Dark Souls RPG: First Session Play Report

 

So we ran a test session of the Dark Souls RPG Saturday. Two players (Billy, Sir Hazbil the Knight, and Nate, Fizbun the Pyromancer). It had been awhile since I had played this game, and it was a blast! We laughed, we laughed, we cringed hard, and laughed more. Despite me having all three books in the line, we only used the core. Mine's shiny. It's so nice. We made characters and played for a little while. I grabbed a random map off the web, printed it off, and resolved to use my encounter dice to populate it as we went. I grabbed the Cathedral of the Deep from page 248 of the Core Book for the random monsters and other stuff.

Character Generation

This was a breeze. The options were "lacking", in the sense that you just had prepackaged stuff that you picked from, with a lot of illusory choice, but it sure makes character creation quick. 

Random Encounter Dice

Now, there are two ways that the book sort of presents prepping an adventure: make a site or a typical "trad" storygame. I cannot overemphasize how poorly the book serves both approaches, and if I had a true and actual criticism of this game, it would be this lukewarm support in lieu of "figure it out yourself". Fortunately, I have designed my own games and have read tons of OSR stuff, so I just took a few ideas and ran with them. I had some ideas on how I might do that.

I figured out quickly that my initial ideas on random encounters for Dark Souls wouldn't capture the full scope of the game. At all. I also hate the fact that there isn't an easy way to just randomly generate equipment. That's going to trip me up later. 

But, for now, I decided to go with two dice - d8 and d20 - rolled every other turn, in areas you have not explored.

Step 1: The Danger Check (d8)

Roll	Result
1–2	Monster: Roll on the Cathedral of the Deep table (p. 248).
3	Trap: Electric doorknobs, mimics, or pressure plates.
4	Soul: A Fading Soul or Large Soul of a Deserted Corpse.
5	Item: Random equipment or "rubbish."
6	Bonfire: Only if you confirm with a second "1" on a d8.
7–8	Nothing: Eerie silence... for now.

Step 2: The World Tendency (d20)

Roll	Result
1–3	Summon Sign: Roll for Purple (Mad), Red (Hostile), or Gold (Sunbro).
4	White Sign: Restores one player and one ally to full Position.
5–7	Shopkeep: A hollow merchant with overpriced Moss Clumps.
8–20	The Dark: No cosmic interference this turn.

The Adventure

Sir Hazbil and Fizbun came to around a bonfire, in a room that was locked from the outside. Sir Hazbil attempted to pop the doorknob off with his sword and managed to just get clear in time to not get the full electric shock: the door was trapped! Fizbun refused to spend position to set the wooden door on fire.. so Sir Hazbil hacked the door open. They found a room filled with rotting furniture. Sir Hazbil opened the next door, only to find himself staring up at huge two cavern lizards... who were leering at him. Sir Hazbil charged, connected with his longsword... and the cavern lizard didn't even flinch. He squashed Sir Hazbil without even trying.

Fizbun gently closed the door. 

And went back to the bonfire. Sir Hazbil was somehow feeling hardier (his Position/HP max had gone from 13 to 16). Only to find the door had restored itself as soon as he went in. They rehacked the door open, and started checking around... only to find there was a secret door in the same room their bonfire. They came out into a chamber with two doors, one to the front and one to the right.

Fizbun opened the door onto a lovely view of a cavern lizard's ass.

Fizbun gently closed the door.

They tried the other door, and found four undead hounds were minding their own business... and somehow they hadn't disturbed them. The hounds stood between them and another door to the front and a staircase to the left. So Sir Hazbil charged! Fizbun actually threw flame this time! They were putting up a good fight... until an unlucky crit took Sir Hazbil down. By that time there were two hounds and one of them was badly injured, so Fizbun figured he could finish them off.

Fizbun was wrong.

They both woke up at the bonfire. This time Sir Hazbil was weaker... and could no longer wear his armor. His respawning had weakened his Strength score by 1, making him unable to wear the Knight's Armor! Fizbun managed to get a -1 to his Charisma score... which is what he uses to cast spells.

We laughed our asses off.

And called it a session, coz Billy had to go.

Gameplay

The people who say this game doesn't play well are lying. They just are. There's more than a few reviews of this game that claim to have direct play experience that are absolutely lying their asses off, or are filled with players so impossibly stupid that I worry for their ability to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. And I say this because this game ran really smoothly! Again! With a completely different group!

So Position is used for three things: improve your d20 roll, 1 for 1 (no limit), improve your damage, 1 for 1 (minimum of 5), and improve speed, 1 for 5 extra feet (can't do more than double speed). 

If your Position drops to 0 you die and go back to the last bonfire... where you have to roll to see if something random (mostly awful) happens to you. It's a DC 18 Wisdom save. You're gonna fail it a lot.

Burning Position/HP to improve rolls is an incredible thing to do. Each failed roll (and there were a lot of them) the question became: given that getting hitting by a sneak attack right now would send me back to the bonfire, do I burn the health now, making a future possible hit worse, or do I whiff and hope the monster misses? Not all the monsters can burn Position like the Players can, and I didn't throw any of those at the Players, so they didn't have to balance that out. Yet. But each Player roll was intense. And this is the only game I have ever played that has justified a passive defense for the players: you can't spend Position on the GM's attack roll, so it's a genuine guess as to what could happen! The players intuited this problem immediately and had a great time measuring risk. We'll see what happens as they go through the dungeon. They're worse off than they were before, mechanically, but now the shock has worn off. 

We will see what the players do next week. But we had a blast. Especially Billy, who now is walking around naked, with a shield. His AC is now lower than the pyromancer's.

What could go wrong?

Galahads: Can You Do It Again?

 

The experience of designing Crescendo was unlike anything I had gone through before. What most call “design”, I have found to be refinement. Purification. What most call design is simply taking an idea that already existed and working it. What I did with Crescendo was not that. It was the discovery of an object that did not exist, but should. Playtesting was discovery of something that we could all feel, but not necessarily see or understand. I felt more like a gardener, refining something that was growing apart from whatever I was putting into it.

Somehow, some way, I am supposed to do that again with Galahads. Can I, however? Is that a possibility? Is it advisable?

Attempting to Clarify the Question in the Title

The vast majority of "design" in the RPG space is iteration. This shouldn't be a controversial thing to say. I hope it isn't shocking, at the least. The vast majority of our TTRPG space is just an iteration of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, as exemplified in 5.5 DnD. RPGers are a hilariously conservative bunch, by and large. A small subsection of our hobby proves our conservative nature, by being as reactionary as possible. What, you think something like Thirsty Sword Lesbians isn't reactionary in nature? Most of the storygaming sphere is just that: a reaction against. But reactionaries will never win their war. Storygaming as it exists is doomed, as the OSRites claim... they don't just understand they're just as badly off. What I am doing is not conservative, nor is it reactionary. I want to create, to pull something out what could be, should be, but isn't.

With the advent of Enter Sandman, I saw something unusual: what a creative act actually is. And, because I saw what real creativity looked like, just for a moment, I knew what I needed to do on my end.

Anyone who thinks I'm saying The Warning's cover of Enter Sandman is the only creative thing in the world desperately needs to reread.

For lack of a better word, I found an experience, that I knew had never been done before. It was just sitting there. Like a chess piece under the couch. I held this chess piece in my mind, and resolved to never let go of it. 

What was that experience, you may ask?

• A slow burn igniting into an unpredictable climax of drama.
• Deeply personal, psychological gameplay that allows people to push their boundaries in a safe and entertaining manner
• All happening across a mythic and tragic backdrop. The world turns and rots and burns on a scale no one can truly master.

I dove in. And it was the most wonderfully terrifying task I ever set mind to. I knew what I needed to honor: this shining thing that filled my mind's eye with a bright darkness. So I just.. ran the game. A ton. An absolute ton. I paid attention to how everyone seemed to react to the sessions, and whether or not it fit the Chess Piece I had found. I obsessed over what would evoke the experience as I saw it. I wanted people to find the same piece I found, and the rules were the map to finding the Chess Piece.

And it worked.

I'm absolutely in awe of that. I honestly don't know what to do with it. No, I didn't make the perfect map to the experience that Crescendo points to, but it works really well. I may need to refine the map over the years, but for the moment I have reached the limit of my talent, and need time to grow, to see if I can make the map better later.

Honestly, I was wondering if I was done with designing after that. I made a bunch of different games, and the playtests for all of them came back really nicely: Dragons and Planets and The Right Thing, particularly. I may still release those, but those are simply refinements and remixes of Crescendo. I don’t find that to be terribly compelling. I can do that kinda thing ad nauseum, but at that point it's just flooding the market with more stuff in the same table milieu. Someone shouldn't be looking at what I make and go "Well, when I have time". I want them to see something legitimately different, which doesn't compete with what they love already, but shows them a new way to do things.

Crescendo is a new way to do things. Heranyt, the science fantasy setting I am making for Crescendo, makes Crescendo weirder, a different thing entirely even from core Crescendo. I am currently toying with the idea of making modern, Western, and sci fi settings for Crescendo, because I think I could fundamentally change the way the game is played, each time.

So when I ask, in the title "Can You Do It Again".... that is what I am asking. Can I be a gardener to Something Else?

The Danger of Principles

I have long been aware of a central problem of life: the solutions you find in life are the source of further problems. You cannot assume that what you found that worked before will work the next time. As you build solutions, you will find that the temptation will be to keep defaulting to what worked before. So long as the square hole has some somewhat rounded edges, you'll go for it.

People who do not understand this have a very hard later lot in life.

Not that I am saying I do this, on reflex. Past solutions being good for present problems is a reflex thing, of your nervous system. 

And man it's tripping me up right now.

The thing that I found I did with stuff like The Right Thing and Dragons and Planets is that I just assumed the things that worked for Crescendo could be ported over to something else.

But that's  refinement, not gardening. It's not finding, discovery, of a new chess piece. Is there a way to do that reliably? I don't know. 

But I'm either flipping the table or quitting. And I have no intention to quit. What will I find when I reach back under the couch?

The Elephant in the Room

 

My relationship with this blog has been complicated from the moment I started it. I didn't really know what exactly I wanted to do, or what to say. Peter, the only Patron I have, even now, has believed in me from the start. He has always encouraged me to write my thoughts and tell the world how I see things, even when we don't agree. As I work on this blog, though, there's one post that I feel I have to write, because it's been hanging over this whole enterprise since July, 2021.

The Black-Haired Girl

Before we get to the actual... well... dying... it's important we cover some preliminaries. Starting in 2004 or 2005 I began having dreams of a little black-haired girl. These dreams ranged from monster fighting dreams to peaceful afternoons at a park. Due to my baggage, which I have documented more than good enough for everyone on this blog, I didn't really take to these dreams terribly well. Some of these dreams involved actual waking visions, where she would be sitting at the head of my bed! I went to psychologists and exorcists, all of whom gave me a clean bill of health. They were confused, but they confirmed I was not delusional and not demonically oppressed or possessed. They had no idea what to make of me.

Understandably, I was not heartened by this.

July 2021

Unfortunately, C-PTSD came along and made these dreams all the more fraught. Oh great, turns out an adult did take advantage of me, and I'm having dreams of some kid! This sounds irrational, and it is, but just the idea of me having access to somebody of the opposite sex but younger, in any capacity, no matter how "unreal", tripped off something really profoundly scared in me.

And, just... well.. time took its toll. Early-mid July 2021 I hit a really dark place, the darkest I have ever been. There was a moment when I realized that I could either continue to suffer and wait and hope, or inflict my suffering on others. Make them as broken as me. I was tired. I was starting to consider the latter. I don't mean "huh, what if", but "yeah, that's something I could do".

And then this popped up.

Something in the quiet strength in this video... it broke that resolve in me. I just sat there, staring at the screen. I couldn't go forward with it. I just couldn't. And that was extremely painful. But I knew I had to go on.

July wasn't done with me, not even nearly. About a week later, I had a vision of the black-haired girl. While awake. It was intense. The vision was a promise of something to come. Suddenly I had this feeling of going down a slide towards a new grounding.  The exhilaration  was not what you would expect. I had a hard time handling it, at first. What everyone else would call "A sense of direction" I called a loss of control.

And then I got this tooth infection. Boy, you don't know pain till you got one of those. The pain was so exquisite they had to put me a particularly strong narcotic... and warned me that I would have a hard time processing emotions, on account of what the drug had to do to make me not feel the pain in my tooth. Boy did they undersell that one. 

A day after I started taking the meds an estranged friend of mine died. She and I had never really patched things up, and her dying broke open a dam of unresolved feelings that I didn't know I had... while on  a drug that made processing feelings extremely difficult. While processing a vision. While suffering from flashbacks. It was a lot, but I doing my best with it. 

And then, on the same day, in the same eight hours, another friend of mine and I had an argument. It was a bad one. He was at a low point, and had decided that he was done with trying. He'd been having a really rough time, too, and finally couldn't fight certain battles anymore. He knew it was a bad idea, and I called him out for it, telling him he couldn't give up, not yet. He exploded at me, saying he couldn't do it anymore. I pushed back. Hard. Told him he wasn't a coward, just tired. He had every right to be tired. It didn't matter what I said. My friend was done. He said as much. And he would appreciate it very much if I stopped pushing him. He knew what he was doing. 

I had done the right thing, or as close to it as I could. But it didn't stop me from waking up the next morning and feeling more tired than when I went to bed. I got up, walked into my bathroom. Lay down on the tile. And died.

No really. I was over my body. I saw it. I went cold.

Suddenly, I felt something push me back into my body: No. You have fought too hard to give out yet.

I had the vision. Again. And the warmth of it pulled me back into my body. I felt my body warm back up. I stood up. I felt... normal. Well, as normal as you can being on a narcotic that makes you not feel a bad tooth infection.

I went to work.

Came home.

Lived my life.

Most people think a resurrection should come with a choir of angels or a permanent glow. For me, it was just the ability to stand up and do a Tuesday. 

The Blog

I worked in a frenzy afterwards, but as I went, something kept working into my soul. I want to say it was Crescendo, but it was something else too: I had to do Crescendo. Had to. It was a fire at my back, threatening to consume me if I slowed down. Abandoned it. I couldn't even consider it. I just was... pushed. Hard. So I pushed hard. Anything that didn't include that overwhelming drive slowly fell out.

Well, by the time this blog post publishes, it'll be about four and a half years. So what now?

I have no idea.

I know that when I go back through some of the older posts on this blog I find something that I'm extremely proud of. Some of those old posts help me get back up when I'm having a bad day. Writing in this blog has become a part of what I do. Not really sure why, or even what I put here, but this is somehow a part of... me.

So, whatever that looks like. We'll see.

To the Glory of God

 

In eating, in drinking, in all that you do, do everything as for God’s glory.

1st Corinthians 10:31

The smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; day and night no rest is theirs, who worshipped the beast and his image, who bore the mark of his name.

Apocalypse 14:11

There's something that abuse survivors don't talk about, especially those who were abused as children: they can't bring themselves to blame someone other than themself.  Deep down, way deep down, most people are actually good creatures and don't want to put the enormity of that monstrous act on another human being. It's so heavy that most of us who are hurt would rather unconsciously bear the burden, alone. 

The problem, of course, is that loneliness is not of God. God is love, relationship. What people don't understand is that, by trying to relate to someone, they are invoking the Spirit of God. Spirits are living media for transmission, like the spiritual equivalent to air... but alive. So, withdrawing requires going through a medium to do so. There's nothing wrong with solitude in God, but we got concupiscence to worry about, which almost guarantees we won't do it right.

So instead of choosing solitude we choose loneliness.

Over the last year, I have watched a lot of horror. And I do mean a lot of it. And I don't mean "tame" horror. I mean stuff that borders on tasteless and genuinely awful. Stuff like Possessed, Irreversible, The Outwaters, The Poughkeepsie Tapes... stuff that is known for being entirely too much. Way, way, way too much. Tons of stuff that has left my skin crawling, terrified, in some cases sleepless. And I have been mainlining it all into my system, factory-style. 

Now, I didn't necessarily do this on purpose. I am ten years into this whole PTSD thing, and have gotten used to gauging when an overwhelming urge is something to fight with every bit of my being, or something to simply let go and watch like a hawk. So I am not claiming some form of moral superiority, no matter how snarky I may get at people who disagree with what I am doing. I am saying that I have gotten used to having things that are simply not worth fighting, because there are bigger fish to fry. I wasn't trying to do anything, other than let a part of me that didn't have have a lot of power before that point have it, as far as I could, without judging it. I simply let it exist and have what it wanted, as long as I wasn't harming someone else.

But I accidentally had a bit of a breakthrough, and I think people in my position may need to know about it.

There was this moment in The House that Jack Built where Jack, as a child, cuts the foot off a baby duck and chucks it back into water. The poor thing squeaks in pain, and then in panic, as it goes in circle upon panicked circle, bleeding out into the water, unable to steer straight because a foot is missing. The camera doesn't focus upon this poor thing's last moments as it spirals into death. It focuses on Jack's totally impassive face. The face of a child who does not care about the poor little duckling he just doomed.

In that moment I felt something I have never actually felt before: disgust. 

I have felt a lot of anger in my life, far too much for it to be healthy. But disgust requires something that no abuse victim can just claim: superiority. You can only be disgusted by something lower than you. Which means that you have to think that you are above something. Which is really difficult to do if you're a sex abuse victim. In order for there to be disgust, you have to be healthy. You have to be able to put yourself as above the disgusting actions (never people) of evil.

Those who think disgust is morally wrong are full of shit.

In that one moment, I was suddenly able to place something beneath me, on reflex. The self-loathing, which is atmosphere in rape survivors, a smothering plastic bag to self-worth, was gone. Just for a second. And all it took was seeing a poor baby duck's foot cut off and its panic.

I went home, and suddenly found I was more responsive to my wife and kids. I could suddenly relate to them better. Something had been banished. So I went and found more things. And found that, the more disgust I forced myself to endure, the freer I felt to love my family. And love glorifies God. 

When I was younger, I was told that to glorify God meant to only think or talk about beautiful things. What I realized a little bit later was what was meant was to only think or do "nice" things. The problem is that "nice" things aren't what Jesus did. Jesus did kind things. Him flipping the tables on the money lenders was an act of kindness to them. He loved them with a whip.

Jesus didn't avoid pain, He dealt it when necessary. Misery and discomfort were tools.

They weren't something He shied away from. He just didn't see the need to use them often.

I am not advocating for random smut. But there's a fact about the modern world that we don't like to acknowledge: we don't see a lot of horrible stuff. One of my friends who grew up on a farm complained about the lack of blood from lightsabers, and laughed that she didn't need any sex-ed, because she had seen what the animals did with each other and put two and two together to make four. The amount of nudity used to be much higher, not to mention the amount of blood, maiming, and killing. Pretending we're not used to such things and will miss them on almost a genetic level is... naive. 

"But Nathan," someone will say "tHE FAthErs..." 

Dude, most of the Fathers lived in a civilization where slitting noses and other public maiming stuff happened. People died much more than they do now. You're really telling me that the context they said any of their comments about entertainment and enjoyment don't factor in... I mean you do you... but my wife's a history major and she wouldn't put up with such idiocy. You do you.

But the thing is that the Father's advice is given in an environment where you don't have to seek out disgust. Too much exposure to evil is corrupting. You have to focus on the true and good and beautiful in a world of horror. I'm not advocating ignoring the Fathers. I am saying that the proper interpretation of those passages in a world where you must choose to look away. No matter how sexually explicit our world gets, it's not the ancient world, it's just not.

"But Nathan,", someone will say "i THink tHat'S iCKy...."

Cool. But I gotta live with my decisions, which all need to have consequences I can live with. Such idealisms are nice, but I have seen the cost for having a "coherent" worldview, where you can worship your little inner abstract idol and not feel bad. "Coherence" is merely a nice word for idolatry, for avoiding God. I want to find God in the real world, using my mind to interact with it. God isn't in my head. He isn't whatever stupid system of beliefs used to keep my emotions pinned down. 

Furthermore, it was into that dirty and blood-soaked world that Christ came. He came during the Pax Romana, which is a polite term for "Rome had killed everyone who could resist". He came to the remnants of utter destruction. People would walk past their neighbors crucified all the time. It was in this dark time euphemistically called "peace" that Christ said "Love your enemies". There were people hanging, choking to death, in public squares as a matter of course. "Love your enemies"  didn't mean "Be nice to those you don't like". It meant looking at atrocity and seeing the humanity of the perpetrator, and to refuse to back down from it. It meant looking something actually horrific in the face, and to go "This disgusting thing you did does not change that you are human, and that on some level if I am loved, so should you be."

That requires horror. And yes, disgust. And yes, that is a beautiful thing to do.

So keep your abstract idols and your sterile sanctuaries. I’ll take the whip, the blood-stained farm, and the God who isn't afraid to get His hands dirty to pull me out of the dirt. The God Who, when seeing me covered in blood and shit, is filled with disgust at what covers me... and pity for the one who is covered.

The Lancelot Problem, Reforged

 

 “In summary, modernity replaces process with result and the relational with the transactional."

— Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

Why does Lancelot fade?

I've posed this question to many people over the years—a quiet riddle from an old story that never fails to unsettle me. Most reach for complicated explanations. So far, three saw the heart of it clearly. Another came agonizingly close, with a confession that still echoes: "I don’t want to feel."

Logres once burned bright. Knights in glory. Wrongs were righted. While Arthur kept Logres, his knights kept Logres a place worth fighting for. Arthur fought and fought and fought. Nobody else could have done what he did.

Then the unraveling. People forget that Arthur slept with not one, but both half-sisters, and gat children on both of them. People seem to forget that your strengths are your weaknesses. Arthur was the fighting man. He was able to keep up a level of conflict in the service of peace that can hardly be imagined. But that has its costs. Arthur didn't sleep with Morgause and Morgan because lust was a problem, but because the same strength that let him keep Logres safe was out of balance. It's just that Mordred's the one that decided to burn it all down.

Lancelot failing with Guinevere isn't what brought Camelot down. It was going down anyway. Whether it was Mordred who brought it down or the consequences therefrom, Arthur's fire burned too bright. He was going to bring Logres down because of who he was. But Lancelot sleeping with Guinevere and then killing Gaheris and Gareth certainly looks bad, doesn't it? Lancelot going to France really doesn't help, either.

But then Gawain forgives him from his deathbed and begs for his help. The mightiest knight is needed, one last time. And Lancelot doesn't disappoint. He rises. Brings up an army from the ashes. He races.

And races. 

And races.

Too late.

The field... hushed. Bodies cold under a gray sky. 

Arthur. Gone.

Gawain. Gone.

Excalibur vanished into mist.

The mightiest knight stands alone, amid the ruin he helped forge. 

Silence.

He withdraws to

cold stone and thin prayers. Fasting until the body echoes the emptiness within. He watches as flames devour the last of the dream. Screams fade to wind. A dark age creeps in. But there's no blade lifted. No banner or roar against the night.

Just... retreat. He collapses at the tomb, wasting away actively, falling apart in a process that is incomprehensible to us.

Why? That's my question for you, the reader. Why did Lancelot, the mightiest knight, fade? And why do we refuse to undstand?

Guesses could come, like crows to carrion. I know I wondered about it a long time. Let's try going through some of them, shall we?

Can't be cold penance. Guilt had clawed him before—never quenched the fire and it hadn't shattered his faith.

It wasn't because it was too hard. Trials had scorched him and Lancelot had charged through outcomes foretold a long time ago.

It absolutely couldn't be fear. Defeat was an old shadow at his side.

These are shields. Words we clutch. Word I clutched, and still try to go back to, still. Dogs and vomit.

But in the ancient tales, not every fall is fought. Sometimes a flame gutters, without wind or cry. The blaze that once consumed worlds... extinguishes. Unseen, unresisted, unmarked, leaving only ash. A hollow where a primeval roar once lived.

Gilgamesh howls into void.

Achilles turns his back in thunder.

Gawain takes the green sash and still flinches.

Lancelot... drifts into a quiet gray.

We crave endings where heroes avenge, rebuild, defy the dark, arise from graves. But here, the mightiest... simply dims. We cannot hold easily it because to hold the situation is to feel the snuffing. That quiet, merciless crushing. The spark goes out, and the sword has to drop, because it requires the spark to keep the sword in the air, with it.

That one confession

“I don’t want to feel.”

really sticks with me. It's been awhile, but it burns through me. That confession

"I don't want to feel."

breaks into my normal thoughts, a lot more than I am comfortable with admitting, so here it is on a blog, for everyone to see.  The problem is that every time 

"I don't want to feel."

break through into my fucking skull, I am reminded that, even though I know the answer to this problem, that isn't enough. Knowing that

"I don't want to feel." 

 doesn't make me capable of facing the truth reliably. This isn't a solution, an end to the journey, but the start of a brand new one. One where I don't know the end of.

 If modernity demands a transaction—a penance paid for a sin cleared—then Lancelot’s silence is an insult to the modern mind. But in the gray light of that monastery, there was no transaction. There was only the process of existing in the ruins. I spent years looking for a riddle to solve Lancelot, only to realize I was looking for a shield to protect myself. 

"I don't want to feel."

isn’t just a key to an old story; it’s a white flag. It's a surrender to the truth without having to look at it. And that's... just... maybe the mightiest knight didn't merely fade. Maybe he just stopped lying to himself, the consequences be damned. We want Lancelot to roar against the night because if he can’t survive the feeling of total loss, what hope is there for us? 

But the tales aren't there to give us "hope"; they are there to give us company. 

Do you want it?

The Dragon's Fire: Passouan 7

The Prompt

Mild day. The rain from yesterday had spoiled several dozen barrels of preserved food. Nothing directly dangerous, but it is a concern.

Kuri- Raphael

The day dares to call itself mild, but I know better. Yesterday’s rain crept in like a thief, rotting several dozen barrels of preserved food—no blade drawn, no blood spilled, yet the damage is done. It isn’t a crisis… not yet. But shortages are the kind of rot that spreads quietly, testing resolve long before hunger sharpens its teeth.

I’ve seen worse omens begin with less. We endure, we adapt, and when the next trial comes, it will find us leaner, angrier, and very much alive.

Heranyt Playtest and The Dragon's Fire - Passouan 4 , 5 and 6

I like reading setting books. I like having a coherent set of vibes that I can just lean into on evenings where I don't feel like reading something more "substantial". Just soak in the vibes.

I hate using setting books while running games. I hate it because there's either too much lore or not enough, and it's impossible to just use the lore immediately. I don't know anyone who personally used a setting book as it was "intended", and the only people I know of who sorta did were using 4e DnD books, which have a lot of crunch in them: using the setting book changed the game itself, so they used the book.

So I decided I wanted to actually make a setting book that could be used, as-is, in a game of Crescendo... which meant that Crescendo needed to be done. And it is. We're getting the text firmed up, which is why it's in Ashcan, but the game's mechanics are done.

So I decided I wanted to make a setting book. Which meant actually making something I would use at the table. This time I decided to try and document what I'm doing in a somewhat public fashion. For funsies.

What I Look for in Designing a Game

The simplest measurement I have for when I design a game or game supplement is that it gives back much more than you put into it. My time is valuable. If the process for playing a game doesn't yield something that's obviously going to be worth my time, I don't want to design it. Or play it.

Now Hold Up

That doesn't mean that the game doesn't take skill or time to master. Or even that the game is easy. I make hard games. Crescendo is a very difficult game to master. The initial entry is quiet low, but once you realize what the game is doing... it takes a long time to produce truly epic results. But the process is extremely rewarding while you do it. It's a process that's fun and challenging.

The Heranyt Setting

So, why my homegrown setting? Simply put, I know it. I have played in it for a long time, and feel comfortable with how much lore should be put in, and what I use. Also, this may come as a surprise to some, but I make my games and stuff so I can use them. For my own amusement. So if I am going to make a setting, it's a setting I am going to use. For me. And that means Heranyt, if I'm going science-fantasy.

Playtesting

Now, the big thing that I insist upon is that setting books fundamentally change how the game is played. It's not merely a skin, it's a different way to play that system. I have absolutely no want or need to make a setting that doens't fundamentally change things.. but I couldn't think of anything. I knew things were missing from the Crescendo experience, but then suddenly-

1:1 Time (It's John McGowan's Fault)

 

- I freaking read "The Living Campaign", by John McGowan, a nice guy who decided to write about how 1:1 time could be useful. For those of you who don't know, 1:1 is an older concept in Dungeons and Dragons, which says that game time is tied to real-world time. Sessions of play are more or less when you check back in with your characters and do something dramatic. 

Something about this setup clicked with me. Wolfe stories weren't quite this formula, but the idea behind all Wolfe stories are that there's something huge going on the background, and it is "the plot". The story is about what happens to the characters when the plot hits them... and then leaves. 

So 1:1 time wouldn't look like in Crescendo what it would in DnD, and that's fine.

The Procedure

Heranyt has some light gameplay astrology to it: the seven planets hang in the sky, and they affect things. 

How Does the Situation Progress?

I would roll a d20 for the scale of the event that day:

1: The situation is totally screwed. Downfall.

2-8: The situation gets worse.

9-14: The situation doesn't get worse.

15-19: The situation slightly improves.

20: The situation improves dramatically.

The Initial Situation

I made a calendar that told me when the principle planet was ascendant (doing good stuff) or descendent (doing bad stuff). For weather, I know that the general location we're at is actually decently similar to my own, so I just check the weather for the day at my house.

How Does the Situation Progress?

I would then check to see if Eous the Evil Moon was ascendant (screwing up the initial bad situation) or descendent (making the situation better). 

The Resolution

I would reference a random line from my journal, to see how it all ended up.

How This Looks So Far

So, here's what we got so far. I s tarted on January 4th, which on my calendar is the 4th of Passouan. It's technically winter, but the locale's in the more southerly climes, relatively close to a gulf. So it's actually decently warm. Here's how the plot's progressed at Sota City, where an uneasy alliance of men and elves keep back the eternal tides of undead attack.

4th of Passouan

Two days from now is The Drowning of Telos, when he was said to have met Elpida, the Flame Eternal. 

Unfortunately,  on this warm and temperate day  General Juhani, a popular elven leader, dies protecting his elven guard from a surprise attack led by the dragon and The Bride. Morale is very low amongst the elves. There wasn't even a body left.

Kuri

So, Kuri responded with two accounts: a historical account and one from the standpoint of her character, Raphael. I didn't anticipate this. I was overjoyed. Both were okayed, given that Raphael's survived run-ins with actual gods before.

Account of the Witness 

On that same day, the one who would later be named in the Wars to Come stood among the elven host, sworn neither to command nor retreat. They felt the turning of fate before the dragon was seen, and raised warning even as shadow fell upon the terraces.

When the attack came, they fought to hold the line beside Juhani’s guard, drawing steel and spell alike. They survived the firestorm only by chance—or by design unknown—cast to the stone as the General made his final stand.

When silence returned, it was they who first rose, and it was their voice that called the living together amid the ruin.

For this reason, the chronicles name them not as a savior, but as the Last Witness of Juhani, from whom the true account of the Fourth of Passouan is known. This what I have written or in historical addendum brain today I can change it up if need be.

Raphael

I stood among the guard when the air turned wrong, warm as a forge without flame. Two days remained before the Drowning of Telos.

The dragon came with the Bride. General Juhani placed himself before us and was unmade. No body remained—only scorched stone.

I fell in the fire.

I did not burn.

When the dragon withdrew, I alone rose where I had fallen. The host was broken, and mourning was decreed.

Fifth of Passouan

Kuri- Raphael

The day before the Drowning, on this day, a hundred of the elves sailed to the stars, hearts shattered by the death of Geneal Juhani. Defenses against the horde are worse than ever before. An envoy has been sent to the wolves of Serpent Forest, and prospects look good. 

I keep watch.

While others mourn or flee to the stars, I walk the walls and count what still stands. I test blades dulled by neglect, trace runes that no longer answer as they should. Juhani is gone, and with him the certainty of command—but not my purpose. I listen for the drums of the horde in the distance and for the answer that may come from Serpent Forest. If the Wolves answer the envoy, I will be ready to meet them. If they do not, I will be ready to hold the line. Either way, I do not leave. My survival—and this stand—were never accidents.

I remain not by chance, but by design—set aside to remember what others were meant to forget.

Sixth of Passouan

It’s a warm winter’s day, the Drowning of Telos is today. Heavy rains cancel the festivities for off-duty soldiers. Drunken debauchery amongst the humans follows, elves are disgusted.

Kuri-Raphael

Rain drums the eaves where I stand still.

Below, humans drown in ale and noise,

laughter rotting into shouts.

I do not drink. I watch—

count guards, note shadows, feel the night shift.

An elf turns away in quiet disgust.

I stay, sober with memory,

waiting for the rain to end.

Conclusions So Far

Only one of the four players has provided responses so far. I don't know how that's going to go, come game time and only one of the four players has been tracking things.

But I think this is the best way forward. I may have to figure out what that means, practically, but it's definitely... it feels right. This is amazing. I love it. I just need to figure out how to channel it to others. 

We'll see how this works!