Beyond the Wall: Growing Up Hack

 

So after a few years I finally started playing Beyond the Wall again. Those character creation tables are amazing, I'd forgotten just how brilliant they are! But the gameplay just... it still doesn't really work for me. It's fine as a simulation, I suppose, but everyone just plays out an adventure and either win or lose or whatever. For a coming of age story, where you finally decide who you are, it really doesn't do much. Part of being an adult is being secure in who you are, at least enough to go out and change the world as you can. The rules do not guide toward this type of story. Here's some initial thoughts on how to hack it to where it does. These rules are untested. Obviously I intend to test them.

The central question of being an adult, near as I can tell, is about how interiorly secure you are in your relation to your location. Players have two additional attributes: Self and Community. To simulate this players will roll one additional d6: if you rolled higher than the table number you are at (early childhood is table 1, etc) the event is seen by your character as a positive experience with his community: increase the Community score by 1d2. If you roll equal to or lower than the table number increase the Self score by 1d3.

When you are done rolling up your events and adding NPCs and locations to the map each person write two statements, one for the Community and the other for the Self scores. For the score that's higher write why you are more comfortable with it. For the lower one write a wish about being more connected to that aspect. It is essential that these statements are tied into the town. Don't just write "I want to be more connected to people", write something more like "Yngvar rejected me as town guardian. I will make myself useful". These are not wishy washy statements: they need to be statements of action, something that will inherently make trouble. If you can implicate a fellow player character in the mess so much the better.

Get rid of Fortune Points. Community and Self values are pools of dice. Community points can be spent to heal 1d6 per point spent as well as grant d20 re-rolls as someone from the community intervenes in the situation. Self pools let you add 1d6 to a d20 roll, as well as automatically succeeding at a check by spending a Self Point. Keep track of the points spent.

At the end of the session note how many points were spent. If your Self spent value is equal to or greater than your Community spent value you leave the town; if your Community spent value was greater than your Self spent value you stay with the town. The higher spent value is your Path. The lower spent value is your Corruption. Regardless, roll a number of d6s equal to each spent pool and compare their total values. If your Path rolled higher your ending is one of integration and peace, even if it's not a cheerful one. If your Corruption rolled higher then your ending is one of violence, betrayal, and despair. 

Regardless of which rolled higher narrate a short vignette for your players about what your character did and why, whether or not they stayed in touch with the people who were there when you started your path, and ask anyone if they want to have a particular role in your ending. This is where you get to name your epic deeds and everyone else gets to tell you how they feel about them, in character. The player who rolled the highest Self Path gets to narrate first. Narrate clockwise from them.

If you try these rules let me know! I'll be reporting back, assuming my players even want to use these rules in the first place. We'll see.

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Alternate Worlds and Burning Wheel, Rough Draft: Part One, The Underground

By Aged Pixel

At one point I tried to run a Burning Wheel campaign where the players were kidnapped to Faerie. While the game's narrative was... alright (getting ready to be deployed made me a bit distracted).. I was not very satisfied with Burning Wheel on a mechanical level for dealing with going to a different world. Faerie didn't feel very different from the world the players came from. And it wasn't that I was trying to get the system to do different stuff than usual: set Beliefs, challenge, and resolve. A huge part of the setting for my Burning Wheel games that I've not yet really explored is how integral the underground is to it. We walk on a solid wave, with an endless ocean of stone beneath. But I've avoided those jaunts below the surface, because I want those places to feel legitimately alien. I hadn't thought of it then, but I think that means the mechanics have to shift a bit.

Now, the next part I'm going to make giant and bolded, in case it gets missed.

None of this is tested. This is a rough rough rough rough draft.

 Got it?

Cool.

A lot of my ideas are adapted from the brilliant and haunting "The Veins of the Earth" by Patrick Stuart. In fact, if you haven't read it just drop what you're doing and give the man the money he deserves for such a fantastic book. And then read it. It's superlative. I'm sure he'd love a dirty storygamer stealing his ideas, but I highly doubt he'd come for my mechanics, given that they're dirty storygame mechanics

THE DIVIDE IS REAL FOLKS. I'M A DIRTY OSR THIEF. COME GET ME.

Going Underground

Beliefs

Whenever you go underground you must rewrite two of your Beliefs: one to address what you see when the darkness comes in, and the other one about the person you're near who's holding the torch. If you're the person holding the light source this Belief should be about what you think of holding the torch. The previous Beliefs have artha awarded for attempting or completing them, and play commences.

Lumes

The concept is stolen directly from Stuart's book: light is time is money. Essentially Lumes are a specific personal tracker of how much light generating potential you have. Don't have light in the pitch black of the underworld? I don't have hard numbers in place yet, but I'm thinking at least +3 Ob, to almost any action that involves moving around in the dark.

Lumes are an abstract measurement of how much supplies you have for light. It's usually oil, but could be other things. After you do any action roll the Die of Fate: If you roll lower than your Lume rating the Lume rating decreases by 1. If you roll a 1 the light source goes out and needs to be re-lit. At Lume 0 your light source goes out and you may not relight it without finding a Lume to sacrifice.

To increase your Lume rating you must pass a Resources test. Obstacle is equal to the difference between your desired Lume rating and the Lume rating you have now (Lume 6 - Lume 4 is an Ob 2 Resource test). Lume takes a number of inventory slots equal to its rating.

Inventory

I know I know, I said inventory in a Burning Wheel game!! Please come back! It matters here! Like, a lot. Go spelunking for five minutes and you'll see that's it's a matter of life and death. Before you go underground add up all your Stat exponents and divide it by 2, rounded down (Power B3, Forte B4, Agility B6, Speed B3, Will B3 and Perception B5 gives you 10 Inventory). Items take a number of Inventory Slots equal to the number of hands required to hold them. I need to come up with harder numbers than this, but that puts everyone at not quite enough stuff, which is the point.

Cracks

When you're spelunking you're going to have to crawl through some tight spaces. This requires a Speed test. Players with an Inventory rating higher than the Obstacle the GM assigns may not attempt the test. Players with an Inventory rating equal to the Obstacle roll the Die of Fate when crawling through: if a 1 is rolled then the player must sacrifice a random piece of equipment from their Inventory to complete the test.

Reflexes

Characters who are with someone with a light source (or holding a light source) get +1 Reflexes. Characters without that light source get -1 Reflexes.

Putting It All Together

It is imperative that the reading understand the following: none of this matters if it doesn't challenge a Belief. Burning Wheel is not a simulator, nor should it be. All this does is give some additional wrinkles to scenes you already know how to run. That being said, don't be shy about handing out these types of tests while you're underground. You want players taking too much down and then pushing it through tight cracks, ahead of them. You want them having to figure out what to do when the last Lumes source broke by accident. These can be really challenge and dramatic moments, and the GM should lean on them, given that the campaign's underground. Used well, these rules should give a very different feel for those who are journeying around, in the veins of the world.

The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game: Drama Rules v1

So after a few sessions I have a few thoughts on how to modify this game. I have a few issues with games that don't have BITs now... which is a flaw, I suppose, but considering how character-centric so many super-hero comics can be can I really be blamed for looking at this and thinking "This could use something akin to BITs?" If you need to know what sorta thing I'm aiming for read my Marvelous Manifesto. My review of the system, which gives some impressions I had of it in my usual rambly tone, can be found here.

A few terms:
Red stone (R): Energy you can put toward an action. You have two numbers to satisfy in being successful: Difficulty (minimum number of stones to complete a part of the action) and Resistance (number of stones you need to complete the whole action). Scaled from 1-10. You normally recover one R for every three white stones you have.

White Stone (W): Your health and your ability to regenerate red stones. If you lose Ws you can choose to be knocked out, which puts you at the mercy of the GM.

These are the two resources in the game. You also have panels, which are a single "unit" of action. Panels can last any number of time, but if it's not specified it's assumed to be 30 seconds. A certain number of panels make a page, which doesn't seem to have a mechanical effect but it makes journaling the sessions really cool. Any number of pages make up a mission, and any number of missions make up an issue.


I want to complicate it a bit. I'd like to introduce the following aspects to the character:

Each player makes up to three Ideals for their hero. Ideals are the thing that the character idolizes and wishes for more than anything and chases as hard as they can... until the call of the hero is finally heeded. There must be at least one Ideal. You are rewarded for betraying your Ideals in a dramatic fashion.

There are also Challenges, which can also be up to three per character. These are the things that the character is incredibly uncomfortable about. Each of these Challenges are rated from 3 (most uncomfortable) to 1 (a minor bother). You are rewarded for letting these things inconvenience you and making your life harder. Being in the presence of a Challenge will make the Difficulty and Resistance of all your tests go up by the Challenge's rating.

Example: One of Wolverine's Challenges is "Can't stand being talked down to"(2). Whenever Wolverine is in a situation where someone is talking down to him and he's trying to accomplish a goal the Difficulty and Resistance of his task increases by 2. Ouch!

There are two Goals each session: the player's Goal and the GM's. The player's Goal is what the PC is trying to accomplish that session. It's a natural extension of one of the player's Ideals. The GM's Goal is the heroic mission that session. You are rewarded for accomplishing these goals.

Now, all of this is dropped on top of a third resource: Blue Stones (B). Blue Stones are awarded to you for roleplaying your CIGs (c'mon, you know it's catchy).

You can use Blue Stones to:

• Push: Turn 1B into 3R.
• Shortcut: Spend 1B to invent a "shortcut" in the narrative and get 1R to boot. Example: Spider-Man is being chased by the Green Goblin and has exhausted all of his red stones in previous battles, saving civilians, and now running like hell. Exhausted, Spider-Man's player chooses to spend 1 Blue Stone to say the wall-crawler pulls up a manhole cover and escape. Goblin can't fly all that well in these particularly tight tunnels! In addition to the 4 Red Stones that Spider-Man normally gets at the end of a panel  Spider-Man's player gets 5, because the player had chosen the Shortcut option.
• Gather Strength: Turn 3B into 1W, which wears off at the end of the mission or when damaged as normal.

At the end of a session award Lines of Experience as normal. After that award Blue Stones. You get Blue Stones by:

• Sacrificing Your Dreams: You get 1B per Ideal betrayed in a dramatic and tragic way.
• Everyman: Sort of like Burning Wheel's Embodiment reward, 3B for great roleplaying. This has to be above Sacrificing Your Dreams, this has to be about portraying  a thoroughly normal person interacting with things that are not normal at all.... including the things that used to be normal but not feeling any real connection to them. This is for those moments of loneliness, beautifully narrated by the player, for the heartfelt speeches about trying to get back to a normal life, for those knock down drag out fights with the significant other about why on earth you can't back down from what you're doing and why you believe in it. Something has to break to get this award. I'll let you decide if that's literal or not.
• Allowing Something to Die: You close out an Ideal, declare it done, 1B per Ideal given up. This can only happen after an Everyman award.
• Facing Challenges: Instead of running away in the presence of your character's Challenges you manage the task at hand and the thing that's your Challenge, for a number of panels equal to the Challenge Rating. You gain Blue Stones equal to the Challenge Rating of the incident. 
• Achieving Goals: If the player achieves his or the GM's Goal that's 1B. If the player achieves both then it's 3B.
• Making Everyone Laugh: This is a pretty heavy system. If you can stop the table dead with laughter that's worth 3B.

Let me know what y'all think!

House Rules: The Despair Deck

4e DnD had a lot of really interesting ideas, one of which was the Despair Deck (complete card list at this lovely person's blog here) . Made for their Shadowfell boxed set the Despair Deck was supposed to model walking into the Shadowfell and absorbing the energies of a world that was death itself. Each card had two sides: up and down. The up-side had a vice that the player had to roleplay with some mechanical impacts for said vice, which is essentially a Die Trait from Burning Wheel. Once you fought off the effects you rotated the card and got a positive mechanical effect for the rest of the day.

Well, 4th is dead and gone for the majority of people, myself included. While the majority of people have gone to either Pathfinder or 5th, I went more of the Indie and OSR route, where these cards can have surprising utility. Anyone who has ever been severely injured or almost killed in real life can attest to the effects of PTSD from those situations. Does everyone get it? No, but no one I know has a goblin screaming at them in the face as they get stabbed either. Plus it gives combat a real edge in that characters change from the effects of being dropped.

So, at least in future games that I'll run, if you are rendered unconscious you have to make a Wisdom check (or a Steel check if it's Burning Wheel or find another corollary). Fighter types or anyone with a trait that makes it harder to scare them get a bonus on this roll. If you fail this check you have to draw a card from the Despair Deck and apply its mechanical and role-play effects. The first conflict that is faced by the party after the Despair Card is drawn must always be played with the Despair Card in its negative position. At the end of every conflict the player may make another Wisdom (or analogue) check. Make this check harder for every time they've failed it. Friends may help, but that help had best be roleplayed. You may also make this check anytime a friend is injured, with no penalties from previous failures. Success means that the card is flipped and stays with the player in its positive form until they go to sleep for that night.

Example for Burning Wheel: Telos takes a Mortal Wound and is down. His player makes a Steel test (with the appropriate 5 dice penalty) and fails, thus making him draw a card from the Despair Deck. The card drawn is Wrathful, which in 4e terms makes you grant Combat Advantage to enemies who are adjacent to you until you overcome the despair effect. In Burning Wheel terms that would probably be a +1 Ob in conflicts where you have to get close to your opponent (so any social and melee situations). The GM makes this ruling and Telos's character agrees to it. Angered by his helpelessness Telos rages at the slightest drop of a pin, making him unpredictable and unhelpful on purpose.Finally, however, an argument comes up and Telos runs right into the Duel of Wits. He pushes the wrathful aspect of his personality but loses the conflict. That still means that he gets to roll however, and he passes with flying colors. Something about the conflict has appeased Telos's rage and, as the card's positive side states, no one can gain advantage over him in close situations until he goes to sleep.

And since it's Burning Wheel the GM rules that these cards give you an extra Persona point whenever it gets you in trouble as compensation for an additional burden. Yeah, make sure to slip the player a bit of extra love. It'll go a long way.

Obviously there will be some issues in making the mechanics transfer over. Not every game has combat advantage and the numerical bonuses can really gimp some varieties of d20 or just be nonsense in a non-d20 game. The onus of interpreting the card rests on the GM, who should check his interpretation with the rest of the players and have them agree if he's reasonable or not. And, like the example for Burning Wheel says, make sure to give extra XP or rewards to make this rule go over smoother. It's not a natural thing for people to put their characters in trouble, so make sure to compensate them for their efforts. This particular rule hasn't been playtested in DnD so GMs, be kind.

This idea probably won't be for everyone, specifically roll-players. But the effects of combat are a real thing and I think it's fun to play that out. This rule will be rough on those players but will add a layer of characterization that will pay off as players are get into their characters as they have to face their mortality and pain. And, provided you have good players, that's a good spot to look into. But, again, don't try this rule if you think they won't enjoy it. But for those people who love character this will provide a wonderful progression as they deal with pain in a way they wouldn't have expected.

House Rules: Burning Situations

In the Burning Codex basic outlines are provided for the types of stories that can be told in Burning Wheel: Quest, Struggle, and Intrigue. In what's more of a thought experiment, I wonder if you can add to the Artha rules via these Situations. This is rough and most definitely not playtested, but if you try these rules and like them please let me know!


Quest
If you are the reason why everyone gets lost you get a Fate point.


If you find an object or information of importance but are the reason why the opposition gets it you get a Fate point.


Whenever the group finds an object or a location of great importance the whole group gets a Persona point.


Struggle
Whenever you act on an idealistic or naïve Belief (and thus rewarded for it) and it screws the whole group you get an additional Fate point.


Whenever you do something that gets someone else injured you get a Fate point.


Whenever the party sacrifices something important for a characters'  ideal they all get a Persona point.


Intrigue
If you get your information from someone at the cost of one of your ideals you get a Fate point.


If you cover up a secret that could harm a fellow Player Character you get a Fate point.


If the group covers up a scandalous incident that they were involved in they get a Persona point.