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!

Gaming and Getting Over It

 

It’s been almost two years, and I still wake up thinking about Afghanistan. The further out I get the more I’ve begun to realize: there is no going back from that phone call and seeing the tiger at the zoo. I thought the anger would die down a bit, that I would be able to return this blog back to its previously scheduled routine. I want to. 

I can’t. 

Every time I close my eyes I see her: an illusory Afghan ripped from her home, her school, to be enslaved to some pig. My mind understands the absurdity of that image, but I don’t have the courage to attempt to debunk it. Sometimes when I close my eyes she’s riddled with shrapnel, blood streaming from her bleeding face. That’s when I force my eyes to stay shut; I can at least keep my mind's eye on something I don't have the courage to look up in real life. And the rest of America has moved on, much to my chagrin and total lack of surprise. I meant, why would they? Taking responsibility for the aftermath of decisions is so alien to the American mind they lose it when fairy tale endings don’t happen for their pop culture icons, nevermind entire countries condemned to slavery in the face of our own apathy! So what am I supposed to make of American popular culture, where we idolize those who will not kill even if it means others die to maintain whatever moral purity they can fool themselves into having? Where idealism is just fine, even at the cost of lives? Am I supposed to take such obvious hypocrisy seriously, now that I see it for what it is? How am I supposed to think about such an obviously damning idea being celebrated in aesthetics?

I don’t have answers for these questions, for the record, because my issue isn’t a rational one. I was involved in the abandonment of a whole country. I have to grieve that, and my questions are symptomatic of my grief. By now I know they’re not the real problem. Somehow I have to figure out a way to integrate what happened into my life now, and until then these questions will persist. That is not a comfortable answer, but it is the only one I seem to have found. Bide your time and hold onto hope and all that! 

But that sort of decision has consequences, one of them being learning to sit with that kind of awful ambiguity.

And pretending that it's a comfortable thing to sit with is a lie. You have to let go of loving comfort and needing comfort to make you sane. But it's not a question of just diving into horrifying pain all the time, because no one can do that, all the time. Where does gaming and popular culture fit into trying to actually develop yourself and to become more, because you're either striving to live or dying, and no there is no inbetween?

Again, the solution is to sit and wait and watch. So that's what I've been doing.

And then the other day I randomly decided to play Bioshock Remastered on the Switch. I'd not played Bioshock when it first came out, although I was always interested in it. So, now it's on the Switch, so I bought it a few months ago... and then did nothing with it. Until the other day. I was having fun, but not a ton of fun, just getting used to the mechanics and the world and all the things I normally don't give videogames much time to do, but this was enjoyable enough!

And then this happened.

Right before she was picked up I had closed my eyes, and yes there was the Afghan girl was, and yes she was shredded all to hell, and that one time I didn't keep my eyes shut, so I popped them open... and there was this little abomination being restored to a little girl. My hands shook as I watched. I didn't hear anything after that. I couldn't. I just stared as the little girl curtsied, ran off, and climbed into whatever the hell that thing on the wall is. All of a sudden I had a goal: rescue all the freaking little sisters. It just sits in the back of my head: "Have you rescued a little sister today?"

No, I know this isn't me actually doing anything for anyone in Afghanistan, nevermind me actually solving the issue. I still have plenty of work to do on that front, and I know it. 

But if you think for two seconds that this one moment of relief, where someone is healed, isn't itself a moment of mercy I don't know what to tell you. This experience did and continues to do something for me, something I did not anticipate but am eternally grateful for. It's unreality seems to be part of the point: I can make something like this real, somehow.

I'm not sure where to go from there. But it is a direction. And that is more than I had before.

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!

If you're wanting to see the current draft of Crescendo, please click here.

If you want to come to the Discord server and ask questions and possibly even see a game or three, click here!

At the Bottom

Ever the Lord schools my tongue to utterance that shall refresh the weary; awakes my dull ears, morning after morning, their Master’s bidding to heed.

An attentive ear the Lord has given me; not mine to withstand him; not mine to shrink from the task.

I offered my body defenceless to the men who would smite me, my cheeks to all who plucked at my beard; I did not turn away my face when they reviled me and spat upon me.

The Lord God is my helper; and that help cannot play me false; meet them I will, and with a face unmoved as flint; not mine to suffer the shame of defeat;

here is One stands by to see right done me. Come, who pleads? Meet me, and try the issue; let him come forward who will, and accuse me.

Here is the Lord God ready to aid me; who dares pass sentence on me now? One and all they shall be brought to nothing, like garment the moth has eaten!

Who is here that fears the Lord, listens to his servant’s message? Who would make his way through dark places, with no glimmer of light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and lean upon his God.

For you others, with brand at girdle, that your own fire would make, with fire your own brands have kindled light the path if you can; this is all the gift I have for you, a bed of anguish.

Isaiah 50:4-11

Let's get something straight: the idea that progression doesn't lead to death is a peculiarity of our modern age. You can try to conserve your momentum into the great beyond, but the actual end point is always the same. This is true for all things, from single-cell organisms to planets and beyond. No, you cannot avoid it: you will die. So will your society, along with the thoughts that went into making it; can you imagine what future civilizations will think of our society a hundred years from now? No? Get started, it changes how you approach life now, and for the better. Oh, and this applies to your own psychology as well, with your body moving in its own up and down rhythms. Anything before Christianity acknowledged this reality, with "afterlifes" either not existing or being so wretched that nobody in the modern era would want it, finding that the reality presented in pre-modern religions to be something out of a horror film.

Sorry folks, it's not a horror film, that's reality.

Christianity does not deny this reality. It does not deny that progress is disintegration, death, and that the best you can do is try to slow down the process as much as you can before control is lost. Oh no, Christianity does not deny the cycle. It calls it what it is: the Fall. This existential change was not intended by God, we did this and cannot get out of it.

No, progressives, you neo-Christian heretics, you cannot defeat it, or even slow it down for all that long.

Christ did not get rid of death and its cyclical loop. Christ changed the loop itself. By dying and going into Hades, where He rescued those who wanted to leave, whom we know as the righteous dead. But they had to choose to leave.

Today in the Orthodox Church we celebrate the beginning of this cycle, of Christ giving us the choice to change the loop in our souls, in our minds. Today is the day that God, instead of annihilating His creation and starting over like a child with his toys made our creation, the cycle of death, His.

For those of you wanting to know why God couldn't just yank us out of creation and put us in a new world... think that request through. You are not a soul in a body, you are a body-soul hybrid, you are not one or the other. You are both. You are you because of your body and soul. If you hate so much that you're willing to nuke your own self and everyone and everything else so that way you're no longer in pain... just sit with that idea and really think it through. And I mean really, actually, think it through.

God. Loves. You. And that means the world you're in. Not what you want the world to be. Not what you want yourself to be. But you as you are, whether your be drugged to avoid the pain, just taking that pain out on other people, or denying it with sheer force of will and wearing yourself out. God loves you, so much so that  He took on your reality, becoming man so that He could feel the disintegration, feel the pain that is the normal human experience not to mention when things go wrong. And the normal way involves you collapsing under the weight of your own existence, suffocating under all the little paper cuts to your psyche as the years wear on and your body begins to fold under the stress of your mind and its inability to fully process everything it's faced.

Hey look, crucifixion is death by horrific suffocation!

Huh.

Now, this leaves us all with an uncomfortable choice, doesn't it? We can either fight the process and hurt all those around us by doing so and still fail, or we can trust that God's Crucifixion means He sits right there, behind the pain, all the way down that inner chute to Hell so many have found, and that if you look for Him, and scream with Him "MY GOD MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU ABANDONED MED?" you will find Him!

That's a big ask. The biggest.

But I've done it. Y'know, once or twice, if I can summon the courage. I've looked on the way down, following the notes left behind by those who did it. That's literally part of the point of this blog. And God is there. He is not there in the way I expected Him to be. But He is, and when He opens His mouth, it is to ask to join in. It is not what I thought I wanted, but you cannot do another cycle than the one humanity already picked: the collapse is always going to come. And there's very little I can do to slow it down, or anyone. Christ does not tell me that my experience is wrong, He asks to ride the elevator to Hell with me.

Every time I've told Him yes something has changed within me. I don't know how else to put it, but my experiences have proven to me that this two thousand year process, of finding Christ in that elevator on the way down is the true way to survive and thrive in this world.

Today is the day Christ goes down. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to try and find the courage to let Him take the trip with me. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, after all.

Index Card RPG

It's a very strange thing, to read the Index Card RPG (ICRPG). Like, what on earth can you say about this book, beyond asking "Is this near the apex of d20 design or is this so darn close it would take a miracle to evolve any further???" And, I mean, I don't really have an answer to that question, but the fact that I have to even ask that question should tell you what this game actually is. Regardless of the answer, ICRPG's mechanics are simple but have significant depth to them, the GMing section is about to close to perfection as you can get, and the hundreds of pages of additional content are beyond what was necessary, in the best way possible

So, first off, mechanics. Anyone reading this blog knows I'm a stickler for them, that games have to be well-designed before anything else. ICRPG took every single d20 innovation I'm aware of and not only iterated on it, but then perfected the mechanics they iterated on. It's really hard to understate how simple this game is to actually run! Difficulty classes are assigned by "room", and can be manipulated very easily to produce a wide range of results. Characters now have multiple "damage dice" to deal with different types of challenges, and so therefore the difference between monsters and complex tasks have been eliminated entirely; it's possible to run the game entirely on the fly to a degree that no other d20 game could possibly match. I'd feel very comfortable handing this game to a beginner and seeing what they did with it, because as long as they were confident in their ability to BS they could do pretty much anything they wanted. Character creation is quick and almost painless, with you just needing to pick some stuff from a few lists, jot a few numbers down, and then start. I mean, maybe others would have difficulty running it completely on the fly, but I sure as hell wouldn't, and I know that when I was a younger GM or a player I would have killed to have these mechanics.

The GMing section is easily the best d20 section I've ever read. No, you're not going to do a better one, sorry! Besides the usual "be confident" and other such nonsense there is actual, good, real advice, like setting up room as set pieces, different tips and tricks that could only be gotten with years and years and years of playing. If you're not going to play the game that's fine, but read the GMing section if nothing else. It's a game written by an incredibly experienced and intelligent GM, who had spent a very long time trying to work out exactly what he wanted to say to newbies. If there is any reason to buy this book, it's the GMing section!!!

... and then there's the extras. Oh man, the extras. There's tons of settings in the back half of the book, along with races, story hooks, classes, stuff that would normally be its own book at 50 bucks, but it's in here in a small $17 book and it's just so wholesome. Looking at this book, at the sheer value of this part of the book alone, I find myself humbled. There's love in the rest of the book, but that's not really what jumps at me in the front half. That's simply a great game and great advice. But here? This section? It absolutely didn't need to be here. There's page after page after page of content that's thrown in practically for free, and only because the author wanted you to have the very best he could possibly give you! As I struggle to make Crescendo, as I bang my head on that engine over and over again, books like this become a beacon of hope for me. I know that sounds odd, but if I'm not even in the same ballpark of ICRPG in terms of love and value, what's the point in making a game at all???

And that, ultimately, is why ICRPG is the d20 RPG. Not because its mechanics are practically perfect. Not because its GMing section is the best d20 GMing section I've read in actual years, somehow beating out 4e's DMG2. It's that this game was made out of a serious love for the pulp genre, a love that pushed at this author so freaking hard that he made the best game he could, simply so others could see what he saw and love it too. I am not saying other designers do not make their products out of love, or that d20 is a soulless field of horrors or something, but in the realm of d20 this is a gem, and even outside of that type of game ICRPG stands out as the definitive text on the d20 pulp genre. Just period.