False Equivalent Exchange

 So in this week’s Dandadan an 18th century alchemist who might be organising an alien invasion got a train across Tokyo to enrol as a high school teacher, which doesn’t even break the top 50 most bonkers things to happen in that manga but I digress

On the train, we get a like 1-page silent scene, a few panels illustrating his journey. At one point he offers his seat up to an older woman with a cane, and stands the rest of the way. Then when he arrives at the school, he comes in and just kind of takes a chair by a computer in the office, talking as if he’s always been there as he infiltrates the school right there in front of everyone. And while his new coworkers seem a little confused, they accept it. Something’s off… but it’s not this guy, we know that he works here, that’s his seat.

And it’s not confirmed or even particularly highlighted, but I’m pretty sure the train journey was a spell. Like, it’s made clear he’s using some kind of magic to alter peoples’ perception of him, but I’m fairly certain the innocuous train scene was him casting that magic, that giving up a seat allowed him to take a seat. The law of equivalent exchange is pretty well known esotericism, used to great effect in Hirofumi Arakawa’s classic Fullmetal Alchemist, but what’s happening here a bit different.

And i think it’s cool so let’s steal it 👍

The Law of False Equivalent Exchange is an FKR-style magic system that works thusly: Any character who can Do Magic may attempt a ritual. They must accomplish three tasks of their choosing which affect the material world in opposition* to their desired goal, represented by three “sub-“goals. If the GM agrees and they are able to perform the tasks, their goal is magically achieved.

*but not exactly. For example:

A character wants to become queen of a small kingdom. Instead of staging a coup or using some mundane trickery with the line of succession, they set out to achieve this via a magic ritual. The player proposes the following sub-goals and their “opposite” tasks:

- I will take the throne: I will give up a “throne”, a valuable seat.

- I will wear the crown: I will remove something precious from my head.

- I will rule the land: I will allow the earth to do what it will with me.

The player character takes a horse and cart to the current king’s castle, paying the fare of an elderly traveller and giving up their seat, opting to ride in the back. By night, in a storm in the fields outside the castle, they remove their own eye with a knife, dig a hole and lay in the dirt, allowing the soil and rain to smother them (GM probably calls for a save or something here).

The GM rules the ritual complete and accepts the exchange - when they wake in the morning, choking on dirt and blood, they clamber out of the earth and walk into the castle, where they are greeted as queen.

This could get boring if it’s too easy so I’d set limits - not silly once-a-day stuff, more like some overall larger price to messing with the material world like this. You’d be immediately set apart, visible by spirits and fairies, or maybe you’d have to reckon with the ghosts of the world you undid. Or just give it a bigger material cost, some specific magical ingredients that must be spent to finish the ritual, unicorn’s blood etc.

Cities of Rooms

Whew, things got shaky for a minute there. Just about levelling out, thanks in no small part to some fine folks offering work, so you’ll be seeing some cool new projects before too long. Thanks all.

Not much chance to go out and do fun stuff in July but I did catch a showing of the Cowboy Bebop movie Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. I hadn’t seen it not-dubbed before which was interesting, lovely old 35mm print too... you’re lucky this isn’t a film blog. Suffice it to say it’s a worthy accompaniment to the classic series, recommended. (Cowboy Bebop is my touchstone for Mothership. I don’t recall the exact timeline because I definitely saw Alien for the first time that year, but I don’t think I’d seen it when I did The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 - I had seen the homage episode from Bebop though. Anyway.)

In one of my favourite sequences in the movie, we see a montage of Spike doing some on-the-ground detective work around Mars’ Alba City’s Moroccan district. (Ok a little film nerd time - the production team wanted a vibe that set this place apart from their mostly Pan-Asian/European settings in the series, so they visited Morocco and it really shows. Some of the best painted backgrounds in the film here, and that lovely “real”, lived-in vibe that permeates so much of the show. And it’s all set to this, a great 00s-gone-old-school working class country love song, but in-universe! So good.)

Anyway, the next day or whenever I was watching North American urbanism videos on YouTube, which I do sometimes to feel better about my own life, and this popped up. Take what you will from the overall message but the bit about parts of cities being like outdoor rooms with buildings and other features as walls stood out to me. In gaming, granular city maps are often designed this way, but the real world context and application just connected some more dots for me I guess.

So what’s my point? Well like I said I’m hard at work atm, so I don’t have the headspace to come up with new examples for this post, but it got me thinking about laying out a city more like a dungeon. This is nothing new, but I specifically mean a MoSh city as a MoSh style flowchart map. Transit maps like the good old Tube are essentially circuit diagrams after all, and maps as a series of connections rather than a representation of physical space makes sense in a setting where you can just walk anywhere anyway (I have more thoughts on different ways to represent city space but you’ll have to wait for a particular Big Thing).

And if our districts and streets are rooms, and our flowchart lines are transit connections, then we get interesting choices coming up around traversal. Do the players take the subway to the other side of town or walk the whole way, triggering encounters? Does the subway cost money or have its own encounters, and how does that factor into decision-making? Are there places they’ve been told to avoid, and what will they see as they loop around them? If a place they need to get to is only two stops away, why not save on travel and walk, thereby triggering a whole other event in the spaces between? If they can find a way through the front of a building in one area and out the back into another, can they establish new shortcuts and routes themselves? What about transit strikes? (Great transit scene in the movie too btw, more inspiration.)

And that’s as much as I’ve got today. Electric Bastionland encourages you to lay out a Tube-style map, which is worth a look. And I will, as always, recommend Cowboy Bebop. tschuss x

Are you living in the real world?

Can I retroclone a game that isn’t real and also makes no sense help

 So you may or may not have heard of Yu-Gi-Oh, as one of the Big Three trading card games along with Magic the Gathering and Pokémon (I think they’re still the big ones?), and/or as a cartoon from the early 00s about teenagers playing said game for Stakes.

(Also while we’re on the topic i vaguely remember someone, I think it was Scrap Princess, doing a post about yugioh monsters a while ago? Like statting them for B/X or maybe even just talking about them based on the art. Anyone got a link?)

We’ve been rewatching the anime Chez Graverobber and having a great time. I decided to try the manga as I know it’s meant to be “”different”” and being a Shonen Jump title it’s included on their app.

(the Shonen Jump app releases all its comics, professionally translated, simultaneously with Japan, for free?? And anything older than the past 3 issues is archived and available for $2 USD a month?? It’s a ridiculously good deal, even if you’re just there to read One Piece. Anyway.)

The manga is indeed, uh, different. The cartoon many folks my age grew up watching is based on the second “season” of the manga and beyond, albeit restitched and sanitised for a Saturday Morning audience. Before that point the manga wasn’t about the card game much at all, but gaming in general - each chapter pretty much had a new game, Duel Monsters was just their MtG analogue that appeared once or twice.

Then it took off, they made the game a real thing kids could buy, it made money and became the focus. But yeah, for the first 60 chapters they play all sorts. Dice games, card games, yo-yos, an escape room, one where they’re manacled to a serial killer… the tone varies.

(Are either the manga or anime worth it? For camp value and nostalgia yes. If you’re not in it for those then probably not. Tone is all over the place - which I found charming. And the manga is interspersed with little games for the reader, like mazes or spot-the-difference all the way up to whole solo or 2P board games. Which aren’t great but - fun!)

We all caught up? Ok.

For the last 10 chapters of the manga’s first run, we’re introduced to a new character, Ryo Bakura, who brings with him plot development and homoeroticism and a new type of game.

The kids play a ttrpg! It’s called Monster World.

So I’m going to see if I can retroclone this fake game because of course I am.

To be clear - this is not an actual game. While Duel Monsters eventually got turned into actual cards with actual rules, Monster World never did. And the author, Kazuki Takahashi, is uh… notorious for not really following any kind of design logic in his in-world games’ rules.

(In an episode of the cartoon, a player declares their aquatic monster cards are invincible because they’re playing the game on a beach, only for the protagonist to play a card that’s just The Moon, draw the tide in and… yeah.)

So my task, which I have apparently set for myself, begins with reading these 10 chapters, noting down anything somewhat concrete I can learn about how the game supposedly functions, and see if I can get a rough image of what an actual RPG might look like featuring as much of that as possible.

Or at least that was the idea - as you can see from the notes below, I somewhat lost my mind in the process. There’s really no logic here at all. If I come back to this I’ll have a lot of work to do...

Monster World - notes:

- a “combination board game and role-playing game”.

    - “you know, like Hobgoblin or Mazes and Monsters!”

- standard GM and players setup - GM is called the Dark Master

- Dark Master has a Boss Monster, defeating the boss is the explicit end goal. Interesting I guess

- you can buy terrain tiles to join together and make your world map, cute. But not something i can do here

    - board is gridded, game uses minis.

    - bakura’s board is about 10x20 squares for the whole world - fields, mountains, town, forest, dark lord’s castle. Scale is like an over world map inf Final Fantasy, but uses that same scale for positioning in battles. Locations open up to reveal interiors, but still at the same scale(?)

-now referred to as an “adventure board game”

- the rules overview is very normal rpg stuff. The GM plays the world, players make characters and face challenges.

- explicit win condition for the GM too - defeat adventurers. Definitely more of a board game.

- now yugi’s saying it “combines elements”. I guess I’ll focus on the RPG bits.

- they have a “what is a tabletop roleplaying game” section lmaooooooo

- “it’s the original virtual reality!”

- ah here we go, concrete info! Races: Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Hobbit, Pixie-Fairy, Dwarf, Birdtail. We get a bit of info on each

    - it mentions the classic D&D stats, like elves have “high wisdom and charisma. Good magicians. Low strength.” But when we see the stats later, they’re different.

- Classes: Warrior, Beast Tamer, Magician, Bard, Priest, Enchanter, Martial Artist, Diabolist, Magic Gunman, Illusionist, Merchant, Thief.

- some of those sound cool! I don’t think they match 1-to-1 with any existing game? Maybe Sword World or some Japanese D&D clone? Probably just a selection the writer liked.

- we get character sheets for our four characters (and bakura has made them all minis). Entries for character name, race, class, weapon, equipment, abilities, level and HP.

- a couple of notable bits. The equipment, which seems tied to class for some characters and race for others - a throwaway line mentions that you need money to buy starting gear.

- The magic gunman has bullets listed, and also “6 special thunder grenades”. Bullets have no ammo count.

- and the numbers. Abilities are not in fact the Big Six, but Speed, Wisdom, Strength and Courage. Looks like the numbers are in the range we’d expect from a D&D-alike, nothing higher than 20, mostly 11-18, the occasional 8 or 9 dump stat.

- All characters are level 1, and hit points range from 18 for the squishy magician to 25 for the warrior.

- bakura is using a program on his laptop to do some calculations. The game is “too complex”

- you start on “start”

- “monsters will appear depending on the players’ actions… or sometimes, by random chance!”

- they “take five turns to enter the village”, seems to be referring to the overland travel it takes to get there.

- they chat with the barkeep in a very normal D&D conversational way (the bartender’s mini contains the trapped soul of a former player, but I feel that’s an impractical design goal)

- confirmation that the GM controls NPCs

- in dangerous areas, there’s a “Judgement Roll” to determine random encounters.

- dice! D100 system!

- encounter rate is 30, bakura rolls a 21, they encounter a level 3 goblin. D100 roll under.

- the warrior rolls a 13. bakura says that “based on the warrior’s level, speed and weapon”…”kills the goblin on a roll of 40 or less”.

- 1 hit kill, no HP or stats given for the enemy.

- “the closer you roll to 00, the more damage you do to the enemy”. So they have HP, and damage is based off the to-hit roll.

- 99 is a fumble! (And in the manga that means yami bakura traps your soul in a mini forever)

- encounter with an unconscious figure in the road. No roll apparent, bakura appears to be reading from or just checking his laptop, maybe just for notes

- encounter plays out in rp, side quest for treasure an a magic sword in the forest. They’re not sure to trust the NPC. Normal rpg bits

- forest encounter rate is 80%. Bakura rolls an 05. “The closer to 00, the stronger the monsters that appear!”

- 5 monsters. Fight!

- roll under “attack success rate” to hit, the closer you are to “critical” (00), the more damage you do. Same as before.

- warrior rolls 82, but needed a 30 to hit. For some reason. He trips and falls

- a bit of detail given on the gunman class - deals “magical damage” from the gun.

- gunman’s attack rolls a 21 - a hit, no reason given. The monster is defeated - again, 1 hit 1 kill, but I guess we can assume that that’s a coincidence or monsters are just generally weak because we know there’s HP and damage systems.

- well, we can’t really assume anything because this isn’t a functioning system. but

- the beast tamer (starts with no weapon, could be by choice though), uses his “magic hands” to make monsters into allies. 50% success rate given, it’s shown later that this varies but no metric as to how.

- “Hand power! The evil disappears from Poki!”

- the magician is “still an apprentice” at level 1, but sometimes “magic is more powerful than expected”

- immediately proven - she rolls 00, which is a “super critical hit” now. “That means she can use the top level magic for an apprentice magician!”

- Apprentice Final Big Bang!!! big explosion spell kills 3 monsters

- the quest giver NPC was actually Zorc, the Dark Master - the GM’s boss monster. the GM says that since the players were deceived and caught with their defences down, sorcerer takes the first attack. He rolls a “super critical hit” with a 00, so I guess that’s what they’re called from now on.

- ok at this point Zorc targets the player not the character, because of the manga’s plot, and seals her soul in her character mini. Also bakura claims that his “godlike game mastering techniques” allow him to roll crits whenever he wants. Unsure how much of this I’ll be keeping.

- a bit of plot, next player rolls to attack and immediately fumbles lol. But Bakura does state a rule here, or possibly just “gaming etiquette” as he refers to it both ways - rolling the dice without the GM’s permission is not allowed! I like this guy

- Players can roll for their friends whose souls are currently unable to roll dice. One of those edge case rules.

- Ok, back to the game. Zorc has a powerful aura, meaning that the magical gunman has to roll Courage or Zorc can preempt his attack. Basically a fear save, and we get a use for the courage stat. Those D&D stats are very much forgotten by this point lol

- “I’m not afraid of you!” “That’s for the dice to say…”

- fail, Zorc goes, gets another Super Critical. Still targeting the mortal souls of the players at the table rather than the characters though so no mechanical insight.

- Explicitly stated - if characters’ HP reaches 0, they die. Bakura is too hardcore for death saves

- btw they’ve mentioned a couple of times that the minis are made of lead. There are little hobbyist details like this for a lot of the games in the manga. In one chapter they go step by step through buying a figure, clipping the spruce, washing the resin parts, assembling and painting. Idk it’s cute.

- Bakura now has everyone’s soul in their minis, but yugi has two souls so he’s still playing. It’s a thing.

- Gunman rolls an 03 which hits, uses his Thunder Grenade. It blasts off Zorc’s hand! Not just cosmetic damage as it comes into play a few times, so possibly a hit location table… ok enough speculation, I’m just here for the FACTS goddammit -

- zorc’s hand turns into monsters, sure

- zorc flees. “Jerk! Creep! Power gamer!”

- warrior rolls a super critical and uses his Energetic Slash, which was vaguely mentioned before as being a special move. Unsure if that’s triggered by the low roll, as with the magician - could also be why the gunman used his grenade? Why am i looking for logic here

- beast tamer is gonna attempt another beast taming. The dragon was part of zorc’s arm until a few minutes ago which apparently makes the chances of brainwashing him 10%. Yugi rolls an 02.

- btw, if you think wow that’s a lot of criticals - turns out there’s a “technique” of rolling the 10s die like a spinning top and then using the other d10 to like… beyblade it into a lower roll. And jiggling the table with your leg to control the path of the dice. i should remember this for Mothership.

- Follow Zorc to his lair. the castle diorama is sick

- there’s an absolutely bullshit trap that isn’t really worth going into. And it doesn’t even damage the characters’ HP but the minis themselves, which are robust enough to last exactly 3 turns? Oh Takahashi, never change

- “Instant death traps are the tool of amateur game masters! A good game master prolongs the torture as long as possible!”

- 30% chance on the judgement roll of Zorc showing up since it’s his castle. He shows up. His attack success rate is 95% while the characters are stuck in a trap

- he rolls a 41 - Yugi’s HP goes down to 13 and Joey’s to 15. I don’t think there’s any real maths happening here

- they escape the trap by rolling exactly 33. What kind of tomb of horrors bullshit

- zorc’s turn, rolls a 12. But since the PCs have “much higher speed”, they have already moved behind him! And because they’re behind him, they get a surprise attack! A 15 hits!

- if any of that makes sense to you, no it doesn’t

- next chapter opens with the characters’ HP and levels in a little HUD, which is at least consistent from last time, and we also get Zorc info - he’s LV15, with 205 HP

- Yugi channels his friends’ anger into the dice (we’ve all been there) and rolls an 09 for the gunman’s attack, which bakura calls a “critical”. So I think 01-09 is a crit and just 00 is a super crit? For now anyway!

- gunman uses thunder grenade, lends credence to that crit theory from before. But am I just seeing consistency because i want to at this point? Does anything mean anything any more?

- the magician “gets a free attack too”, a 13 to hit, uses “Apprentice Death Blaze”

- beast master rolls 08 (a “critical”!) and all his beasts attack

- “Fools! You are still apprentices, level-one adventurers! You don’t have enough experience to defeat Zorc!” Experience is in bold. Tells us something about the campaign structure i guess.

- GM goes on a power trip here. Also gets out some special d10s with a human soul in them or something. Rolls a super crit. This attack can apparently “kill characters with more than 50 hit points in an instant”.

- Bakura uses his laptop to crunch all the variables because there are to many! But all the PCs survive with 1hp each! Because his left hand is being controlled by his real self- ok we can skip this bit

- warrior gets 05, hits, no more detail given. Oh but now it takes out his left eye? Idk

- i guess when all the rules of your game are about combat etc etc

- the magician’s level is too low for resurrection spells, but she can use “healing magic of luona”!

- but will she be able to do so before zorc’s next attack? Roll off for tied initiative apparently! Lowest wins

- Some plot happens. The healing spell goes off, heals everyone by An Amount

- zorc can now hit all of them if he rolls 80 or less

- why am I doing this

- who knows any more

- zorc fumbles and hits himself, now at 125 HP if that means anything to anyone

- the castle terrain is made of “durable poly-resin”! We know this because bakura impales his hand on a gothic spire

- beast master rolls a crit 05 to tame zorc, but he can’t at his level, but some plot happens and a new character appears, level 13 white wizard. No that wasn’t one of the classes. NPC apparently

- white magic lowers defences i guess

- gunman hits on a 15

- why am I doing every turn like it’s a play report, we all know this doesn’t make any sense by now surely

- zorc is at 81 HP. Changes form to Last Zorc. Rolls a 00 to hit but the white wizard can defend by converting HP to MP. Yes that is the first mention of MP so far

- they’re all still down on 1-3 HP. But after last zorc attacks his weak point is exposed, an eye on his torso. One of the beast master’s beasts tries to hold it open and sacrifice himself but they won’t let him. So the beast tamer uses his training hand to punch right through the eye hole (jet stream punch!), rolls an 02 (crit).

- the warrior rolls an 01 for an explosive energetic slash, whatever that is, and they win the battle

- no wait, they didn’t for some reason

- reroll initiative i guess? And the same roll is also to determine attack success, because stakes

- bad guy rolls a super crit but the dice explode from friendship

- Magician uses Final Big Bang, and the battle is finally over

- I’m so done

- There’s one more roll but it’s to restore a player’s soul.

So, uh, that’s as much game as I could find in the Monster World arc. Supposedly there’s more RPG action later on, and I’m morbidly curious so maybe I’ll report on that too. Whether or not I can retroclone this mess is another question… I do like a challenge, though. Who knows.

[To Be Continued…?]

Big Hype x3(+1)

 So as it turns out there are currently three whole RPG Kickstarters running that I don’t just think look good, I don’t just want to back, but are - all three of them - projects I’m seriously excited for.

I’d be backing all of these right now at the highest level… if I had anywhere near that kind of spare change. At the very least I can share them and hope you get excited too.

In no particular order…

Mausritter Box Set

One of the best OSR-or-whatever games out there is getting a shiny new update. The conceit of mice doing adventure is a perfect one in my opinion, but mice or no mice, Mausritter’s rules are some of the absolute best fantasy adventure tools available right now.

This KS will also fund a bunch of new adventures written by such top-tier talent as Diogo Nogueira, Amanda Lee Franck and Nate Treme that can be run standalone or as part of a sandbox setting. And it’s a box set! You get lil cards and sheets and stuff!

This one only has a few days left, so hop on it.

The Herbalist’s Primer

This gorgeously illustrated compendium lists various real-world plants along with their uses and importance to various cultures, including any supposed mystical or mythological properties.

As a lovely little coffee table book I’d already be sold, but the Primer is also primed for use in your games, stuffed full of things like quest hooks, random tables and tools to generate your own fictional flora. There are even exactly d100 existing plants in the book!

A worthy tome for any arsenal.

Picaresque Roman

How much can one game be Specifically My Jam?

I’ve harped on many a time about the brilliant design ideas coming out of Japanese table-talk rpgs, how we need to support anyone sticking their neck out to get them translated and published overseas. And when a game has this level knockout art & production and a great premise? Deal me in.

Players are gangsters competing for underworld influence - yes, this is a PvP game. In fact it looks like it blends a lot of Japan’s favourite tabletop game features: simple rules, d6 based system, easy character creation with a lot of options, one-shot session structure… even social deduction elements. If the end result is as good as it looks - and as that soundtrack sounds - this will be something special.

You’re going to want to check this one out.

Bonus Hype…

there’s going to be a Lupin III rpg!?(?!)

This is celebrating the gang’s 50th anniversary, and the press release includes words like “sandbox” and “the same system as Star Wars d6”. I’m somewhat gobsmacked tbh.

More news in October apparently, so stay tuned.

EDIT 30 seconds after posting this: lol I forgot this one. One of the rewards is a coffin. One (1) entire coffin. Containing a fake skeleton, holding the book. Also the book looks good.

3-Part Tachyon Detainment Solution

 I came up with this idea for a Mothership module but as you might’ve guessed from the lack of posts here I’ve got a decent bit on my plate - like Journeylands! - as well as a bunch of Mothership projects already (more on all that in due time I’m sure).

Sidenote - never too busy to talk about new projects tho hire me! Graverobbersguide at g’mail dot com

Anyway I don’t feel like I can do much with this concept right now so you can have it, here:

3-Part Tachyon Detainment Solution

-        Lodestone. Monolith found in deep space. Emits a tachyon pulse once per planetary cycle which permeates normal spacetime.

-        Cuffs. Affixed to prisoners’ necks. Calibrated to the lodestone. If activated they time travel, along with the wearer, to the time and place they were in when the lodestone’s last pulse was emitted.

-        Activators. Carried by guards. Activate cuffs from range with electrical signal. Fire as pistol. A lens on the barrel records tachyon emissions and keeps record of successful activations through altered timelines.

 

Notes on Time Travel

When a cuff is hit by an activator, the wearer’s current personal timeline is aborted and their mind returns to their body as it was at 1200 local time. Travellers exist in a new, separate timeline branching from that point.

 

Events taking place after 1200 in any previous timelines no longer exist in a new timeline, though travellers retain memories. Cuffs from the same aborted timeline transport their wearers to the same new timeline.

Travellers make a Sanity save after each timeline reset vs 1d10 Stress. Players do not need to roll checks if their characters successfully performed the exact same action in a previous timeline. Running time travel can be confusing, but your game will work as long as the rules you use remain consistent.

All you’ve gotta do is write a prison break module, simples. I’m sure you’ve seen enough movies. ideas to get you started:

- This is MoSh, so it’s a private prison. Come up with a security corp that made this tech and give them a catchy slogan (I had one but uhh... spoilers)

- Pepper your prison liberally with details, give lots of points of access/opportunities - players will be attempting the escape over and over. Here’s an excellent video by Mark Brown that’ll guide you through the concepts.

- What might be in a prison? security passes, non-lethal weapons, food, cleaning chemicals, identical uniforms, contraband,

- What might be in a MoSh prison? Weird prisoners, secret alien prisoners, clunky security, sci fi contraband,

- 1d10 important locations is plenty, plus now you have a random location table if needed. That’s what i did for Ypsilon 14 (which btw Vi at Collabs Without Permission did a lovely video about here, also definitely watch their Mothership review here)

There ya go

I had this silly anime adventure idea while playing a silly anime game! 13 Sentinels was on my to-play list since release last year and I finally got the chance to get my hands on it. So just like my GM’s Oracle article was an excuse to talk about another Vanillaware game...

(Btw since then Chris McDowall of Bastionland fame has done great things with the concept, not saying he was inspired by me at all haha but check it out for sure)

So 13 Sentinels is a visual novel done as a classic V’ware hand-painted sidescroller. Also there is an RTS kinda side-mode that’s simple and... ok? The main focus though is the story - 13 of them, each with branching paths, each focused around a main character’s daily life interesecting with some sci fi weirdness. Each character also pilots a Sentinel (mech) in the RTS mode, but absolutely nothing here is presented in chronological order - so how and why and when and... what is going on??

There are two moments in good mystery stories, which i will call:

- “Omoshiroi”: Japanese for “interesting”, like how we’d say “...IN-teresting...” with a stroke of the beard. Those moments where something happens you don’t understand yet, but you understand enough for it to pique your interest. A new wrinkle. A clue?

- “Naruhodo”: means like “I see”/“Ah, gotcha!”. Revelations, pieces falling into place.

Anyway - if you can get into it, the story of 13 Sentinels has more of both these kinds of moments in each 15 minutes of gameplay than some of the best mysteries have in a whole movie, or season of TV. The narrative presentation allowed by an interactive medium is used deliciously, but it’s not overly conceptual - very standard controls and mechanics.

It’s one big concept album love letter to the last 100 years of sci fi’s greatest hits. A lot to follow, a lot to read, but if this is your thing then... yeah. Wow. This got a Game Awards nom out of the blue among a lot of AAA western titles for a reason.

Go in blind! Have fun x

(...Hmm... what video game will I find an excuse to talk about next time... :P)

Cowboy Bebop RPG

Ok 3, 2, 1

Let’s Jam

Use my Bell Peppers and Beef money mechanic.

Starting Money:

1. 0

2/3: 1

4/5: 2

6: 3, must spend at least 1.

Start with one ship, spend 1 Money on smaller sub-ships (during character creation only - normally, ships are super expensive).

Can spend into negative numbers at any time - while in negative you are in debt and must complete missions to gain a positive Money score. (Positive Money score needed for any purchase.)

Call 1 Money “a couple thousand woolongs”.

Use a base of the GRAVEROBBERS system, with the following changes:

Characters have a fifth Odd, called Fortune. Your Fortune is the number on the other side of the die fro the value of your lowest Odd.

(Optional: reroll 1d6 for a new max fortune every mission, or each time you visit a fortune teller/online mystic/etc.)

Or:

(Optional: spend 1 Fortune to make a lucky thing happen. Do not restore spent Fortune.)

Crimes are now The Past. What did you do that you can’t escape from?

1. Syndicate. Revolver, +1 Violence

2. Lowlife. Knife, +1 Will

3. Cop. Metal arm or revolver, +1 Fortitude

4. Gambler. +1 starting Money score, +1 Finesse

5. Hacker. +1 Finesse, +1 Will

6. Drifter. Always reroll Fortune and take the higher

When Luck runs out, The Past catches up with you. Roll Fortune to survive (restore Luck and reduce max Luck by 1). If max Luck = 0 or you don’t survive... You gotta carry that weight.

Prep Phases are time spent aboard ship or in ports between jobs. Job Phases see you and your crew trying to apprehend bounty heads. Structure tends to be: get a hit on a general location and go there, investigate, locate, aim to apprehend leading to fight/chase/escape/scheme/peril.

Shucks Howdy! A Bounty Generator:

Draw from a full deck, or from your Prep Deck for extra spice (replace cards after)

1. Gambler, reward 2 Money

2. Lowlife, reward 1 Money

3. Crooked Cop, reward 3 Money if word doesn’t get out

4. Hacker, reward 2 Money

5. Con Artist, reward 2 Money

6. Joyrider, reward 1 Money

7. Eco-Terrorist, reward 3 Money

8. Ex-Syndicate, reward 3 Money

9. Syndicate, reward 4 Money

10. Someone from The Past...

Hearts: You know some key info

Diamonds: +1 Money for the reward

Clubs: Their weapons/loot are fair game

Spades: You’ve got a read on their ship

J: Draw again, -1 Money

Q: Draw again, -1 Fortune (each)

K: Draw again, -1 Money for the reward

A: Draw again, +1 Money for the reward

Main ship: 6 Hull (works as Luck, 1 Money for a full repair). Odds are Endure, Evade, Escape and Engage.

Sub-ships: work off the pilot’s Odds: Finesse to manoeuvre, chase and race, Violence to attack, Will to do something stupid that just might work, Fortitude when the ship could go down (succeed and keep flying - the ship will need 1 Money for a full repair either way)

Building a GM's Oracle

The GM is arbiter and referee, making decisions on how rules are executed. We tend to call these "rulings"; some, often dismissively, call it "fiat".

(I'm saying GM because it's the familiar paradigm; this all encompasses solo or GM-less games too, the role is just shared or has new context.)

The GM also makes decisions on a fictional level. They're not just telling you to roll double damage against the orc-chief cos a die came up 20, they're also deciding how the orc-chief's untimely demise will affect the world around you.

When a player asks a question or their character does a thing, the GM must have a response, just as the players respond to the world put in front of them.

The GM's job, chiefly, is answers.

An illustration from one of the helpful diagrams in GoGoGolf
(what, did you miss last week's post? get on it!)

Human beings are brilliant at questions, but not very good at answers. We're just not that smart.

So, a GM defers. They may not have all the answers they need, but they're not expected to. They can consult their rulebook, notes, the adventure module. Some ask the players, take suggestions.
They're still making up their own mind in the end, but with these foundations the process is eased. The fact that any given decision is not all on one mind, but also guided by a set of rules and established ideas, means it's possible to make hard and fast decisions in a meaningful and effective way: just leave it to the dice.
Decisions we defer, consult for, have gravitas. We like consensus, we like The Rules, we like coming down from the mountain with a stone tablet from on high saying "this is How Things Should Work". That's why, say, mechanically enforced lethality (an HP system f'rinstace) is good. Death has weight, becomes an effective antagonist and motivator, when it is an answer given not by the human at the table, but an uncaring god.
(Of course, in this neck of the game design woods we want our stone tablets to be concise doctrine over bloated dogma - if Maze Rats is the ten commandments, something like Pathfinder is all that stuff about wearing mixed fabrics or having to pronounce your Latin right so the demons don't take your bad prayers down to Hell.)

the demons in question! called a "tutivillus".
i like how one has pants.

Deferral of decision making is not only good for rulings, but that "fictional level" stuff as well.

This is why we love a random table (if you don't yet, try starting here). It's like a horoscope or tarot reading; no higher power truly exists, but when we play pretend at deferring to some greater wisdom, we find said wisdom in our own imagination. The power was inside you all along ya dingus.
So, to wit: the game is the people, the mechanics are an Oracle, random tables are horoscopes and Maze Rats is a damn good game.
(Further reading: Luka elaborating on the dice as an Oracle.)
With all that in mind...

Let's make a GM's Oracle. Basically, a randomiser to consult for inspiration. (I'm not coining the term or idea btw, just going through my own process. Ironsworn is just one game that already does this with random tables; the new Skyjacks podcast from Campaign uses Illimat cards in a similar way.)

First off, we need some raw materials for the random generation. Dice are classic, tarot would be a fun gimmick - but hey, any opportunity to use something really weird instead, right?
So I recently got Dragon's Crown on PS4... (Yes, this is the bit of the recipe blog where I tell you all about my travels and how I fell in love with food; skip to the next image break if you want.)
The fancy Special Deluxe Collector's Edition was going cheap and it comes with seven cards, these royal-card-meets-tarot-looking dealies that are kinda cute. There's one for each of the game's archetypes, plus a "common" card.
Also, me and my partner have been listening to the audiobooks of His Dark Materials, and if you haven't read them, oracles are a biiiiig thing in the trilogy. There's a cool steampunk ouija/tarot pocket watch, and it's got a bunch of symbols like the Major Arcana, but this is fantasyland so they're all like The Beehive and The Anchor and The Chameleon. I love that kinda bullshit.
I'd tried to make an Oracle before using the royals from a playing card deck, worked OK but I wasn't super into it and it got shelved. Not weird enough for me probably.
Now that I have these funky lil game cards though... It's on.

So basically I'm making up a fortune telling system using these weird video game merch cards.
This is the heart of RPGs for me. That LEGO-set feeling of taking raw mechanics and ideas, tools from whatever I have to hand, and repurposing things to my own ends for the joy of not only the creation process but a playable end result.
Playable how? The crux of it is a bit like that mood board we did last month, in a roundabout way - deferring creative decision making. I'll be assigning meaning to these cards as if they were constellations or entrails, then constructing gameable systems of procedural idea generation.
OK enough preamble, I'm just gonna do it. You'll get the idea.
Hopefully this'll make you want to make your own GM's Oracle! If you want to use the one I made but don't have these cards, take seven ordinary face cards and, if they're symmetrical, mark one side so you can tell which is the inverse.

First off let's consider some higher-level meanings for each card. All the Major Arcana, for instance, have broad connotations about different Big Concepts - facets of the world, the soul, human nature, love, life and death - and between them they sort of cover all the bases.

Our cards don't come with any attached meanings, but their names and images are archetypal enough that they can evoke certain themes or ideas, which is a good place to start for making up our own connotations. Think broad and general.

Now's also a great time to introduce the coolest aspect of this process - the in-universality (or "thematic resonance" if you wanna get nasty) that you can incorporate into your oracle.

Take for example our Elf card. When considering meanings the first idea that might come up is probably "nature". A bit more thinking and stretching of the imagination may yield "age" or "beauty", because of the LotR/D&D default elf that is our modern cultural archetype.

But! Consider your world, your game - what is an elf to those people? What is an elf, in its essence, in your mythology and across your various cultures? This can yield meanings you wouldn't've thought of otherwise.

And! This can be a great way to decide what an "elf", as a concept, means in your game. It's almost a worldbuilding exercise. Throw in a random meaning - "reflections" or "fire" or "bad weather" - and then think backwards to work out why your world associates that meaning with The Elf.

And I'm not just talking about how your in-game cultures think about things. Remember that gods and fortunes and all that are immutable truths, as real to a fantasyland as the laws of physics - the associations your cards make are facets of reality on a cosmic level. Each of my cards could be one of the gods, f'rinstance.

Pick obscure meanings, or ones that don't make sense at first or contradict one another. Not too many of these; reading your oracle still has to be intuitive, not an exercise in "hmm, hang on, which of these did I say means "disaster" again...?". But mixing things up at this early stage, throwing in your silliest ideas or your most weirdly specific connections, will imbue uniqueness into your Oracle and your world. (Also: separating similar concepts across different cards calls their subtle contrasts into focus.)

Nobody else will make associations between ideas in the exact same way you do - that is your advantage, in this as in all things.

Here are the "high-level" meanings I came up with for my set of seven cards. If you have more, these concepts might get more specific or more spread out.

I didn't have a world in mind when I started this, so I built ideas out of the cards and their art rather than matching them to existing notions - although I did lean into the base worldbuilding assumptions I tend to use in my D&D games, so this should mesh ok with any other fantasy content on my blog if you want to use it in parallel.

Each card has a different face depending on which way up you turn it, so I gave them all "inverted" meanings, kinda like in tarot. As long as I remember which face I chose to be the inverted one I'm peachy.

Amazon: Challenge, honour, sex, summer. Inverted: Passion, wrath, instinct, the 6th day. Common: Luck, change, death, autumn. Inverted: Greed, omens, spirits, the 7th day. Dwarf: Plenty, art, discipline, patience. Inverted: Gluttony, masculinity, jealousy, the 1st day. Elf: Nature, water, defiance, spring. Inverted: Time, sloth, loneliness, the 2nd day. Fighter: Family, humanity, past, fire. Inverted: Recklessness, wrath, lust, the 3rd day. Sorceress: Magic, femininity, community, love Inverted: Illusion, envy, apathy, the 4th day. Wizard: Knowledge, travel, winter, discovery. Inverted: Hubris, teaching, future, the 5th day.

These aren't set in stone, and this isn't the stuff we're actually going to be using most of the time, but it helps to have these general concepts sketched out in your mind.

You'll notice parallels within mine, like how each has a connotation with a particular Deadly Sin. This is good and can make the later steps easier. Since there are seven I also gave each one a day of the week, which I dunno, might be useful for something. Clearly what day it is has some cosmic or magical importance in my setting; I'll decide what later.

It's perhaps important to note these Big Ideas should never be a constraint, and you can always extrapolate to get more concepts - entries for masculinity and femininity doesn't mean androgyny isn't a concept in this world, just that it straddles those two cards.

There are also no judgement values here; Gluttony sits alongside Masculinity because the Dwarf represents both, not necessarily because they're linked to each other, and most of these concepts are meant to be read as ambiguous rather than inherently good or bad. Likewise, the "inverted" side of a card is not the "evil" version.

Look, just... just study tarot and steal ideas tbh.

Mainly just for fun, at this point I'm going to play fortune-teller and make up a way to do a reading. I don't tend to do prophecies and fortunes and things in D&D games because what even is fate in a game where you roll a 20-sided die for the outcome of any important event, but this is an exercise to help me think about my oracle so far and get in the zone.

Let's say a fortune is 3 cards - what will happen, what change it will bring, and what can be done.

I draw... Amazon Inverted, Fighter Inverted, and Sorceress.

Now just do some improv or bullshitting or storytelling or whatever your preferred term is. Hmm... looks like following my instincts will lead to recklessness, and the solution is to remain apathetic? Or perhaps my passions will incite lust, but someone involved will become envious?

Ha! it already sounds like the right kind of bullshit. Love it.

Ok, a more gameable version - my players are headed into some woods and I have no ideas for what might be there! Let's draw two cards to spark inspiration.

I draw... Elf Inverted and Amazon Inverted.

That's enough inspo for an encounter, right? Maybe a wandering knight, lost in the fey wood, has become mad with loneliness and accosts the party?

Or let's take the Time and Instinct meanings - if the player wait too long in one place here, they'll become like animals, slowly transforming (that's gameable too - many a PC would risk it trying to hang around for just long enough to get some cool beast ability.)

Ok, we're getting somewhere.

But it's not gameable enough yet! Having a wishy-washy mood board for ideas is all well and good, but at the table I want results, dammit!

Let's get results - random table results.

Make some random tables - the kind you would in any game. If you like making tables for strangers encountered on the road, do one of those. If you need a wandering monster table for a dungeon, do that. Festivals happening in town, quest generators, weather tables, NPC name lists, whatever.

The only difference - and this is the cool bit of this whole idea, not whatever I said was the cool bit before - is that each entry will be thematically linked to the oracle. We're not rolling dice for numbers, we're drawing cards, and now that we've decided these cards mean things, we can tailor our entries to those meanings.

This a) makes it easier to fill in your tables in the first place, b) ensures each has a variety of disparate entries, and c) links every aspect of your world back to its core themes and concepts. If every draw on a random table could be the Sorceress, that means every randomly determined thing in your world has a chance of pertaining to, say, magic or illusion or femininity. This solidifies these as themes inherent to your game.

You can do single entries, or tables that cross-reference different card combos. The inverted thing also means I can do tables with either 7 or 14 entries, which I like. (Ooh... I could run an OSR game where each card is a character class... hmm...)

Anyway, let's try all this theory out in practice! Here's an example table (again, worldbuilding on the fly, here. It's the only way to go.)

Encounters in the Woods
Amazon: A fey prince, furious at your trespass in his grove, challenges one of you to a contest (whoever most looks like a leader). He is feeble but sly; win and the fairy maid reluctantly betrothed to him will, blushing, request you take her favour (be careful - love and the fey realm a potent mix).
Common: This tree grows chattering skulls like fruit. Each was a warrior who fell here and now repeatedly whispers their life's last words - only one had her wits about her at the moment she fell, and tells the way to some treasure in a nearby bathhouse.
Dwarf: Goblin-men have set up something resembling a gallery, taking turns to display useless trinkets and appraise them through stolen monocles, nodding sagely. They are angry at your approach, unless you act like their art has some value to you. They will trade for fruit, of which they already have much (beware the fruits of goblin-men).
Elf: A gang of elf-children live in a tree, recalcitrant squatters disobeying the fat local fairy lord, whose obsession with cultivating and expanding his lush garden is upsetting the woods' wild heart. (Elf-children are not young elves, as elves are all full-grown; they are actually a type of fairy.)
Fighter: A human youth, troubled deeply behind his wan but handsome features, has fled to live in these woods but is unable to cope and close to starving. He does not wish to go through with the wedding his rich father has arranged.
Sorceress: A witch lives here, they say. Disturb her dawn walks as she sings to the plants, or interrupt her dancing naked beneath a full moon, and she will enact a quick, cold sentence upon you - death, or perhaps transforming you into a toad if she's feeling playful. However, knock on her cabin door while she is home and she welcomes you to stay and rest. Or, enter the cabin while she is away - there are many odd things to steal.
Wizard: Travelling your way is a wizened old hermit with only an owl for company. Ask him to join you, show him kindness and give him time to grow comfortable, and he will divulge that the owl is really a transformed monarch from a strange land. He is on a quest for the spell that will restore his companion's form - or perhaps he is a madman with an owl.

I like the feel that's emerging, classic D&D with a kinda gonzo-Arthurian meets Angela Carter does Grimm-ness to it.

And that's what, under 10 minutes' work for 7 whole quests? And it'll only get easier the more you use your oracle over time; fleshing out more and more gameable content for your campaign, keeping it all thematically linked and havin' fun doin' it.

Try it out! Any other ideas on how to make or use one? Try those out too!

Sidebar - Dragon's Crown is fun so far. I know I'm not a video game blog but it's pretty OSR actually (there's even xp for treasure!) so I thought I'd share my thoughts.
If you'll recall, Japanese fantasy owes its lifeblood to D&D, and the lineage here is something like: D&D > Wizardry! > Dragon Quest > Fantasy hits Japan > D&D books reillustrated for Japanese market to ape Toriyama's style > D&D arcade games from Japan like Shadows Over Mystara use said style > this game is a tribute to those games. OSR af.
Anyway, it's got a cool art style, almost Frank Frazetta meets Kinu Nishimura - two of my fave art icons so I'm a happy duck. Everything is hand drawn, 2d graphics on parallax planes like intricate cardboard cutouts - it's all v v stylish.

The characters are fun, hyperstylised fantasy tropes; I've tried and enjoyed playing both the beginner-level Fighter with his wardrobe-wide shoulders, and the more complex playstyle of the willowy goth-boy Wizard, while my partner gravitated toward the Amazon's chainmail bikini and thunderous thighs. Each uses a fairly simple control scheme, similar but different enough to the others to feel fresh.

Gameplay is very much like those old arcade beat-em-ups but also an RPG kind of. It's got drop in co-op both online and off - I love couch co op options! My feeble wizard can better hold his own when he's got an Amazon taking the front lines (there are NPC allies too, but that system works a little differently).

Negatives: - All the hallmarks that make this a solid arcade game could be seen as negatives if that's not what you're looking for - this game makes no bones about what it is, like it or lump it. - Although its sexualised aspects are mostly fun and campy, and there are cool female characters with agency, things still feel quite, uh, old-fashioned. - The translation is largely fine but has moments that really needed proofreading - although the patchiness makes it almost more endearing?

Worth a look!

Cool concept art, right?
Except this is the *in-game character select screen*.
This game is gorgeous.