Fusion energy

The DESUS has worked. It has not revolutionized anything, but the players have started to do cool maneuvers now and then. The system has encountered a minor setback, however: It requires interesting encounter areas to work. Frantically making last-minute balance evaluations on my selection of foes, selecting combat music, drawing the map and providing descriptions leaves me little time to add interesting terrain features to interact with. Especially since most of the latest combat areas have been in outdoors.

A long time ago in a website far far away, there was a FAQ for Star Wars Roleplaying Game. There was one detail I remember from the pages of text: “…you can make combat more interesting by letting every player describe a detail of the combat area; For example, an exposed power conduit…” That was the key to one sort of fusion energy: An endless sea of imagination for me to populate the environment with.

I gave the player an option to freely suggest terrain features and applied the good old improvisation adage to it: “Yes, and…” I try to never say no to their suggestions, and merely add mechanics. Last game, I had to improvise a combat area and attacking creatures while I was describing that one of the players saw attackers coming. Apart from a very basic game area (two trees, ground, one ancient warpgate…) I had nothing. Then I reminded the players of their right to add details. One of them suggested very tall patches of grass. I made them difficult terrain and cover. Another suggested a nest of bees. I made it hang on a tree branch, made it have an area where the bees attack if the players fail a Diplomacy check. In the encounter, one of the players took about 20 damage when they failed the diplomacy. The player then kicked the tree, making the nest fall, and then kicked it at a goblin shaman. The situation was funny and cool.

Combat does not happen in a vacuum. Environment is an important factor, and I heartily suggest that if you wish for a more exciting combat, ask the players to provide details.

A funny detail: One of the players had to skip the session, leaving me with the question on how to handle his character. I did not have the character sheet, meaning that I couldn’t run him in a combat situation. After a malfunctioning warpgate, the party was lost in an unknown place. One of them decided to scout around, since his character had a horse. I remembered the absent players character and exclaimed “Shuwe says ‘I have a horse too!’ as he gallops away to scout, beyond the borders of my combat grid” The wonders of patchwork player substitution.

Boss Negotiation

A culmination of sorts happened in my last D&D session. The players finally met their enemies… at a negotiating table.

The characters had to convince four executives from a trade union to abandon a very expensive fishing vessel to allow peace negotiations between the nation of Ilea and a local sahuagin tribe. The characters had been finding out weaknesses and counterarguments to be used in the talks, and now it was on.

I wanted the encounter to feel like a boss battle, so I put together a mechanic to handle the talks themselves. In the end, it paid out, and at least two players enjoyed it. Every opposing negotiator had one argument to present, and a couple of skills they are good at. For example, a very cold and calculative consultant presented hard facts about the loss of money for the negotiators, should they agree with the players. Due to his methodological approach, he was resistant to empty wordplay and veiled threats, meaning Intimidation failed automatically.

The encounter proceeded in normal initiative order. At their turn, the characters could attempt to find weaknesses in the opposition’s argument. This meant a relevant skill check. Due to wanting the encounter work somewhat like D&D combat (if the players did not want to provide descriptions of their actions, I would handle them), I let the players use the common social skills freely, without having to speak in-game. This was a major relief with two of our newer players, who interestingly used the most varied skills. If the skill check succeeded, I would turn the card representing the main argument 90 degrees clockwise. If it would end upside down, the players would have successfully invalidated the argument (or confused the opposition with rethoric).

The card system was, in my opinion, a stroke of genius. At all times there was one main argument under consideration. This kept the conversation focused on one point. At every turn the character in question would either throw a new point in the air,  present a counterpoint to it, or strenghten it, depending on the initiative order. If someone did not want to answer to the counterpoint, they could delay as per the initiative rules to let someone else take a shot. The system worked, and the conversation flowed naturally.

That was it. The players succesfully argued their point (with the aid of one very cool natural 20), and were off to make diplomacy. But after witnessing how the system worked, I think I could improve it still.

Champions of Ilea, Part Two

Sometimes it is hard to not believe in fate. Last week I was talking with Tuonela’s CEO about my thesis. At some point the conversation headed towards Civilization 5. As he talked about the game’s failures and successes, I thought that “wow, it sounds like an interesting game. If it were a bit cheaper, I would buy it and see what’s all the commotion about”. Lo and behold: A week later it is on sale on Steam.

Now if this was Ilea, my reaction would probably be:

1. Yeah! My belief in my destiny to play that game soon has manifested in a material way!
2. Wow, fate must want me to play that game. Better play along; I don’t want to mess with fate.
3. This event was just an outcome of different variables, and was actually quite predictable. No fate orchestrated anything.

Since there are two sources of magic spells in basic D&D mythology, Arcane and Divine, I had to weave them into my world. Since I did not have enough energy to write a pantheon of gods and did not want to resort to the usuals, there are no actual gods on the planar cosmology of Ilea. Instead, there is an enigmatic force called Fate. It manifests normally by strange visions and making sleeping people write prophecies on nearby surfaces. Most of these are gibberish, but some might hold actual information about future events. But the thing is, since Fate is so vague, everyone has their own perspective on it. A farmer might believe that Fate makes the seasons change, and if he believes strongly enough it will give rain when needed. A cleric might believe that Fate wants him to help the needy. A warlord might believe that Fate will tell when it is a good time to attack. As there are no actual gods, some artists have taken to themselves to anthromorphize their concepts of Fate. These works are referred to gods, and their usual purpose is to be shrines where people can focus and congregate..

The concept of divine magic was somewhat stolen from the Orks of Warhammer 40k: When a creature believes in his version of Fate strongly enough, he can influence it by creating physical effects seemingly out from nowhere. These people are usually so impressed by their “powers” that they take on themselves to adhere to the goals Fate has set to them.

In the first campaign, Fate evolved to the point where it is today quite organically. At first it was just elaborate fluff for divine magics, but as the game progressed, I started to use it as an explanation for unexplainable things to give them depth. (If you happen to be a player in my campaign, you might want to skip the rest of this paragraph due to spoilers) For example, the players heard about Wailing Hill, a hill where a voice wailed loudly periodically. The locals feared the place, since it was inside a forest, which are full of monsters. The players investigated, meeting a half-finished marble statue of a traveller’s protector god. Fate wanted the impressive statue to be finished, so it was randomly animated to plea for help. Another Fate-related event was a vampire, who wanted to stop killing people and began to conduct research into making sap a substitute for blood. Since it would be technically cheating a curse, Fate threw all sorts of problems into his research, which lasted for hundreds of years. Depending on the quest, Fate was either a sympathetic ally for a noble cause, or a capricuous bastard who revels on irony, and in the end most of the player’s characters acknowledged, denied or feared it. The party’s alchemist constantly tried to find scientific answers for everything and their rogue prayed nearly every night for Fate not to transform him into anything.

I think that Fate the most interesting feature of the world. It enables “Fate did it”-explanation for weird things, it gives me as the GM a tool to direct the characters and it pokes fun at both human belief and scientific outrage at the former. One drawback is that players have to invent their own war cries, since there are no standard gods. In the most recent adventure session it was called “Atheist-D&D”, which was both funny and true.

Champions of Ilea, Part One

Champions of Ilea is a fantasy roleplaying campaign that I originally envisioned for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Since the system pretty much assumes that the players and their characters will spend most of their time kicking monster ass, I decided, in my very typical way, to fight back.

Note to anyone concerned with spoilers with the world or the plot: Here might be some.