I'm a clockwork punk

There are essentially two kinds of game mechanics: fiction-in, and fiction-out. A fiction-in mechanic is triggered by an event in the fiction. A fiction-out mechanic creates an event in the fiction.

In traditional roleplaying games, most mechanics are both. The fiction “I attack that guy with my sword” goes into the mechanic “roll 1d20 to hit,” which outputs the fiction “and then he dies.” In older games (read: classic Dungeons & Dragons), the most common mechanics that are purely fiction-out are character generation and, arguably, experience gain.

In everything produced up to about the late 90s, purely fiction-out mechanics were relatively unusual. Point-build games even made character generation fiction-in. Purely fiction-out mechanics tend to be mechanics triggered by fiction-in mechanics.

More recently, we have games that encode a dramatic structure into the mechanics — Fiasco is a good example here. These games have some fiction-in mechanics, but more fiction-out mechanics. Purely fiction-out rules tend to look like this: “each player takes beans from the bag; the player with the most black beans narrates the beginning of the scene, and the player with the most white beans narrates the end of the scene.”

My current project, To Seek Adventure, has the players making a decision on each turn: do I narrate my character taking action, or do I narrate an event for the other player? The dice are then rolled, determining how close the scene is to resolving; unless a character falls, there’s no direct fictional output.

This pacing mechanic affects the fiction — if the scene doesn’t resolve, you narrate more action and events — but doesn’t output any particular fiction, such as “and then he falls over and hits his head and dies of of bleeding.”

At the same time, 2SA also has some purely fiction-out mechanics, such as the random plot hook draws that kick it off.

Relying exclusively on fiction-out mechanics can be dangerous: you run the risk of creating a clockwork story machine, in which the players’ fictional contributions affect very little. At the same time, most pacing or structuring mechanics are primarily fiction out, as are such techniques as random encounter tables. All things of which I’m a fan.

What games rely heavily on mechanics that are fiction-in/out, and what games go only one direction? I’d say Apocalypse World is a particularly pure example of the former… am I right? And how might this relate to narrative boardgames like Battlestar Galactica?

As I prepare for some exciting Vampire-related content, as well as new Raven: Swordsmistress of Chaos, I thought I’d talk about some of my current gaming.

Right now, I’m preparing an Exalted game for three of my players. I’m looking forward to it, since Exalted is a very different kind of fantasy from what I usually run or play, yet shares the pulp fantasy roots I draw from so often.

In going back to the first edition core book, I’m reminded of why I fell in love with the game in the first place. There’s a lot to love in that book, but I remember the first thing that jumped out at me — maybe the first thing I even read.

From page 204:

SPEED THE WHEELS

…

Through the use of this Charm, a character can cause a bureaucracy to accomplish a task in record time. An Exalted using Speed the Wheels causes the bureaucracy to work (her Essence + 1) times faster for the duration of a particular job. For example, a character with Essence 3 who uses the Speed the Wheels Charm to expedite an appeal tothe ruler of a city to use the naval dry-docks to repair her ship would be able to make the appropriate appointments and cause the proper papers to be read four times faster than normal. Note that this Charm simply speeds the process, it does not increase the character’s chances of success. Characters who wish to improve their chances of success should use Social Charms or Deft Official’s Way.

I was blown away. I had the general idea that Exalted were demigods who practiced a sort of all-powerful, glowing kung fu, but no one had told me that they had literal martial arts for cutting through metaphorical red tape. The whole idea of a secret art for every skill was tremendously cool, and it made me immediately want to play an Eclipse negotiator.

That’s the second thing that made me want to play Exalted. The Eclipse caste. Loosely equivalent to D&D’s bards, they were supernaturally proficient ambassadors, able to seal bargains in the name of the Sun. I’ve long held that the coolest moment in any Star Wars novel was in Heir to the Empire, when Luke discovers that, as a Jedi, people automatically look to him to resolve disputes. That’s what I had here — Solar Exalted were sword and sorcery Jedi, and actually had the powers to back that up.

Just like that, Exalted became the first fantasy game where my first character concept wasn’t a rogue.

Then I flipped back to the beginning and read the traditional White Wolf fiction. And I learned about Chiaroscuro. A city where the living live alongside the hungry dead, the boundary maintained only by lines of precious salt. For me, that evoked Zothique in all the best ways.

A world of incredible marvels alongside an incredible sense of loss and sadness, where titanic heroes were empowered for their potential to make a difference.

That sealed it. I had to play this game.

And that’s how I fell in love with Exalted, and why I’m running it now.

The Snakkubus

Snakkubus

Level 4
Medium Semi-Humanoid (nekkid)
Number Appearing: 1
Habitat: Moors, Mires, an abandoned shrine you’ll find by accident

The snakkubus is a sort of minor goddess or demon that dwells in the Grimbog. She has the upper body of a woman, the lower body of a snake, and the upper body of a snake somewhere in-between the two. When disturbed, she typically attacks with the jaws of her midsection, the fangs of which carry a lethal poison.

While there are varying reports of whether or not she is a single creature or a community, most adventurers agree that it’s unlikely an entire tribe could have such fantastic… eyes. The snakkubus can take the form of a beautiful female human or elf, but doesn’t, because she has a positive body image.

Qualities:

• Slithering Slide: The snakkubus’ movement cannot be blocked by an adventurer.
• Poison: Any adventurer against whom the snakkubus rolled a critical hit during a fight must, at the end of the fight, take another attack from her, whether or not she still lives. 

Edition War

Yesterday, Mike Mearls made a plea for Dungeons & Dragons players to make peace in our edition wars:

Whether you play the original game published in 1974, AD&D in any of its forms, 3rd Edition and its descendents, or 4th Edition, at the end of the day you’re playing D&D. D&D is what we make of it, and by “we” I mean the DMs, the players, the readers, the bloggers—everyone who has picked up a d20 and ventured into a dungeon…

When we look to the past, we learn that there are far more things that tie us together than tear us apart.

Needless to say, I agree. As far apart as any two things called “Dungeons & Dragons” might be, we, the players, are a single community. We share a soul. A network, as Ryan Dancey might say, with balls-to-the-wall externalities.

There are, however, those who doubt Mike’s sincerity. He’s just making nice for the Pathfinder players, they say, in order to lure them insidiously into his brand-new gingerbread house D&D products. The ones that look like candy, but are soaked in cyanide. And WoWcraft.

That last paragraph was my initial response to the skepticism. “You must be crazy to doubt this guy,” I was thinking. But, you know, you don’t have to be crazy at all. It’s one of those things that looks different when you’re working in the industry.

‘Cause, here’s the thing: you don’t get to have the proud but exceedingly unromantic title “Dungeons & Dragons R&D Group Manager” without being a huge fucking fan of Dungeons & Dragons. How do I know? Because I’ve been there. I am here. When you are asked to take charge of designing new stuff for a beloved-yet-still-valuable intellectual property, it is not because you were the person who thought all eight previous versions sucked, and you can do better.

Those people, by and large? They take other career paths.

When you’re put in charge, you’re the last fan standing. You’re the one who loves the game enough to keep working on it when the entire market is alternately shrinking and filling with pus. You’re the one willing to put up with the corporate bullshit. And don’t kid yourself: once you’re in charge, there is corporate bullshit, no matter how wise or well-run the organization. By the time you get to be in charge of ruining the franchise for a whole new generation of fans, you’ve been through a lot, and still love the game so fucking much that you’re willing to step into the line of fire.

From now on, everything that goes wrong will be laid at your feet. At best, your mistakes will get chalked up to the interference of “suits.” At worst, your successes will become dividing lines in new conflicts between the fans. You will go to bed every night knowing that the future, if not the fate, of the world you love more than anything rests on your shoulders.

In those late, hard hours, when you’re trying to wring every drop of cool out of the twisted rag your employer’s property has become, do you hate the rag? Do you hate those who came before you, with their brown books and their red boxes?

No. You love them even more. You look at your predecessors, and do you see men? No. You see giants. Not the kind that eat people. The kind that are Ultraman. You love the work that came before yours all the more because now, just a little, you see what those greats were up against. You know what it’s like to face a fraction of what they faced.

And so you love them with the fury of a thousand suns. When the fans of your work pile up on the message boards and talk about how great your stuff is and how much the old stuff sucked, you want to jump in and start smiting. Just as much as you want to defend your own work against those who call it a debasement, a soulless corporate abomination that has seized a once-great name.

You see the big picture. Because you can no longer see anything else.

Yes, I’m projecting. But I think I’m right.

You go, mearls.

Robgoblin

Level 2
Small Humanoid (delinquent)
Number appearing: 4-12
Habitat: Any, but there are often football posters

As misshapen and mischievous as any goblin, the robgoblin had a degenerate youth and got mixed up in potions and gangs. Some have even been to goblin prison, and come back with tattoos both fearsome and salacious. Others have been kicked out of goblin militias, and you know how hard that is. Robgoblins operate in small bands, but can be extremely well-organized for a group of creatures which do so much cackling.

There is usually a reward for returning a lone robgoblin home to his parents. Happy reunions are unlikely, however, as he usually learned it by watching them.

Qualities:

• Rob: If they roll a critical, robgoblins may steal an item from an adventurer.

Night Troll

Level 5
Large Humanoid (nocturnal)
Number Appearing: 1
Habitat: Caverns, Castles, Forests, Ruins

You need to understand two words with regards to the night troll:

“NIIIIIIIGHT TROLLLLLL!”

Because these are the only two words he thinks. In his mind, the night troll is always the star of his personal black metal ballad, and this can lead to him wielding a large axe and occasionally being accompanied by a black panther with lazer eyes.

The night troll will generally want to bludgeon and split you with heavy weapons and then eat you while posing for a crowd of forest monsters, but he has also been known to spare those who truly rock.

Night Gaunts

Level ?
Nightmare
Number Appearing: ?
Habitat: Wherever you are sleeping

Night gaunts ravage unprotected camp sites, leaving no survivors and only the tiniest and grossest traces of bodies (such as bloody toes). They are believed to attack in total darkness, like the grue, but this is largely presumed because no one has ever seen one, ever. It is possible that night gaunts were created as the monsters under adventurers’ beds, but the lack of beds in use by adventurers has caused them to evolve into grislier and even more invisible forms.

Do not sleep in the wilderness without protection, or the night gaunts will get you.

Do not sleep in inns without protection, either, especially with the serving staff, but you are an adult and we should not have to tell you this.

Owl Bear

Level 3
Large Owl Bear
Number Appearing: 1
Habitat: Caverns, Woods

Mathematics dictates that some bears will be smarter than the average bear. But possessing the wisdom (and head) of an owl, this bear is even smarter than that, and not included in the aforementioned averages because of discrimination. Probably this bear would have better scores than you, if it had had the same advantages in life and not squandered them on being an adventurer.

Owl bears are typically peaceable, so long as no one messes with them. They often perpetrate cunning traps and elaborate revenges against those who cross them. Those they tear to shreds with beak and claws are usually those who only tweaked them a little bit.

Qualities:

• Grab: On a successful melee attack, the owl bear grabs one adventurer. A successful melee attack on the bear releases the grab, but a roll of 5 or less also hits the adventurer.
• Bear Trap: Any owl bear lair is likely to contain a trap. Roll 1d6; on a roll of 3 or less, the trap is a pit trap, on a roll of 4-5 a jaw trap, on a roll of 6 the trap involves another monster.

Monkbat

Level 2
Small Semi-Humanoid (religious)
Number Appearing: 1-100
Habitat: Ruins

Monkbats are lesser imps who inhabit abandoned holy places. Resembling bat-winged, pot-bellied and tonsured chimpanzees, these creatures live in the style of a religious brotherhood. One in ten casts spells as a cleric, and one in any lair will be a robed Abbat.

Monkbats attack by throwing gruel and their own particular brewed beer. Typically, they grow the grain and hops themselves, though they have been known to trade for supplies with local townsfolk and denizens of the lower planes. They will also rob merchants carrying necessary supplies, sometimes in the company of goblins.

Qualities: 1 in 10 monkbats has the following:

• Miracle working: Casts as a level 3 cleric.

Iron Devil

Level 9
Medium Armored (exterminate)
Number Appearing: 1
Habitat: Graves, Caverns

Before he was imprisoned beneath the earth, the god Loki passed the fiercest of his followers through a fire, burning each down to a single, ever-hot cinder of purest hate and resentment. He implanted the cinders in iron shells, with the horned helms of the most fearsome raiders and stout construction resembling kegs of the heartiest ale. Each stares its hate at the world with a single, unblinking eye. He set them sentinels over buried ships and treasures, to mercilessly destroy any plunderer with their beams of divine fire.

The Iron Devils are widely considered Loki’s greatest achievement or greatest failure: a race of monster with absolutely no sense of humor.