Willpower is an important part of my vision for running Star Trek. I’m a big believer in players having pools of magic beans that give them some control over when they succeed. Willpower is also a powerful feedback mechanism in the Storytelling system. In our conversion, it will provide reinforcement for following your character’s Values and Nature, as well as fuel for the Aspect system.

The Name

I considered renaming Willpower “Action Points,” as we did in the Storytelling adaptation of EVE Online. In that game, the goal was to make Willpower an entirely metagame resource, getting rid of the flimsy mapping between the idea of “willpower” and an increased ability to succeed.

However, I think I want to keep a flimsy mapping of that sort. Therefore, I’m going to follow the Last Unicorn Games version of Star Trek and call Willpower “Courage.”

Starting Courage

Characters start each new episode with five Courage points.

Uses

 Courage points will have a few more uses than in the World of Darkness.

• Flash of Insight: Spend a Courage point to get the familiar three die bonus to a roll.
• Use Aspect: When one of your character’s Aspects is relevant, spend a Courage point to gain a five die bonus to a roll.
• Lucky Break: Your character finds a clue, such as one accidentally left behind by an antagonist.
• Spirited Defense: After someone has successfully attacked your character, roll three dice. Your successes are subtracted from the incoming damage.
• Escape Condition: Shrug off a Condition (like being stunned) without making the necessary Escape Roll. More on Conditions in a future post.

Getting points back

• Once per scene, you can get a point of Courage back by fulfilling one of your character’s Values.
• Once per session, you can get a full Courage refresh by fulfilling your character’s Nature.
• You also receive a point of Courage when one of your Aspects is activated against you.

Aspects

As per Stew’s recommendation, these replace Merits and Flaws. Aspects are a concept borrowed from Evil Hat’s excellent FATE system. They’re character traits which can be positive, negative, or, frequently, both. Aspects cost a point of Courage to activate in a character’s favor, and give a point of Courage when used against the character.

Coming Up

I’m working on starship combat. While I don’t intend it to be a central feature of my chronicle, I want to have a distinct and fun combat system that imparts the feel of big, heavy starships crewed by specialists.

I think FASA’s system was really good, and easily the slickest part of their Trek RPG. However, I don’t want to use their hex-based positioning, or give two players (the science officer and the communications officer) heavy bookkeeping to do even on turns where their characters don’t take any action.

I’m starting from two places: first, an initiative and tactical positioning system inspired by AGON. Second, Ben “Bailywolf” Baugh once designed a neat starship combat system that split each “ship turn” into several “crew turns.” I like the idea of mixing lots of crew-scale actions in between large-scale ship maneuvers. As usual, I’m interested in any suggestions.

I’m kind of stuck on lifepath rules. I like the idea of charting out your character’s academy history and tours of duty (something that was cool in both FASA and LUG), but most Star Trek characters are specialists and I’m using a short skill list, which means each tour of duty would be something like “yeah, another helm job, pile on one more dot.” I’m thinking of taking a look at Traveller‘s most recent High Guard book and seeing if there’s anything inspiring in there.

This continues “The Apprentice’s Tale,” a serial exploration of the world of Cavaliers of Mars.

Warfare

My master was not alone in living by the sword. Indeed, he was slower to draw it in anger than many of those he associated with. In this world, everything of value must be protected with force, whether by fending off desert raiders and canal pirates, or marching across the desert to defend an oasis town. While we are not by nature murderous, we are often driven to violence to protect what is ours and take what we need from others.

Most warfare is conducted at little greater than arms’ length. Knives and spearpoints are made from bone. When I was fifteen, I offended the honor of a young gentleman. Or, rather, I refused both his advances and his demands for my food. Ringed by his friends, we fought a traditional duel. I slew him. After all, I was hungrier. But afterwards, I retched for hours.

We left town under something of a cloud, but when we next reached civilization, my master gave me my first steel dagger. Metal weapons are valuable indeed, for quality steel comes only from Surtur or the forges of far Deimos.

Our most common firearm is the flintlaser, which is slow to reload but deadly and reliable. My master insisted that I carry at least one flintlaser ready to fire at all times, a practice I have not abandoned.

Many sorts of beast are employed as cavalry mounts. Flying terros and their landbound cousins, the ostoros, are difficult to tame but highly prized. My master was a peculiar breed of cutthroat, a cavalier who could ride all manner of beast. Cavaliers keep their methods close to their chests, but more than one has found employment training the army of a city-state or hill-tribe in the mastery of a particular mount. I learned riding from my master as I grew to womanhood and we spent more and more time on the road. Someday, I think, I shall teach another, provided the world lives that long.

Illium and Zodiac both possess flying ships, based upon a secret anti-gravity element. When I was fifteen, my master and I were caught in a bombardment by Illium’s forces. We spent the entire night lying flat on the floor, hoping that no bombs would fall upon the hovel we had commandeered. I didn’t sleep a wink, between the explosions outside and the cooling body of the homeowner lying next to me.

The capability to unleash such horrors make most cities afraid to challenge Illium or Zodiac on the field of battle. Fortunately for the rest of us, the long enmity between the two states prevents either from reaching too far.

Wars between the city states are sudden and short. At nineteen, I fought alongside my master in one of Vance’s mercenary companies. In that year as a soldier, I probably learned as much of the world as I did in the entire six previous. When the war ended, we were once again unemployed, and took to guarding caravans for a while. Truthfully, we rarely had to draw steel. Most of the bandits were people we had fought beside in the war.

Still, from time to time, we were forced to kill former comrades. He never told me aloud, but I believe that is why we soon left the caravans to seek our fortunes in the lost places.

Medicine

The other reason we left guard duty was that I took a nasty cut to my sword arm. My master always told me that he needed me to watch his back. By the time I was 21 this was actually true, and I needed a good arm to do it.

Our physicians are well educated in anatomy, and skilled at the ugly art of surgery. Like most drugs, their anesthetics are dangerously strong, and difficult to dose safely. However, they are well-known and widely available, provided the physician’s price can be met.

My cut was treated with a peculiar gum derived from trees in the canyon-forest of Wyeth. Wyeth gum is antiseptic, and firms quickly when applied to a wound. It acts as a coagulant, stopping bleeding, yet is porous enough to allow drainage. Wounds treated this way heal quickly and leave only light scars. My arm recovered swiftly, though it still aches from time to time.

If a wounded person is treated quickly enough, they can often return to at least light physical labor within hours. I have heard soldiers boast that with a vial of Wyeth gum and a pitcher of liquor, they can fight until the end of days.

Next: Our story concludes in the Lost Places!

A world of strange peoples and stranger vistas

Mars is home to many peoples. The most numerous are the Red Martians, of which I am one. We are the common people of the Red Cities, and I suppose I must admit that our rulers are of the same descent.

We share our history with the Greens, though you’d hardly know it to see them. They are giants, of whom my master fought not a few. The Greens stand over a dozen feet, with four arms. I would not have believed that every one of those hands could hold a sword, but I have seen it with my own eyes –and been lucky to survive. Their eyes are large, their hair black and spare, and their mouths sport two small tusks.

Like us, they are the descendants of desert nomads who survived the drying of the seas and the fall of the cities of the First Martians. Unlike us, they choose to reclaim these cities. Of course, there are not many of them anymore – the First Cities are dangerous places, as is the open desert – yet they live in small settlements among rebuilt ruins. I have heard them called a savage race, but my master often said that we are no less savage. For, if we were not, how could we survive in a world which also contains them?

We Reds and Greens are not alone, of course. The Zaius, sought after as physicians and wise men, resemble the apes even more than we. The women of Wyeth are as much plant as animal, and much-feared as warriors. The Skarrans have survived where most other lizards have died, evolving to generate heat within their own bodies. And there are others, smaller, stranger peoples who might be found in the bazaars of Vance or their own lost cities.

Whence came so many peoples and the fragments of culture we share is unknown to me. I’ve heard it said that we were created by the First Martians, each with some purpose in a grand design. Some astrologers claim that we were seeded from distant stars, that the First Martians themselves were survivors of some earlier, more beautiful world. My master, though he could wax philosophical given enough drink, dismissed these questions as the domain of scholars hunched over books and bones. I myself think that when our world truly lived, it was simply abundant in all things, thinking creatures included.

During my apprenticeship and in the years beyond, I have never met a man quite like my master… yet I have met many who share the same wanderlust, the same greed, and the same passion for reckless adventure. I have met these among all the people I have encountered on our Red World. For some, there is no place in life but that carved with the point of a sword.

Next: Warfare!

You can read previous installments of “The Apprentice’s Tale” here.

Alright, started testing out a new conflict system for Cavaliers of Mars last night.

I want conflict in Cavaliers to be a swashbuckling game of rapid back and forth exchanges, as well as a process of making choices about how much to commit to attack or defense.

To that end, the system I’m testing is based on a bidding mechanic.

At the start of a round, everybody rolls their combat dice. (In my mock-duels, I’ve been giving everyone 4 d6s.) These “hands” of dice are concealed.

On your turn, you can bid a die and narrate your attack. The target can bid a die of equal or greater value and narrate a parry or a dodge or the like. In turn, you can narrate an attempt to get past that defense, again bidding a die of equal or greater value. And so on.

If you, as attacker, bid the last die, you deal your damage.

You can also bid your dice for other actions. An attempt to disengage and retreat, for example, might use a dice bid, as might an attempt to force your opponent to move. Extra dice to your initial roll can be gained by picking up “terrain dice” from around the map; manipulating a standing brazier might be worth 1 die, where knocking around the throne of the Princess Invincible might be worth 2 or 3.

In the final system, someone who loses the bidding process might have options other than taking “damage”… for example, it might be possible to give ground, or accept a condition which hampers you.

Thoughts?

I’ll be attending White Wolf’s Grand Masquerade in New Orleans this week. I’m planning to devote a lot of my time to talking to players, so, please, come and find me. I’ll be the guy with bright red hair talking about vampires as horrible lizard-brain boyfriends.

When I get back, I’ll be releasing the third part of “The Apprentice’s Tale” for Cavaliers of Mars.

A world of fading sunlight and haunted storms

Continuing “The Apprentice’s Tale,” for Cavaliers of Mars.

We live upon an old world, and you can find that in every aspect of life and death. My master often spoke of the world dying. As a child I imagined I could hear its groaning sighs on the wind. As a grown woman, that is not a fancy I have entirely left behind.

My first voyage across the desert began the day after my master bought me. Or, as I’ve come to think, bought my freedom. Clad in long desert robes and silk breathing masks, we set out beyond the borders of the square mile in which I had lived all my life. The desert, then as now, was temperate by day, frigid by night, and extended forever in all directions. Though we followed an ancient track, no one could have seen it who had not learned it by heart. Master to apprentice, as it was with me.

My master often said that the sun no longer looms as large as once it did. Certainly, it no longer warms the planet with the same intensity. While the air itself is thin, it is thick with dust, creating the strange scarlet skies. As the sun rises or sets, the dust gives it an eerie blue halo. Like many, my master was superstitious about night and the color blue. Twilight lasts an hour or more at both at sunrise and sunset, and at that time you can clearly see the blue star called Earth.

Dust storms are common, and can cover huge regions. We were fortunate not to encounter any during my first desert crossing. A few times a century, a storm will rise out of Hell’s Basin and engulf the entire world. A planet-wide dust storm can leave behind an epidemic of the maddened and possessed. It had fallen to my master sometimes to put such people to the sword.

Bodies of water are few, and rain is rare and precious. Some parts of Mars have not seen a drop in thousands of years. Sometimes I’ve seen ice clouds in the coldest, highest parts of the sky, giving it a violet hue. This ice can be harvested by intrepid flyers – one of the thousand ways Illium maintains its flowing fountains and generous water rations. Other water comes from ancient wells, or is processed from layers of ice beneath the sand. The marsh people of the old sea beds distill their water from the muck. Indeed, I have been forced to do so myself, and can say that the results are musty and unpleasant, but as life-giving as a drink from any other source

Yet Mars’ greatest waterworks, those which sustain our remaining societies, are the canals. The canals are the final legacy of the First Martians, miraculous channels which melt water from the polar cap and irrigate large sections of the planet. Nearly all of the Red Cities depend on the canals for water and trade, and repairs to the canal network are one of the few subjects which can bring our feuding rulers together in cooperation.

What travel and survival rules do you enjoy in RPGs? I’m just starting to design these for Cavaliers of Mars.

Next: The Cities of Mars!

A world of dusty little towns and mysterious wanderers

“I have lived a long life,” my master used to say. “Soon it will be my turn to die. And not long after, the world’s turn.” And then he would order another drink.

When my master took me in, I might as well have been an orphan. He bought me from my mother for a handful of ceramic chits laced with the radium of Illium. They were worth a dozen rations of water, but he might as well have handed her his flask of liquor directly. I know he was carrying one.

Why my master did that, I don’t know. He told me, at various times, that my father had been his brother-in-law, or that they had served together in the war. There were other stories, too. Any or all of them could have been true. I often suspect that he took me on because he pitied me.

Whatever the case, he raised me from the age of 13 as his own child.

He died three years ago.

The master was a man of wild stories. He had been across our Red World a dozen times or more. He told me of hard-fought battles, of daring deeds, of the love of princes and princesses. He talked most often when we were practicing with swords. I think he talked to teach me how to fight while distracted. He told me his stories, and he told me that one day I would have as many of my own.

From the time he adopted me until his death, he made his way as a fencing instructor and a hired bravo. He made little money this way, but always enough to keep him in his cups and to keep me well looked-after.

This book is our world as he saw it, the world he lived and died in. I am giving you his words, as honestly as I can, and with care taken not to reveal certain indelicate secrets. I am giving you the words of a dying man on a dying world. I am giving you Mars.

The Desert Towns

I spent the first 13 years of my life in the desert. It is, as anyone will tell you, a hard life, harder even than in the cities. We were fortunate… we had an old well, an artifact of the First Martians that plunged deep into the permafrost and sucked out the water.

The desert brigands merely collected dues from our village; we were spared the seasonal ravaging that came to so many others. My master told me about the brigands. He told me that no man joins them by choice, that they are bands of outcasts driven farther away from society than any others, save perhaps the lost inhabitants of the dusk cities.

He never said whether he fought with or against them.

Without walls or buildings, the desert towns are also subject to the full fury of the elements, including the dust storms. When those great red clouds come rolling out of the desert, they bring scouring debris. Worse, though, is the dust itself, fine as smoke. It will seem to suck the moisture from your tissue, and you must try desperately to hold your breath, lest you be taken by a ghost. Storms give voice and motive power to the dead, who can otherwise travel only on the wind.

Still, there are reasons to stay. Overland trade can support many a community, as can the rare operating mine. Some take the difficult path of raising meat animals, and bring in a measure of prosperity in selling them to the larger settlements. Some few are even located on oases, where vegetables can be grown and water is not quite so scarce.

Desert towns aren’t precisely hospitable, but they can be good places to go to ground. I can vouch for this from experience. More than once, my master and I were been hunted across the desert by those would have our water. Some towns will hire wanderers as protectors, to ward off desert raiders, or even to enforce the law.

A few of our ill-omened expeditions into the lost places began in towns like the one I grew up in. Despite the danger ahead, I was never tempted to stay behind.

And here begins a series exploring a red world of strange adventure. Stay tuned.

Pride and Prejudice

For this week’s theory/criticism post, I’ve invited over Calvin Ashmore, a close friend and Digital Media student at Georgia Tech. Calvin studies game adaptations, both in tabletop and electronic forms. He hopes one day to make a Pride and Prejudice game, which should tell you something about why we’re friends.

Calvin’s been working with a concept called “story worlds,” which has a lot of bearing on how games construct and relate to fiction. It’s a different perspective from what we get in tabletop theory, so I thought it would be interesting to share.

Stories are not static. They move, they change, and the things that happen in them happen for reasons. Story worlds describe narratives using rules. When events in a work of fiction unfold, they do so because it is appropriate for them to do so. A common rule to hear in fictional writing is that if a gun is introduced in the second act of a mystery story, then it needs to be fired in the fourth. This rule is not just a guideline or a convention, it is a mechanic. Rules such as these indicate how fiction works, to the degree that if a story does not follow them, then it feels broken or dysfunctional.

Essentially, story worlds treat stories as simulations. However, this does not mean that stories must be realistic, or simulate exactly what characters would do in a narrative situation. A simulation is an approximation of some other system, be it the rules of physics, the dynamics of characters, or the rules of drama. All of these are systems, they can be described by formal models, but compelling arguments can be made that we perform simulation in our heads during the very process of reading.¹

In a world-centric perspective, plot is not static, it is mutable and volatile. There may be determined outcomes, but the essence of a story is in the path it takes to reach its destination. If we look at a story as having a world, then the story itself is just one of many possible valid paths.² Story world theory pushes toward looking at narratives as fictions³, rather than as texts. The meaning from story worlds comes not from the plotted outcome of a story, but in the system of rules that map causes to effects. In this perspective, games and narratives have a great deal in common.

Applied to game design, story worlds are particularly useful for thinking about composing a design based on a source text or a setting. If it is possible to interpret a text to create a story world, then the world’s rules and mechanics can be applied toward the game design. This is useful for both adapting an existing IP into a single game (a huge number of video games are adaptations, after all), and also for adapting a setting (a huge number of tabletop roleplaying games are adaptations of settings). By using story worlds to inform design, it is possible to recapture some of the elements that make the story enjoyable and create a similar type of experience for players. Story worlds are useful for creating a sense of immersion, and also a sense of participation within fictional universes.

One of the most important issues from the perspective of game design is interpretation. What is the right level of abstraction for building a story world? How do we distinguish what is relevant in a story, and filter these into coherent rules? There is clearly no single right way to interpret a world from a text, but there are also interpretations that are better or worse than others. It is possible to identify five key criteria for judging story worlds:

The first challenge is that games made from story worlds are not gamelike enough, namely that the rules for a story are not interesting for gameplay.⁵ My answer to this is “too fucking bad.” If the point of a project is adaptation, then forcing the game to be more gamelike by including gameplay that is irrelevant breaks the principle of minimality, sabotaging the adaptation.

The second challenge that often appears is that story worlds are not storylike enough, that they allow players to have freedom when the designer would much rather like the player to reach the interesting outcome of the story. My answer to this is “then write a fucking story.” If there is only one interesting path or outcome (a principle which is absurd if you know good players), then the design should be for a story, not a story world.