Gold and the Life Cycle of Dragons

 I stumbled upon a wonderful explanation of why magic item creation in D&D 3.5 requires Gold. Now typically, I think the game generally assumes that the gold is spent on rare reagents used to create the items, but this version told it differently. Gold itself is magical. It provides a base for the spells that provide the item's enchantment.

I saw this, and I liked the general idea but didn't think much about it at the time. Recently, it came to mind when I was writing a fantasy adventure. What fantasy creature is known for their magical power and their love of gold? Dragons.

A Dragon's horde is necessary for proper growth. Without a large supply of gold to nest on, dragons grow into the small, stunted, neotenic creatures called drakes. If a dragon only gathers a small amount of gold, they grow in size, but do not develop the intelligence or magical powers of a dragon. These monsters are known a wyverns. The wyvern's great size comes with some major changes from the normal dragon phenotype. The front legs gradually fuse with their wings and their tail grows a deadly poisonous stinger.

The changes in wyverns are not the only example of physiological adjustment induced by gold. All forms of dragons change slightly when they receive the proper amount of gold. The famed fire breath of a dragon is an adaptation induced by proper nesting. Dragons that make their nests near water eventually develop gills to adapt to life below the waves. If a dragon nests underwater, often in or around sunken treasure galleys, their limbs shrink and their tail elongates. The legs become fins and the tail grows a single ribbon-like fin, much like an eel. These aquatic dragons are better known as Sea Serpents. Despite the great change in body type, these creatures started out as the same four-legged creature as any other type of dragon.

Nesting in gold does not only provide fuel for the creature's growth cycle, but it sustains them in other ways. A true dragon requires magic to sustain its body. Typically this is obtained through long periods of nestled in their horde. A steady diet of magical beings, such as wizards, could substitute in a pinch. Underdeveloped dragons don't need the same amount of magic to sustain their bodies, if they need any at all. The diet of neotenic dragons is entirely carnivorous. For true dragons, while they may eat meat (particularly livestock), any non-magical food they consume is for pleasure alone.

Like with magic item creation, the process of nesting consumes gold slowly. As such, dragons must always be looking to re-stock their larder, so to speak. Tribute and raiding do an adequate job, but dragons more in touch with the affairs of humanoids may kidnap royalty in order to extort a ransom, hence the tales of dragons stealing princesses. This also has the lovely side effect of attracting rich knights and other adventures, including tasty wizards which can provide a nice dietary supplement.  

State of the Inkwell: Project Update

I'm working on another post, just my general thoughts on an issue I've come across while doing game prep. I started writing a short description of the progress I've made on my pet projects, but as I wrote more and more about my projects, I decided it would be better off as its own small post.

Project AK

I've decided to stop holding it back, as soon as I update the rules with the results of my playtest, I'll be doing a release post.

Eclipse Phase Adventures

I'm writing a collection of Eclipse Phase scenarios I will be running as a campaign eventually. They were initially just a set of scenarios I was writing but I've recently decided to combine them into a short campaign set up as a series of unconnected vignettes. If my players are reading, and you know who you are, don't read them. You'll only be spoiling it for yourself.

Steel Titans

This is the working title for a game in the mecha genre. It's definitely not rules heavy or rules light, it's really more of a rules moderate game, if that makes sense. There are two main concepts that I'm trying to get across with the rules.

The first is customization, I could put together a massive list of mecha and allow a player to choose the one they like best, but I don't think that's very fun or authentic to the genre. Look at Pacific Rim or the Gundam series, in these examples each of the protagonists mechas have a specific design reflecting the personality and combat niche of its pilot(s). The Jaeger Cherno Alpha is a heavy brawler focused on head to head combat whereas Crimson Typhoon focuses on acrobatic combat and its unique three pilot system. So allowing the player to design their mecha allows them to fit them to a niche.

I think I've mentioned wanted to do a game where combat is treated like social skills are in D&D and other games of its ilk. That's my second point, combat with pilots is just another way of solving an argument. Not to focus too much on Pacific Rim but there is a fist fight between pilots. It doesn't endanger any lives, nothing is at stake except the argument between the characters. Also, I didn't want to limit myself to a system that could capture the feel of mecha combat and a fist fight between pilots with equal accuracy (Something I think would detract from the authenticity of both). Also, if the game is about giant walking tanks fighting, that's the focus of the game. A fight between pilots is to the genre as doing research in a library is to a dungeon crawl, it might reveal interesting things, sometimes things that are vital to the plot, but the action itself isn't important.

-Ink

Design: Rewarding Randomness and Card Conflicts

One of the fundamental ideas of the roleplaying hobby is the idea of using dice as an objective means of determining success or failure. There are exceptions, such as LARPS and certain narrative focused games, but they have made a conscious decision to not use dice due to logistical or design choices. I'm focusing on the, at lack of a better term, traditional RPGs. Like I proposed in the Fluxborn first impression, I'm asking why we, as gamers and as designers, reward and punish based on arbitrary results.

The classic examples are the critical hit and the fumble. These are events with a small, but not insignificant chance of occurring, and they either greatly reward or greatly punish players. Even the idea of success and failure relying on the roll of a die is rewarding and punishing arbitrarily. If I try to remove myself from any knowledge of tabletop games, I would wonder why a die is involved at all. It doesn't reflect the skill of the character, or the player at all. It can level the playing field, but it can also skew things one way or another.

We need an objective arbitrator of results in a structured RPG. That is the way RPGs distinguish themselves from, say, an improv game. Because even game master, the referee analogue, is one of the players, it can't be a judgement call. This is especially true since every player may have internalized a different take on a given scene. If the referee makes a call that doesn't mesh with someone's idea of the situation, there can be conflict. So we naturally fall back on the randomization of dice as our arbitrator. This is the whole reason for mechanics, it is something to fall back on when two players disagree. This may have something to do with the hobby's connection to war games, which traditionally used conventional six sided dice, but in early examples the dice were only used for factors outside the influence of tactics.

Most games, especially those with a more traditional structure incorporate things like attributes and skills to show where a character's strengths and weaknesses lie. Even with this notation imbedded in the game's structure, we, as gamers, still rely on dice as an arbitrator. In RPGs with a level based component, some things are impossible to a lower levelled PC, so it doesn't seem to be about allowing agency on the part of players. Honestly, the only explanation I can see for why RPGs use dice at all is tradition.

I wrote about games that don't use dice in their design earlier. These games, usually newer and in the broad category of “narrative” or “story” games eschew the use of random arbitration in favour of narrative guidance. Even then, this doesn't so much reflect the skill and nature of the characters as it does the most interesting narrative path. I don't see anything wrong with either path, it just struck me as odd that things like critical hits are considered an inherent part of the game and those that drop things like the use of dice are deliberately breaking away from the usual form a game takes.

To switch gears completely, I've seen games use playing cards as the randomization factor instead of dice. It makes sense, if you take out face cards, you have 10 cards in each suit. If you shuffle after each draw, it's the same as rolling a d10. Most card games don't have you draw one card at a time. You usually have a hand of cards. A core mechanic using a hand of cards puts more emphasis on strategy and less on purely random factors. I came up with a outline of a card based resolution mechanic while musing on the subject of randomization.

There are three major things that your standard playing cards have that dice don't. First, we have set colours, black and red. Second, we have suits. Four identical sets with only a symbol to distinguish them. Lastly, we have the face cards: Jacks, Queens and Kings. I'll admit, the face cards don't fit into the dice analogue that the rest of the cards give us, but if we link them thematically to the concept of the game, we can do some interesting stuff. The jokers are interesting for similar reasons but don't have the same fourfold symmetry that the suits give us.

The standard playing cards aren't the only kind of cards readily available to a gaming group though. The tarot deck has four different suits, ones with a less abstract form. We have the swords, a basic symbol of offence with masculine ties (phallic metaphor and all). So the reverse would be the cup suit with ties to femininity (I'm just working off what I remember about the metaphor of these kind of things, I don't have any attachment to these ideas, but they work for our purposes). What is the reverse of offence? Obviously defence. We also have the pentacles, or the version I'm choosing to use, coins. At first, I had trouble thinking of what sort of connection the coins could have to game concepts. Then I looked at the obvious counterpart for coins (and the only suit of the minor arcana remaining), the staves. What was the big realization? Well, another name for that suit is wands. Wands are associated in pop culture with wizards and witches making it a symbol of the occult (or, arcane, if you will). Wands then seem to be in direct conflict with the worldly connotations of the coin suit.

The French suits of the tarot minor arcana correspond to the suits of a typically deck of playing cards. Wands and clubs are paired, as are diamonds and coins, hearts and cups, and spades with swords. Wands and swords would then be black suits, with coins and cups as red suits.

You might ask “what does this have to do with a conflict resolution mechanic”? It's the very basis of it. In my original conception of this system, I had two (at times, conflicting) ideas of things I wanted in the system. Firstly, I liked the idea of a character having an overarching theme of high or low and red or black (some other distinguishing mark perhaps, if using the tarot deck). Secondly, the idea of each skill being tied to a particular suit and either high or low. We can use the metaphorical descriptions of the tarot suits for a guideline on what kind of skill to link to what suit. The high and low is difficult to thematically tie into the mechanics. Either way, I suppose that the skills would be divided into ranks and playing a card that is closer to high or low (for high or low skills respectively) would be the intended goal. Playing a card that meets or exceeds the rank, after any modifiers, would equal a success. In this example, if you have a low skill of 4, you would need to play a card that is a four or lower in the relevant suit to get a success. Whereas, if you had a high skill of four, any card that is four or higher is a success. Playing cards that don't match the suit, or even the colour would be possible, but with penalties. On the subject of modifiers, I think I would apply them to the skill ranks, rather than the card played, just for simplicity's sake.

On the subject of hands, (the grouping of cards, not the limb, or hands in general) the player characters would have five or six cards while the GM would have a larger hand (possibly 10-12 cards) for all the NPCs. That said, if there were particularly large groups, they would either have to be grouped together, or the GM's hand size would increase. An alternative way of handling the GM's hand is to give them the face cards. This removes a potentially interesting tactical element from gameplay, but something about the GM working in more metaphorical terms interests me. This mode prefers the tarot deck, as there are four face cards per suit as well as the major arcana which could serve a similar purpose.

While I enjoy working on mechanics for mechanics sake but before I can go any further in designing this system, I need to decide what kind of game it is for. The basic mechanics (ignoring the tarot based suit metaphors for now) are card based, and could be modified to be fairly neutral. My first association is with the western, shortly followed by mafia stories as they both have a thematic link to cards and gambling. The mafia in particular is a good fit for this system since North American pop culture usually uses Italian crime families as their inspiration. The common tarot deck is based off of the Italian style, so you can see the connections build up. Those choices are based entirely on the method of arbitration, not the concepts of the system itself. I like the idea of the GM using the face card and major arcana, so I'll assume that the system uses the tarot deck. We have swords, the occult (or knowledge), and wealth. What this suggests to me is a fantasy game with a wider scope (especially given the medieval nature of the face cards). To me, this system seems like it suggests a group of allied baronies, marches, or small kingdoms struggling against outside influences. Unlike the typical adventuring party, the communication would all be correspondences, they would rarely be in the same room, much less crawling into a dusty old crypt together, and combat would be done with armies, not weapons. A departure from the typical fantasy game to be sure, but it could be interesting. In fact, I think I'll start writing something of a setting for it. We'll have to see how it works out.

Design: Factions Actions

In the most recent session of my Wild Talents game, some of the players got to plan the defence of a superhuman enclave. Also, an ongoing actual play stream of Stars Without Number had something called a “GM turn” recently. These two events got me thinking about factions in games and how they can form the undercurrent of a sandbox game.

Initially, I ran sandbox games by giving my players a spray of plot hooks and letting them choose which ones to take. When I started writing my Wild Talents game, I started building factions and teams with certain motives and/or goals. With player intervention and the personalities and methodologies of the factions, plot hooks emerge organically. The interactions between groups are either (as I've done it) up to the GM's judgement or played out in full. Given the number of potential factions and conflicts between them, playing them out in full is not really feasible. So, given my nigh fetish for rules design, I started planning a reputation system that would affect how behind the scenes action happened. This post is not a description of that sub-system, just my thoughts on what goes into designing these systems and potential components.

One, I guess I'd call it bias, I see in games (both on the side of the developer and the player) is the preoccupation with symmetrical design. I'm talking about the idea of one solid set of rules that the GM and the players use. The GM might get a few extra tools, but everything works on the same underlying basics. I suppose this makes balance easy, but I don't think it works in all cases. With the notable exception of GM-less games, the medium is fundamentally asymmetrical. The Game master already has a different role than the other players so to me it seems insisting on symmetry as a design philosophy seems dishonest. I'm not saying symmetrical design is inherently bad, just like asymmetrical design is not inherently good. I bring this up because the entire idea of faction mechanics hinges on the idea of the GM having mechanics exclusive to their role.

What are faction mechanics? First of all, it is large scale mechanics depicting struggles between two or more groups of NPCs. Secondly, these struggles take place over larger spans of time than typical PC actions. Third, these interactions would be time consuming to calculate using the interpersonal mechanics.

Before settling on conflict resolution mechanics, we need to decide how factions exist mechanically. I like the idea of breaking them down into assets that contribute to different rolls. For instance, if a criminal faction has a gun running operation, that would give them access to a steady supply of weapons and money from selling them. This would increase their buying power and their military power. Each asset would have resilience based on morale, strength of arms, and strength of numbers. So a small group that is well armed and extremely loyal is roughly equivalent to a large group of poorly armed fanatics, or a large group of well armed cowards.

When it comes to the titular faction actions, there should be a cost involved. In the example of the gun runners, I would say they can either earn money, bring in weapons, or act as personnel for something the faction attempts. If they earn money, that could go towards purchasing a new asset for the factions or supporting an action. No matter what the endeavour is, it will cost some money. Even purely money making actions take some capital to start up. That said, I would simplify matters by removing any sort of cost for using capital producing groups to add to the faction wealth. If they brought in weapons, they wouldn't make any money from selling them, and would likely need to spend money bribing border officials and the like but the rest of the faction would have the weapons available to them, adding to the overall capacity for physical force. Lastly, if they are used as personnel, they aren't doing their usual jobs and are acting as foot soldiers, recruiters, spies, or anything else the faction might need from them. There should also be some mechanical facet that marks the gun runners as criminals.

A logical assumption to make is that factions don't operate on the same wealth scale as player characters. The gun runners touched on this a bit. The question is whether wealth should be treated like a stat, or as a game economy. We aren't counting out every gold piece, credit, or dollar, but we could create an arbitrarily large sum of money that factions deal in. That said, it need not represent liquid capital, it might be production capabilities or sufficient barter goods. What a wealth score represents depends on the setting and could even vary from faction to faction within a setting. If we treat wealth as a game economy, spending and gaining points over time, what else can we treat as a game economy?

Reputation, or at least the goodwill of a group of people is difficult to represent as a game economy. After all, what matters to the population of one island/planet/city/whatever the territorial separation du jour in your setting is, may not matter to the population of another. A rebel group may be isolated to a single region, or it might be a populist movement across the whole country. I would say that the previously mentioned marks may be a way around this. If a movement is limited to a specific area, it should be easier for them to cash in on their reputation there, but more difficult elsewhere. Why a game economy for reputation? What benefits does it grant the system? I think it makes sense that, like wealth, a faction cashing in on its reputation (either the fear, or goodwill of the populace) will run out eventually. For example, the gang of gun runners and a populist uprising are both strapped for cash and need a place to hide out. They intimidate or accept the hospitality of the common people, respectively. Eventually, the people are going to strike back against the intimidation, or get sick of the rebel fighters and kick them out. In either case, unless the faction does something to inspire fear or hope in the people, the reputation that allowed for the action in the first place is going to expend itself.

Not everything should take the form of an economy. The use of force is an example of a resource that can't really be spent in the same fashion as wealth or reputation. Factions don't accomplish everything through force though. Each faction is made up of many, many characters and if each character has the capacity to do certain things, then it stands to reason that a faction should be able to do the same, but in a coordinated manner. The use of force is one such thing, but it certainly isn't everything. Just as we consolidate all aggressive capabilities, be they gunslinging or spellslinging, we should also consolidate other character options that use the same general methodology. Stealth and deception should be one part of a faction's repertoire.

Knowledge, sadly, is a difficult thing to work with on a mass scale. First we need to look at the function of knowledge in a character scale. I'll separate this into two categories, world knowledge and skill knowledge. World knowledge is the kind of thing that players develop from exploring the setting and getting relevant contextual information from the game master. Simply put, these are facts about the setting and its inhabitants. Skill knowledge is general knowledge about academic subjects, or the knowledge needed for trained skills. This is things like knowledge of heraldry, or occult secrets, or how to fix a starship. Even these categories break down further and there is some overlap between them. If knowledge of the Black Knight’s heraldry, or the Ritual of Unseen Dangers is relevant to the plot, then it might cross over from skill knowledge to world knowledge. What would a faction use the knowledge of how to fix starships for? Well, you can fix starships which either gives you a starship, or someone pays you for fixing their starship. Either way, this falls under the category of wealth. When is knowing occult secrets or heraldry important? When it gives you an advantage in winning over a potential ally, thwarting an enemy, or other things that I haven't thought of. With that in mind, can we separate knowledge into its own category? I have to say no, when knowledge is relevant, it is enhancing some other aspect of the faction.

These are just some initial thoughts. I may revisit the subject with some more concrete ideas. I may also touch on potential uses for a faction scale system in the hands of the players. We'll have to see what we end up with, won't we?

First Impressions: Fluxborn Part 5

Chapter 3 (Continued)

We're starting off with combat rules. As I touched on in the last post, this game involves active combat. I'll explain what I mean by illustrating an example of passive combat. In D20 games (like D&D 3.5) one player attacks and they compare their result to a static number in their target's stats. That said, there are things like saves, but that really reverses the roles. One player rolls and compares the number to a static value. While this results in faster combat, I think it is less engaging to the players because you have to wait for your turn to come around again before doing anything. With an active combat system, which is any system in which both players roll with the defender's roll acting as the difficulty for the attack, the players have an active roll in combat even when they aren't making a choice.

To illustrate, let's say Hrothgar the bard is attacked by a wolf. In a game with passive combat, the wolf attacks, Hrothgar's player compares the number to a static value and takes damage or doesn't. Then Hrothgar takes his turn and rolls to hit the wolf. Then the player goes back into inactivity for the rest of the turn. In active combat, Hrothgar rolls to defend against the wolf. Then he takes his turn and rolls to hit the wolf, with the wolf rolling to defend. This is a pretty simple example of combat, and with more participants there is still waiting but a player gets to act twice as much in the second example. So in terms of design I prefer the active model because it guides gameplay in a direct that is more engaging than the passive model.

To bring it back to Fluxborn, I feel as though their combat system has made some pretty good choices. Most of it is pretty standard and I won't go into too much detail, but notably, when you have two opposed critical successes, the defender successfully defends themselves but the attacker gains a point of Wild or Logic which I think is a good touch. It rewards both players for their good roll (The idea of rewarding people for essentially random factors is something I'll have to explore more at a later date.) but antagonistic nature of the conflict is avoided but making the attacker's reward independent of the primary conflict.

Attacks not dealing lethal damage are left to the GM's discretion. There is a mention of grappling but only how to initiate it, the end effect is left to the imagination. I don't mind this idea in concept but I feel that mixing the more narrative driven GM fiat style rules don't mix with the concrete style of rules found elsewhere in this chapter.

Combat seems fairly lethal. The average damage of a melee attack is around 7 and health averages around 15. Players can take a little more than two average hits without armour before dying. Armour looks to be fairly cheap so that alleviates the effect somewhat.

There is an interesting system with weapons and armour. Players have a list of generic types but there is a list of qualities, like Big, Fast, Shield or Thick that modify what the weapon can do. I tried to do a system like this before but in my attempt all qualities including damage were picked by the player. In both systems the price depends on what qualities you give your gear. In my attempt it was only weapons, armour was still fairly undefined. Considering this allows a player to create any number of weapons or armour without long lists, I enjoy this type of design. Then again, generally, if I've tried it before, I'll like seeing it in print.

Stunts are next and initially seem to be generic ability but there are some interesting combo rules. Instead of the Exalted combo system (which just allows a single player to combine different abilities) this encourages cooperation on a strategy between various player characters. There is some tactical choice with which stunts you pick thanks to a balance mechanic. Players have to alternate between Wild and Logic Flux in a combo or it is more difficult to accomplish. Aside from the stunt and combo rules, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of tactical decisions you can make in combat. I don't mind that as much, not every game is meant to be played on a battle map with miniatures. What I do mind is the lack of some important details. In the body of the rules I couldn't find how to calculate movement or initiative. These are two things that should be plain and easy to find in the rules. Movement isn't abstracted since there are ranges for weapons and presumably some stunts. On the plus side they have a fairly comprehensive example of play which is something I think all games should include just to clarify exactly how some rules work. Sometimes not even the most comprehensive technical-style writing can adequately convey some rules. In that case, an example of how the rule works in play is invaluable.

Stunts act a special abilities and magical spells. They seem varied and useful. Combos also look like a big part of combat in this system which I'm totally okay with. They are taking something their system does which is cool, original, and done well and making it a major focus of the system. Sadly this section doesn't have any art. The rest of the chapter, especially the equipment section is full of beautiful and evocative art. Really, this seems to be the strongest of the chapters so far.

Chapter Four

Ah yes, the Bestiary, I am firmly in my territory as a GM. As a brief aside, these single book systems really some kind of monster repository. If they don't print it in the book for space concerns or whatever reason, they should release it for free online. These stat collections make it easier for GMs to run a game, simple as that. If a GM is interested in running a game, there is a higher chance they'll buy the book. Now this product is released for pay what you want so that isn't a huge concern but in my mind the quality of a product jumps greatly if they include tools for GMs. The art in this section is good but there isn't as much of it as I would like. That's nitpicking though, with one notable exception the art in this book has been the best part.

There are a variety of creatures ranging from animals to nightmare creatures. Some entries come with custom stunts which, considering their importance, is a nice touch. The sample Wilderbeast which is a lovingly illustrated thing called a Duckmouth Gazelle really captures the surreal quality I've been looking for throughout this game. Generally, the sample creatures are imaginative and varied enough to provide a decent groundwork for a campaign. Sadly, one of the biggest things I was looking forward too, the tools to generate antagonists, is severely lacking. There are plenty of examples to draw from and some general advice and lists of monster specific abilities but no major section on creating monsters. Also, while this is something that most games lack, there is no easy way to tell how powerful an antagonist is. The D20 Challenge Rating system has some major flaws but it exists and you can generally assume that creatures of equal CR are around the same difficulty. Without looking at the stats, and even after that, we don't get a clear idea of the power level of the stats presented in chapter four. While I'm not happy about that, I can't fault them unduly for something that a lot of games struggle with.

Closing Thoughts

So, we come to the end of Fluxborn and with it, this first impression. I hope to do more of these in the future, but I think I'll keep it to one post. I'm might switch to doing standard reviews as it seems far easier. I'm going to rate each chapter out of ten and then give my rating for the whole book.

Chapter 1: 4/10

This chapter was a disappointment to me. With the introduction offering so much potential, I learned in this chapter that the game was (not quite, but very close to) your typical medieval fantasy. There were a few glimpses of mechanics that kept me going. I can unequivocally state that this chapter has no reason to exist. All of its contents could fit in the other chapters and they would be better for it.

Chapter 2: 5/10

By no means perfect, this chapter had a very weak start. Eventually, the scattered ideas of interest won me over. If, for whatever reason, I ran this game in the future I would ignore most if not all of this chapter. That said, there are a few ideas that I may shamelessly steal the next time I run a fantasy game. The biggest thing this chapter did was reinvigorate my interest in the game.

Chapter 3: 7/10

There are a few major issues with this chapter, but in general I liked what I saw. I stand by my complaints about how the layout could have been improved by adding more variety. In general, there were quite a few original ideas and ideas I've seen (or come up with independently) that were well executed.

Chapter 4: 6/10

The Bestiary is perfectly serviceable, if a bit short. I’m trying to resist judging this chapter based on disappointment. When the introduction claimed this chapter had guidelines for creating antagonists, I was expecting something a little more robust. Fluxborn didn't deliver. It did, however, offer a wide variety of well crafted and beautifully illustrated beasties for your PCs to fight.

Fluxborn: 6/10

Interesting mechanics and some clever ideas hidden throughout the rest of the books. The setting is by far the weakest part of the game. Overall, a beautiful book that squanders its potential and core concept.

Would I run it? No.

Would I play it as written? No, there are too many issues with the setting for me to really enjoy playing it.

Would I buy it again? Yes. It's available for free and even the suggested price is not too bad. Besides this the first product from an indie developer. Hopefully, they learn some lessons from writing and producing this game and apply them to their next publication along with their beautiful aesthetics. Aside from the benefit to the developers, there are some interesting mechanical design choices and setting tidbits that I can pull out to examine or use as inspiration for other games. This is a thesaurus of gaming, I want to have it on my shelf, but I'm not going to recommend it to my friends unless they need something like it.

First Impressions: Fluxborn Part 4

After the high note of chapter two, I'm excited  interested to see what the third chapter brings us. A thought occurs to me as I get ready to dive into a juicy pile of conflict resolution mechanisms. The signal to noise ratio of this product so far has been mostly noise with only a little bit of salvageable signal. I can only hope this trend doesn't continue. Then again, it doesn't really matter to me. Unless the mechanics blow me off my feet, I'll just use this as a reference point when working on game systems. A brief aside, I got my hands on a copy of FATAL. I won't link to it, believe me when I say this system has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Also, yes, this is the one game I will flat out admit to pirating. Byron Hall deserves none of my money, this game barely deserves to exist. It's only merit is that it snugly occupies the title of worst roleplaying game created by humans. Anyways, I heard about this game and thought to myself, “there is no way it could possibly be as bad as people are saying”.

It was.

Then, being the obsessive collector I am, I said to myself, “you know what? There has to be some redeeming quality, if not in the setting material, then in the mechanics. Surely there has to be at least one salvageable idea in the midst of this gargantuan literary turd.”

There wasn't.

The point of this whole story is to illustrate this point: no matter how bad the mechanics are, this game is still better than FATAL. Wait, no that isn't it. The point is: even if the system is bad, I will enjoy combing through the mechanics looking for gold. I can't say that reading though the FATAL mechanics was enjoyable. It was more like having teeth pulled while under a sedative, or cleaning a bio-hazard site with a sponge instead of a toothbrush. Slightly better than a dreadful experience, but not by much.

Before we delve into this chapter, I suppose I should have a set of guidelines for me to judge if I like the system or not.

1. Does conflict resolution match the conflict?
2. Does the central mechanic have any interesting ideas?
3. Is the system limited to one core dice mechanic?
4. Does the system function as written?
5. Does the system promote active participation?
6. Is the system complex enough to allow for sufficient character variety?
7. Are the rules well explained?

Chapter 3

The core of the system is fairly simple. Skills and stats are paired and added to a roll. Fairly standard stuff so far. D6s are the dice used in the core mechanics, and this is where it gets interesting. For untrained skills you roll one die. When using trained skills you get to roll two dice. Although I'm not sure how that balances out, given that skills already give you a bonus. This does give you significantly less chance of rolling “Drama Dice”, their equivalent of fumbles and critical misses. You also get to roll the second die while making untrained skill rolls but only add the result if it's a six, otherwise the result doesn't matter. I think that adds needless complexity and could slow down play. There is already a mechanic that gives an automatic success when you roll two sixes. Personally, I would have a roll of six on one die to allow the player to roll again and add the two results together. It adds a bonus for good rolls and streamlines the process.

Helping on a task has fairly standard rules, but honestly, I think they missed an opportunity to do something really interesting with their two dice system. Maybe one player rolls the untrained die and the assistant rolls the trained die, with the special rules for success and failure applying to each. I'm not completely sure how that would work, but it's just an example of incorporating an interesting facet of their design into the rest of the mechanical framework.

We get a quick glimpse of the target number required for the various levels of difficulty, devoid of any context, before moving on to character creation and hopefully some explanation of what we just looked at. The attributes start at zero, and can stay at zero, which is something I like. I should mention before we get any further that this is a points buy system from what I've seen so far. Anyways, the idea of starting at zero and requiring every stat to be at least one seems pointless to me. Some systems require at least one point in a stat to have functional characters. If a system has a minimum value, then a character should start at zero. The points are divided between categories instead of having a large pool of points like ORE. Oddly, you get a similar amount of points between skills and attributes.

There is an example of character creation immediately after. Before, I might mention, giving us what the attributes or skills are. In the example we see that wealth is handled abstractly. As long as your purchases are below your total coins your total coins remains the same. Purchases equal to your total skills reduce your total by 1. Now, I don't hate the name coins but I think a more general wealth or resources fits better. This may seem contradictory with my complaints earlier about the setting's lack of originality but when it comes to mechanics, I think it's best to avoid the abstract and take the well trodden path. The exception are rules-light games, something like coins would fit with the lexicon of the average rules-light narrative games.

One thing I'm torn on is justifying experience spends. I like that they mention a need for players to explain why they can suddenly speak Turkish. On the other hand, that is the sort of thing that can generally be hand-waved away. Obviously, learning something like sailing while stuck in a desert is harder to justify, so a player might need to explain that to his GM.

The section on attributes lists limits and averages. I think this should be put up with the character creation summary. If not, then the summary should be a side bar. Honestly, the simple layout is bothering me now. The large font and straightforward layout is aesthetically pleasing at first but makes mechanical discussion messier. A more complex layout could have made the setting chapter more interesting too. Now, I understand if they couldn't afford a graphic designer to do the layout or didn't want to spend the money, but I think spending that money would have made a better product.

The attributes can easily be divided into physical, mental, and social attributes. The social attributes are the only ones that are really interesting. We have the standard Charisma but we also have Trickery. This novel stat concerns deception. Charisma seems to be concerned with the pleasant side of the social world. I like the neat division of attributes but I'm not sure if separating deception and social graces is the best way to separate social stats. That is the sort of division I think is best covered by skills. On the subject of skill and attribute interactions, the skill list has no suggested attributes. Is athletics usually covered by Strength or Finesse? I don't know. The skills themselves are general while still covering a specific set of knowledge and abilities. Education, which covers science and history but I would imagine is suppose to deal with things like advanced math as well, is pretty general and ill defined.

Guts are another game economy, allowing for a bit of direct mechanical control by players. They start with two and gain a point at the start of a session or by completing objectives in game. I'm not a huge fan of Guts as a name, it only really works for one of its two functions. The function it works for is the ability to ward off death. Instead of dropping to a Health score of 0, you can spend a point of Guts to remain at Health 1. Interestingly, while using this ability, the player can choose to move away from their attacker. A neatly cinematic touch that could bring the character out of a potentially fatal melee. You can also spend these points to alter the results of the dice in a skill check. I find it odd that they single out skill checks. Why can a player not spend their points on an attribute check? It seems like an oversight on the designer's part. I think these would be better called Luck as their current name doesn't really line up with the function it serves.

Closing Thoughts

Chapter three is far from over. That said, this is the biggest chapter of all. Hopefully I'll be able to complete this chapter and the Bestiary in my next post. That said, now we have to look back on my checklist from the start of this post.

Does conflict resolution match the conflict? Don't know.

Does the central mechanic have any interesting ideas? Yes, I haven't seen the dice scaling before.

Is the system limited to one core dice mechanic? So far.

Does the system function as written? From the point of view of pure mechanical functionality? Yes. Is it balanced? I have no idea.

Does the system promote active participation? Yes. I'll do another post explaining exactly what I mean when this review/first impression is over.

Is the system complex enough to allow for sufficient character variety? So far, between the list of twenty skills, a big list of boons and more to go, it looks like there is plenty of player choice in character creation.

Are the rules well explained? The core mechanics are written out in clear, plain language. The skills and attributes could use some work, but I've explained all that above.

First Impressions: Fluxborn Part 3

I'm pressing on with this first impression. The few bit of game mechanics I saw were simple, but interesting. Sadly, this chapter is all about setting. Well, I've already been surprised once, I suppose it isn't too far fetched that this book has the capacity to surprise me again. Granted, the last surprise I had wasn't what I would call a good one. This chapter is about setting.

Chapter 2

We start off with Albion. This is a land of lush green hills, rainy weather, and other things that indicate this is a stand in for an idealized Medieval England. The people of this area have a rich seafaring tradition. Luckily, what lies off their coast is actually interesting. The High Seas are a body of water shaped like an ascending spiral. Waves from this sea crash against the high coastal mountains and huge iron walls, created by ancient dreamers. No one has been able to sail to the top of the sea, leaving a bit of mystery for players and GMs. This is more the kind of setting I was hoping for, a genuinely surreal location. Hopefully this isn't the only one included in the section on Albion. The capital city of Albion is called Eden. I almost skipped this section thanks to the overused name. While not as interesting as the High Sea, Eden has a cool core concept.

While I was in the middle of writing that last sentence, I realized that the names in this setting are pretty terrible. I can only imagine what their Cycpops! brainstorming sessions were like.

“We have an ocean that climbs into the skies, what do we call it?” asks one designer.

“The High Sea!” says another.

“That's just a bad pun, it isn't even that clever.” says the first designer.

“That's a great idea!” says the first designer.

Anyways, Eden is a city built on unstable ground thanks to all the water and swamps in England  Albion. The people of the City (I refuse to call it Eden.) build their city higher to negate the effects of the constant sinking, The lower levels get closer and closer to the not-Underdark as the city sinks, once again offering plot hooks for a GM. Interestingly, the city has two Kings, both ruling together. We don't get much detail. We learn their personalities, where the palace is, but nothing about why there are two Kings, how they rule, or anything that builds on this interesting tidbit of information. There is a prophecy that claims the City will sink and be forgotten which is the reason the citizens are building upwards. Interestingly, it is a forgone conclusion, the city will eventually fall. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Not the ultimately depressing end for the city, I'm cool with that. My issue is with how they presented the information, in the middle of describing how the city functions they tell you “Oh yeah, and it's eventually destroyed and turned into a hive of scum and villainy” right before going back into the layout of the city.

Sadly, the layout is where the interesting ends for now. Like another sinking city, there are few streets. Most people get around by the waterways, presumably by gondola. This city, doomed to sink into the swamp and falling slowly into a pit of evil is turned into not-Venice in a single paragraph. I just scrolled down to continue reading and, yes, they do get around by gondola. I'm skipping over a fishing village devoid of anything interesting and going on to the next big nautical disappointment. Get ready for it: skeletal pirates lead by a Captain Blackbrand. Yes, the bay of mists is home to the greatest evil of all, a stereotypical evil magic pirate. Granted, it's a pretty small pool to draw that stereotype from, but somehow, Fluxborn manages. Kudos Fluxborn, kudos.

Wait, I just noticed something. Captain Blackberry's ships raid coastal villages while sailing upside down in the clouds. Well, Captain, you've redeemed yourself somewhat by going full gonzo. Sadly, the same can't be said for Tortuga. That wasn't a general statement, there is a town in this book called Tortuga. Considering Albion is not-England, a Spanish name from a real town is jarring. More than that, it's flat out stupid. Again, the throw-away lines contain the most interesting material. The town is built on the back of a petrified turtle-leviathan (presumably just a big fucking turtle), attempting the justify the name. Sadly, our turtle friend is the only interesting thing about this pirate infested sleep aid.

We leave not-England and arrive at Olympia. I'm guessing this is going to be not-Greece, only time will tell. Olympia is a place of cold mountains and pine forests. Their people are skilled carpenters, and definitely not a stand in for the various Scandinavian nations. So I'll admit, I was wrong, the Olympians are not aping Greek culture, my bad. There is a pretty interesting idea here, some of the Olympian cities are said to be intricately carved so the resemble one giant house. We get to see one of those houses in this page's art, giving us a good idea of what that might look like. Promising, but again, just a single sentence containing an idea that should be given far greater significance. A few more evocative ideas are listed here. The roots of the pine trees reach down into the not-Underdark and rumours exist of icebergs glimpsed coming down through the clouds. The Olympians ride bears into battle against their enemies, an idea which gives an awesome mental image, but is pretty overdone at this point.

Thankfully, the house city idea is expanded with a location called The Great House. They build the city up, and the longer the areas have been around, the more refined they are. I assume they get a nice patina on the...well, the everything. The ruling family has claimed the lower, higher quality sections and forbids the lower classes from entering. The lower classes instead enter through zip lines. I can only wonder how grandma and grandpa manage to get back inside.

Skyberg, the mythical flying mountain and the source of the interesting rumours from before is also given a section here. I'm not sure if they decided to showcase their best ideas in the opening or they had less ideas for this section. This is the last entry in Olympia's description for a total of two locations compared to Albion's six. Only two of the ideas in Albion are really worth remembering, so this is really a case of quality versus quality and quantity. Skyberg appears at random and drops ladders and ropes that stretch impossibly long bring strange raiders with them. Mysterious raiders descending from the sky have been done before by Commodore Burberry in Albion. This is more original, barely.

Our third location is Elysium (and the Jade Isles). I'm not sure why these two locations are combined. With any luck there is a reason, I'm not holding out hope though. From the names I'm guessing this is not-Greece and not-China. I have been wrong before, so we'll see. Apparently these two regions have been at war or at least “bitter conflict” for the setting's entire history.

Elysium is a region of fertile landscapes with city states known for their walls and scientific advancement. But this place is totally not Greece guys. The mountains have what look like faces on their sides. It doesn't clarify if these occurred naturally or were constructed, both possibilities are equally interesting.

South of Elysium are a group of jungle-covered islands called the Jade Isles. The islands are symmetrical sections of green jade, as the region's name suggests. Surprisingly these are a collection of tribal societies ruled by a queen/warlord. There was a previous society on the Isles called Yomi which was ruled by an Emperor. The only listed location in the combined region is the ruins of the palace city. The ancient society was destroyed by a vague apocalypse that shattered the island into the archipelago it is in the setting proper.

The last region is Old Irkalla, an inexplicably purple desert. The art depicts it as a Saharan-type desert, but the text talks about cacti. I'm aware this is essentially a fantasy setting, so it isn't too egregious. When travellers die of exposure a large human-shaped cactus grows where they died according to the rumours which is an interesting idea. When this section gets down to locations of interest, it starts strong. The book introduces us to the Winding Stairs, a lost city in the desert. Not original, but it does it much better than the previously mentioned Yomi. This seems to be a trend, two similar ideas in adjacent sections and the second one is much more interesting than the first. This city, built by people so ancient they are forgotten is rumoured to move around the desert. Understanding the layout causes madness. Really, we're getting into some solid architectural horror tropes here. Giant mechanisms power the structure and cause the stairs that fill the massive structure to move in all directions.

The last section concerns factions of the world. Most are not really worth noting. A definite exception to that rule is the last of the smaller factions, The Abandoned. Sometimes human children put their dreaming self into an object. Normally these objects are non-sentient but a very specific set of circumstances can change that. If the child could produce a Fluxborn while dreaming and dies in their sleep, the dream self can continue to exist as a living toy. The idea of living toys is not in itself original, especially not when produced by a dead child, but this works. It's weird, edging on gonzo and is dark enough that it catches my attention. The concept of a child creating or infusing an object instead of creating a dreamer is interesting and opens the path for plot hooks. For instance, what is the effect of having one of these objects? Can adults create these? Honestly, these should have been one of the Fluxborn flavours. The name could use a little work, but otherwise, I like these!

Closing Thoughts

The chapter started off weak but built momentum. Most of the chapter wasn't particularly interesting, but there were large sections that stuck out, mostly positively. Not-England and not-Greece were the weakest sections in this chapter but there were a few genuinely good ideas that you could salvage from it. After the boondoggle that was the first chapter, I'm glad that I stuck in, this chapter ended up being more of what I was looking for from this game, which caught me off guard. Kudos Cycpops! unsarcastic kudos. Oh, I didn't mention much about the art this time. It was good, is about all I can say. Nothing in particular stood out. It didn't brilliantly evoke a scene that captured my attention, but it also didn't distract me from the content of the text. With the exception of the Hare from chapter one, all of the art in this book has actually been pretty outstanding. It has this sketchy quality (despite being painted, I'd guess digitally) that captures the essence of a dream state rather well.

On the other hand, my critique of the first chapter stands. There isn't a strong reason so far for the material in the first chapter to warrant it's own section. If the authors had put all of the setting material in this chapter, I wouldn't have batted an eye. Well, I might've enjoyed this chapter less, pushing me from tolerance to total dismissal. In hindsight, maybe it's best they kept chapter one seperate.

(Just kidding, it's remains a poor layout choice.)

The next chapter is about mechanics and is longer than the previous two chapters combined. I may have to break my post down into two or more parts. The silver lining of the first chapter was the brief taste of mechanics. Hopefully a whole chapter on them will be fun. If you had to appraise my attitude towards this project after this chapter I would go with cautiously optimistic. Mechanics are one of my favourite parts of a system and I usually enjoy delving into them.