Creating Roleplaying Opportunities

The other week I played DCC for the first time. It was a blast. I had a wonderful time. Three of my level zero wusses died in the first session, in hilariously awful ways. Blood was flowing, we were solving puzzles and trying to survive... and boy was I failing. But I noticed something while we were having a great time: we weren't really roleplaying, as I had come to understand it. Again, I had a blast! I was engaged! But it wasn't like we were truly RPing.

This isn't a complaint. It's more of a meditation. A processing. Please keep something in mind: I have been playing either Burning Wheel or Crescendo constantly for going on... ten years? I have been steeped in very deep, narration-heavy, roleplaying for a very long time. I don't say that as a boast. It's a fact of my life, and in order for this post to make sense, you have to know that.

Now, I am a firm believer that systems influence people. I think it's possible to encourage people into roleplaying more, into any system, with just a few modifications. After thinking about it, here's what I thought of:

Whenever possible, hook mechanics into roleplaying.

You can't make a fictional world in an RPG without the rules the players agreed to. Throwing the rules out actually makes the world incomplete. I've found that the more you bring the rules into roleplaying itself, the better the roleplaying itself is.

Hold any possible skepticism for the moment. Here's some ideas on how you do it. 

Use Their Player Classes/Archetypes/Backgrounds to Describe Scenes

Whenever you're done describing a scene, ask each player to add a detail that would interest their someone of their class, archetype, or background. Let the players add to the scene. Let them help you tie the noose.

Players Must Justify Success

If a player doesn't narrate why they should succeed in their action... they don't. It's not "Roll for it", it's "No". That simple. 

Rolling comes up, generally speaking, if the GM feels that the plan given by the player might be plausible. This one little rule will almost entirely do the trick, just on its own. If you require actual narration, with an attempt to solve the problem before them, players will do it. 

Justify Advantage When Rolling

Rolling should never be neutral. Either the player has justified having advantage on the roll or they get disadvantage. 

This comes down to system choice, of course, but the general mechanics of most RPGs can be fit to this rule pretty easily. This rule keeps the player engaged in the fiction, even as they pick up the dice. It's a small trick, but it keeps the flow of narration going. Be more merciful than not. Rolls are usually instigated by the GM, not the player, so if you're forcing a player to fend for themselves and then not be terribly lenient about them responding it's actually going to kill engagement. Let the players feel like they're rising to the occasion.

Let Them Narrate the Loss of HP

Or whatever negative stuff you have in your game. If something happens to the character (like gaining Stress, losing HP, gaining Conditions), ask them what that looks like for their character. Players naturally want to use the system to describe their characters. Let them! They'll invest if you let them do it.

Conclusion

The idea that the fictional world is complete without the rules of the game doesn't really work, because it doesn't. You aren't just playing make-believe, you are using a ruleset to guide make-believe. Bringing the rules into the fiction, to make it an aspect of roleplaying, makes the overall experience more cohesive. The rules are in the world. You bring the rules in, and the loop is complete.

Design Journal: Crescendo's Beliefs

There is no mechanic I love more than Beliefs. Pioneered by Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, Beliefs are a subjective statement made entirely by the players. They're used to determine scenarios in the game, making the story tailor-made to what the players want it to be about. The sheer utility of this mechanic can't be understated. Players get to write what they want. The GM gets a statement they get to interpret. Inherently creative, Beliefs give back far more than what are put into them.

There is no mechanic that is even close to a Belief. 

Period.

This is a blog post about how I almost gave up on Beliefs for my game, Crescendo.

Two (Necessary?) Asides

As a quick aside, there's a saying in the art world: don't make portraits of those you love. I love the works of Gene Wolfe. I am trying to capture the feeling I get when I read his books. This is objectively not a good idea at any point. It's a harder project for my emotional attachment. Things that should be obvious can't be. More time is spent is because I can't have an objective view of this design.

As an additional aside, there's a large elephant in the room: Burning Wheel. Anyone who reads more than a few posts of this blog is going to discover that Burning Wheel is my favorite game. Beliefs are my favorite mechanic in gaming. A lot of my thoughts on designing Crescendo are, inevitably, going to be about taking Beliefs and adapting it to my vision. Which means that Burning Wheel is going to come up a lot.  Crescendo isn't a hack of Burning Wheel, but it would be stupid to pretend that Crescendo doesn't owe a lot to it. A great deal of time has been spent repurposing Beliefs from the ground up, (usually) to the confusion and (sometimes) delight of my playtesters.

What is Crescendo?

Crescendo's central conceit isn’t a simple one: as character changes so should setting and vice versa. The game is principally based on the works of Gene Wolfe, which are intensely subjective, mythological, and cosmic. If you're going to do a Gene Wolfe game you have to have an intense subjectivity and soaring scale, which form each other. This is Crescnedo's by-line, its mission statement, is:

Belief Has Consequences

Okay, that's nice, but what does it feel like to play Crescendo? That's all very pie in the sky, but what am I going for?

Excellent question! Crescendo feels like this:

One movement causes a series of ripples in a pattern that nobody understands... until they pull back and see the full implications. Players each create a Hero whose Beliefs create consequences and the Lore Weaver (LW) creates a Setting for the Heroes' consequences to play out upon. These consequences are unknown even to the LW beforehand. Nobody knows where the ship is going. All you can do is ask "Well, what do you believe? And should that change?"

Heroes have Beliefs, Traits, and Scruples. Beliefs are what drive the Hero, Traits are how the Hero acts, and Scruples are hidden doubts/obligations that mess them up. The Setting has NPCs with simpler Beliefs, Locales and Histories that chronicle recent events, and Conflicts which rage across the Setting. 

The Journal

All participants have a journal, where they log their history and events of the session. The journals are used in a mechanic called Hitting the Books: everyone opens to a random line in their journals, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and reads aloud their selection. The LW interprets these randomly picked prompts into whatever piece of information that's needed, primarily plot twists. And then everyone writes their interpretation of whatever the LW just said into their journals.

I cannot understate how much Hitting the Books impacts play. No one is driving. The Lore Weaver isn't called a Game Master because he's not in control of where things are going. He's given prompts and says "Well, this seems like a good idea right now". Nobody is driving. If there is a single way that Crescendo has genuinely changed the face of roleplaying games, Hitting the Books is it. 

There's various triggers throughout the game to record more lines in your journal. Once you record enough lines you can advance, gaining/ improving a skill or a relationship with an NPC.

The only thing even comparable are FFG's narrative dice, except Hitting the Books is cheaper and more creative. The dice are only marginally faster. Hitting the Books is also qualitative: success and failure aren't really a part of it, but bring in completely unexpected elements from past recordings. The more you play, the more eerily coherent the experience becomes, as past events factor into the present, creating more lines to choose from in the future. Hitting the Books sets up play loops that can last for tens of sessions before closing with a snap... creating a new loop.

Or, as one of the playtesters commented: "Reintegration is one hell of a drug".

Beliefs

The first thing I tried to do was to provide incentives for interacting with Beliefs, Burning Wheel style. And that would be reasonable for me to try! I'm a Burning Wheel vet! People will do what they're rewarded for. Right? Well, hold up. Burning Wheel's by-line and mission statement is

Fight For What You Believe

So, if you cause trouble for what you believe, you will be rewarded. This change at the core has been the hardest thing for me to navigate. Crescendo, if it's to stand on its own two legs, has to be its own thing from the ground up. Beliefs in Crescendo have to be fundamentally different from what they are in Burning Wheel.

Two and a half years have been spent trying a lot of different things with Beliefs, to the point where I was advised by some to just torch the Beliefs, outright!

Well, I did that, Robby, and that game's called Brick!, which I'll release as well. Probably first. We'll see. 

The problem, of course, is that Crescendo is about Belief and Setting in the style of Gene Wolfe. And I am going to see that through.  NPC Beliefs are based off the players'. 

But is that really enough? Heck no.

Belief is Perception

But that wasn't enough for me. It didn't feel Wolfe enough. And I really was about to just pitch them. Robby could be right. It hurt my pride, but I had to admit he might be right. Humility's good! It's fine! Fine...

Ironically enough Herbert came to my rescue.

In Children of Dune Herbert writes that information comes in two parts: Trivia and Message. Trivia was the base information that was in the world. The Message was what the recipient interpretated the Trivia into.

The lightning flash that lit up the interior darkness can't be understated.

What Herbert stated, Wolfe does. Most of his works feature this translation of Trivia into Message, using their preconceptions. Anyone who has read even a page of Wolfe knows this to be true. But Wolfe doesn't stop there. Wolfe doesn't just transmit Trivia to Message. Wolfe Shades. When the Message is assembled, the assembler discovers additional Trivia that doesn't fit what they believe.  It sticks there, an unknown that can't be quantified. Sometimes that Shade is an aspect of the Problem they hadn't anticipated.

And sometimes it's the Lord God Himself, wanting to have a word.

Suddenly, I knew how it had to go. Two and a half years, going on three, and suddenly it clicked: Beliefs were a Player tool for helping create Problems with the LW. The LW could present Trivia, pieces of information that might imply a context, but that's it. The Players then use their Beliefs to turn the Trivia into Messages. And then the LW adds a Shade to each Message. The Player then gets to write this modified Message down as a Bullet Point in their Journal. The Players must make at least one Message, and may make up to three, one for each of their Beliefs.

Putting it Together

All that's well and good, but what does it look like?

Hey everyone, meet Sir Mal, one of the example characters in Crescendo! He's the bastard street rat of a noble, found and restored to his place as a knight. Here's what you need to know about Sir Mal to understand what I'm writing:

Sir Mal

Beliefs

Beliefs are what Sir Mal uses to help construct Problems and are so used by the LW  to further complicate Sir Mal's life. Beliefs are what Sir Mal is willing to burn the whole world down for.

 

1. My father knighted me as he lay injured on the battlefield. I didn’t need his recognition to known honor and bravery are their own reward.

2. Once I came into manhood, I realized that no woman, even the queen, could resist me long. If she lifts her skirts, she’s fair game.

3. One day a knight, Sir Alain, came into the slums where I picked pockets, and told me that he was my father. To this day I’ve never met a kinder man.

 

Scruple

A Scruple is a hidden reservation or taboo a character has which holds them back. They're used to add Shades to Problems and to trip up Heroes during play.

You cannot trust the other nobles to do the right thing.

Traits

Traits are aspects of a Hero that either make you more powerful for acting on them or which make you weaker for ignoring them.

Charming, Nihilistic, Impulsive

Climbing a Tower to Get Royally Laid

Sir Mal has decided to deflower Princess Genevieve, for a multitude of reasons. He's climbed the tower where she lives and finally gotten in through the open window.

Paul the LW tells Alex, Sir Mal's player, that the Trivia for the current Problem are the soft candlelight in Princess Genevieve's room, Princess Genevieve just pulling a shift over her head, offering the briefest glimpse of perfection etched in flesh, and the open window Sir Mal just crawled through.

Alex's first Message is that Princess Genevieve has seen him before, as she was there for his formal knighting, from his first Belief! She's a bit shocked to find that he's climbed into her window, but she's not scared. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve isn't just not scared, she's calm, her pulse doesn't look like it's budged even a little bit. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve isn't even shocked to see me. This will be a fun night!" as a Bullet Point in his journal.

Alex's second Message is that his charming smile has never not made a woman weak in the knees, and that's definitely what's happening right now. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve lightly brushes a pendant of Elpida, The Most Holy Flame (wait did it glow slightly? Gotta be a trick of the light), but she doesn't break eye contact with Sir Mal. But yes, she looks very happy to see him. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve has one of those purity necklaces. But I can tell from just a glance she's mine."

Alex's third Message is that he leaves the window open, and in fact he doesn't really get off the windowsill, causing Princess Genevieve to relax even further. Paul adds that there's the sound of King Julian ranting and raving just outside Princess Genevieve's door... which she locks, factoring in Sir Mal's Scruple. Alex writes "King Julian really has lost his mind, and Princess Genevieve seems to think it's more sane to be locked in with me than out there with him. Excellent."

Remember...

All those Bullet Points can now come up again. There's always going to be fallout from constructing this Problem, regardless of how it's resolved. It might be next session, it might be forty sessions from now, but these Bullet Points always have a chance on forming the current situation.

Here's the Rope

Someone is going to point out that, even if Crescendo is just for one to three Players, things can get overcomplicated quickly! If three Players do this once per Belief  that's nine Bullet Points that everyone has to record. Not only could that take forever but that would be a very thorny, if not outright unwieldable, Problem.

And you're right.

So what?

If Players want to go overboard, whose fault is that? The designer? Or the player? I can't stop people from doing stupid stuff. I've found that people stop when they want to stop. If you approach the game in the way intended it's not a problem. Pretending that I can make someone approach the game in a healthy way is.. well.. laughable.  It would take so much work to construct a Problem in an unhealthy manner that I don't particularly feel that I need to safeguard it much. Journaling takes a bit of work. If you're playing the game, it's because you want to. So you'll automatically know when to stop.

In Conclusion

It's been a journey, but I finally got the Beliefs done! You use Beliefs to construct Problems with the Lore Weaver. The LW uses them to further challenge the Players by putting them in ethical trolley problems. And when the Players change their Beliefs, it sends ripples across The Setting, causing truly unexpected changes to the story. There's this amazing interplay between the subjective nature of the Beliefs and the incredibly bonkers changes in the world and the plot. You say what you are willing to burn the world down for and the world just convulses in response, mashing the incredibly person and epic together.

If any of this sounds amazing to you, come and join us the Die Young Games Discord Server! Crescendo is in its last stages of editing. There's sessions of it running. The people are great. So come on over!

Eating Crow: FFG Star Wars

 

I have never pretended that any opinion of mine is correct. I have considered writing things that will get more than a dozen reads on this blog and experimented with branding. I have always decided not to, coz I ultimately don’t want this blog to be a brand. I just want people to find someone saying exactly what he thinks, no matter how flawed and sometimes outright outrageous it is. Over the years I’ve occasionally written Eating Crow posts coz I changed my mind on something and think it’s good people read about that on the internet, where everyone is right all the time!

I was wrong about FFG Star Wars. Here's why.

The basics of the game revolve around a set of six dice: the ability, proficiency, boost, difficulty, challenge, and setback dice, pictured below:

Each of these dice share a number of symbols on them that help generate differing types of results. There's a lot of openness in interpretation. While there's a general slowdown from having to sort through the dice, I've found that the amount of richness that can come out of a single roll more than makes up for it. Could you go and have normal dice do this? You can! The core books actually include a conversion chart... and it's a nightmare to use. I wouldn't do it.

The problem?

The dice are about 20 bucks for a package, and in typical FFG fashion there's not enough. You'll need at least two sets of these at the beginning, and you will probably want to just keep getting them until you've got six or seven packs. That's 140 bucks, all told. On just dice.

The core books are also a bit of a money sink. There's three of them, covering the three "types" of Star Wars stories: criminals, military, and Jedi. There's a lot of overlap between them of course, but there's just as much that's unique to that particular book. And they're fun to read! They really are! The FFG folks did a good job making them coffee table books.

About ten years ago I bought all the core books and two sets of dice, over the course of about a year or two, and then went on deployment, got a group together… and hated the game. I was playing with former DnD min maxers in a game that resembled DnD in format… and didn’t play anything like it. Please understand I’d sunk quite a bit of money into this game, was in a place where adapting to a new system was a bad idea (and I didn't really know that) and was criminally short on sleep. I was pretty bummed out, came home, put the books up on my shelf, lost the dice... and then forgot about the game.

The years went by, and then a buddy of mine told me that he really liked the Genesys system and was more than willing to defend it against detractors. I just sorta sat and watched as people came at him about the absurd cost of the system and even its practicality. My buddy went and defended the practicality of the system but made no efforts to defend its cost. I jurst sorta filed it away, while making my own complaints about a system I'd seen not work too terribly well. I respected him for standing up for his beliefs, and resolved to eventually give the games another chance.

Yanno.

Whenever that was gonna be!

And then my kids watched The Skywalker Saga. 

And found those books. And started begging to play. I shrugged, told them sure, and made characters with them. They went acrost the three books, grabbing options and gear relatively evenly. I've not really thought about gear lists in a long time, but boy did I get a new appreciation for them as I watched my kids. For them the gear lists were a direct portal into the setting of Star Wars itself, one that they did everything they could to leverage for their own enjoyment. They just wanted me to read every last item and asked how it worked. And the long prose really helped there, let me tell you! It was actually a lot more fun than I expected, overriding my experiences with the former DnD-heads bitching about they wanted more gear, coz they wanted more options to blow people up with.

But character creation being fun is a nice bonus. I want the game to be good. So I got a set of dice and we went to planet Ord Mantell, where a gigantic kaiju had dropped from the orbiting moon to attack the Imperial base there. And every. Single. Second. Of that session was sheer gold. The kids leaned into the dice, oohing and ahhing over them, asking how they could get more yellows and blues, changing narration accordingly. They understood what the dice were for: crafting an exciting narrative. And they leveraged them as thoroughly as they could.

You really need more than one set of dice to run this game. I'm sorry, but you do. That's about 35 to 40 bucks, just right there. Buy yourself a book and that's a hundred bucks. That. Is. A. Problem. And it's pretty ubiquitous to FFG's money decisions. So, if you don't like FFG, this isn't going to change your mind, and I can hardly blame you.

But.

But.

These two sets of dice solve more problems than most RPG books of the same price. They just do. I'm not gonna pretend to you they don't. And if I can just pick up a set of dice instead of reading yet another blowhard telling me how to fix RPGs I'm gonna do it. Maybe you won't. That's cool. That's on you.The book is really secondary to the dice. All the systems they present work, and they work well, and the books themselves are worth the money you spend on them. 

Together?

Yeah, that smarts.

But honestly, folks have spent hundreds of dollars trying to do what FFG is offering for a fraction of that. And I find that worth my time. And cash.

Animon Story

 

An action RPG has to have a few things in place for me to consider playing it: a good general system, a combat system that isn't too different from the non-combat one, and tools for making fun combat encounters on the fly. You have no idea how many times I've been disappointed on getting all three of these essential points. Pretending that systems that do not provide these three points aren't flawed is a special kind of silliness, but We here at All the Things Under Heaven and Earth try not to engage in spurious self-deception; only truly foundational self-deceptions allowed on this blog, and only for irony's sake!

So the premises of Animon Story is absolutely irresitible to me: it's essentially a digimon/pokemon nostalgia grab, with a promise of a working system for kid and creature creation, evolution system, and a working combat system. Does it live up to these promises?

Eh.

This may have finished off a fundamental love of storygames as most people understand them in my soul.

The book is attractive, feeling good in my hands. The art is appropriately cartoony without being simplistic. The visual design and flow of my eye is unobstructed. It's not the most incredible book I've ever held, but it's a darn nice one.

The character creation is really nicely done, well-organized for running with kids. I was able to help both children make interesting choices about their animon and their kids in a timely manner. My kids were super excited to make animon, and they were a bit weirded out at the thought of having as much detail on the kids as they did, but they quickly warmed up to it after I reassured them it was a good idea to have the kids be cool too. They're here for the monsters, I'm here to see if a game works! All should be well and good, right?

Well, sorta.

One of the problems of a storygame is that it asks players to hurt their characters in favor of the drama. Some players, like myself, are more than happy to do such things. There's a fundamental disassociation in my soul that lets me look at such mechanics with a more detached eye. The character is not me. I want a good story. I better allow the character to get hurt. Even as a child I understood this.

Try telling that to most children.

Go ahead.

Didn't work, did it?

These mechanics are built around the players hurting the bond between kid and animon, and then mending it. Children don't inherently want to do this. Adults don't, either. They want to think they're the kid, they want to have friendships with their creatures, they don't want to sit outside the construct and watch dispassionately. And so the kids bounce off. And I suspect more than just the kids will. Combat has similar things in it, where the pain of getting a good combat is pushed onto the players to create it. It's a bit jarring to see the philosophy for what it is and that I actually do hate it. The loop is too long to allow one to store up a bit of pain and then unleash it quickly.

All of this typical nonsense in storygames, but the real bullshit is that the game does not decide if its combat is sport or war. Combat as sport requires game balance, requires good tools for building encounters on the fly. Combat as war who cares??? Just try to kill the players and let them figure it out. But both require a good stable of opponents and even better adlib mechanics. And Animon Story has neither. The game just has levels and doesn't tell you how they factor in, as if combat was war, but there's a huge dissonance in that Digimon and Pokemon treat combat as sport. 

Oh, and you can't evolve in your first session. That's kind a staple of Digimon. Why is it slowed down here?

I really wanted to like this game. Zak Barouh seems like a nice dude and has a lot of passion for his game. I really appreciate that level of passion from anyone, even if I don't like their stuff. That doesn't make my distaste for the game any better, but instead makes it less palatable. This is a guy who clearly wanted to design something joyful. And maybe it does for other people!

But all I got out of this was disappointment.

Such a shame.

Trophy Gold: The Book (Sans Megadungeon)

 

I already considered the zine version of Trophy Gold and Dark to be the tightest designed games in my library. Nothing felt out of place; Jesse Ross had codified a vision. Reading the zine version impacted me and my designs in a powerful but subtle way.

The book only increases my respect.

What do I think of it so far? I say so far, because I haven't tried the megadungeon, although I'm curious. The wording of the rules has been vastly improved, making the core loop the clearest storygame mechanic I've ever read or used at the table. But the book goes further, adding town and journey rules. They're not super involved, but add context to the characters and the world. You may not want to use them, sure, and the core gameplay would not suffer for it. But there's a lot added by these mechanics.

The gist of Trophy Gold is thus: when the GM tolds you to roll, gather as many d6s as you can (usually between 2-4) , and look at what the highest die is: 6 and you get what you want, 4 and 5 you get what you want with trouble, 1-3 you don't get what you want and it all goes wrong. There's three different kinds of rolls that interface with this base concept: Hunt, Combat, and Risk (the catch-all for doing something risky, including casting spells), and they all have different effects based off of what you're trying to do. You may take a Devil's Bargain (a bad thing that happens no matter what) for an additional die... and these are meant to be group activities; you're supposed to goad each other into greater and greater heights of stupidity. The amount of laughter this one mechanic has generated at my table is hard to overstate, folks.As dark as this game gets, as horrifying as it frequently is, it is hilarious. I've not laughed so hard at a game in years.

The Hunt roll is one of the smoothest  systems I've ever run into, provided your players know that to ask a question is to roll dice. The GM then tells them if they get an extra die to throw in or not, usually basd off a skill or some story advantage.  Everything, and I do mean everything, funnels through the Hunt roll. The GM need do nothing except go off of the results of that one roll. If you are an OSR player you know this as someone taking a turn and the GM making a roll for a random encounter. In Trophy Gold it's just the one roll. It's elegant. The Hunt roll will kick back tons of wrinkles, all the time, and will keep everything moving on a constant basis, either because the player knows where to go or because something will interrupt them. The players are just rolling dice and you're jumping in to tell them what dice to roll and how many, and everyone's throwing in ideas of how badly it can go and the GM is just sitting in the back, laughing, taking notes. It's fantastic. The Hunt roll is the type of mechanic that every single game should aspire to imitate in spirit, if not outright.

The Combat roll is fantastic because of the ecosystem that it's hooked into more than the actual roll itself. Which isn't to say the roll isn't bad!  Combat is dangerous, with lots of chances to get hurt, especially if your teammates chicken out; the more people that drop out of a combat due to wounds the worse it is for everyone else. When you do the kill the monsters you can get Gold off them in the form of body parts that can be sold, as well as examine the creature for creatures, name it, and enter it into the shared journal bestiary the group is supposed to maintain. As time goes on combat will turn from "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING" to "Oh yeah, take its knees out!" It's a fun little advancement technique that cuts out one of the most problematic parts of RPGs, numbers. Whenever a game finds ways to do advancement that qualitatively change the experience, rather than just up numbers, you should pay attention: it's a sign someone has a clear vision of their piece.

The Risk Roll is the most "normal" part of this game, with the least implications on it. And that's fine; not everything can be this huge groundbreak innovation in a game, you've gotta have something to just do the hard work. The Risk Roll does this.. .although its expansion into spells is extremely cool. Spells are just a name with a short description, and you and the GM figure out if it applies best to the situation or not. Given the consequences for casting a spell can be extremely nasty.. be wary if the GM just keeps saying "yes". The balancing factor of spells in this game are that you may succeed and not like what you get. And that is going to be a lot more common than you think.

There are Journey and Town mechanics in the book version of Trophy Gold. They're not meant to be anything more than a small narrative beat between dungeons, something to contextualize why your (possibly not so) lovable losers are out doing what they're doing. It's simple, to the point, and poignant stuff. These are a great upgrade from the zine.

My favorite addition, however, is the versus and helping rules. The original zine didn't have anything for those situtations, and if there was ever a game I have run into where you will want to help or hinder your fellow players Trophy proper is that game. You could kinda hack something in, but Ross has clearly done a lot more testing and thinking on the subject and has crafted rules that are hilariously awful to deal with, cementing the mood of dark humor and despair that is a Trophy game.

I've run a few of the sample dungeons in the book and have found myself really impressed by what happens with these barebones outlines when you throw the Hunt roll at them. If there's anything that I resent about these sample dungeons, it's that you technically don't need them; you could just draw up a general structure and use the Hunt rolls to figure out the rest. Hell, probably could grab a bunch of OSR tables and throw them at the GM to answer questions. If anything, the game and how it's written at this point obfuscates the reality of what a GM would actually need to prep for the game and why. 

Ultimately, Trophy Gold in book form is an absolutely fantastic time. I've not heard people laugh this hard in a very long time at just some of the absolute worst situations one can orchestrate. The mechanics are simple but extremely deep when people decide to play with them. The book is a marvellous and dark beauty. The guidance could be clearer, sure, but that's usually a problem in most RPG systems. This is an amazing time. It's worth figuring out.

The Meeting of the Telvrans: Session Two

So on the morning of the session Prince messaged me: something had come up and he only had about an hour to do the session. I told him that Crescendo could handle an hour easily. So all the below happened in fifty or so minutes.

Last Time...

The soldier Girard had been given a chance to avert war with the dryads... only to succumb to their wiles at the last second. Will he ruin his chance to save Fort Falls?

The Seven Dooms

1. Not all post-medieval information we have is true, especially gunpowder and antibiotics; people are at the mercy of nature.

2. There is a flame of goodness at the center of Heranyt, linked to the hearts of all creatures on the planet. This is not so for other planets.

3. Some beings have set up their own anti-flames, anti-points of light. They are corrupted and horrific beings, who try to destroy those not like them.

4. The elves fly amongst the Ring of Tears, the sub-orbital remnants of their continent. Strange things are said to live there.

5. The dryads of The Glade will go to war with Fort Falls.

6. La Fourchette will be abandoned, even with oncoming winter.

7. The dwarves will provoke Fort Falls into a war.

The rules of Crescendo dictate that the player picks one of these Dooms for the Judge to challenge them with. We're still on number five from last session: "The dryads of The Glade will go to war with Fort Falls."

Girac's Beliefs 

1. Superiors should be obeyed. 4 RP

2. It is natural to use force to advance your own interests. 7 RP

3. You should stick by your comrades. 0 RP

Beliefs have health, called Resilience Points. If you fail rolls it hurts your Beliefs, and there are also Resilience Rolls, which target RP as well. A Belief being at 0 RP is bad news, we'll get to that in a second!

Girac's Traits: Loyal, Quick to Anger 

Girac's Sign: The Warrior

 The Poem is what the immortals are up to, in the background, while the session goes on. It changes every few sessions. Here's what's going on in the background, as we play:

The Poem

Sing to me, O Muses!

Of man-killing Sota

And the zenith of his rage

With his resentful fist of iron

Sota smote Tuntemata

he split and crackehis silver skin

And nightshade blood rained from the heavens

Before Sota then came The Inquisitor (Viivoty)

And queried "Why then have you smote my son?"

Sota laughed: "How could I not, given what we are?"

It was the last dryad that Girac fell prey to, the seventh one. It was an impressive feat, one that would have gone down in the history books had anyone else known, but Girac just couldn't resist... and she was more than happy to comply. She drew near to kiss him.  Girac's mind locked up; he refused to defile himself with this dryad, no matter the cost! 

So whenever a Belief drops to 0 RP, the player has a choice: to keep the Belief or to change it. Prince chose to keep his Belief "You should stick by your comrades". The Belief immediately charged to its full 7 RP.  

1. Superiors should be obeyed. 4 RP

2. It is natural to use force to advance your own interests. 7 RP

3. You should stick by your comrades. 7 RP

The question after that was whether or not something awful happened as a result of this critical decision.

Prince had to roll a two or less on a d20. If he succeeded, he could do something awesome with his Sign (the Warrior) confirming the Belief. If he rolled three or higher, he'd get a ton of XP, but he'd have to do something awful with his Sign (the Warrior) to contradict the Belief. Like, something really bad. Really really bad. Something that would haunt him for years bad.

Prince failed, rolling an eight. This got him to a total of 65 XP, which Prince could spend immediately. Prince increased his Resilience Die to a D7, Willful Stat to a D8, and his Stoic specialization to a +05. Prince spent all his XP.

But now Girac had to betray his loyalty Belief, which would give him a level three Mental Condition ("Betrayed Fort Falls to a dryad" level 3)  and the Doomed condition. A mental condition is an event that troubles you, increases your Stress, and will open up more opportunities for provoking Saves. 

Doomed is the worst condition in the game: it makes you unable to spend Stones (the metacurrency in the game, vital for winning rolls), and if you keep running into situations that would get you Doomed again you get serious physical injuries, which hastens your death.You cannot get rid of Doomed until your Stress is lower than your total Trait levels (so 2 in this case). So Prince had to get rid of his two Conditions ("Ensorcelled by a Dryad" +1 Stress, and "Betrayed Fort Falls to a dryad" at +3 Stress), before trying to get rid of Doomed.

So Girac is now in serious trouble.

Girac pushed the dryad away, in a daze, telling her he would give up information about the fort if only she would stay away from him! He threatened to kill her if she didn't listen.

The dryad drew back, desirous of Girac, but intrigued.

Girac told the dryad about the east gate (the forest they were in was north-west of the fort). It was currently being rebuilt, with a guard that wasn't even close to adequate, because of an illness that had struck the guards.

She smiled, and withdrew, leaving Girac alone. He felt sick in his soul, that somehow, something had abandoned him in that moment. He shook his head. He had to go and give his testimony. He re-entered the ring of yew trees, which had previously give him so much strength.  The Queen of the Dryads stood before him, in the mingled lights of the twin moons. Girac told the truth: the man who had attempted to violate the queen was not of their race, and no one at the fort would have done a heinous thing like entrapping a dryad soul. None of the men there would know how to do it and none of them were of such low character. All dryads were satisfied. 

A run through the woods later and Girac was outside the gate. The dryad told him she didn't want to see him again, and Girac heartily agreed. And then she was gone, vanished into the forest. Girac looked up at the sky. He was very late; hours had gone by. The guard who had been so jovial with him before was not jovial now. Girac told him a version of the truth: he had been captured by dryads, and was afraid he had revealed information about the fort to them, but he couldn't be sure, because he'd blacked out. The lie was believable enough, and the guard grew pale. Girac insisted in the morning they both raise concerns about the guard level on the east gate, and the guard (who reluctantly gave his name: Theo) agreed, although not happily.

The next morning Girac went to the Temple of the Eternal Flame to try and atone for the sins he had committed the previous night. The Temple of the Eternal Flame was an enclosed cube, with no windows. Inside, at the center, burned a single flame, at the bottom of a series of steps. During more formal services these steps would be submerged in water, with the flame floating atop in an oil lamp. The water was drained at the moment, so the stone steps led down into a depression in the ground. 

A young priest stood by the dark entrance. Girac held out the money (all the had left from his soldierly pay) he needed to pay for a sacrifice, and the priest vanished into the gloom, reappearing with fine dove few minutes later. They went down into the depression together, towards the flame that burned in a large oil lamp. The priest cut the dove's throat, removed the feathers, and  skewered it on a spit. The priest took a long look at Girac, handed him the spit, and went back up the stairs, telling Girac he could tell something was really on Girac's mind and the extra dove wouldn't hurt. He climbed down a moment later, another live dove in his hand. One slit of the knife later and the dove hang in his hands, dead. Into the flame the skewer went, and the priest cooked both birds, saying prayers for Girac's soul, begging the Eternal Flame to burn the sins from him. After a few minutes they ascended the steep steps together, and left the temple, which was by the wall of the fort. The priest ripped the heads off and tossed them over the wall in a ceremonial flick. Together the two ate from the cooked birds, and Girac felt as a weight left his chest... but not all of it. Something was still wrong. The priest, seeing something was still amiss, kindly told Girac that the Flame had consumed it all, whatever it had been, and that he could trust the sacrifice. Girac mumbled a few excuses and thanks and left.

So if you offer a sacrifice to the immortals in the form of Wealth you can heal one entire Condition per Wealth point given up (normally you only heal levels of a Condition, not the whole darn thing). Prince only had one Wealth, so he could only get rid of one of the two Conditions he had. I decided to throw him a favor and have the priest give another dove, out of a concern for what was clearly a troubled and conscientious individual. Healing Conditions gives you XP, in this case 12, as well as allowing Prince to fully heal two Beliefs:

1. Superiors should be obeyed. 7 RP

2. It is natural to use force to advance your own interests. 7 RP

3. You should stick by your comrades. 7 RP

So Girac is about as good as he's going to get, Resiliency-wise, even if he is still Doomed.

We were almost out of time, so we decided to handle getting rid of Doomed next session. We'd have Girac go and get Theo, to go and make their report about the east gate.

Girac found Theo, and told him it was time to go report their concerns about the east gate to their superiors. But Theo had lost his nerve; he told Girac that he smelled a set up of some kind, and that if Girac was so afraid of what was going on at the east gate he could tell the superiors, alone. Girac told Theo he could take all the credit, it would look good if Theo took the lead! 

I decided I was going to push on the "Superiors should be obeyed" Belief that Girac had been dancing around. Was he going to keep up with his shenanigans, or was he going to back down and just tell the truth to his hierarchy?

Prince had Girac push on with the shenanigans.

A Save was provoked.

Prince, because Girac was still Doomed, couldn't spend Stones on the roll: it was his Willful stat plus his Falsehood (D8+2) versus my raw D20 roll. Given how wild a D20 can be, Prince hoped for me to roll low.

I didn't. I got a 19. He got a 9. The margin of failure (10) damaged his Belief about obeying his superiors, reducing it to zero. I asked Princed if he wanted to keep the Belief, and he laughingly said he didn't.  Another Crisis Point was invoked: Prince rolled a six, failing the roll by four.

But Theo, with that uncanny sense of the enlisted, knew he was being asked to help cover up  a situation that would come back to haunt him. He grabbed Girac and shook him, yelling, drawing attention to them. Something in Girac's troubled soul snapped.

Originally Prince wanted to just have Girac headbutt Theo, but I reminded him that failing a Crisis Point required an action that would haunt Girac for years. 

Girac put the iron dagger Master Girard had given him into Theo's neck; Theo bled out quickly.

So now Girac has a corpse he has to worry about, in addition to what's surely about to be a dryad invasion of some kind, which he would be responsible for. 

All in under and hour.

If you want a closer look at the Crescendo ruleset as it currently stands, go on over to the Discord and download the document, free!

The Meeting of the Telvrans: Session One

 

The goal of Crescendo is to truly enable long-term play. It requires a full set of standard dice, zocchi dice, and a journal. 

This is a play report on a playtest. While most of the game is nailed down I'm still refining a few things, here and there. Sometimes that means I'm rather wrong in an idea.

The setting of Crescendo is always in flux, it's always shifting around. The Seven Dooms are the ways, that the setting is in flux. These are goals, with the means of accomplishing them totally up to the Judge. Doomsd are public knowledge so that the players are aware of the pressure cooker. 

Yes, seven is too many. That is on purpose. 

No matter what the players do the setting will shift beneath their feet, creating new problems that they could not have anticipated. This is essential for a game story that needs to run a long time, as story threads wrapping up kills stories.

The Seven Dooms

1. Not all post-medieval information we have is true, especially gunpowder and antibiotics; people are at the mercy of nature.

2. There is a flame of goodness at the center of Heranyt, linked to the hearts of all creatures on the planet. This is not so for other planets.

3. Some beings have set up their own anti-flames, anti-points of light. They are corrupted and horrific beings, who try to destroy those not like them.

4. The elves fly amongst the Ring of Tears, the sub-orbital remnants of their continent. Strange things are said to live there.

5. The dryads of The Glade will go to war with Fort Falls.

6. La Fourchette will be abandoned, even with oncoming winter.

7. The dwarves will provoke Fort Falls into a war.

The rules of Crescendo dictate that the player picks one of these Dooms for the Judge to challenge them with. Prince picked #5, The Glade wanting to go to war with Fort Falls.

Girac's Beliefs 

1. Superiors should be obeyed. 4 RP

2. It is natural to use force to advance your own interests. 7 RP

3. You should stick by your comrades. 5 RP

Yes, Beliefs have health, called Resilience Points. If you fail rolls it hurts your Beliefs, and there are also Resilience Rolls, which target RP as well. You're going to see them in this session and this session only, because they've been removed in future drafts.

Girac's Traits: Loyal, Quick to Anger 

The Judge gets to pick one of the player's Beliefs. I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if Girac was forced to go against the "using force" Belief for an extended period of time. Would he go along with it? What would he do? So I decided that there was a dryad who wanted to stop the oncoming war and was willing to actually talk with the humans... who she usually despises for being susceptible to her charms. It was a delightuflly easy pressure cooker to set up: Girac was already a short-tempered guy, so let's see what he did when he had someoen who didn't like him trying to actually use diplomacy!

The Poem, drafted in the last session, is a thematic reinforcer for a few sessions. Prince will be rewarded for choosing actions that speak very strongly for or against The Poem. After testing for about a year without a poem it became apparent to me that a thematic focus was necessary for arcs, one that shifted every few sessions to change things up. This is what we drafted up for the session zero:

The Poem

Sing to me, O Muses!

Of man-killing Sota

And the zenith of his rage

With his resentful fist of iron

Sota smote Tuntemata

he split and crackehis silver skin

And nightshade blood rained from the heavens

Before Sota then came The Inquisitor (Viivoty)

And queried "Why then have you smote my son?"

Sota laughed: "How could I not, given what we are?"

With all that done (it took less than five minutes to pick a Doom and a Belief), we began play! Crescendo is meant to be mostly conversation, with spikes of mechanics that shift things in wild and unexpected directions. The book is chonky, sure, but it's a book that only gets used in spurts of intense moments, with everything going back to the conversation right afterwards.

Girac was waiting at the docks for his brother-in-law Galbert to come back from his logging expedition along with his sister Veronique and his sun Luc. It had been a few months and everyone was eager for Galbert to come home. Galbert did not come to his wife and adopted son, but went straight to Girac and asked to talk in private, immediately. Galbert and Girac went to a nearby alleyway. Galbert's explanation poured out hardly a moment later: Galbert had met a dryad. A real dryad. Things had... happened... with said dryad. And she had asked to talk to a soldier of Fort Falls. Girac made Galbert swear a solemn oath to never have relations with the dryad again. Galbert tried to say that his oath may not be worth much, for he could not resist the dryad, but Girac forced the point, making him swear heavily to never see the dryad again. Commending Galbert for his resolve, Girac told Galbert he would meet with the dryad at one in the morning, two days hence. Galbert promised to hold to his oath and left. By the time he came back Veronique was upset, but Girac helped smooth things over.

Girac went to Master Girard and asked him what he knew about dryads. Master Girard told Girac druids were very secretive creatures. They had a bewitching effect on anything sapient at all, and were highly dangerous in that regard; it was almost impossible to resist a dryad, at least for long. Reaching into his desk Master Girard pulled out a curious dagger, explaining that dryads were deathly afraid of cold iron, and if they found someone with cold iron on them they would fly into a rage. To provoke a dryad was to die. He handed the dagger to Girac, repeating to not get caught with it.

Girac then went to one of the soldiers who was on guard duty. He told the guard that he was set to met a wench from La Fourchette, the town just outside of Fort Falls, and he asked if he the soldier would let him out. The soldier smiled wickedly; this was old hat, he let soldiers out of the fort all the time for such ventures, in fact he considered it his primary duty! Girac told the soldier if he wasn't back in a half hour to call the guards and get ready for trouble; the "girl" had brothers and they may not take kindly to someone messing with her. The soldier was only too happy to comply with such a request.

When the night came, Girac snuck out to the docks of La Fourchette and waited for the dryad. When she showed up Girac was shaken to his core; here was something far more beautiful than he could have ever expected. 

It was here I interjected by calling for a Save. Saves are only called for when a player's narration doesn't have a plausible explanations for time, skill, tools, and general temperament like traits or bad crap like traits. In this case dryads are passively enchanting and arousing to other sapient creatures. It is not something the dryad controls, others are just immediately captivated by her. Girac had to try and resist this unfortunate fact about dryads.

There's six stats to the game, rated in dice sizes: Brawny (strength and constitution from other games), Nimble (fine motor skills), Agile (gross motor skills), Cunning, Empathy, and Willful. Prince and I agreed that Willful, which doubles as a spiritual/social resistance/offensive stat, was the principle stat to use in this case. Girac had Stoic at +4, which was a really damn good skill for this particular case. He also had the cold iron knife, which I ruled improved his Willful die by a step, from D7 to D8.

I, as Judge, always start at a D20, and add something called the Fate Counter. That starts at 0, but is increased by the margin of success of the players. So the better the players do makes the game harder on them. Eventually the Fate Counter will trigger a Twist, which is a plot twist that also resets the Fate Counter to zero. So there's a natural ebb and flow to the game, as the world resists the player more and more until things finally reach a boiling point, and then resets.

I then introduced Prince to Stones, which are a type of metacurrency that make dice rolls easier for the player. You get more of these Stones from either the character There are three types of Stones:

Mythos Stones: when you spend these the Judge has to lower his dice by a step (so from D20 to D16, to D14, D12, D10, etc). The immortal of the poem (in this case Sota the Suicide) interferes with the game to your benefit. The Judge says how. Both players then journal the supernatural occurrence into their journals as they see fit.

Dynamis Stones: this lets a player reroll his stat die and/or the Judge's save die. The player narrates how one of his Traits gave him a burst of strength, and he and the Judge write down their versions of it in their journals. The player underlines what he wrote.

Persona Stones: the player increases his Stat die by one step. He has to tell the Judge how his relationships with others and the setting have given him strength. They both write that down into their respective journals.

Prince currently has two of each kind, and can only spend two at a time. So Prince spent a Mythos and Persona point, decreasing my dice to a D16 and his dice to a D10.

Here's what I wrote in my journal for the Mythos Stone: "A bee, a symbol of Sota, flitted near the dryad, and the enchnatment lessened a bit as the dryad's passive focus shifted to the bee; dryads love bees the way humans love dogs".

For the Persona Stone: "Remembering his conversations with Master Girard and Galbert, Girac tried to summon more strength. He had to resist! This was the enemy!"

The roll off happened, me at D16 vs Prince's D10+4. 

He failed by 1, meaning his Belief " It is natural to use force to advance your own interests", which had 7 RP, now had 6 RP instead. You don't want it to hit 0, bad stuff happens. I gave out a Condition "Enchanted by the dryad" at level 1, and we got back to it!

He could feel the enchantment, the need to be possessed by her, to be with her, come over him. He had to resist. He must! A bee, a symbol of Sota the Suicide, drifted by the dryad in the dark, and she was distracted a moment, as dryads all love bees the way humans love dogs. Girac could not resist; he was under the sway of the dryad.

The dryad, for her part, regarded him with annoyance. She could not control the effect she had on Girac, but did not want him, not now at any rate. She had come here to talk. She took a step forward and Girac growled at her, telling her to stay away, to not come even another step closer! The dryad acquiesced, asking Girac of whether he knew of the declared vengeance her sisters had sworn upon Fort Falls for the attempted rape of their Queen. Girac said everyone knew of it and were worried. The dryad told him that she had personally stopped the rape attempt and had killed the man herself. But something about the whole incident was wrong to her, and she needed a human who knew the uniform of various soldiers to identify the body. Would he come with her? If he did they may be able to stop the attack on Fort Falls and La Fourchette. Girac agreed without hesitation, he needed no enchantment to agree to such a proposal!

The pair hurried out of La Fourchette, into The Elder Forest. Baleful Eous and Observant Tuntematon, the moons, were bright, the stars were out. The Ring of Tears, the remnants of the elven continent, glittered as they hung in the sky, oversized jewels.

Within a few steps into The Elder Forest the dryad turned and snapped at Girac: could he please be quieter???  Girac apologized, but the only way he could move quieter was to move slower. The dryad took hold of  Girac's hand and spoke in a voice that sounded like the wind rustling through leaves. She then ran, hand in hand, with Girac.

Right through a tree.

And a bush.

And so on.

They ran much more quickly than Girac ever could have expected, with an abandon no human could have ever managed. By the time they got to a glade and stopped Girac was exhausted. The dryad spoke once more as the wind and all of a sudden Girac could feel his body on the ground again, he could feel the wind, the moons' mixed lights, all of it, all over again. It was thoroughly disorienting. The dryad gave Girac about ten minutes to recover, and then showed him the body.

It looked nothing like Girac or any other human he knew in Fort Falls or La Fourchette. The man was bald and clean shaven, covered in a light black and white cotton that would have made more sense in a warmer climate, as opposed to the more northerly humid climes of Fort Falls and La Fourchette. The dead man had a bag on him made out of a strange leather. Girac picked up the bag; in it were four strange cylinders, one of which shone with an odd green light. The dryad cried out in agony, pleading with Girac to put it away. She screamed that thing was profane to all life, to put it away, now, now please!! Curious, Girac put it away gingerly. He swore that he had never seen such a thing in his life, had no idea what it was, and that the dead man was not of his locale, and never had been. The dryad touched the garments of the corpse and Girac's, nodding to show she understood the difference. She was going to call her Queen, who had exiled her for reasons she would not get into, not right then and there. The point was that Girac was walking into a very fragile situation and needed to keep his head down unless the Queen herself talked to him. Girac made his promises.

The dryad opened her mouth and spoke like the wind once more.

So I'd forgotten to do a Resilience Roll, again. It's something I thought was necessary for the game because it keeps to the concept of the psychology of the character being primary. A roll-off occurs, with the margin of success going to the Fate Counter (which is currently at 0) or the margin of failure damaging a Belief. 

Prince spent a Mythos and Dynamis stone, and this is what I recorded:

Mythos Stone: "The glade was mostly composed of yew trees, which allowed Sota to help Girac."

Persona Stone: "Girac's loyal nature provided him an enormous burst of internal strength".

And Prince forced a reroll on me, and passed a by a huge margin of failure, to 4! So the Fate Counter goes up to 4.

At this point in the cycle a Resilience Roll always precedes a Save. In this case it was to see if Girac would be ensorcelled by the Queen of The Glade as well. Prince argued that his previous Condition should actually count as a bonus to his own roll! I agreed, and he got a +1 step to his stat die, which we decided would be Willful again, along with another +1 step because of the cold iron dagger.

The roll-off was me at D20+4, versus Prince's D10+4. Not good odds, but after an initial bad roll Prince spent a Dynamis, which forced a reroll: he succeeded by 5!

Here's what I wrote for his Dynamis expenditure: "The loyalty of Girac was so powerful that it drove him, demanding more of him, pushing the wiles of the Queen of the Glade away."

Now, part of what's going on in the background is that, every time that Fate Counter goes up (it's currently at 9) I'm rolling a D20 to see if I roll under said counter. Whenever I do a random twist occurs. We'll get into what the means more next session, but just understand for the moment that each success drives the chances of something crazy happening in the narrative up.

The light became brighter, the birds louder, the wind kicked up. In walked the Queen of the Glade, in her fully unadorned splendor. It was a level of allure and beauty totally unexpected. Girac, even though he was enchanted by the other dryad, could feel that the pull of the Queen was of a completely different level. He had already failed once, he could not afford to fail again. Looking at the yew trees, the symbol of Sota the Suicide, holding the dagger he had hidden on him, and steeling his resolve, Girac refused to give in, even a little bit.

The Queen laughed; it had been a long time since anyone had resisted her, Girac was an interesting human being indeed! She also found it funny that Girac had a cold iron knife on his person; did he really think he could threaten her with it? She conversed with the dryad a few minutes, and confirmed with Girac that the human who had attempted to rape her had nothing to do with the humans of Fort Falls and La Fourchette. Girac swore it was so. He then brought out the green-glowing tube. The Queen flinched, and demanded that Girac put it away; it was the remnant of a dryad, somehow ripped from her tree and imprisoned. It was the foulest of things, a profanation that nobody should tolerate. Girac put the cylinder back in the bag immediately, apologizing profusely.

The Queen then requested that Girac allow himself to be examined by the other members of her Glade court. They would want to verify themselves that the human in question was not of Fort Falls or La Fourchette. Girac reluctantly agreed. They relocated the corpse into a small thicket, so that Girac would not have to contend with the effects of all the dryads of the Glade at once. Eight of them came and examined the corpse and Girac, one by one.

This is where it gets bad. See, by now the Fate Counter is at a +9, which is a pretty heft bonus to my rolls. Prince has spent a lot of his Stones, having only one Dynamis left, which means he can't shift luck to his side all that much. He either makes the rolls or he doesn't. So far Prince had been rolling hot, but would his luck hold? Would he be able to withstand the wiles of not one, not two, not four, but eight dryads, one after another? For the good of his people?

We agreed it should just be one Resilience Roll and Save for all the dryads. Eight rolls was too much, and frankly Girac had shown an unusual willpower up until this point.

He bombed the Resilience Roll, knocking out "It is natural to use force to advance your own interests".

The Save was even worse, even with the reroll.

Dynamis: "The dryad's promise to protect Girac gave him strength, allowing him to have more resolve. The tree trollops would not enrapture him! He would stand strong!"

The margin of fail on the Save, which always damages a Belief, also knocked out another Belief. I asked Prince which one he wanted to reduce to zero, and he chose "You should stick by your comrades", because screw Galbert for getting him into this crazy situation!!!

So that's not one but two Beliefs knocked out. What does that mean? What's the terrible thing that happens with one Belief going out, nevermind two? Prince wanted to find out but we were out of time.

NEXT TIME: we'll find out. I've run enough of these to know it's not good. Oh, and Resilience Rolls will be mercifully gone. It's clunky in game and even clunkier to write about.

If you want to hop onto the Discord to ask questions or read the current draft of Crescendo, click here!

The Meeting of the Telvrans: Introduction and Set Up

It all began on Reddit.

No wait it’s okay, this story doesn’t necessarily end bad!

Like I said, Reddit. We’ll call him Prince. I saw a post of his I appreciated enough to DM him, giving my appreciation for his candor. We got to talking and eventually Crescendo, the RPG I'm developing, came up. Prince was intrigued and we decided to give Crescendo a trial run: one act, which should be about six sessions, session zero not included. But first Crescendo requires a pretty detailed setting bible to throw at the players. I had to get that done first. 

I decided to finally draw up my long-running setting, The Wanderers’ Psalms, and pitch it at Prine. I’m not gonna lie, I wanted someone with the quality of Prince’s candor to rip my baby game apart. So I decided to throw the best I got at him. And frankly it was only a matter of time; two years of not really playing on Heranyt had been too long.

It was time to return to my old home.

You don’t really need to know the mechanics of Crescendo to appreciate the setting bible, beyond that Prince and I both have a journal and the following is copied into both of them. And yes, the journal has mechanical weight. All of the below was generated by the mechanics of Crescendo and is necessary to play the game. Yes, that means it's a bit of set-up, but in comparison to your standard open table game it's about commesurate. Well, at least the way I set up an open-table game that is.

Again, I am just following the directions in my game. I'm not deviating to the right or to the left, I'm running the instructions out of the book.

The below is what I sent Prince, with my commentary upon it in italics.

The Meeting Place of the Telvrans

Languages Appropriated

I have personally found that very few things help world building like stealing real-world languages and modifying them to your native ability. Given that I barely have my own American English down pat, this is likely to lead to some hilariously bad pronunciations, for which I think God the reader cannot hear... although Prince with his beautiful French will. RIP.

The dwarves use a bastardized Japanese

The elves use bastardized Finnish. Humans, when trying to be fancy, use bastardized Finnish.

Humans from The Seven Iron Kingdoms use French, probably really bastardized.

The Seven Dooms

Dooms are the Judge's goals for the setting that are also world-building tools. Crescendo plays out in what are called Acts, where three Dooms are addressed. The other four then act upon the setting and change it.

1.       Not all post-medieval information we have is true, especially gunpowder and antibiotics. People are at the mercy of nature.

2.       There is a flame of goodness at the center of X ,linked to the hearts of all creatures on the planet. That is not so for other planets.

3.       Some beings have set up their own anti-flames, anti-points of light. They are corrupted and horrific beings. They wish to destroy those not like them.

4.       The elves fly amongst The Ring of Tears, the sub-orbital remnants of their continent.  Strange things are said to live there.

5.       The dryads of The Glade will decide to go to war with Fort Falls.

6.       The people of La Fourchette will begin to abandon it, even as winter comes on.

7.       The dwarves will enrage Fort Falls into war.

The following entries (Current Five and the planets) are the immortal pantheon of the game. These immortals are constantly acting upon the setting, and play a major role in the story. With each immortal are also symbols, like swans and elder plants, that those particular immortals favor.

The Current Five

1.       The Outsider. Prophet and Observer. Lit the Flame Eternal by becoming a member of each race, who all betrayed him in equally repulsive fashion. His deaths lit the Flame Eternal.

·       Swans, dandelions, tin, wind, creation, travel

2.       The Flame Eternal, The Secret Source. Integrator and Lover, servant and creation of The Outsider. Blue.

·       Fire, courage, magic, doves, copper, elder

3.       Telos, Leader of Those Who Sailed. Prophet and Inquisitor. A former anti-flame who was converted by the Flame Eternal. Black.

·       Bears, lead, seas, grief, protection, yew

4.       Eous, Leader of the Anti-Flames. Warrior and Trickster. One of the two moons in the sky, placed there as punishment for creating the Anti-Flames. Sickly Teal.

·       Chaos, defilement, crime, bees, bloodroot, iron

5.       Verzhoben, The Corrupter of Creation. Inquisitor and Observer Led the origin race known as the ensivalo in rebellion, extinguishing the first flame and dooming the planet for millenia.

·       Beetles, iron, deadly nightshade, void, betrayal, harvest

·       NOTE: all spells invoking Verzhoben are called “tech”.

The Seven Planets

1.       Enusta, The Mysterious Elder. The sun (gold). The Integrator.

·       Dandelions, fire, gold

2.       Tuntematon, The Painful Friend. The real moon (silver). The Observer.

·       Seas, grief, deadly nightshade

3.       Sota, The Suicide. Red. The Warrior.

·       Bees, iron, yew

4.       The Triplets (Epasointu, Epatoivo, Lahjonta), The Baneful Ones. Yellow. The Trickster.

·       Betrayal, chaos, bloodroot

5.       Rakkaus, The Hidden Devourer. Blue. The Lover

·       Elder, doves, copper

6.       Viivoty, The Mother by the Gate. Green. The Inquisitor

·       Swans, crime, travel

7.       Viestinta, The Destroyer. Orange. The Prophet.

·       Defilement, protection, deadly nightshade

The Myth

The myth is the cultural myth that everyone in this small little section of the setting uses to explain the immortals they've encountered. This myth is generally considered reliable by those in the setting and those at the table. Don't be looking for any real subversive stuff going on here.

Once upon a time Verzhoben decided that he did not wish to serve creation, but to master it. He corrupted himself and the ensivalo, along with all their slave races, extinguishing the First Flame. When they did so, the ensivalo realized they cared nothing for their own genetically engineered creations, and left them, to parts unknown. Without the First Flame the races fell to barbarism and undeath.

The Outsider intervened. He incarnated as each of the races -elves, orcs, minotaurs, dwarves, dusken, wolves, dryads, and humans - trying to get them to accept him… only to be killed by each of them, in turn. The humans didn’t even let The Outsider survive childhood. But as the last incarnation of the Outsider was killed, a pillar of blue flame leapt from the corpse and burrowed into the planet, straight down to the core… where the Eternal Flame now rests. The undead plague ended. The insanity ended. Some were nostalgic.

Led by Eous, some began to try to extinguish the Eternal Flame, to no avail: the Outsider’s will was behind The Eternal Flame. Telos, Eous’s right hand man, turned on Eous, founding a resistance group, Those That Sailed. Unable to extinguish the Eternal Flame Eous forced the flame within him, which he could not extinguish, to turn to his mind, to his goals. And thus the first Anti-Flame was born. Others followed suit, drawing power from Herna, the Abyss.

Telos and the Eternal Flame begged The Outsider to force the Anti-Flames to relent, traveling to the very heights of Seitseman to plead their case. No one knows what was said that day; Telos and the Eternal Flame will not speak of it. But Telos, along with Those Who Sailed, have spread throughout the world, working towards an end goal that none know of. Someday we may know of it.

Seasons

A cold spring, a mild summer, a vicious fall, and a bone-chilling winter, as the wind usually comes in against the Etranger Mountains.

The Feast Cycle of the Seven Iron Kingdoms

Yes, there's a cycle of celebrations, and it is relevant! Players use these to heal up from long-standing conditions and get a lot of XP from participating in them.

The Gathering and Forgiving Days: The first days of harvest. With each barn filled an attempt is made at resolving a grudge with copious amounts of communal drinking. Small trees are placed into the ground with a secret desire whispered into them.

The Day of Mourning: The winter solstice. All lights are extinguished, even the eternally communal bonfire. The bonfire is relit by a child at midnight, and the party begins.

Finding Seitseman: the spring equinox. Telos and the incarnation of the Eternal Flame had to learn the way to Seitseman by climbing a tree and watching the cloud formations. Roof parties and tree crownings are held.

Secret Day: All gather around the trees they planted, and reveal whether or not their secret was granted.

Yes, I drew the map in Paint. Yes, the circles in the top left are trees. Shut up.

 

The Local Area

The Glade: where the dryads gather, location actually unknown. They were last seen gathering for a push against Fort Falls for cutting down several dryad hometrees.

Fort Falls: Right at the meeting of The Telvra River, Telvra Falls River, and the Minor Telvra River, Fort Falls is the last military outpost from the Seven Iron Kingdoms. It protects the town La Fourchette, but both are losing more and more people to migration south each year.

La Fourchette: Colloquially just called “Crotch”, La Fourchette was once a prosperous trading post with the dwarven strongholds Sakabun Horu and Kami Horu. With the slight of Warlord Akio, however, the trade dried up, with the dwarves growing ever colder. If Crotch doesn’t fall to the dwarves, it’ll become a ghost town, whichever comes first.

Sakabun and Kami Horus: The two closest dwarven strongholds still in existence, the dwarves have total control over all natural resources in the area, including up to the area of Fort Falls. After the slight to Warlord Akio a growing resentment to the human presence in the land has been brewing, including raiding parties.

I sent all that over to Prince, who was supposed to read it and make a character with that context in mind. Crescendo makes characters by a structured series of journaling prompts, which the player uses to make one of those overly long and drawn out backstories that folks like myself love. Here's what I got back:

I grew up in Fort Falls. My father was a sergeant there, my mother a seamstress. I remember watching the logs going on the barges of the Telvra River. Even then I was headstrong, fearsome, quick in anger. The old woman said it was the Sign of Sota, under which I was conceived. She took her own life during the Day of Mourning, two years later. When they relit the bonfire she was gone.

They were a tough breed, army brats. By day we ran all manner of errands for whomever asks. You learn to stand up to the elder children or you will be worked to the bone. Sota the Warrior. When we were sent outside the walls to collect firewood I split a boy's lip with a yew branch; he was two years my senior. Father thrashed me, but I could see in his eyes he was proud. In the fall my mother gave birth to my sister Veronique and passed away shortly after, while I held her hand.

Life became harder then. The groups of boys would chase me, but I was nimble enough to run and hide amongst the beekeeper's hives. Other times I took a beating, sometimes badly. Father would ask me how and, when I told him, he would grunt and reach for his bottle, telling me to do better on the morrow. It was a harsh existence. Fearful, painful. While I made few friends, the next years were easier. The elder boys became apprentices and were gone. I then made two friends, Sal and Rene, and we watched the lumber barges pass in the summer, while the younger boys gathered firewood.

The masters came at the appointed time, Finding Seitsemann. While parties were being prepared and trees were crowned they inspected us in a cold hall. Master Girard selected me for the polemen. I was so happy I cried.

Master Girard was hard, his piercing rasp never failing to elicit verbal jabs from the other apprentices. He would know if you were lying or scared or hiding something. I feared and respected him.

My hot blood made me ill-disciplined. It took many cuffs and mess duty shifts before I could march in step. The intricate formations and maneuvers of a pike-man became mine over time. I learned also to control my temper. Your fellow apprentices  were tied to your fate, and if your unit fell short all were punished.

If we were not being trained there were endless tasks. Bringing water, mending tunics, sharpening pikes. An hour every day we would have to ourselves, one we would play cards for coper. If Iwas indifferent to marching I was a gifted Bez-lue player. I gained a reputation for stubbornness. After the second year our apprenticeship was over, and I was allowed to wear the colors of the Papillion, Fort Falls' block of pikemen. I married Genevieve the same day, a match made by my father and hers, and though I loved her little she was kind and doe-eyed.

Our duty began in earnest. We patrolled walls, roads, and the forests of Fort Falls. We had to quell unrest in La Fourchette. I gained a reputation for discipline and courage. I never saw dryads, but men would go missing on patrols or be found in unusual places later. I found an unusual talent: I was a natural carpenter. Soon Papillon found me a hundred tasks to train that skill. I set wheels, mended barricades, and repaired the commander's tent. I grew in time to be respected.

Genevieve passed away giving birth to our son, Luk. I asked Veronique and her husband Gelbert to take him in, for I had no time to raise a young boy.

I worry for the future.

And with that the backstory concluded. Haunting stuff. Prince then figured out his relationships, based upon the number of times he'd written about them in the backstory:

Veronique, level 2

Gelbert, level 1

Luk , level 1

Zak level 1

Rene level 1

Father level 4

Master Girard level 2

We drew up some gear for Girac: a decent pike and some armor that could take a hit or two.  Nothing terribly fancy, and Girac had some money left over.

We then drew up three Beliefs for Girac. Beliefs are subjective statements that are part characterization and part plot hook. Beliefs have what are called Resilience Points (RP), which tell you how hard the character believes in them. They're roughly equivalent to HP from old-school games, and the numbers mean just about what they mean there:

Superiors should be obeyed, 4 RP

You should stick by your comrades, 5 RP

It is natural to use force to advance your own interests, 7 RP

So yes, those are very low. The beginning of Crescendo is usually of a brutal nature that most games do not think to show, that of the effects of adventuring upon the mind and its need for constancy... as opposed to all the shit that can happen to you if you go out your door.

Prince then chose two Traits for Girac, adjectives that described his base personality: Prince chose Quick to Anger and Loyal, both at level 1. Trait levels tell you how powerful the Trait is in influencing the mechanics of the game. HINT: level one's not very good.

Last, but not least, we drafted the Act's Poem. Yes, you make up a poem in Crescendo. It is used as world-building and a set of thematic rewards is based upon it. Prince seemed a bit skeptical at first but took to the process like a duck to water, practically writing the Poem, much to delight and surprise. Here it is!

Sing to me, O muses!

Of man-killing Sota

And the zenith of his rage

With his resentful fist of iron

Sota smote Tuntematon

he split and cracked his silver skin

And nightshade blood rained from the heavens

Before Sota came then the inqisitor

And queried "Why then have you smote my son?"

Sota laughed: "How could I not, given what we are?"

And with that prep was done. 

Thanks for reading!

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