps for 7th Sea are specific and precise, but the setting remains open.

I always worry about how much the players need to know to get a feel for the place and play. The best settings, IMHO, set up just key ideas. In these worlds, playing a particular character doesn’t require deep knowledge. Instead we learn about the setting through play. Cultural ideas provide a map and we become interactive tourists. It’s a happy middle path that 7th Sea travels.

Almost Approaches: 7th Sea has a skill+stat system with a dice pool. Like The Veil or Fate Accelerated, you choose which stat you want to use based on circumstances and intent. It’s flexible and means two characters can attempt the same action, but color it differently.

Simplicity Throughout: Magic is present with each culture possessing at least one unique form. Yet they’re kept relatively light. A PC sorcerer will have a good number of choices throughout, but it’s not overwhelming. Magic is potent and varied. Likewise the mechanics for ships and nautical conflicts give plenty of color without requiring a massive sub-system.

Fighting Styles: I like the ideas of these. The mechanics of them, not so much. They’re cool but imbalance conflict scenes and eat up time. Still I love the idea that “fighters” can be quite different from one another.

And finally, Mechanical Flourishes: When players spend a Hero Point to aid themselves, they get 1d10. When they spend that to aid others that player gets 3d10. Mobs have an abstract value—they’re an obstacle the players have to deal with to avoid damage. Characters take “dramatic” wounds at certain points on their wounds track. Sometimes these give you a benefit, sometimes the Villain gains one. Guns always deal a dramatic wound. There’s more, but I want to steer this in another direction.

PLOTTING A COURSE
I want to consider ways to hack 7th Sea which are fun, reasonably faithful, and super lazy. I love swapping settings and systems, especially when the combination brings something new to the setting. We’ve played many hours of my PbtA Changeling the Lost. That mixed version focuses on emotional play and the characters’ intimate stories.

Porting a setting/premise over to another system means unpacking what the game is. Not only what it’s about, but what you do in play and how the system shapes that. You have to discard making a hack which covers the full breadth of the original and think about the version of the game you actually want to run/play. For example, many players love tracking details of the Contracts, Pacts, and Glamour in Changeling the Lost. That felt unimportant in my campaigns, so we pared that down.

I want a 7th Sea game that gets to what I dig from the setting. But I don’t want to do a ton of work. I want it simple; then I can actually get it done and to the table. There’s a joy to tooling around, but no closure if it doesn’t see play. I’ve seen Gauntleteers propose hacks, but turn away when they begin to see the work required to get it just right. My motto here is: Close Enough: Verisimilitude over Veracity. With that in mind, here are three approaches I’ve considered for 7th Sea hacks.

BUCKLERS IN THE DARK
In our recent Gauntlet Podcast Roundup episode, Fraser mentioned running a quick adaptation of Coriolis to Blades in the Dark. Coriolis’ tight skill list mapped well to Blade’s action ratings. Character creation just ported those numbers over. Since they used the same range, character feats from Coriolis transferred easily as well.

I like the Forged in the Dark mechanics and I’ve run several versions. It has the advantage of simplicity in resolution. FitD also creates competent characters. They can act and take risks because the system has great fallback tools like Stress and Flashbacks. While we lose “approaches” from 7th Sea, we gain the ability to negotiate position and effect.

However moving 7th Sea over to FitD requires mechanical manipulation. Eliminating the 7th Sea’s stats takes out the bulk of their pool. Usually players lean into their better, 4 or 5 dot, stats. Special abilities and other bennies in 7th Sea drive that total up. On the other hand, FitD lives and breathes in the 1-3 dot range. What would a +1d vs. +3d bonus look like in FitD?

But there’s a larger conceptual challenge. 7th Sea offers a broad and sweeping world with characters of different origins, classes, and agendas working together. One of FitD games’ strengths lies in a having a connected character conceit: the crew, the ship, the army. To really make use of that for 7th Sea, you’d need to tightly circumscribe the campaign premise.

That’s a feature not a bug if you want to play 7th Sea as a pirate game. Luckily we’ve recently seen a cool FitD nautical hack: Tides of Gold. I picked this up a couple of weeks ago. It’s amazingly well conceived and present. A ton of work has gone into it. Bottom line if I wanted a 7th Sea/Black Sails style game, I’d reskin this and call it a day.

POWERED BY THE RENAISSANCE
I could also go down the well-worn road of Powered by the Apocalypse. That’s become my go to for hacking in recent years. We have lots of great games out there with interesting models and ideas. That makes cobbling together a workable franken-game easier. Several sci-fi games have put together mechanics for handling ships, so that’s an easy steal for a seafaring 7th Sea campaign. But surprisingly there isn’t a major Swashbuckling or Pirate-themed PbtA out there. The closest thing I can find are Piratical supplements for Dungeon World. I have to think more broadly, which brings me to a question.

Can PbtA actually do “7th Sea” writ large? I think PbtA’s great for handling specific, well known genres (like D&D or post-apocalypse). That extends to reframings of existing genres, Dead Scare for example. I think PbtA games have a tougher time when they want to cover everything in a genre (Uncharted Worlds). Or cover a genre without a clear touchstone. For example, I think Pigsmoke, a game of sorcerous academia, works as a concept. But we don’t have that many solid genre examples for it. It has to build a ton of architecture to deepen the “Hogwarts Staff but a real university” concept. And I don’t think the most common literary touchstone for university life-- novels by writers about the tribulations of being a white, male academic writer going through a mid-life crisis-- has much resonance for rpg players.

And bottom line, 7th Sea is made up of too many genres for PbtA to handle it adequately. We have Musketeers, Elizabethan Swashbucklers, High Seas Pirates, Monster Hunters, Archaeologist-Explorers, Romantic Manipulators, and so on. Each could be done as a PbtA game, but they wouldn’t necessarily work together. A character created for one would have fewer interesting opportunities in another. Some crossings might work, but it wouldn’t capture what’s great about PbtA.

So if I had to do a 7th Sea PbtA game, I’d pick one narrow campaign concept and go with it. For that I’d do a fully Swashbuckling game about dueling, romance, and intrigue. It would range across Théah’s analogues for France, Spain, and Italy. It would be about heartache, lost loves, and melodrama. I’d start with my own Hearts of Wulin as a basis. Characters wouldn’t talk obliquely about their feelings, but instead express them too loudly and get themselves into trouble. I’d have to reconsider swashbuckling vs. wuxia combats and use that to retool the dueling moves. It could be great fun. But wouldn’t be a complete 7th Sea hack.

MUTANTS ON THE WATER
But an option which might allow for a “full” conversion is the Mutant System. That’s ironic given I earlier mentioned hacking away from Coriolis, which is powered by that. But having played Coriolis, I’d probably hack it the same way Fraser and Darren have. It contains a batch of odd game decisions which make that game a mess. But I like other iterations of Mutant—especially Mutant: Year Zero and Tales from the Loop. The simple tweaks they make to the core engine support the atmosphere.

Mutant has the advantage of being Stat+Skill driven like 7th Sea. It could easily map over since both games have 0-5 ratings. We’d only have to trim the skill list a little, but we’d have to make a big decision about resolution. Mutant takes the classic approach of linking skills with particular stats. This makes it easy to organize and to know exactly how many dice you need to roll. So do we link skills or keep some additional steps and choices in the resolution process? I’d probably go for the latter. If the game requires lots of rolls I wouldn’t. But tests in both 7th Sea and Mutant feel “big,” i.e. a result generates significant effects.

A different question comes from the difference in the success curve between 7th Sea and Mutant. The latter has a key mechanic involving rerolls. In Mutant, you roll a pool of d6s. Each 6 rolled counts as a success, and almost everything requires a single success. Extras can be spent for additional effects. That seems reasonable. If you have 6 dice, you’ve got a good shot at it, right?

You don’t.

That mechanic is super fickle. You might assemble a big batch of dice and not get anything. From experience, I can say you probably won’t. In contrast, 7th Sea’s mechanic feels bountiful. You roll d10’s equal to your stat + skill. You then assemble dice to make sets of 10+. Each of those is a success which you can spend as a currency. The question isn’t do you succeed, but how well do you succeed and did you roll enough successes to do everything you want. Even left over dice can get you benefits.

Mutant has solves this issue with a reroll mechanic. Each version of the game allows players to reroll, called Pushing, at a cost. In Tales from the Loop you mark a state. In Coriolis it generates Darkness Points the GM can spend for effects. In Mutant: Year Zero and Forbidden Lands, however, rerolls hurt. There you can’t reroll 1s—and any 1s showing up after the reroll on stat dice cause damage and on gear dice they break your items.

It’s concrete, harsh, and fits with the survival feel of Mutant: Year Zero and Forbidden Lands. Changing what rerolls cost has a significant effect on game feel. Coriolis’ abstract currency for rerolls feels less consequential. I can imagine a couple of ways to handle rerolling in 7th Sea. Usually Mutant games have small damage tracks—equal to your stat (1-5). But 7th Sea has a larger one (set at 20). Using this bigger wound track allows for damage on a reroll, but reduces the impact. Alternately if you want to skip damaging rerolls, you could just use 7th Sea’s Hero Points as a reroll currency.

Most of 7th Sea’s special abilities-- Stunts and Arcana-- should translate easily. These usually offer a special effect (alcohol doesn’t affect you) or gain you bonus dice in a particular situation. I see only a few which don’t work, like Dynamic Approach where you spend a Hero Point to change your Approach during an Action or Dramatic Sequence. I can cut those.

Actually it feels like sliding this over would be super easy. But those who know 7th Sea have probably spotted the elephant in the game by this point: 7th Sea’s Dueling Styles. They’re great color for the game, I love the idea of them. But in practice, duelists feel unbalanced in combat situations. They get many more meaningful actions in these scenes, as well as being able to dish out and take damage on a completely different scale. If non-duelists had parallel advantages outside of combat I might feel better. But I still don’t like games that make a particular archetype eat up all the choices in a scene. I suspect these will be one of those elements which end up on the cutting room floor.

SAILING AWAY
Ripping a setting out into another system is a great way to figure out what you actually like about it. I used to spend days, weeks, doing these kinds of conversions, often getting frustrated by the end. Most were, in a word, garbage. But I rarely went back to rework or reconsider them. I didn’t want to get dragged but into the time sink of it.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Hack light, hack fast, hack lazy—then iterate and go again. In the end I’m going to probably go with Mutant because I dig the basic system and I think it can probably handle most of what makes 7th Sea tick. But I also think I can easily hammer a version of that together in a day or less. That means I can get it on the calendar and have fun with it in short order. If you’ve got a setting you dig, but you’re daunted by the challenge of hacking it, start tearing it apart. Find the part you love, make a basic model from that and get playing.

For the full backlog of Age of Ravens posts on Blogger see here. 

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3/12/2019

Design Diary: The Between 04

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by Jason Cordova

Since last summer, I have run over 35 playtest sessions of The Between alpha, and have been revising the rules in preparation for the public beta. The public beta is nearly ready, and I’d like to use this post to discuss a few things folks can look forward to.

What is unchanged from the alpha?

I’m happy to report that the core of my game is more or less intact from the alpha. The novel aspects of my game, including the Janus Mask, the Overscene, and the overall flow of conflict resolution, are working well. Each of those areas is getting nips and tucks, but they will function more or less the same as before.

And now for some of the big changes from the alpha…

Talking about the past

The cardinal rule in The Between has always been that you can’t talk about your character’s past——either in character or out of character. In the beta, that restriction is loosened somewhat. Now, you are only forbidden from speaking about elements of your past that are related to the Janus Mask. Any other element of your past can be discussed, though it is discouraged. The cardinal rule is lifted entirely with the Intimate Move (formerly the Colleague Move) selection “You may ask the other player a question about their character which they must answer truthfully and completely.” We have already playtested these changes, and everyone agreed they felt much better.

Basic moves

The triggers for the Day Move and Night Move (the moves used for basic conflict resolution) now say “When you do something risky or face something you fear…” This changes fixes a problem we kept running into, which is there was nothing like an Act Under Pressure or Keep Your Cool. Adding the “face something you fear” language solves this problem neatly.

As mentioned above, the Colleague Move is now the Intimate Move. It has been sufficiently streamlined while also injecting a greater degree of flexibility in the outcomes.

Playbooks

The ability modifiers are now a little less forgiving, leading to more mixed and miss results. They are also pre-selected, a la Monsterhearts 2.

Extra end of session questions have been added for variety’s sake.

Elements that were previously Assets have been re-contextualized to be moves.

The Factotum has been majorly re-worked to account for some of the bigger rules changes and to just make the playbook sexier in general.

The Mother’s main move , The Child, has been re-worked to be more evocative.

The Undeniable has also been significantly re-worked to account for rules changes, as well as to make them somewhat more sympathetic (they were just plainly evil before).

Before I wrap the playbooks section, I want to go ahead and reveal all the playbooks that will be available for the public beta:

The American
The Explorer
The Factotum
The Girl
The Martian
The Mother
The Undeniable
The Vessel
The Volatile

The Orphan will eventually be added to the public beta but will not make the initial release.

Other major rules changes

Harm & Healing is no longer a concept in the game. Now, your character simply has physical and emotional conditions.

Conditions have been re-worked to be more immediately problematic for players.

Assets of Hargrave House are strictly NPCs now (previously they were objects and collections of items). The rules for how Assets work have been significantly streamlined.

Major additions to the beta

The most significant addition to the beta is Personal Quarters. In the alpha, the Personal Quarters section of the playbook was there just for color——players were encouraged to write things down, but there were otherwise no particular mechanics associated with this part of the game. In the beta, Personal Quarters is a major feature of the game. Items that get added to Personal Quarters (through character introductions, various moves, and as instructed by the DI) can be used for fictional positioning, and they can be marked to give a die roll advantage. We have had a chance to playtest this part of the game and I am LOVING IT. It adds wonderful color to the proceedings, ties the characters more intimately to Hargrave House, and is a counterbalance to the new, more vicious die rolls and conditions.

The other major addition to the beta is the structure of the game. I’m going to talk more about structure in a future post, but for now know that I have added new phases called Dusk and Dawn. These new phases are to do housekeeping for the Day and Night phase, and to further add color to Hargrave House and the characters’ relationships with one another.

Finally, what was previously called Dramatic Conflicts are now called Tensions. They work more or less as before, but the rules for how to explore them have been expanded and clarified.

The DI materials

I have never shared any of the DI materials for this game (the DI is what the GM is called in The Between). The reason for that is I was still very much trying to figure out what they looked like. The Between depends very heavily on its structure——it’s not enough to give the DI some agendas and principles, and then just turn them loose——and so I want to make sure I have everything just right so the beta playtest DIs have everything they need to run the game successfully. I’m happy to report I have recently had a breakthrough in this process. This is basically the main thing that has been holding up the public beta, but now that I have had this flash of insight, I should finally be able to finish it all up and get the beta out into the world.

I’m not going to say too much more about the DI stuff, except to say that it is foundational to the game. The player materials are only one-half of the story here. My hope is to do nothing less than marry two schools of thought when it comes to GM-ing: the school that likes to do plenty of prep beforehand, and the school that likes to wing it. The Between operates in a middle space that I think a lot of people are going to really love, and that is going to open up peoples’ eyes to a new way of running games. It’s an engine designed to make you into a strong, dynamic, supremely engaging GM, which is something I have spent years advocating for in my work with The Gauntlet, and I am hype as fuck about it.

Closing, play materials, and media

Overall, the beta is a much sleeker, much more feral version of The Between. And the above only represents the major changes from the alpha. There are dozens of smaller changes——language, numbers, and so forth——that are not mentioned here.

I will be kicking the tires on the beta through April, with the hopes of having the public beta written up and ready for you all by June. I have already conducted one playtest session of the beta, the video of which is embedded below.

Enjoy!