Yudhishthira’s Dice

The Mummers: Gaudily dressed mummers and madmen walk the streets of Schermo, begging and selling, singing mindless songs and dancing daft dances. These are the Mummers, in their public face — a group of daft folks, lost to their own mind, who beg and cavort to raise money for the asylum that houses them.

What fewer know is that not all the Mummers dress in motley, and most of them do not beg. The costume they wear is often that of a priest, as they sell false relics and blessings, spread heresy and steal alms. They do this because their lord has taught them to hate the Church, a Church he once served.

Ptamic Harlequin-Eye (one eye red, one eye white) was once a Sandman and servant of the Zultanate and the Church. That was before they put fetter upon him and tried to teach him to hate himself for his gifts. Learning to accept himself for the Koldun that he was cost him his home, his pride, and nearly cost him his hand. In the dark time after the loss of his home and faith cost him his sanity as well. Now, years later he has come to Crail to pursue vengeance against the Church, to help those who did lose their minds, and to learn the secrets of madness.

The Mummers work out of The Pazzarella, the largest asylum in Agua Azul, lies just across the street from Schermo, technically in the Buitre district. A former monastery, it is built almost like a fortress, with narrow windows and thick iron bound oak doors front and back. It is three stories tall, though it is said to have more levels below the street than above. Inside the mad of the city stay or are kept, some in locked cells, some in their own rooms that they keep themselves. The Mummers have littered the buildings with traps, especially in the subterranean levels where they keep their real work.

Ptamic Harlequin-Eyed (2 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Scrupulous if insane sense of justice and fairness.
Motivation: Destroying the Church. Good +2
Nationality: Zultanate. Good +2
Past: Sandman. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Koldun. Expert +4 (Manticore, Chimera, Qilin, Griffin, Merhorse)
Forte: Lord of the Mummers (Minions). Expert +4 (Either Good Spies or Good Thugs)
Forte: Sanctum — The Pazzarella. Good +2

Notes: Ptamic is both scrupulous and insane, much in the tradition of the anti-heroes in Batman’s rogue’s gallery. His hatred of the Church is based on both its “betrayal” of him, and his vision that the Church restricts the gifted and Kolduns in order to secure their own power and control, making people fear and loath themselves so that they stay weak and needy. The only things he cares about beyond his crusade is his care of the mentally ill, whom he really does care for. As a result of that care he has more resources in the community than one might initially suspect — after all, several of the mummers (or those who are cared for in the Pazzarella) are the secretly disavowed but perhaps still loved members of important families.

Ptamic is an obvious suspect in any crime against the Church, its congregation, or anyone who is suspected of preying on the mentally ill. Even though he doesn’t specifically hate the Zultanate (outside its connection to the Church) he’s also had a history of causing embarrassment and harassment to the embassy, and so the Mummers may come up in any investigation into crimes in that area.

The Rough Tribes: Everyone knows that the Rough Tribes are trouble, but most folks think they’re only trouble well beyond the high walls of Agua Azul. The truth, however, is that while the rough tribes may be barbarians, they aren’t stupid. They know that the raids into their lands come from the city, and at any time one or more of the tribes will have an agent in the city keeping an eye on things and stealing any goods the tribes deem essential to their survival.

Ragara
Foible: Addicted to soft civilized pleasures.
Motivation: Gaining status by harming Aqua Azul. Good +2
Nationality: Rough Tribal. Good +2
Past: Tribal Ranger. [Athletics, sword and spear, track, survival, tribal lore] Good +2.
Swashbuckling Forte: Smuggler. Expert +4 (Situation: Agua Azul)
Forte: Thunderbird. Good +2 (Maneuver: Blind Luck)
Forte: Leader of the Rough Tribe Runners (minions). Good +2. (Foe: Falcons)

Notes: Rough, tough, and with a wicked sense of humor, Ragara has found herself in a natural alliance with Ptamic. The two work together to smuggle artifacts into or out of the city, disrupt Church missions to the wastes, and steal Church resources to send to the tribes. Ragara also hires out as a smuggler for whoever can pay, and her ability to use the land outside the city walls is in high demand for those who wish to avoid the pratfalls of civilization — things like taxes, laws, and people asking questions when bodies are found. On a less intelligent note, her fondness for hard liquor often ends with her in drunken brawls or public benders, and its likely the PCs have had her in the drunk tank a time or ten.

The Pirates: Once upon a time, Crail was part of Ilwuz (or vice versa) and there are still ties that bind between the two islands. Not the least of which is that pirates need a place to sell their loot, and Crail is always open to the redistribution of wealth, especially into its own pockets. So at any given time any number of pirates can be found in Agua Azul, many of them on shore leave, many of them up to no good. (And most both.)

Misha the Knife is the unofficial representative of the Illwuzzi Congress and Clockkeeper to Crail. Its unofficial on both ends, as the Congress doesn’t normally send diplomats and Crail doesn’t officially accept diplomats from Illwuz. None the less, everyone knows the score, and this “reformed” pirate captain is well respected by the Illwuzi in Crail, and acts as their advocate when they get in trouble beyond simple fines for drunken debauchery. And while she doesn’t engage in piracy (at least around Crail), she does give information, haven, and support to those who do.

Misha the Knife (3 extra fortes)
Foible: Lecherous
Motivation: To build a secret compact between Crail and Illwuz. Good +2
Nationality: Illwuzzi. Good +2
Past: Pirate Captain. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Brotherhood of the Skull. Expert +4 (Idiom: Taunting, Situation: Against Men)
Forte: Dangerous Beauty. Good +2
Forte: Reputation - Pirate!. Good +2
Forte: Dread Ship Revenge. Expert +4
Unchained Technique: Foe: Officers of the Law.

Notes: Misha is actively trying to work out a deal with the Commandant to secure a long term partnership between Crail and Illwuz. So far she’s met with little luck, and so she may start looking for those with an eye to the future and fewer scruples than greed. (More or less everyone on Crail, really….) As a result she’s likely to offer aid for future favors to just about anyone involved in shady dealings, from smuggling Church missionaries out to the Rough Tribes to helping to hold local authorities for ransom.

The Thieves: Its no surprise that in a city as rich, as corrupt, and as hierarchical as Agua Azul there would be a thieves guild. The current guild, which has been the dominant force in organized crime for almost a full generation, is said to have been founded by a Barathi Imperial Spider who had to flee his country after nearly sliding himself into the Imperial Throne. (Not true, he was an Avokato who was ruined by the Spiders for forging a morgani contract.) Once in Crail he set up shop and took over the other miscellaneous thieves’ guilds by extortion, murder, informing on rivals to the Falcons and getting immunity for his own crimes to it, killing Falcons and Judges who wouldn’t work with him, and even seducing the former Commandant. (All true.) In time he was replaced by his hand chosen successor, a native Crailese who had worked his way through the ranks. (Not true, he was killed and replaced by his eldest son, who then killed all his brothers to be sure.)

Now days the guild is known as the Tarantula, the Eight Legs of Crime, or the Family Web. The guild consciously uses bastardized Barathi spider symbolism and methods, partly from tradition and partly as a form of low-grade terrorism, borrowing part of the Spider’s mystique as their own. The Spiders occasionally object to this, but by and large their attempts to punish the Tarantula for their temerity have backfired, and have even lead the thieves to work with the Falcons to foil Barathi espionage in the city.

The eight “legs” of the guild are each lead by a guild leader, and the eight guild leaders together report to the arch-deacon of crime: Taranto, the Tarantula Himself. The Tarantula is run for the power, profit, and protection of those on this top tier, and they routinely use, abuse, and betray their underlings in order to put themselves ahead. The lower status members are thus afforded some degree of freedom, so long as they follow the rules and pay their cut, they’re able to do more or less what they want. The middle tier is sandwiched in between, without the freedom of the lower levels or the power of the upper, and as a result are the most bitter, given to selling each other out, and given to taking the biggest risks in order to try to rise in rank.

Each leg is run by a lieutenant to villain level foe. The eight legs are:

• Assassins — The most feared of all the legs, for obvious reasons. There are only about 4 active assassins at any time, but the leg also includes all their support (spotters, contractors, runners, weaponeers, etc) and the lesser “hitters” who are barely more than jumped up thugs.
• Beggars — Probably the most numerous leg, and far more brutal than most would expect. They guy and starve babies to get sympathy money, cripple children, and run blackmail in addition to haranguing and harassing folks in public and private events.
• Grifters — The con artists, actors, witnesses for hire, and gambling cheats. A large and well organized leg, but with a noted tendency to fuck themselves when members grift or inform on each other. They’re also currently in a low level war with the Mummers, who’ve managed to take most of their business in fake religious artifacts.
• Thugs — Muggers, muscle for hire, protection rackets, and enforcement for the other legs. Looked down on by the rest of the guild, surly, and often with a brand new leader who took power by braining the old
• Fences — Those who move goods, launder money, and provide fronts. A few are members of the Merchant’s Association as well, with various degrees of loyalty and fear.
• Street Thieves — Pickpockets, pennyweighters, snatchers, shoplifters, anglers, and so on. Many in this leg are young, ignorant, and more than a little impulsive. They’re usually run by an adult spotter and handler, and often work together with beggars to distract and poach large amounts from a single crowd.
• Burglars — break and enter experts, second story girls, infiltrators, resurrection men, and all the thieving that requires going into someone else’s house or property and removing what they value. A very large leg, but with a very cell-based structure that often leads to anarchy at the lower levels of operation
• Forgers — check writers, art forgers, figure dancers, and dirty lawyers. This leg also includes the prestigious “handlers” — the folks who bribe, interface with, and sometimes blackmail, seduce, or kill Falcons.

Taranto (6 Extra Fortes — Arch Villain!)
Foible: Secret Identity: The Drunkard Rinaldi
Motivation: To become the defacto ruler of Crail. Good +2
Nationality: Crail. Good +2
Past: Rogue. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Firearms. Master +6 (Idiom: Precise, Foe: Falcons, Maneuver: In the Back, Weapon: Pistol, Weapon: Dual Wield)
Forte: Sanctum — The Heart of the Web. Expert +4.
Forte: Minions: Tarantuals. Master +6
Forte: Has a Plan. Good +2.

Notes: Taranto is the Tarantula, and if he has his way he’ll soon be more powerful than the Commandant. Through his spies, informers, thieves, and assassins he’s involved and taking a piece of the majority of underhanded dealings in an underhanded city, and he’s starting an aggressive bid to make it every underhanded dealing. He’s got no conscious to speak of, but he always has a plan, and a plan after that plan. Make no mistake, he is the big bad, and even most Falcons think of him more like the boogeyman than like a real person.

Ulema (2 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Devotedly Loyal to the Guild
Motivation: Arete: To pursue a life of excellence in all things. Good +2
Nationality: Hekuban. Good +2
Past: Rogue. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Stalker of Men. Expert +4 (Idiom: Patient, Situation: While High, Weapon: Crossbow)
Forte: Streetwise. Good +2
Forte: Alchemist. Good +2 (Drugs)
Forte: Connoisseur of All Things. Good +

Notes: Taranto’s right hand, Ulema is the head of the Assassins. A former killer for the Queen of Hekuba, she left the Queen’s service due to boredom, feeling the Queen kept her too safe and constrained. Ulema seeks for excellence in all things — what she eats, what she wears, what she reads, and of course who and how she kills. She is a connoisseur, a sophisticate, and just a little bit of a hedonist. She frequently makes alchemical drugs to heighten her senses during a hunt, which give her an air of surreality during her bloody business.

The Unaligned: And then there are the folks who just don’t fit anywhere else. Independant operators following their own dreams, sometimes in ways that help the Falcons, sometimes in ways that might cause their posteriors large amounts of torment.

Shuk-Jai
Foible: Bird Brain!
Motivation: To find respect amongst a new tribe. Good +2
Nationality: Sha-ka Ruq. Good +2
Past: Been Just About Everywhere. Good +2 (Maneuver: Haven’t we met before?)
Swashbuckling Forte: Ruq Rider Good +2 (Idiom: Idiotically Reckless, Situation: On Silvertongue, Maneuver: Death From Above)
Forte: Sidekick — Silvertongue. Expert +4
Forte: Likable if a bit impossible and twee. Good +2

Silvertongue: Ruq +4; Smarter than Shuk-Jai, Good +2; Willful Average +0 (War Trained, Be Where He’s Needed)

Notes: Shuk-Jai is an exile from his tribe, due in part to accidentally blowing up part of their village. For years he’s wandered from place to place, avoiding death mostly only because his Ruq, Silvertongue, has more brains than his master. Now Shuk has settled in Crail, working as a mercenary and messenger. But he desperately wants not just friends but a new family, and combined with his dim little brain, that makes it all to easy for the bad sorts of Crail to use him to do things far more wicked than he’d ever do on his own.

Pierre Jean-Luc
Foible: Arrogant
Motivation: To found the greatest school of fencing known to man. Good +2
Nationality: Royalist. Good +2
Past: Musketeer. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Fencing. Master +6 (Idiom: Precise, Weapon: Rapier, Situation: Outnumbered, Maneuver: Riposte, Situation: Formal Duel)
Forte: Devilishly Handsome. Good +2

Notes: Pierre is a simple man — simply the best man. Or so he says. He’s recently come to Crail to start his own school of fencing, using the new scientific and honorable techniques he has perfected since leaving the Musketeers. Of course, to do so, he may need to wound or kill a few of the best fencers in Crail in order to prove his mettle. Isn’t it lucky the Falcons have a reputation as the best?

A campaign sketch for Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies.

The Elevator Pitch: The Four Musketeers meets Miami Vice and Batman the Animated Series: sexy swashbuckling cops fighting more for each other than for the law dealing with a rogues gallery of the cruel, the insane, the corrupt, and the awesome.

The Setup: The PCs are the Falcons in charge of the Schermo district — one of the richest and most corrupt districts in the world city of Agua Azul. Every PC is a Falcon, and the entirety of the district force is the PCs (plus whatever sidekicks they chose to take or NPCs they chose to create). All PCs must thus have one Forte of Crailese Falcon, and are encouraged to take a few of their other fortes and techniques to specialize their role within the team. The PCs should also set their Foibles to fit the genre, and it would be super cool if at least one of them was corrupt.

Every adventure is based around a crime, a police action, an investigation, or other situation familiar to us out of every cop drama ever. To solve the crime, catch the crook, or get the pay-off that they’re looking for the PCs must deal with the powers that be in their district — which is no easy feat considering that every single one of them is up to something shady. (And chances are every one of the PCs is too.)

Schermo Schermo is on of the central districts of the city, facing onto The Tower of Smoke and home to the Grand Cathedral of Crail, the Zultanate’s Embassy, one of the busiest palazio’s in the city, and the homes of many of the richest and the poorest in all of Aqua Azul. It is often said that it is a district without a middle class, where the most desperate and the most glittering live stacked ontop of each other in a layer cake of status, greed, and violence.

Schermo is also one of the tallest and most densely built districts in the city. All the better for rooftop chases, fights in blind alleyways, sewer spelunking, and all sorts of urban naughtiness. In general, the higher up you live, the higher on the social scale you are.

The PCs, obviously, have the only one story building in the whole district — the squat, ugly, but fortress strong District Command House. (Also known as the “Ice House” — ice being a common local euphemism for bribe.) Isn’t it grand to be a Falcon? Every meal is a banquet, every formation a parade!

The Powers that Be: Luckily for the PCs they aren’t all alone in the world. There are two figures of respect, authority, and dignity who make sure that the PCs are looked after. And, obviously, expect that the PCs will thus do their best to look after them. Which is the way Crail works, and so all would be well… except that the two of them hate each other.

Judge Hawthorne Crowe is the closest thing the PCs have to an immediate supervisor. He is the Judge for Schermo, and is known as a man of unyielding honor, moral uprightness, and without a trace of humor. (Though the common resident of the district is more likely to formulate this as “he’s a dangerous and stupid jerk, that judge.”) For many years he was a Falcon of Schermo himself, and one of the most honored to ever hold the post.

The only other in recent memory who could be considered his equal is Deraad Oralee Desrei, who twice fought duels with Hawthorne while they were both on the force. Desrei is much beloved of the local populace, because she knows exactly how far to gouge them, and doesn’t insult them by pretending to do anything else. This, of course, is because she has found ever so many more corrupt and subtle ways to wring money out of the wealthy district.

It is well known in all of Agua Azul that the two hate each other. What the PCs get to be special witnesses of, and participants in (willing or not) is the ongoing vendetta the two have against each other — constantly trying to humiliate, frustrate, prosecute, or shame each other. Its a testament to the honor of having been Falcons together that neither would see the other killed, and have in fact saved each others lives in the past. (The rumor that they are, or were, lovers is surely false.)

Judge Hawthorne Crowe (1 Extra Forte)
Foible: Unforgiving
Motivation: To destroy Desrei by exposing her corrupt black heart. Good +2
Nationality: Crailese. Good +2
Past: Crailese Falcon. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Hanging Judge. Expert +4. (Idiom: Merciless, Maneuver: Subpoena)
Forte: Reputation - Ye Most Honorable Judge (asshole). Good +2.
Forte: Reparte. Good +2.
Unchained Technique Foe: Desrei’s minions.

Notes: Erudite, and a devoted student of the law, Crowe is a man of verve, wit, and integrity. In a better world he’d be the hero. In this world, he’s a fanatic on crusade. He will do his best to recruit and befriend any of the PCs, especially anyone with foibles of honorable, dedicated, or with vendettas or revenge against any of the criminal elements of the city. (Style dice bribes!) He will always give PCs aid until and unless they are proved dishonorable or corrupt — at which point he will come upon them with his full wrath.

Deraad Oralee Desrei (3 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Avaricious
Motivation: The Woman Who Will Be Commandant. Good +2
Nationality: Crailese. Good +2
Past: Crailese Falcon. Expert +4
Swashbuckling Forte: Corrupt Deraad. Master +6. (Idiom: Subtle, Maneuver: Co-opt, Location: Schermo)
Forte: Finger in Every Pie. Good +2
Forte: Wealthy. Good +2 (Maneuver: Hidden Resources)
Forte: Gorgeous. Good +2

Notes: Sophisticated, urbane, and greedy, Desrei is a near perfect human mirror of Agua Azul itself. She will do her best to seduce, with favors, wealth, and romance, any PC with foibles of greed or lasciviousness or ambition, (style dice bribes!) and will use them to help her spread her web of control through the district. Unlike Hawthorne, she sees life as a game, and even if the PCs harm her enterprises she is likely to forgive them. After all, the cry is “Falcons Forever!” not “Falcons so long as it is convenient!”

The Merchants: Then there are those the PCs are sworn to protect. Not the common poor, you fool, the merchants who pay the taxes (and the ice) that pays the PCs wages. Business is the business of Crail, and the merchants are the ones who make it happen — often at each other’s expense. All through Agua Azul merchants run cons, steal, and strong arm each other (and anyone else) in ways that makes it hard to tell them apart from the thieves. (Tip: the thieves don’t have letters of charter or stores with deed of title.)

The good (and bad) news in Schermo is that 90% of the local merchants of substance (not mere street vendors, one step up from dogs, they are) are part of the Schermo Merchants’ Alliance. Those in the Alliance do not run game on each ther, do not cheat customers (which is common elsewhere), secretly fix prices together for the whole district, and secretly target non-members for various kinds of bad luck.

The SMA “donates” heavily to the local Falcons (and the Deraad and even the Commandant) and in return asks a lot. basic protection is just the start — going after rivals, running off street vendors, ignoring thefts by SMA agents against non SMA merchants, help fencing goods taken from non SMA members, personal protection, and the occasional rough mission (battery, arson, etc) are often expected as well. And if any member of the SMA should violate the Associations rules, well, then it will be the Falcons who will be sent to “talk” them into being good.

Of course, as long as Hawthorne is in place, the merchants have to be careful. Pushing things too far will draw the wrath of the judge, and no one wants that. Most merchants are also respectful of the Falcons, rather than domineering. After all, they know they pay for the Falcon’s fancy capes, but most of them have seen what happens to anyone who pushes a Falcon too far.

For years, the president of the SMA has been:

Trai Maeley (4 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Proud
Motivation: Money, Money, Money, Money. Good +2
Nationality: Crailese. Good +2
Past: Sky Sailor. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Wealthy. Expert +4 (Idiom: Lavish, Maneuver: Bribe, Tool: Bag of Coins)
Forte: President and Founder of the SMA. Master +6
Forte: Knows Everyone Worth Knowing. Expert +4. (Location: Schermo)

Notes: Maeley is a hostess, a canny business woman, and one of the hardest screws to every walk the deck of a skyship. She grew up without, and now that she’s got she’s going to keep. She hosts all the best parties, gives patronage to all the best artists, and is most generous with those who are generous with her. She’s very much in bed with Desrei, but also has Hawthorne mostly convinced of her honorable intentions. Of course, if she could bribe away some corrupt or greedy young Falcon, she could help him (or her) to rise to the highest of heights — so long as he takes her along.

Church and State: Schermo is blessed to be the center of the Church’s presence in Agua Azul, the home of the massive and towering Grand Crail Cathedral. (I always think of it as rather like Saint Pauls, but Notre Dame could work too.) And just down the street from the Cathedral is the secular arm, the embassy of the Colronian Zultanate. Everyone knows that the two institutions work together, and many of the jaundiced of Shermo say of giving alms that they hope the Zultan enjoys their taxes. But, think what you may of their politics, both are centers of power and prestige, and both are very high on the list of things that will bring hellfire down upon the Falcons heads if they are not properly taken care of and respected.

What very few know is that the Cathedral and the Embassy are joined by secret tunnels, part of which detour through the massive sewer works under Schermo, and that the Ambassador and the High Priest use these tunnels to work together on dealings that are less than bright. It is through here that enemies of the Church are smuggled in or out (through the Embassy), through here that plans to further the Church at the expense of Crailese sovereignty are hatched, and so on. Besides fighting the Mummers (see next post), the Embassy and Church are very much involved in running both missions and inquisitions into the Rough Tribes lands in order to stamp out their heresies. As part of this mission they are gathering information and influence in local spheres. It isn’t hostile yet, but if diplomatic tensions between Crail and the Zultan ever increased, it could become so.

The Embassy and Church also are involved in controlling, buying, or stealing Kroyu artifacts, as they think only the Church and Zultan have the wisdom to control them. Usually they buy them, often from smugglers or illegal expeditions, but when that doesn’t work they aren’t afraid to take the gloves off and get dirty. Sometimes they go so far as to covertly finance and supply expeditions into the Rough Lands, and damn the Commandant’s orders.

Spying on, monitoring, and sometimes “controlling” the Koldun of Crail is also under the mandate of the High Priest. Because of the openness of Crail to the wizards, this is currently low boil issues, and handled carefully. But sometimes zeal gets the better of discretion, and someone has to remind the koldun of their hubris.

Majora Alnimi, Ambassador of the Zultan (2 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Hubris — thinks her will is the holy will.
Motivation: Honor of the Zultanate. Good +2
Nationality: Zultante. Good +2
Past: Priest. Good +2. (Alchemy)
Swashbuckling Forte: Sandman. Good +2. (Weapon: Pistol, Weapon: Scimitar)
Forte: Amir (Aristocrat). Master +6
Forte: Sanctum — The Embassy. Expert +4
Unchained Technique: Foe: Those who defy the Church

Notes: Alnimi is as hard and strong as the Mirror of Honor itself. She has served the Zultan and the Church her whole life: in prayer, in battle, in the worst places in the Seven Skies, and now in politics. She is devout, true, and even has a surprisingly gentle and loving side to faithful of the Church. Alas, she confuses her will with holiness, and has little in the way of humility. She will entreat any Falcon who is faithful, especially those with foibles of honor or religion, to take up the true path and follow the Church rather than the Commandant.

High Priest Nazori (3 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Loyal to the Zultan
Motivation: Power through the growing Church. Good +2.
Nationality: Crailese. Good +2
Past: Spy. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Priest +6 (Scribe, Cenobite, Eremite, Virtutoir)
Forte: Sanctum — The Grand Crail Cathedral. Expert +4
Forte: Reputation — Living Saint. Expert +4. (Situation: The Faithful)

Notes: Once upon a time Nazori was a spy for Crail, two Commandants ago. He infiltrated into the court of the Zultan himself, but once their found that he believed the Church more than the materialist, shallow urbanity of Crail. With honor he resigned his post, and did not return to Crail for nearly 40 years. Now he is the High Priest of Crail, and one of the most revered and honored men in the city. Even the jaundiced Crailites treat him with respect, so esteemed is his reputation and so well known the good works he has done for the city. And, of course, the money he gives to worthy causes….

The Koldun: Crail is a center for the Fraternity of the Koldun, as it is one of the places in the Seven Skies where they are most welcome and most able to make money hand over fist. Because of this the possibilities for magical violence, or magic gone amok, are high in Agua Azul. So the Fraternity tries to reign with an even hand, curbing the worst of its members impulses and excesses so that everyone can go on living and profiting.

The central house of the Fraternity is in Schermo (where else would be so much fun?), but unlike many of the other guild houses or fraternities in the district, the Koldun rarely ask for much of the Falcons. Save, perhaps, to stay out of their way.

The unofficial head of the Fraternity in the city is the much respected Arch Koldun Anna Arogasat. Unfortunately for her, the city, and the PCs she happens to have a son, a Koldun too, who is in a rather rebellious stage and has a tendency to behave less than responsibly.

Arch Koldun Anna Arogasata (6 Extra Techniques, 3 Extra Fortes)
Foible: Cannot use magic against those of her own blood
Motivation: Power. Good +2
Nationality: Barathi. Good +2
Past: Merchant. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Koldun. Master +6 (All ten gifts, Arch Koldun)
Forte: Reputation - Sorcerer Supreme. Expert +4
Forte: Sanctum — The Tower of the Elephant. Good +2
Forte: Wealth. Good +2.

Notes: Arogasata is well over 100 years old, though reports about her actual age differ, and are usually not given in mixed company for fear of word getting back to her and offending her. Though no one has ever actually witnessed her do anything terrible to anyone who crossed her, the whole city is dead certain that is simply because there are no witnesses left. And Arogasata is the sort who could arrange that, and cares for only two things on earth: her power, and her son: Nico.

Niko Arogasata (1 Extra Forte)
Foible: Vendetta against his own mother
Motivation: Power - to replace his mother. Good +2
Nationality: Crailese Good +2
Past: Son of a Koldun. Good +2
Swashbuckling Forte: Koldun. Expert +4 (Basilisk, Dragon, Merhorse, Manticore, Qilin)
Forte: Devastatingly Handsome. Good +2.
Forte: Equpiment - Sigil of the Manticore, Kroyu Artifact. Good +2
Forte: Minions — The Clockwork Brigade. Good +2

Notes: Nico is a charmer, a lover, a rake, and a good guy to party with. He loves the ladies, and would love to love a female Falcon. Or hell, a male one for that matter. His only real flaw is that he’s trying to cast down and replace his own mother, and wouldn’t really mind killing her as long as he’s at it. To help him he’s got an ancient Kroyu artifact that makes his already potent abilities with Manticore even more ferocious, and a small legion of foot tall clockwork soldiers that do his every bidding.

Next Post: The Thieves Guild, The Mummers, The Pirates, The Unaligned, and the Rough Tribes!

Sometimes the universe conspires to impose itself upon you.

Or, that is to say, sometimes the patterns of what you notice and retain start to make patterns, and in those patterns you connect dots in a way unique to your experience and create a meaning from the perceived patterns.

Or whatever. The point is that over the past week or so I’ve been looking at a bunch of horror games, more or less by accident, that have been produced over the past 5 years or are going to be coming out in the near future: CoC’s Secrets of Morocco, Innana’s Kiss, Tour of Darkness, Curse of the Yellow Sign*, and a couple more I can’t immediately drag to mind. (Failed the SAN check.) And the trend that these books, all lumped together like that, made in my eyes was a little irksome.

All of these books put horror into a place that is not the place where the intended audience lives: Morocco, Iraq, Vietnam, Africa. And many of these books (all of them save Morocco) assume a default role where the PCs are soldiers, usually American, who have been sent into a foreign land to go and kill the yello… er… Cthulhu.

Now, I do know this is both a classic setup for adventure horror, and (minus the soldier bit) rather out of the Mythos as well, what with the white adventurer’s exploring the strange and exotic lands where not-quite people worship we-wish-they-weren’t gods. And yet, it irks me for three reasons:

1) I rather like it when my horror is here. All my favorite horror games (from Unknown Armies to Delta Green) take place “here.” “Here” is often America, but is almost always the first world, places where the centers of power, rationality, and money sit. It is, in short, the places where most roleplayers live and the places where I’ve lived the vast, vast majority of my life.

I like it when the horror is here because it makes it horrific. The things that creep and crawl, the things that destroy humanity and reason and sanity aren’t safely someplace else, someplace that’s someone else’s problem, some place that I can exotify and thus remove the very real human stain from. A good horror scenario that is here horrifies because, well, because its my world gone so very wrong. I, and people just like me, are responsible for this. The flaw is in us, in the way we do things, in the people right here with us.

Set a horror adventure not here, and all of that goes away.

2) I rather dislike the soldiers fight Cthulhu angle. I mean, I know this is just a case of folks designing for what people actually play (CoC often becomes the game of blow up the cultist using heavy weaponry, right?) — but still. I suppose that’s because I’m generally less into dark adventure, and like my horror to be horror.

Of course, there is an angle where well trained troops with good heavy weapons being unable to defeat a force is terrifying (maybe even horrifying) — but that brings us to point three.

3) In Iraq, Vietnam, and Africa the most powerful military on earth has, for various reasons, met up with forces that it could not defeat by shooting them with overwhelming firepower. It is a common thing to say “we shouldn’t be in Somalia/Afghanistan/Iraq/wherever because the conflicts are deep and old and we can’t possible understand them because they’re so different than us.” And that is pretty clearly where a lot of the cultural subconscious terror of these scenarios comes from: Well armed and trained heroically heroic soldiers who stumble into an ancient situation that they cannot handle, despite their gear and training.

And that alone wouldn’t be so bad. Not my cuppa for horror, but not really irksome to me either. The thing that makes it irksome is twofold. First, it may be possible for the soldiers to shoot their way out of it if they’re just willing to unload enough ammo. Second, it isn’t just an ancient problem — its an ancient evil problem that these people used to (or still do) worship.

The first thing is a problem because it echoes all those jingoist lines in American interventionist rhetoric about how we could have won Vietnam/Iraq/Choose Your War Here if only we’d let the army do what was necessary, but we didn’t because of week political bullshit. That bugs the shit out of me, for ever so many reasons, the major one being that it assumes that wars aren’t all about politics anyway and that the way to win is just to Arnold Schwarzenegger everything.

The second thing is a problem because it casts the situations in these exotic foreign places where good Americans face danger not as a complicated situation full of human reasons — but as an eldritch, immoral twist that is partly brought upon them by the evil actions of their evil ancestors. That people with oddly colored skin worship strange and evil gods is a given, right? And that’s one of the reasons they have so many problems, the moral flaws in their way of life.

Of course, there is also a strain of possible anti-interventionist rhetoric here. After all, in several of these scenarios the evil was asleep until the Americans, being where they shouldn’t be, went and stirred up sleeping dogs. If only they’d stayed where they belong (in America, of course) there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Which is a bit complicated, but still bugs me. First, it leaves the moral stain of inhuman abomination as an inherent property of the other place, a place where good Americans should not be. Second, its as reductive as the “if we’d just shoot everyone we wanted to we’d win” line of reasoning.

So yea. Put me down as not a fan of the genre of “western soldiers discover ancient evil gods lurking in the lands of the darkies” adventures.

*I’m basing my statements about Curse of the Yellow Sign on a preview image and a couple of blog posts. The final product could well prove that I’m wrong to put it in this category.

You’re like Dogs, except you’re the law and arbiters on a generational ship. In this world the colonization of other planets has started, but it takes place by big ships that take hundreds of years (maybe, or at least a generation or two) to reach their target planet. There may be frozen folks on the ship, but maybe not.

The big deal is this: you have a crew that is large (between four dozen and a couple hundred people) and is human, with all the foibles that implies. They also have lesser and greater degrees of specialized knowledge that may be crucial to staying alive now and certainly crucial to founding a functional society on the new home world. Some of them may have some redundancies, but not a lot — losing someone means losing something you may really, really need.

And yet, problems occur. From petty gossip to rape and murder, people do bad things to each other. And there is no place for it to go. You can’t leave, you can’t go outside and walk it off. You will live with these people for your whole life, and maybe your children will live together for their whole lives. And there is no one else to interact with, there is nothing else to do besides work and socialize with each other. You are in a tin can in space, a generation away from any other human beings.

The PCs are tasked, as in Dogs, with keeping people together, happy, justly governed, with preventing and punishing crimes. But unlike Dogs they don’t get to ride out of town at the end of laying down some righteous, indignant judgment. Whatever they chose they, and all the hundreds of people that depend on them, will have to live with it forever. And not in the wimpy moral sense either — they will literally being living in the society they create for the whole rest of their lives with the situation they find themselves in a direct result of every single choice they’ve ever made. There is no escape, there is no easy answer, there is only the struggle to get human beings in an inhuman situation to live and work together in justice and peace.

Or in tyranny and slavery, if that’s what you end up choosing.

The goal of the game is much as in Dogs, but with less emphasis on the morals of the individual and more emphasis on how the society goes forward and works. Unlike in Dogs you can’t ride out, can’t quit, can’t escape. You can’t go anywhere and neither can they. Killing people is an option, but a bad one that could well kill the whole ship if too many core skills are lost.

The goal of the game is to get your ship, as a working society, to the planet and set up a colony. The system should manage conflicts, but also should manage the evolution of the society and the resources that are depleted by the judgments. Will you let a killer live because he’s the only one that can repair the drives?

Because its all the rage with the cool kids these days:

Pretty nifty. I’m even happier with this one, for Dharma and Defiance:

Dev has some good stuff to say about how players make decisions in Dogs. Especially interesting to consider in light of fiction-as-rule, and the twin axises of always present cooperative-collaborative and fiction-game tension of the modern story game.

Neel Krishnaswami said, once upon a time in a post I cannot now find, that an RPG is a game where the fiction is part of the rules. I thought it was a very smart statement indeed.

The thing this says to me is that when you’re playing an RPG (and thus when you’re thinking about designing play) options are not limited to (one might even suggest are not always primarily located) in the mechanics, rules, and dice. The positioning of a character in the fiction, control over elements of the fictional world, and how and when and where characters come on and off screen are all powerful tools not just for telling a story, but for playing tactically in a game.

Here’s an example from a recent discussion about a Dog’s game by John (jenskot):

Vincent and I played Dogs in the Vineyard. I played this pissed off kid who had daddy issues. My initiation conflict was, “Do I shoot my dad………. for a second time?” I had a chip on my shoulder for having a dead beat drunk of a father.

Later, some crazy kid is running around causing all forms of un-heavenly chaos. I flip out and confront the kid’s mom ready to beat her down in a conflict over me chastising her for raising such an awful boy. Vincent sees my raise with the mom saying, “I had to raise him all alone without a father.” Holy crap! He hit my buttons perfectly with narration and even though I was kicking ass mechanically I had to give on the conflict.

It also isn’t just about tactical play. Its about ongoing play and continuity and narrative authority and all the rest. As Ron (the Devil Himself) Edwards recently said about Sorcerer:

As I keep saying, and which people only really understand once they’ve been through a few games, Sorcerer resolution and narration is very contingent on things that were narrated or established earlier in play - often which were not presented with any intention of being so important later. That’s the key concept, I think, that keeps judgments about “is intensive care available” away from GM fiat. That question should not be answered by whether the GM suddenly invents a team of paramedics who dash in from off-screen; it should instead be answered by checking around all the details and circumstances of that particular location in the setting. Given all that, is intensive care available? That question can usually be answered without controversy.

Now, I don’t know if Ron would say that the fiction is the important part of the rules there. But when I read it, that certainly is what I think. The things that we’ve made together, the fiction, is the binding rule that keeps these things together, that positions them and determines what is going to happen. We do not, at that point in Sorcerer, go to dice to see who has the right to narrate about intensive care — because it is about the fiction we’ve all created together, and not narration rights determined by dice.

Furthermore this means that when you’re playing an RPG it isn’t always an issue of if fiction or mechanics lead or follow. Most of the time there is going to be a more subtle interplay, and I have a feeling we miss a lot of it. Big chunky conch-passing rules with stakes resolution often make it seem like what is going on is simple, but even in those games I don’t think it actually is.

Now, for me and my group a strong fictional statement has as much weight as something coming from the mechanics, even in games where mechanics lead the fiction. And in games where it doesn’t, I either have to change gears about what it is I’m doing (like I start thinking of the game as a board game without a board, and then can have a lot of fun), or I get bored and annoyed. Which, I think, is one of my growing discontents with games whose rules mostly revolve around who gets narration rights. I don’t find narrations rights and simple stakes resolution interesting — I want something that spins in and around the fiction, something that pushes fictional statements forward rather than relegating them to the role of “mere color.”

Now, this can all be tricky, especially as there often isn’t one fiction in an RPG. Instead there is a lot of stuff from a lot of different points of view, all of which lays in and around each other in different layers. As the brilliant Emily Care-Boss recently said:

“Continuity is short-hand for a large, un-manageable piece of shared, vaguely overlapping mass of experiences interpreted as a narrative.”

So you know what I like? Things that help us keep all those pieces together, that help us develop a narrative and agree about it in some part. The trick about that is that those things don’t have to be mechanics and dice. They can also be lists and guidelines. For example, In A Wicked Age doesn’t tell have the dice tell you when endgame is going to happen (in contrast to, say, My Life With Master), but it does have a list of things that will indicate to you that a chapter is over. And that list, shock and surprise, mostly says “when the fiction tells you its over, and here are how to recognize the signs.” Which is also the kind of thing I was doing with my “A Way To Structure a Narrative Game” post — things about watching the fiction without having to have it mechanically enforced.

And no, it doesn’t have to be dice free or mechanics free, it just has to have some cognizance of how it is that it is working with the fiction. Sorcerer and Trollbabe and In A Wicked Age all do this in different ways, as does Spirit of the Century (in a whole different paradigm) and Nobilis (in yet another paradigm). I don’t think its an accident that all of those games are hot in my brain right now.

P.S. Jonathan Walton just tipped me to Sweet Agatha by Kevin Allen jr. I’m not sure what I think about it yet, but I do have to say that I enjoy his exploration. In some ways I think he may be headed off in a direction almost the opposite of what I’m talking about here and at the same time opposite to what a lot of mechanically conditioned games are doing. Diversity is wicked cool.

This is a rough, only partly tested system that I whipped up for a game of Afraid that I ran last Halloween. I found the notes recently, and figured I’d toss it out to the world.

The Eldritch Arcane is magic for Afraid. It could probably work for Dogs or a Dogs homebrew too. Its basic principle is that magic lets you go beyond the limits of normal human effort, but that it can exact a terrible price for doing so.

At character creation characters who have Eldritch abilities mark them as such. For now lets just say they come out of your normal dice, but get marked special when you declare them Eldritch. GMs who want to limit magic might say you can only use 1 or 2 dice at character creation as an eldritch ability. If you want to be fancy you could make a new background that grants access to Eldritch powers, and say you have to take it if you want any dice.

Eldritch abilities can be traits (Blood of the Dark 2d8), relationships (Slave of Kali 3d4), or gear (faerie cloak 2d8). In general eldritch gear can be temporarily lost as part of stakes or as part of gaining a condition, but losing it permanently requires a burnout consequence from magical backlash. (I’ll explain that below.) We also experimented with letting some of the dice for a Stat be eldritch, so that you could have Heart 3 (1) with that (1) being an eldritch dice. Results generally indicated yes.

In play, Eldritch abilities work just like others in terms of how and when they get rolled. You use relationships at the start, for those involved or at stake, for example. However, eldritch abilities work a bit differently when they are in play, and for that reason I recommend having dice of a different color or style than all the others in play to roll for your Eldritch abilities, as it will keep things easier once dice start hitting the table. If you don’t have enough dice of different colors you can just keep the eldritch dice in a separate area from your normal dice.

In play Eldritch abilities have the following special rules:

1. When you use one, you can make raise and sees that are clearly beyond the norm. In other words, it lets you do magic. Fly, crush people’s throats by squeezing your fingers together across the room, and so forth.
2. They give you access to the magical world, which allows you to use magical sites or ritual implements as improvised objects. (”Jeepers Scooby, its midnight on Halloween and we’re in Stonehenge? My Druid Blood gives me a 2d8 for this big, excellent ritual space.”)
3. You can use a dice from a magical ability to do something beyond the pale. An action that is beyond the pale risks backlash, a supernatural repercussion, in addition to other fallout. The benefit of going beyond the pale is that it lets you add one dice from a magical ability (and it must be a magical ability dice, the reason for the different color) to any raise, see, or taking the blow. If you raise or see you can do so with three dice total. If you take the blow you take one dice less fallout than you would normally take.

Note: You can use your eldritch abilities for the first two items without risking backlash. In that case they act just like normal dice, save that they let you do kewl raises. It is only if you add a magical dice as a third dice (or fourth for taking the blow) that you risk backlash.

Backlash

When you use an eldritch ability to go beyond the pale, you risk backlash as the inhuman forces rebound upon you. All eldritch dice used to go beyond the pale (add an extra dice to an action) are set aside after they are played (played, not rolled) and after the conflict all of them are rolled after normal fallout has been rolled. They are read just like fallout dice, but use the following tables to determine their outcome.

Backlash Roll
Any 1’s — Backlash experience
2 - 7 — Minor Backlash
8 - 11 — Major Backlash
12+ — Devastating Backlash

Backlash Experience

Note: Eldritch abilities cannot be raised with normal fallout, though they can be lowered. So you can make your Druid Blood go down as a result of fallout, but you cannot increase it. The only way to increase an eldritch ability is through backlash experience.

• Add or subtract 1 dice from an existing eldritch ability
• Take an new eldritch ability at 1d6
• Change the dice size for one magical ability by one step
• Pick from the normal experience list

Minor Backlash

• One condition becomes true
• Seen (an evil occult force knows where you are and gains your highest backlash dice against you in the next conflict you have with it).
• Lose access to one eldritch ability for the next conflict

Major Backlash

• Two conditions become true
• Marked (an evil occult force now can track you and gains a relationship with you with a dice size equal to the biggest backlash dice you rolled.)
• Lose 1 eldrtich ability for the rest of the story
• Lose all eldritch abilities for the next scene
• Lose 2 dice from a Stat
• Change an eldritch ability to d4s

Devastating Backlash

• All conditions become true
• Tainted (as marked, plus against the being you are always considered to be either Alone or Unprepared)
• Lose all eldritch abilities for the rest of the story
• Lose 1 eldritch ability permanently
• Lose 3 dice from a Stat
• Require Real Medical Care

And that, as they say, is that.

Credit Where It is Due: Landon Darkwood had a big impact on this, as should be obvious if you read his article. Vincent Baker, of course, had some impact as well.

Recently I’ve been talking about freeform play in various and sundry places. I’ve also been talking about the construction of story and emotional play in RPGs, and the various ways in which we do them. As part of those discussions I looked at how I set up and structure conflicts as an ongoing part of a game that I am running, and tried to break it down into a procedural format.

The result was something of a step by step that I do when making conflicts part of a story in an RPG. Much of this stuff is not surprising, as its stuff many of us do. Its also not something that should be read as a hard and fast rule, as much of it was intuitive and all of it is always subject to the mode of the game, the mood at the table, and the specific things I want from a scene. It also is not a check list for running every style of game. (Duh!)

For the general type of emo-porn-metal game that I usually run, this is a basic checklist of what I do to run a conflict:

1. Have an idea of a meta-level conflict or situation. This is the big conflict of the game, story arc, novel, or season. From a Buffy Big-Bad to passing final judgment on the humanity of your own character in Dogs, this is the thing that you know you’re going to get to eventually, but aren’t going to get to immediately.

Some games have systems to do this. Burning Empires, for example, specifically sets up the Human vs. Alien arcs, and breaks them down into segments. You know that the issue is going to get dealt with, and you even know the general pacing of how its going to go.

Other games do this on a more moderate level. Trollbabe, for example, has stakes and consequences for any given story, giving something that gives a coherent focus to the whole story across multiple smaller conflicts. It also has the overall but subtle arc of troll vs. human, and the very real possibility that if you play a long enough game you will end up deciding the fate of one or both races.

The real point here is to have a chronic level issue, problem, or focus that keeps the game together as we in play focus heavily on the moment to moment acute conflicts. Most conflicts in a larger narrative scale don’t resolve instantly, and so having an idea of a large level conflict based on the situation is an important place to start.

In recent games the meta level conflicts I’ve done have been: Expose the conspiracy of serpents while figuring out who you want to be with; find your place in the life you lost and figure out if you really want to kill the mirror or yourself; stop the Titans from taking over the world; face the end of the glory of the Caliphate; rearrange the metaphysical nature of the world so that women have equal rights with men; and decide which of the perverted cults is going to become the new True Church.

2. Set the Stage and Foreshadow: From the earliest moment in the game there should be something that gives a general, lose finger pointing at the moon idea of the big threat of the game. This can be anything from the way that a Dog’s initiation conflict gets you to start thinking about who your character is and how they deal with violence to having your village raided by outriders of the orc army that is going to crush all human civilization. The point is that very early on you establish that there is something going on in the background, an arc that you’ll deal with over time, but without making that arc the main focus of conflict right now.

Its worth noting that in games where groups create situations, rather than just the GM creating it, a lot of the foreshadowing starts during the set up of the game. For some groups that out of fiction knowledge is enough. I find that I like to have an early scene in the game to bring it on stage, however. I like everyone knowing about the situation OOC, but until there is something that happens in the fiction, on screen, or however else you want to put it, its ephemeral and unreal. I have to put it on stage before I care about it.

In an Unknown Armies game I’ve been running for a long time, the very first scene of the game set this up (along with some other plot issues). The game was about Flying Women and feminism, and in the first scene of the game we have a professor lecturing the class and the female PC sitting with her lab partner male NPC. When the PC answers questions the professor ignores her, and then praises the male lab partner when he repeats the exact same answers. Whatever the PC does about the professor is fine, because the point is that there is a bigger problem than this jerk, and that problem is going to be an ongoing issue.

3. Show why the issues matter. This is where we start to put a human face and emotional investment into the issues of the game. Its the point at which we see that the princess actually loves the knight, acted out on stage before us. This is where we’re going to learn not just about why we care in general, but why we actually emotionally start investing into characters. (This often goes hand in hand with foreshadowing, but can be played separately so I’m going to list it separately.)

This is where scenes that don’t necessarily have conflicts at all, or only have soft conflicts, are important. There don’t have to be no conflicts at all, but they shouldn’t be about the most important thing, they should be about establishing details and furthering the demonstration of what is at stake.

For example, in the Thou Art But a Warrior playtest I played with Anna, we knew going in that the meta conflict of the game was the fall of the Caliphate. (That’s what the game was about.) We also knew that the Emir’s daughter was going to be at the heart of the conflict, both for being a princess and for being a named character on multiple PC’s sheets. So the very first scene we did I asked for Anna and Kitt to give us a scene in which we see the love between the princess and the brave knight, and then swept my asshole knight and the evil Imam into the scene on the heals of it. So now we’ve got a finger pointing towards the love, lust, jealousy, and betrayal at the heart of the court that is going to be part of the fall. We also have the main characters on stage, and have actually seen them being in love and being jerks, rather than just knowing that they are because we set them up to be.

Yes, this does number 2 and 3 at the same time. Yay us! In the Unknown Armies game I mentioned above, I was actually a little weak here. It wasn’t until much later in the game that the importance of women being overlooked in class came more directly on stage. We foreshadowed the ongoing conflict well, but we didn’t do the greatest job in that scene of showing why it mattered, or why we should deeply care. Luckily we got into that pretty quickly there after.

4. Introduce an acute conflict. Now that we’ve got characters on stage, have some idea of why we should give a crap about them, and know the general direction that things are going to be heading in the game, we can start making the character’s lives hard. This is where we start to push, to block, to make things hard, to make the characters fight and adventure and reveal themselves.

The first time you do this, this should be a pretty modest conflict. You’re not going to get the final moral statement of a Dog’s career in the first conflict, nor are you going to defeat Chronos in your first fight. This conflict is the one that is going to act as a the baseline from which other conflicts can build, the conflict from which you can say “yes, but what about now?” in future conflicts. So make it fun and make it count, but don’t blow it all first thing out the door.

Every time you do this after the first, you should be thinking about the other conflicts in the game, the direction of the meta issues, and if you need to repeat a past conflict with more intensity, or start a whole new kind of conflict to test a different issue or have a different kind of coolness.

Examples from games I’ve done recently include: Having hell hounds, which looked like big dogs at first, attack the characters; making a group of Dogs decide whether or not they were going to cut a hanging girl down; having the hot-headed swashbuckler get in a fight when he’s outnumbered; bringing the mayor home to find her drunken husband embarrassing her in front of important political guests; and about a million more. This level, alone, is really easy. I’m sure you can all think of 1 billion examples.

5. Complicate the conflict. (Optional, but usually recommended). Just when it looks like the conflict is going to be easy, add a twist in. Maybe the conflict is about more than it looked like at first. Maybe it turns out the guy you were sent to kill is an old friend, or maybe he’s a crazy 13th level Knight of the Purple Dragon, or maybe you fall down and drop your sword, or whatever. It works especially well if you can make the twist be something in thematic keeping with the overall meta issues, or with a previous or future conflict (more foreshadowing).

A lot of games with good mechanical systems will get the mechanics to do a lot of this for you — Trollbabe conflict resolution and re-rolls, special templates or powers in D&D, critical fumble tables in Rolemaster. All of these exist to give the conflict something more than you expected, or harder than you expected, that happens and suddenly things are moving in real time.

Note that sometimes its enough to let a simple acute conflict resolve. When it feels like its enough, then skip this step.

6. Resolve the acute conflict. Figure out what happens, here and now. If you’ve got conflict resolution rules use em, if not, do your thing. This step is probably worth a flowchart of its own, and really it is here that many, many games “conflict resolution” lives. Some games (Trollbabe, Beast Hunters, maybe Afraid) combine this and the above step, some don’t. Some games don’t have a conflict resolution at all, but have a system of some sort that lets the players figure out who lives, who dies, and who cares. However, this is the level that most RPGers already know pretty damn well how to do, so I’m going to leave it at that.

7. Show what the conflict has changed, in human terms. After big tense conflicts this is the place where we have a softer scene. Much like the scenes way up in scene 3, this is where we’re going to deal with the human, emotional levels where the characters live. We know who won and who lost and how hurt they got, what the fallout was. But how is that going to hit the rest of the people on stage? Will the princess still love the knight after he was felled from his horse? What does it mean if our Dog just ran from her first conflict and doesn’t think she’s worthy of being a Dog anymore?

In some games you can have a whole chain of conflicts before you get to this point. For example, in Dogs in the Vineyard you might have a conflict, a follow up, and a follow up to that before you get to a break in the constant shooting in the face. That’s fine, as that’s just cycling through steps 4-6 a couple of times before you get here and this is what happens when the whole chain reaction cycle of current moment current level conflicts is finished. This scene will probably happen eventually, however, as without it there is real risk of the story being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Some examples of this from games I’ve played is: Having the Steward come talk to the Dog about why she ran away; getting the PC to talk to a shrink about the gunfight she was just in and why she shot her professor in the face (”because it was where his mouth was” she answers); having the princess left alone in the room with the man she loved to deal with each other now that she’s seen him murder someone; and blocking out a scene where the PC sat amid the wreckage of his life and wrote a song about how all the sex means nothing when you’re left alone with broken bottles and blood stains at the end of it all.

8. Follow up, follow through, and expand. We’re going to head back to step 4 soon, but we’re also going to do a little bit more than just start a new conflict. We’re going to place that conflict into the context of what has gone before and where we want to head. What I do here is start to develop a cycle of conflict, to deal with things on the same level of the old acute conflict but exploring outwards, into new territory.

This can be new thematic territory or it can be literally new territory as the world is revealed. Either way, this is a step more than just cycling back to 4 to do an immediate follow up conflict, but a little bit less then pushing the whole game to a new higher level of conflict like we’re going to do in step 9. What I’m really doing here is making sure this current plateau is sufficiently alive, sufficiently fleshed out before I go on to bigger and meaner things. You aren’t there yet, but you’re setting up to be and letting the players all get the sense of anticipation about what is going to come next.

There is a way that I often think about this when doing games based around theme rather than challenge or verisimilitude, that Mo calls the thematic tension cycle. It works constantly in the background of all steps of the process, but tends to come most to my attention at this step. So its right here that I’ll break it down, despite the fact that its happening all over the place.

• Thematic Declaration: This is what we did back in steps 1 to 4 the first time around. The PC make their initial stand, they’ve shown the first signs of what they believe. If any character hasn’t done this, they need a conflict or median scene where they get a chance to do so. So I’ll cycle back to 3 to 7 until everyone has made their declaration, shown what their character believes, stands for, or pursues.
• Thematic Reinforcement: This is when you reinforce that a character or scene or issue really is dedicated to a certain stance, theme, or goal. This is where you fight the titan spawn again to show that you’re dedicated to the war, or swear an oath to stop the orc invasion you’d already fought against by accident, or fight for another woman’s rights like you just fought for your own.
• Thematic Support: This is the kind of scene where a player’s choices get rewarded, reinforced, or highlighted by the world for the choices they’ve made. Their protagonist role gets underlined. This is where the whole village starts to come together because of your leadership against the orcs, or where a woman you used to help learn to read is now going to get her high school diploma, or where Zeus gives you the Aegis for your fight against the hellhounds. These types of scenes tend to go well into the humanizing scenes from step 7, but can be the seeds of new conflicts pretty easily.
• Thematic Opposition: Here you start to challenge the nature of the stances that characters have taken, to make issues problematic, to introduce conflicts that show the motivations (and possibly even nobility) of the enemy or the corruption of the ally. This, in a real way, is the “okay, so you fought for it then when it was easy, but what about now when its all getting hazy and the lines aren’t so clear anymore?” scene. It also often makes a good place to bridge to step 9 and some escalation, but it can happen just as well without. Some examples include: Facing the orc shaman who tells you that your people drove them out of their lands with great slaughter two hundred years ago; finding out that the man you’re after for killing a woman had good reason to kill her; finding out you could overthrow Zeus and replace him as a god yourself.

(I do not know for sure, but suspect these might have parallels in other creative agendas — for example the occasional “gimme” conflict in a gamist game where the point is not a huge test, but to demonstrate how bad ass the character is. I’m sure you can figure out your own things here.)

Anyway, by looking at what kinds of thematic scenes I’ve already done at the current level of intensity and past levels of intensity, I know the basic kinds of things I want to provoke from more scenes. And if I think that enough has been done at this level, then we move on to step 9.

9. Escalate and Intensify. This is the point at which you start stepping up the conflict on the road towards that meta-level situation you started out with way back at step 1. Where you’ve been fighting hell hounds you’re now starting to face off with demi-gods, where you’ve been fighting orc bands with your village you’re now fighting companies with your own troops, where you’ve been having to question your love of the princess you now have to decide to save her or save your mother, and where you’ve been judging sinners you now have to judge another Dog.

Make the new conflict escalate or progress from the old. This can be a harder challenge (gamist), a deeper creation of world (sim), or the “yes, but what about now” (nar) or just “well you’ve fought an imp, but can you fight a full demon” type of bigger (gonzo) — but it should push forward and be a “bigger” conflict than the one before it. It can also be a “move the story forward” type of conflict, where now that the local boss is gone the characters have a chance to learn about the regional level boss, or whatever.

In general I like to go back to step 3 at this point, and show why the escalation matters. After that when I hit 4 again, I’m going back deeper, nastier, and wider in scale, scope, or human trauma. Many games have this type of thing preset to some level. Like in D&D we all know that when you hit level 15 or so you’re suddenly facing the kinds of things that would have been a total party kill at level 10; or in Trollbabe when you move the conflict from Group to Kingdom you know the size and scale of your next adventure is going to be huge. Games like Dogs do this when each town pushes your issues a little harder than the last town, which is less hard coded but just as effective*.

10. Bring it on home. Eventually as you hit step 9 again and again and get a little bigger and badder every time, you’re going to end up at a level where your conflicts are synonymous with the meta conflict you started out with in step 1. Once that happens you’ve hit endgame. Pull out the stops, drive everything and every lose end towards Apocalypse, and bring the story arc to a close with a purgation of terror and sympathy.

Then if you want to play with the same characters or the same setting again, cool. You’ve told one full long arc story (like a novel or a season of a TV show, probably) filled with shorter chapters. You can walk away now, or go back and start at step 1 again. In the new novel, or new season, everyone is going to have new thematic stances and new meta level conflicts. But this time you’ll have an even deeper understanding of the characters, so rock out.

And there you have it. Noting new or revolutionary, just a step by step breakdown of what is in practice a far more organic process. I do find, however, that having broken it down for myself this way has been helpful, as it lets me be a little more mindful of what I’m doing, to ask myself questions such as “should I be escalating now, or doing some reinforcement?” and such. Even if this method doesn’t work for you, I think taking some time to figure out how it is that your brain organizes story and narrative development is worth it. The unexamined game, as they say, is not worth playing.

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*Its worth noting that I don’t do all of these in all games as well. In Dogs I usually don’t foreshadow as much (or at all) because the players are more in control of the pacing. However, even then I will push for stakes that replicate some element of this flow chart — like if it is the Dog’s first interaction with a given character I will usually drive for small stakes around the line of “get X to feel Y” or “get X to confess Y” or something like that. This does the same thing, in practice, as step 2 and 3 — it shows the building relationship between the characters, gives a greater context for how they fit together and what both have at stake in regards to each other and the town, and gives more meaning and context to the bigger conflicts to come. The rest of the cycle works slightly differently, but in a pretty similar order, just by following the rules of Dogs.

It was one of those days where things came together online.

Someone recommended Google Reader to manage my blog addiction. I tried it, its working nicely. Now all my feeds are in one place, all right next to each other.

One of my feeds was talking about Shock!. One of my feeds was talking about the new report from Microsoft Research about human-computer interface in 2020. One of my feeds was talking about the possibility that our skin my act as an antenna to broadcast information about us.

And suddenly a Shock! game was born. I attribute it to the AI that is emerging from the net. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.