Crescendo: The Journey

I will always maintain that the journey is the most important part of a fantasy story because it’s the way the reader gets to know the setting. Immersion is king in fantasy, and what gets you immersed better than seeing the countryside and how it operates? I’d put a journey mechanic above just about everything else in a fantasy, and that arguably includes even a basic resolution mechanic!

So yes, Crescendo has a Journey mechanic. But in order to understand why it works so well we have to cover several unique mechanics in Crescendo and how the Journey utilizes them. 

First off there’s the Locale. A Locale is a discrete chunk of the setting. Some power dynamics and the basic concept of the place are part of a Locale, but the most important part of the Locale is its History: the significant events that have happened there.

And then there’s the journaling: everyone in a game of Crescendo has a journal they are responsible for. There’s various prompts for writing in it, and there’s times you’re expected to reference it: open to a page you know has writing, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. You read that aloud. So does everyone else. The GM then assembles the prompts into whatever he needs for that moment. Others can make you write their actions into your journal, and there’s a bunch of mechanics where lore is made up and then written in too.

The next piece of the puzzle is The Black Swan. A Black Swan looks like a twist, but is really someone else’s story coming out of the blue and smacking into yours; you get a chance to change the Black Swan, in an intense series of rolls that can truly change things, forever. Black Swans are always based off the History of the Locale you’re in, and are generated by Hitting the Books. So basically the world butts its head in on your situation and you have to respond or lose something of yours. It’s an intense mechanic. And most of the time it can be avoided.

Excerpt during journeys. Then that crap finds you. A lot. And all you can really do is navigate it the best you can.

What comes out isn’t a series of random encounters, but an organic evolution of the setting. Because the events generated are from the journals y’all have put so much into the Black Swans are always an evolution of what came before. It feels like there are multiple stories happenings around you that you’re only JUST privy to. The world feels alive, like it has its own purpose… which you just interrupted. And, since the journals get updated with these events, it means they’ll come back, and almost never where and when you expect them to. This takes a tremendous amount of work off the GM’s shoulders, allowing him to find out what happens at the same time the players do!

Crescendo has a unique Journey mechanic. It allows the stories of the word to really come to the forefront, impacting the players’ characters in unexpected ways… which then makes the story richer. All without having to occupy the GM’s brain. Because of how coherent the journals make twists it’s east for the GM to generate situations that not only challenge the players, but do so in a way that makes the world feel alive.

Son of Dathomir

The Clone Wars show was MASSIVE. From what I understand there were many more seasons beyond the seven that we got, with even some going into rough animatic form. Other stories, like Dark Disciple, were made into novels. The transformation of Darth Maul was made into a comic book, with an eye for the trades. It’s set between Maul’s capture by Palpatine and his reemergence in season seven of The Clone Wars. On the one hand I’m delighted by the story, which is excellent. On the other I’m peeved by the format and the fact that I incredibly important elements of lore were relegated to this comic… which I only recently discovered.

The story begins almost immediately after Maul was captured by Palpatine. Maul’s association of Mandalorians break out Maul easily… too easily. And Maul knows it. Instead of hiding he decides to take the fight to Palpatine immediately. It’s a game of cat and mouse where Maul thinks he’s the cat.

He’s not.

I love how Star Wars treats the problem of competing inner and cultural narratives. 

It’s strange coming to this comic post-TROS. Palpatine’s plan for immortality reads back into this book PERFECTLY. This book, along with the slaughter of the Nightsisters, forms a key part of the lore that made TROS inevitable. I get tired of the idiocy against that movie, and this book just makes that irritation all the stronger. I won’t go further into it than that, because I think folks should read the comic… but at least to me this link is incredibly clear.

Given how little I hear about Son of Dathomir, I’m surprised by not just its quality but importance to the lore of Star Wars. Maul makes a compelling journey, the plot is tight, and Sidious just becomes that much more of an asshole. And that can only benefit the story.

The Book of the Short Sun: Second Go

 

Reading Book of the Short Sun for me is like being talked out of suicide. There’s always this jolt, and then this burning resentment: what if I wanted to die, Gene Wolfe??? What business is it of yours if I live? How dare you talk me out of the only action that makes sense? At the beginning of my RPG Crescendo I had written the following dedication to Gene Wolfe:

In eternal memory of Gene: 

I’m still a coward. 

This is the best I can do, for now. 

I know you’d understand.

A few friends of mine have quibbled with me over this dedication. They don’t see me as a coward! Not at all! No, they see the horrors I’ve survived and assume courage got me through them. They don’t see that a part of me still hasn’t made up its mind. It stands on the ledge, it still holds the knife at my thigh, the gun is in its mouth, and it cannot make up its mind. It’s too afraid to jump, to cut and bleed out, to blow its brains out… but the alternative scares it just as much. I’ve seen much in my life, why would I try and live through more? How could I be so crazy??? Why the hell make such a choice? So here I sit. Not making up my mind. I am the worst coward of them all. And it wasn’t until Short Sun that I knew it. I could practically hear Wolfe chuckling from beyond the grave, as step by wretched step he showed me my true colors. 

Book of the Short Sun takes place decades after Book of the Long Sun. Without Silk’s leadership the new colonists of Blue and Green, as well as those still aboard the colonizing worldship called the Whorl, have stagnated. Devolved into war and barbarism. The blood-drinking inhumi treat the new inhabitants like livestock. Horn, Silk’s closest student, resolves to find Silk and bring him back to save everyone from moral and physical death.

It is the saddest book I’ve ever read. It is also the only book that made me cry harder on a reread. I don’t mean pretty little tears; I howled as something in me finally died, gently and quietly. There’s a complexity to rereading Short Sun that I’ve not found in the rest of the Solar Cycle. I’m not saying that there isn’t complexity in the others, but for my money so far Short Sun’s layers have made the reread more tragic than anything I’ve ever read. Horn and Silk are both on the ledge, they both have a knife to the thigh, the gun’s ready to go… and so they’re kind. Almost as a matter of course: a dying man wants his last acts to be something he can live with in those last few moments, after all. And everyone mistakes it for courage. For normative kindness. Horn and Silk know the truth of course, you can’t convince someone whose soul you just accidentally saved that the only reason you were any good at all was because you knew exactly how they felt. 

You were only a step behind them is all, and not because you were later in your decision.

There are more than a few who do not see Book of the Short Sun as properly part of The Solar Cycle, but instead choose to see it as this retcon that has little to do with its supposedly finer entries, Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun. After the second reading I not only declare that manifestly and obviously wrong, but I ask those who disagree a question: who are Tzadkiel and where does his ship come from? Not to mention Father Inire?

Short Sun actually answers those questions, whether you like it or not.

I will leave you with yet another biographical note. Once not so long ago that undecided part of me was about to make up its mind. Again. I could not argue; the decision was made. I was so worn out. I begged for mercy. I’d not come so far and fought so hard to lose here! But it was no use. I could feel my body go cold. It was over.

I was, in my mind’s eye, suddenly holding a young woman’s face in my hands, which tingled with her tears. I found myself saying over and over “Hold the course. Just hold the course”. Her streaming eyes widened and she whispered “It’s YOU”. I’ve prayed for this girl ever since. The part of me that hasn’t made up its mind now has something to do. And so it does it. I don’t know why that’s enough for now. But I’m not going to argue.

A few weeks later my long estranged Mei-Mei, the first woman I ever loved fully platonically, died. I was devastated; we’d had a nasty falling out and had never really been reconciled. I also happened to be on a med that had the side effect of making managing emotions practically impossible. So that made for a uniquely hellish cocktail. I went into a grocery store, praying for Mei-Mei.Choking back tears I could normally handle…  but with the drugs? No way in Hell.

Hello. I’m scared.

I stopped. Dead in my tracks. The female voice that reverberated in my skull was just shy of audible. And familiar.

I’m scared, she said. 

“Not on my account,” I whispered. 

There was a sigh of relief. And I was alone with the water, pumping shoulders, and the raggedy gasps of someone who knows he will have to see his friend at another time. A very long time.

The next day one of my best friends seemed on the verge of giving up on himself. I don’t know how true that was, given how addled I was by grief and the side effects of the drug. So I put my foot down. I stamped. I may have screamed at my friend. By the end of it he was only getting more and more angry and something inside of me began to wear out. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, give up. The conversation ended and I was convinced I hadn’t just failed, but had made it worse.

The next morning I found myself hardly able to move. I could feel my soul had had enough. I was so weary as I sat in the bathroom I was genuinely afraid I was going to die. My body felt wearier and wearier, the type of tired I couldn’t possibly feel upon waking up more than a few minutes ago. I found myself lying on the cold tile. I couldn’t not close my eyes. I couldn’t hold the dark away with my eyelids , not anymore.

No, something said. It was firm, but gentle. No. You stuck it out with your friend. You don’t die today. You have so much more to do yet.

And I was back with that strange black-haired girl, holding her face as she wept. “Hold the course” I heard myself say. And I knew then the words weren’t just for her. Somehow I’d spoken those words to myself too. And that past hers could hear it too 

Life coursed back into my veins like an electric blanket someone had just turned on. I could move again, somehow. So I got up and moved about my day. I made it to the end of the day and collapsed into my bed, and passed out immediately. The little death is such a mercy, is it not?

If you think that has nothing to do with this masterpiece of a book you’ve either not read Short Sun (which, while sad, is forgivable) or you have and quite possibly thought Green is Luna, Urth's moon, a bunch of years in the future. Or that the Neighbors are just aliens.

Neither of which is true.

I changed the dedication to Gene in Crescendo. Here’s what it says now:

In memory of Gene: 

I couldn’t remember.

Try as I might, I couldn’t do it 

So I sat in the dark.

I’d not seen light in so long. 

But I heard you.

You reminded me I was not a creature of light. But I could be, once again.

I could return.

And so now I wander, stumbling through it all. I do not do so without hope.

I will see you someday, at the Gate, where Eve awaits all her children. Adam will be just beyond, beckoning.

I’ll be holding this.

How to GM: Complicated Morality

This post won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay. Not everyone wants a game where morality gets murky and complicated, where the least worst option is hard to figure out. But some of us really like that stuff. I’m one of them. I’ve been doing it for years. Here’s how I create situations where the players look at each other and throw up their hands, because good decisions simply aren’t possible.

First off, we have to establish a baseline of what’s necessary in your setting. There are basic needs that individuals have: meaning, relationships, food, a home. Those aren’t in a particular order because each person is different, and will prioritize their needs differently. But without meaning, relationships, food, and a home individuals suffer, and may even die. 

Societies have different, but related, needs: mythology (a common story, includes culture), stability, resources, and leadership. Without societies possessing these four things individuals will suffer and die, even if their own needs are met. These are not “nice things to have”, but essentials. You can’t not have these. At least one of these societal needs are at the center of any conflict I make. In fact I usually like to threaten three of the four, but almost never with people. Droughts, plagues, post-war, natural disasters, big monsters like Godzilla, can put the setting off-balance in a way that removes an obvious bad guy. You can’t punch a plague. Nor can you find an obvious solution to the wreckage of a post-war economy.

At this point you don’t need obvious bad guys. You really don’t need bad guys! You just need sincere people who are trying to fix a problem in a way that your players find objectionable. You can’t play the guy as a bad guy. That might cheapen the conflict. Instead, make it something that the NPC himself may find reprehensible, but necessary. Most importantly? You may be able to change the NPC’s mind. In one of my playtest games of Crescendo one of the NPCs took over the hub town, killing anyone who stood in his way. The players wanted to stop him, but the town was already embroiled in a riot (which the players had a hand in starting, however accidentally) and the current leadership was incompetent to the point of criminality. This particular NPC, Keliva, had shown himself to be a somewhat noble and competent, if dangerous, individual. The players knew Keliva could calm down the riot they had started. They had watched Keliva lead people more than competently before, so they trusted that he could turn it around…if they helped him negotiate with their own friends, who were fighting Keliva tooth and nail. Doing so would reduce the casualties. And it had already been established that the players’ friends weren’t half as competent at ruling as Keliva. So they held their noses and betrayed their own friends and family for the sake of the city. The people regarded them as heroes. But the players had lost the respect of the people they cared for most. But at least their former friends were alive! That was something! Right?

That wince? 

Where you can see why the players came to their decision but man it was ugly? 

That’s the point. 

There is no good answer to that situation, just the answer you hate the least. If that situation was handed to someone else they’d have come to a completely different solution. Maybe the way a group comes to power is so important to you you’d rather let the town burn, helping to sort out the wreckage later. Or maybe you would try to take over yourself. Or maybe you’d shake your head in disgust and walk away. None of those answers are good. Someone’s going to get hurt, and badly. You will be responsible. But you can’t not make a choice! You have to ask “What do I really value most? Really”

And then you make sure the consequences of the players’ hit home. How does the setting react? People are generally happy with any regime, so long as their individual and societal needs are met, or if there are enough bread and circuses to distract them. But there will always be some idealists out there, who demand these needs are met in a way they think legit. How do they counter and criticize the players’ decisions? I do not suggest you have the NPCs ignore individual and societal needs. Not only does that make them harder to deal with, but practically speaking they can’t get a mass movement out of their efforts if the mass’s basic needs aren’t met or “medicated” away.

If you’ve done your job right there’s one question your situations come down to: what do the players value the most? What’s the one thing they’re willing to sacrifice everything for? 

And what if it changes? Y’know midway through?

Well, I mean, what more could a GM ask for?

Hunter Ninja Bear: Provenance

Okay look folks the name ain’t rocket science. Hunter. Ninja. Bear. It’s a thoroughly ridiculous concept. It’s PERFECT. What’s in the 360 page book far exceeded my expectations, giving a gripping tale about taboos, spirituality, and vengeance.

And it all begins with something that seems totally ridiculous on its face:

This tale offers a fair warning from the people past, built upon these simple rules:

Hunter beats bear

Ninja beats hunter

Bear beats ninja

To understand the hunter is to witness true love slaughtered and brothers brutally slain.

To fully understand the ninja is to watch a legacy of honor systematically destroyed and shamed.

To fully understand the bear is to hear the primal scream’s last breath, choking on its own blood.

My first thought was "Dixon, lay off whatever you're smoking. I just want to see hunters, ninjas, and bears kill each other, not whatever this nonsese is". Not gonna lie, that really puzzled me. I mean that’s practically incomprehensible. What in the hell was Dixon talking about, and why would he put it at the beginning of a story so manifestly ridiculous??? And to be clear, I still roll my eyes at the title. Yeah, I’m a grouch. Sue me.

Put a pin that a moment, willya?

The set up’s simple: a group of Japanese villagers defile a shrine to a bear spirit. Bears appear out of nowhere and slaughter the village… except for one ninja, who swears an oath of vengeance to a god. He then leaves to recruit a team to help him take down the monstrous bears.

Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but Hunter Ninja Bear takes the premise straight and MAKES you do it too. The bears are terrifying forces of nature, and I lost all sympathy for them almost immediately. I’d hesitate to call the bears evil, but they sure are a legit threat. I never thought I’d be happy to see bear cubs die, but man, this book REALLY pushes the menace hard. Children and women are torn apart on the page. It’s grim.

Yes, there’s another G word I could have used.

If you didn’t chuckle sit with it a minute. 

The backdrop is the era of the Gold Rush. Americans are flocking west in hopes of a quick buck. Japan is modernizing. Chinese are flocking to California. The mythic may still be real… but hardly anyone cares anymore. Thematically there’s a lot of grieving over the creeping loss of spirit in the world. Not necessarily a nostalgia, but an admission that modernizing didn’t fix any of humanity’s problems. Obviously this isn’t a foremost quality of the work, but this low-key grief is part of what makes the story work! Chuck Dixon finds his moments as often as he can and I think he gets the balance between brooding and bloody just right. I’ll be reverse engineering Dixon’s methods into my games, cause they really work!

All that’s well and good, but this sorta story lives and dies because of the characters; if they don’t take the premise seriously there’s absolutely no reason for the reader to. And on this front Hunter Ninja Bear absolutely delivers. All the stakes are personal, intimate. Every last panel is used to economical effect, always commenting on the characters at play. Dixon is a master at his craft, and the characters is where he shines the brightest. I really don’t want to spoil it for you: Dixon really does a phenomenal job, particularly with Little Heart, who could have been done wrong really easily.

And how could anyone ignore the art??? It’s gorgeous! The coloring doesn’t feel tacked on here, like it does to me in a lot of comics, but was made with color truly in mind. The page composition flows really nicely; I never once got lost, and all my squint tests revealed good storytelling. It’s not Eisner, by any stretch, but it gets the job done and well. I didn't get lost and it's pretty. 

I’m spending my penultimate paragraph to write more about that weird spiel Dixon put at the front of this book. The rest of this review has attempted to indicate that Dixon lives up to the front page. I’ve been letting that page sit with me awhile now, and it keeps making me come back to this comic to see where I can find more of it. Dixon’s discussion on grief not being solved by “progress” has left me with a lot to think on about pre-modern concepts of morality and religion. One cannot cut out the brutality of the world, merely misplace and lie about it. And that’s it. 

I originally backed this comic because of Dixon’s name and the cheap price: 30 bucks for 12 issues is a steal these days! I got a lot more than that. Yeah I got ridiculously awesome battles and gore, but I got the things that make that sorta thing actually great: theme, characters, and story. I’ve no idea when volume two is coming out, but I am definitely watching for it, as well as Fenom Comics, just in general. If this is representative of their work in general I am so in.

A Post-Modern Catechism: Christianity is Nihilism Done Right

 

John 9:2:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.  

In a previous post I had made the statement that nihilism is the proper attitude of any true Christian. I didn't say this ironically, and I mean it all the way down. A friend of mine read the post and said "Um, WUT". This is my defense of my statement. Because yes, I really do mean it.

The definition of nihilism that I hold is best stated by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. 

If there is anything that sums up my view of the world, it's the above. There's only one way to the universe, and that's down, to dissolution. Progress is disintegration, the utter ruin that is the end. What most view as a bad end and unfortunate I view as the inevitable death and destruction of all things. If everything falls apart then falling apart is not a bug, it's a feature. You cannot escape, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying, to themselves first of all. There is an inherent hollowness to the world and to ourselves that most would have you believe is this unfortunate thing that must be fought. The prevailing philosophy of any age is a noble lie, designed to prevent you from realizing that you never truly communicate anyone to anything in this world, ever, and that this world is not just worse than shit, it's a trap to make that makes you think it matters.

Funny, that sounds familiar.

Oh yeah, the Book of Ecclesiastes, which rips apart everything in the world with a sorrow one would call crazed if not for the utter sobriety of the author. 

Ecclesiastes 1:2 

A shadow’s shadow, he tells us, a shadow’s shadow; a world of shadows!

Shadow as in trick, shadow as in deception, shadow as in it'll be gone in a second. Qoheleth the author spends the rest of the book taking each and every little thing that we think of as having worth and destroys it. Wisdom, power, money, kindness, goodness, evil, everything is worthless. Well, except for God, but we'll get there.

But this is a post-modern catechism: none of you give a flying fuck about what the Bible says and we all know it. You want to know what the experience of the writer, in this case me, is. And I have seen much that proves that Ecclesiastes is a gentle letdown of a book. I have watched every single possible relationship in my life has been defiled, sometimes (a lot) by mine own hand. The notion that there is something invincibly sacred is a bad joke, and if you deny that simple fact of the universe that's your mental illness talking, not mine. The void will get us all.

Yes, you.

Deny it if you like.

Run.

Be a coward, which is an all an optimist is: gibbering cowardice against a universe that genuinely doesn't give two shits about you.

I don't care. You will succumb, and may be doing it right this minute for all I know. Go ahead, tell me that somehow you will find a way to defeat the rot in your soul. Go ahead. Say it louder, damnit! Try and make yourself believe it! Lie lie lie, whatever you gotta do to ignore the truth for another five minutes so you don't have a mental breakdown. Go ahead. It's encoded in your very DNA, to fight and scratch and lie and cheat and whatever you have to, just for another five stolen minutes of not having to face the empty hole that is your soul. If you think it'll help go ahead. Fight. Believe that somehow my nihilism is "pessimism", that simply believing that you will conquer the downward pull will make it so.

Go ahead.

But I'll never believe you.

And you don't either. You shouldn't.

Here's the thing that keeps tripping me up, though. Every time I have collapsed, every time I have fallen apart and watched as the illusion that is my soul begins to ebb out of body, as I feel the relief of knowing that i am nothing and to nothing I will go back, if I just had a bit more courage, I keep running into this... presence. I don't know what else to call it. It's this calm, beautiful, thing, that's solid in a way that I am not. People run into this thing and lie to themselves, saying it's their true self.

You don't have a true self.

You don't have anything at all. You're a trick of the light.

You are nothing.

So whatever it is, it's not me. It just isn't. And then, as I realize that whatever nothing I am is resting on this... whatever it is, it talks. It's this small gentle voice that hurts to hear; when It talks it rocks the very core of whatever is left of me. I am utterly helpless, because It is real and I. Am. Not. And whatever this thing is It cradles the broken pieces and puts them back together, just as I had them. It won't change anything, because I had things a certain way that I like, and it's not my fault that that configuration of shadows hurts, because that's all shadows can do: hurt. And It comforts me as the convulsions take over my body, which stores the falsities of being something deep in the infinite lie that is my DNA.

I have no idea what to make of the above. Whatever that Thing is, It's real, and to say otherwise is a lie only because It exists to give any credence to falsity at all. Without It lies are not possible because there would be no truth, no nothing even. Even nothing is something to It. 

Now, from what I can tell, the Christians have a word for this Something: God. The Thing that always exists. And actual pre-modern Christians teach that everything else rots and burns. All of it. There's no exception. It all goes the way of the dodo folks. And it's very simple to check this: if you've ever experienced what I have, all you have to do is go read the Old Testament and see all the spots where God talks about Himself: when people ask Him Who He is, He responds that He is the Existing One.

The Bible is a collection of books about people who bumped into this thing, and had to write the experience down somehow. That's it. It comes out of the encounter of nothing with Something.

I don't know how else to put it.

Shadows need a light source. They need sunlight. Shadows are only cold if there's a warmth. And don't tell me the garbage that darkness can exist without light, and cold without heat. Absolute zero is a physical impossibility. 

So, like, that's your opinion, man.

Fixing XP

 

Milestones, where the GM tells you that you level because you met some goal, are the absolute worst way to level up a character. The. Worst. Basically it's whenever the GM feels like giving you a level for doing whatever nonsense he came up with. It takes the already-bad trend of GMs throttling the life out of their players and amps it up to eleven. "Trad", where the GM has total control, needs to be eliminated, not further entrenched. 

The problem is that XP is normally implemented so poorly that it makes more sense to hand the GM leveling power. XP isn't really anything, it's just numbers on a sheet. There's no context to XP, there's nothing you do except get it. Anything is better than milestones, but XP usually isn't. So how do we fix it?

Those who know Dark Souls are laughing, because I didn't exactly bury the lead here, didn't I?

Dark Souls is certainly on the right track: XP becomes a resource: you use it as currency, you lose it if you die and have to get it back, and it requires actually being at a bonfire to spend to level up. You also can farm XP, deliberately going to places where you know you can get a lot of XP relatively easily, kill everything in sight, and then go back to the bonfire, reset the area, and farm some more. You can manipulate XP gain. Mechanically and setting-wise it's an object, part of the game in all senses.

The OSR keeps the old ways, even if they're imperfect: gold brought back to town is XP. It's not perfect because XP is still just this random abstract object, but the way you get it is by playing the game in an objective way, outside of GM fiat. How you get that gold which gets you the XP is totally up to you, so long as you get it. And this creates a really cool loop of players picking their own goals, going out in the world, and getting their gold how they want to. The GM preps the sites and the players go where they want, doing what they want. At that point so much player stuff is going on that nobody cares if XP is an abstract object, with no actual game relevance beyond marking what you've done so far. If anything the XP then serves as a marker, as a "YES WE DID IT!" sorta an object.

But I think more can be done with it. Here's two ways I mess with XP.

So in Crescendo I use XP as a resource. You get it by various actions and yes, you spend it on stats and skills and whatnot... but you can also use it as currency, and to bypass certain challenges in the game system. Basically it's used to get around certain things I don't think Crescendo to get around. And, since it's not used as a static number to level, you don't really have to care whether or not you spend it. You have it. You do what you like with it. It's a resource, not a tracker.

There's another game I'm kinda working on, Once More!, where XP is gained for each and every HP regained; you're rewarded for getting roughed up. Now, you can spend XP or burn HP to improve your rolls at any time. Given that you get XP for regaining HP, you'd probably opt for one or the other... until you hit a threshold of XP; I'm thinking it should be the character's current max HP. When you do, you must get your XP back down to 0... which means spending it to augment rolls. And then you level up. The problem is that if you roll too high you run the risk of creating unexpected trouble in the setting. This little trick puts the player in an environment where getting in trouble isn't just inevitable, it's necessary. You get this awesome romp, where your character is super powerful and just breaking everything in your way, while setting up for the next arc.

Milestones are bad. XP  can be a good way to provide an objective measurement of progress, but it can be so much more! Dark Souls already paved the way on that, showing that XP can be a general all-around resource. I've been experimenting with a few ways that XP can be used as resource, and am definitely looking to do more! If you've seen some innovative ways to handle XP let me know!

But not milestones.

Milestones very bad.

Spider-Man: Reign

Many think of giving up as a choice. Life gets hard and people make this decision that enough is enough. And then somehow they keep deciding that they’re done. It’s the same line of reasoning you see with Luke in The Last Jedi. Something happened and he made a decision to just screw over everyone.

That’s totally idiotic.

Giving up is a disease of the soul. It HAPPENS to you. No, you don’t get a choice to be done or not. You get so overwhelmed that there’s really nothing else you can do. And whether or not you’ve fought this sorta thing off before is totally irrelevant: everyone will have a threshold that, if crossed, they will automatically give up, until the day they die.

Everyone.

Yes, you, Last Jedi hater.

After One More Day I threw away all my comics in a fit of grief I couldn’t communicate to you if I tried. Along with the comics went my hopes of being a comic artist and writer. All this happened at the same time I came down with Lyme’s Disease (which became so bad that I would have cars literally pop into existence before my eyes), my best friend completely went off thr deep end, and home troubles amped up a few notches. No, giving up really wasn’t a choice. It was too much. Later on I had to grieve throwing my comics out.  

There was one comic I made sure to buy again from that old collection. Just one.

Spider-Man: Reign.

I will not pretend to be objective about this comic book to you. It is so a part of my soul that it’s the spiritual equivalent of an arm or a leg. Or a heart. The beating heart.

Spider-Man: Reign is about a Peter Parker who has been so thoroughly poisoned against himself that giving up is no longer an option. It just is. Mary-Jane is long dead, in a manner that totally hollowed Peter out. While he was possessed by this illness a utopian government took over New York. One day J. Jonah Jameson appears on Peter’s door to ask him to become Spider-Man once more.

It goes about as well as you’d expect.

I am not going to tell you this is the best comic ever made. It’s not. The art is well-done but not exceptional. The story is a deliberate pastiche of The Dark Knight Returns. The third chapter is strange and outright gross and I love it for those qualities. You may not. And that’s fine.

But this is my Spider-Man story. It is the story of my soul, dressed up in dystopias that aren’t speculative anymore, costumes, and aliens. Whenever I read it I see my remarkably damaged and sick soul staring back. It’s stronger than when I was nineteen. A lot of the gaping wounds are now healing into scars. It’s ugly.

But it’s still alive. 

Someday I will be able to do what I always wanted. Slowly but surely I am becoming who I always wanted to be.

And yeah, that gives me hope. That’s what stories are for.

Initiative is Badly Handled

 

The other day I was playing in my weekly Level Up game, and it went particularly well: I almost drowned. The previous session I was almost eaten by zombies. And the session before that I did actually die. And was then brought back to life by the god of justice, cause as it turns out Sir Solomon the Ugly is too cool for school, nevermind death. I have a habit of throwing characters into certain death with an aplomb that's a bit unnerving at times. This time we had some creatures coming up and out of the ground... so I asked Marty the GM if we were gonna roll initiative. And Marty said no. I raised an eyebrow.

And I charged.

Marty was surprised. 

The warlock facepalmed. "Oh God, not again".

What followed was essentially a puzzle as we tried to figure out the weird creature I'd managed to piss off was. It got... really intense. Like I said, I almost drowned, after reducing the creature to 1 hp underwater... and then passing out first. The warlock pulled me out of the water, none too happy about having to save my fanatical ass, yet again. We exchanged the usual pleasantries over a warlock having to save a paladin. For the third time in as many sessions.

Later on Marty asked me what I thought about the session. I told him that I had a great time and that that particular session had felt pretty unique. I wasn't even sure why. Marty's encounter design is absolutely pristine. There is literally nobody else I trust to run a trad game, because Marty's got a good enough head on his shoulders to handle the normal awfulness that is trad design. But this was particularly good, even for Marty. We fought a goopy tentacle monster with a gigantic-ass skull for a head. It had eight legs I think? Took a long time to find the head, and then killing it was... it was something. I got stuck when I hit it, and couldn't get out, and we spent all our resources to figure out that it hated radiant and necrotic damage... and then realized we couldn't do any more of either of those types to the stupid thing. So we had to brute force it into oblivion.

Like I may have pointed out, I almost died.

Anyways.

It felt different this time, a fact that I pointed out to Marty. I couldn't really figure out why the fight was so much fun. I mean, it was a good design on Marty's part, but he's done a lot better. So we talked it over. And for a few minutes I just couldn't figure it out.

But then I literally started shouting on the phone, causing poor Marty to wince. He asked me to calm down and explain. 

See, the thing that people don't understand is that special modes inside of RPGs are... well... special. You have to treat them differently. During playtesting of Crescendo I found that if each scene was ended formally players made the transfer to the myriad game scenes that Crescendo has pretty easily. Because of that formal ending to scenes players were able to handle multiple game modes. Their concerns were tied up, debriefing happened, and they were able to move on with a clear head. Clear demarcations helped a lot, specifically ending the scene. In fact I'd argue that doing different sub-mechanics should have some form of debrief before, simply to get everyone's head in the game.

See, the thing is that, without the initiative, there wasn't the muscle response to "combat". Sure, we were using attacks and whatnot, but there was a definite feeling that was not there from not rolling initiative. Had we had an opportunity to book it for the hills after my charge we would have. And it was specifically because we didn't have this klaxon going off in the back of our heads going "KILL. MONSTER."

Instead it was just a puzzle. With swords.

We didn't have to fight. Heck we didn't have to do anything other than just get around it. 

I commanded Marty to try a few more encounters with us that didn't involve initiative, to see if it stuck. We'll see.

But going from one mode of play to another suddenly may not work out. We'll see.

Alterna Comics

 

Guys, I’m excited for comics again.

I’m not sure when I stopped, honestly. Sometime in Spencer’s Spidey run it occurred to me that I was spending a lot of money for something that didn’t ever seem to have a satisfying ending. So many of the comics I bought were just people standing around talking about their feelings, just straight up navel gazing. The rules of plot just seemed… abandoned.  Look folks, I like Book of the Long Sun, but Wolfe does get to the point. For what I was spending I sure wasn’t getting what I thought was my money’s worth.

Oh, and I usually miss newsprint. I don’t know why, rightly. Something about the smell and the feel and the fading colors. I dunno. Put a pin in that.

Then one day I happened upon Alterna Comics. To be honest I wasn’t terribly impressed at first. I found it hard to figure out what was going on in their stories, and some of the art flat out didn’t impress me. But hey, two bucks for an issue! And three issue collections for five bucks? Okay, that was… better.

And then I read their submission guidelines. And I fell in love. Each issue was to be as self-contained as possible, with “writing for the trade” expressively forbidden. Instead of spending 24 bucks acrost six months for a “complete” story, it was two bucks for a whole story! And if it was part of a larger arc the comic still had to be mostly self-contained.

Oh, and newsprint.

Sold.

What I found beggared my expectations. Every. Single comic. Was good at worst.

Holy hell.

Alterna woke something up. 

This blog is going to be three times a week now. The third entry? Comics. I’ve a lot to say. Stay tuned.

Tom Bombadil Is Essential

 

No, I’m not trolling you. Yes, I mean it. Here’s why.

In order to understand my point, we need to go over a fact of the narrative: Frodo is the main character. Sorry, he is. He’s the one carrying the Ring, everyone is literally there to support him, and it’s his exit from Middle Earth that is the actual ending of the book. The main plot rises and falls with Frodo. 

Now, we also need to establish that the Scouring of the Shire is Frodo’s climax. Not Mount Doom. The Scouring of the Shire is where Frodo finally has his moment of genuine heroism. For those of you who still don’t know, the Scouring is where the four hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin come back to the Shire, only to find it taken over and defiled by Saruman. Keep in mind that Saruman, while diminished by Gandalf, is still a demigod. His voice is still extremely powerful. And Saruman uses his voice to work his last work of evil, in petty vengeance. Sam, Merry, and Pippin organize a resistance and make short work of Saruman’s organization. But then they run into Saruman. And not even those three can face him; he’s still a demigod. In an instant all would be lost.

Except for Frodo.

Frodo isn’t phased in the slightest. Because of his experiences with the Ring, especially his succumbing to it, Frodo is can’t be intimidated. Frodo stares down a demigod, and wins on sheer strength of character. It’s a powerful moment. 

And you need Tom Bombadil to make sense of it.

Y’see, Tom is this random… something… that shows up in Fellowship of the Ring. He just comes in laughing, and leaves the same way. He’s totally unaffected by the Ring and can’t see why everyone is so frightened of it. And Tom’s no bumpkin, easily capable of facing down pretty much anything in Middle Earth… but you’d have to get him to care long enough to do it. Tom’s presence in the books is controversial, with detractors claiming Tom’s irrelevance and defenders usually claiming Tom’s charming attitude and his general contribution to the ambiance of the story.

But the thing is that, without Tom being immune to the Ring, Frodo’s arc is nonsense. Frodo FAILS. Why is he capable of having any form of hope at all, nevermind standing up to a demigod on sheer force of will, something literally no one else does in the Legendarium? His ability to stand up to Saruman doesn’t make much sense without the example of Tom, the one who would rather pick flowers for his wife while singing silly songs. Tom contextualizes the world that Frodo is making his decisions in. If there isn't a good that can survive any evil, then Frodo has hope.

The problem of adaptation is that the context of the original work is vitally important; it is a fragile thing, context. I have no problem with changing anything in the adaptation to keep that context. The anime Gankutsuo is possibly the best adaptation of a classic I've ever seen... and it transfers the the setting in order to keep the moral context intact; Dantes's possess by the spirit of revenge is made literal and apparent, so that the spirit of the original work can become that much more powerful. You can argue the change from French Revolution to sci-fi was unnecessary; you cannot argue that the change damaged the actual context. I bring this up because it is absolutely possible to keep the real context and change practically anything about the work. Not one Tolkien "adaptation" has done that.

So I'm not surprised that Jackson removed Bombabil, but I am saddened by the inability of the adapters to understanding that there was a moral and metaphysical framework that needed to be kept in order for the work to be respected. By removing this one character Frodo becomes the saddest of sacks, one of the biggest suckers in the history of suckers. The context of a character's decisions are really important in an adaptation, and the utter lack of caring about Frodo's context just...

Look, I can complain about the movies all day, alright?

Let's leave it at that.

The Problem of Advancement and Endings

So the modern RPG usually follows a pretty settled formula: you start out unable to stop bad crap from happening, so you get some XP and level up, gradually erasing the chaos from the game. You now have control, hurray!

Well, not really. That’s boring as hell.

See, the thing that makes a plot move is tension, the pull between law and chaos. Without tension stories don’t live. So basically most Western TTRPGs,  on a design level, kill themselves. We remove tension and the game deflates. Storygames are particularly bad at this, creating games where complications are tied inherently to failure… which the advancement system totally chokes out. PBTA particularly is bad at this, and can only be played for a short amount of time before the mechanics grind the story to a halt. For a genre that prides itself on mechanics generating story, this is a deadly flaw.

“Just have the GM smooth it out!” you might say. "That's up to the group to figure out!" No, that’s making excuses for bad design: a game should not need a GM to houserule or ignore the mechanics to keep playing. Period.

“These games aren’t meant to run for long!” Even if that’s true grinding to a halt isn't the same thing as an ending. Storygames don’t usually do ending mechanics… which I think a really bad idea. Endings are the hardest part of a story to get right, enough RPGs don’t have advice and mechanics to support this to where an entire book, World Ending Game, focused on ending the stories from other games.

So not only are most storygames advancing the fun out of their game, but they're going into mechanical oblivion.

Yes, trad games are usually worse about it. That should just be a given.

The irony is that it’s because we bastardized DnD.

See, we get XP from The World’s Most Banal RPG. Duh. We all knew that. But XP and level growth originally happened in a context: the random encounter. Advancement didn’t affect the chances of random crap happening to you, it just indicated how big of stuff you could handle, and even then the numbers weren’t perfect; by and large you weren’t ever the top of the pile. And therefore you were always in danger. That’s good game design!

Trophy Gold is another game that manages to thread the needle. Dungeons are made as flowcharts of possibilities that must end. Not only that, but advancement doesn’t turn you into some god on earth, but just gives you a BIT more of an edge. You could run a Trophy Gold game for years, with bite-sized little adventures that you can drop in and drop out of. And that's a really good setup!

And yes, Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death address these problems, each in their own ways.

Crescendo's solution is to make higher rolls create more chaos within in the setting. So the more powerful you get the more out of control things get in the setting, because your efforts are just so much more powerful. As the game progresses it gradually goes from deep introspection on who your character thinks he is to having to deal with his intentions not matching up to effects those intentions have. And that's the sort of thing character development thrives on! The ending of an arc of Crescendo is called The Festival, where characters discover how they have changed, in the context of a public celebration. The ending of a game of Crescendo is called The Apocalypse, where players get one last time to define their characters, and the world responds one last time... but not in the way the players expect. The game ends in a final, irrevocable, statement on the characters and their relationship to the world.

The Truth Found in Death takes the problem in a more BDnD way: by putting chaos generation into the framework of the game. In every adventure there are four times when the players have to help randomly determine where the plot goes. Nobody knows where the one-shot is going. No one. And four  times in those two hours the plot jukes like this... and then ends as the characters wrap up the adventure on go on to their next thing. Which we may or may not see in a future session. Dunno. But it's done. Eventually players will be able to build and protect their own towns, which will dramatically alter gameplay for those who have stuck around long enough. By that point there will be differing levels of player interaction going on, and the game will have gone from a bunch of murder-hobos looking for adventure to a political thriller. With lots of blood. Since The Truth Found in Death is a Westmarch game I don't think it's the type of game to have an ending, per se, but each session will be totally standalone and offer its own ending.

There's a pretty big gaping hole in most RPG designs when it comes to advancement and what you're advancing to. It's not a universal problem (and ironically enough DnD not only did it first but better than most), but it's widespread and asks players to do something that full-on professional writers have a hard time doing: pacing and finishing the story. But I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass. Whenever Crescendo and The Truth Found in Death get released they have their own ways of handling advancement and endings that will help each story to be satisfying.