CastleVania 2024: The Mappers and the Trappers

 Its been 5 years since we had a Concentric here in Adelaide, so as soon as I saw tickets on sale, I grabbed mine, signed up for the Roleplay GMing and .. sat on my hands until the very last moment. 

Worst luck, I put out my back 3 weeks before, and was for 2, unable to really move. Luckily with some help from my Chiropractor (not the back clicky type, the physio type), I was mobile in time to run my game.

Luckily, the bag with all the CV gear was the same as it was, stashed in the carport, a quick dusting and I was ready.

CastleVania: The Epic Legacy Game.

Incase you're reading this for the first time:

Based on the Computer games, The Castle of Castlevania, Players represent the 'next' generation of the Beaumont family, arriving at the castle in the next 'phase' of the moon and magic leylines, that affords the more successful possible time to enter the castle. 1 day after a full moon, 7 years on. Dracula is asleep, the Werewolves are devolving down, but their is enough light from the moon to make things visible enough at night. The Players arrive 2-3 hours before sunset (after a 9hr journey) at the castle gates.

If you follow the map of the game, this shows that you've skipped past a whole section, from the town, the forest, the main bridge to the mountains, and that's correct, because other players have already completed and cleared those regions, and set up rangers camps to keep them clear.

And that's the rub:  This is a legacy game, players have made decisions to make it easier for the 'next' group to be able to progress further. 

So our next group, The Monk, The Ranger, The Priest and the Knight, entered with a mission. MAP everything.

In the last play of 2019, the group spent some of their family fortune investing in a papyrus/parchment craftsman's house and imported the goods. It breaks even, but mainly it gives the family parchment. So now the players get 2x sheets of parchment and  some charcoal to draw out their findings.

They progressed. slowly, then at a decent rate, avoiding all pitfalls and combat, and finding what was needed. The front gate was burnt down, but the towers appeared accessible, So they took to the stairs and climbed. A few broken stairs and swearing, but they reached the top. A Spectral Crossbowman guarded the opposite tower, so the Monk lept across the parapet and ran at it, while the Ranger with arrows blessed by the Priest, took shots. Sadly the monk was injured, but they managed to take down the Spectre, but not before his blazing fists set fire to the roof eventually destroying the innards of the tower.

Yet from here, they spotted some creatures in the castle and with a perfectly aimed shot, the Ranger managed to penetrate the skull via eye socket of one of the creatures inside the castle. 

Now, exploring the roads leading to the sides, they encountered spectral demon horses, so terrifying they turned hair white. Something their grandfather had warned them of, but they had forgotten in the moment.

Returning to the castle proper, they entered the main front hall. Covered in dirt and debris from years of neglect, yet strangely a set of saw horses, a box of tools and several trees worth of wooden beams sat here. They noticed one of the front doord had been heavily repaired from the back half.

The creatures had fled through the doors. 

The room was empty, stripped of anything of worth years before by previous adventurers, they had nothing to do.

The room that followed was a great hall, intricately carved archway held a roof 30ft above, while the room itself was easily 200 feet wide, a giant crack across the floor allowed them to see down to the servants quarters below, but they too were torn asunder and their floors let down to further rooms, and below them water was heard to gurgle its way through unseen caverns.

The shortest distance across was 7ft, fairly easily jumped by someone with help, but the creatures from before were huddled against the far wall, and once a torch was lit, they retreated to a place beyond this.

The heroes searched out the corridors to the right and left of this great hall. One led down to the chasm but also to a large opening spilling into the stables.. the eerie light reminded them of the spectral horses, so they quickly retreated.

The opposite corridor let to stairs up, to a small 10m alcove leading out to a giant ballroom. immaculate in comparison to the rest of the castle, and guarded by two stone statues of armoured warriors that did not hold weapons. A clue, that weapons should not be held beyond this point.

Regardless characters approached with weapons drawn, and the statues turned in place towards the closest weapons, as if to beckon them. the ranger, slowly with no weapon drawn moved into the room, and it sprang to life. The 10 candelabras and chandeliers lit up with a ghostly blue flame and 12 dancers faded into view, dancing to some unheard music, they moved gracefully around as long as they remained undisturbed, but once a weapons was drawn, scimitars materialized at their sides and they struck at the armed opponent.

The ranger, as dangerous as it would seem, braved sliding along the very edge of the room, focused on the spectres, so failed to noticed anything else, made his way to the opposite side, but the doors here were locked from the other side. Upon return, noticed that if he approached the candles with his holy-blessed arrows the candle flames would flicker and he ghosts flicked in kind.

The knight suggested he put an arrow into a flame.. so the Ranger did, which snuffed out a ghost like a flame, but instantly the remaining 11 ghosts turned red with anger and rushed to kill him.   

The Knight was caught off guard and slashed at, but beat a hasty retreat so the spectres could not get to them, as they were bound to the ballroom. The team realizing they had missed the opportunity to use the blessed arrow to snuff at least half of the flames & ghosts in one go, decided to retreat.

Night had truely fallen, and some new ghosts were beginning to emerge from the castle, they would be surrounded. The retreated as quickly as possible, but the Priest was injured while attempting to draw on the map while retreating, and taking an attack from something, the map torn in half. one piece fluttered to the floor, and the other bloodied, shoved hastily in his pocket.

The Group decided that they'd reached their limit, with 2/5ths of their party injured, night fallen, they packed what they could, returned to the carriage and set to driving home.

Only a few huge bats and a wolf were encountered on the return, so they arrived home safe and sound. Map adventure complete. they contributed their findings to the family knowledge store, the Map, vital to future endeavors, they were safe and alive, unlike many of their family before.

Seven Years Later

The Younger siblings of the group above, armed with some of this knowledge and a copy of the map, arrived at the castle for their turn. The castle was cleared, surely its just the Vampire himself, past the dancing spectres.

The Group, A Mage, Barbarian, Ranger, Monk and Rogue.

They entered the castle, skipped past the overgrown carnivorous plants, after taking a sample, entered the first hall, and while taking note of what was around, taking a giant leather pelt, went through quickly to the next room. The family of knolls were no where to be seen, the corridor to the stables, quickly skipped when the Monks hair turned white from a mere glimpse, they too went to the ballroom, but instead of approaching the statues with weapons, realized that the weaponless statues was a clue. They 'gave' over their daggers to the statues, which 'ignited' the ballroom, but this time faint music could be heard. The Cleric and the Ranger, tapping their feet, realized, the dance being done was about a bakers dozen, 14 step song, but only had 12 dancers, there was a gap. They began the dance, yet clumsily, they fell out of step only part way and rushed to the walls edge before the dancers were angered. Here they found too, the doors locked, so attempt number 2, they somehow managed to dance in time back to their group, angering only one ghost for a brief moment.

They returned to the carriage, took turns to watch

Disheartened but also relieved (that they didn't need to figure out the dance), they returned to the ground floor to try the huge darkened doors at the end of the great hall. It opened to a balcony over looking a great chasm. 50m distance. But curiously the doors opening this side, also opened the doors on the other. in sync. They looked up, further balconies. Surely this was where the ballroom opened to above.

Their Rogue climbed above tied all their ropes together, and using some pitons, the Ranger shot an arrowed tied to the rope through the lower doors and had the barbarian shut the connecting doors at the same time, securing the rope as a zipline to get across. with some more pitons and some clever shenanigan's, flipped the rope around, because, their is nothing worse than needing to flee and not having preset the ropes to flee upon.

The room in the opposite side was, for the most part pristine, but for some small hornet nests and hornet bodies on the floor.. some an inch long, some a foot long.. but the worse part was when they glanced into the corner, a nest the size of a house.. the entrance a circle the size of a dog.

The Monk.. some inner desire for bugs to die.. set their fists afire with their psy powers and punched the nest, igniting it. Two gigantic hornets emerged, but the Ranger dispatched them quickly.

Meantime, the Barbarian wanted to inspect the room. there was a strange circular blue pattern with tiles on the floor. The Mage had repeatedly attempted to detect magic, and time after time had just not been able to concentrate, exacerbated by her cousin the Rogue who could constantly 'do' the required mental agility, but had no clue what he was looking at. She got agitated time and again at this.. but at least identified that the magic was purple and therefore necromancy in nature. 

All too late, one of the Hornets  landed inside the circle and something started to happen. 

The Mage, maybe in a panic, threw a fireball into the nest, somewhat to dislodge the Hornet from the circle and knock it outside, the Ranger quickly knocked out the other, as two more emerge and were dispatched, also falling into the circle, but dislodged. 

What could have been a disaster was averted, the Ranger made the required 'zombeez joke', but they'd been damaged in the fight, so they said they'd stand guard and make sure the escape was not blocked. (players had to leave for another event) and they proceed to climb the nearby stairs.

The room above was a great hall, where an upper floor balcony looked down.. up there what appeared to be ghosts were very faintly seen, but maybe due to the sunlight, were barely visible and did not appear to react to the heroes (maybe at night)   

There were alcoves with large statues, but these statues had obvious cracks where joints might be, the Barbarian approached sword drawn and as soon as he did the statue fought back. It was a formidable statue in combat style, so the barbarian had to apply all his skills and stances to keep pace.

Meanwhile the Rogue and Mage approached the centre of the room, staying back from the other statues, but not entering the centre, they cautiously approached. yet  it did them no good. some ghostly manifestation appeared to rise from the last of 7 large purple flagstones. it then proceeded to float over the flagstones in a zig zag pattern, slowly forming into some head shape, a head shape with lots of strange braids, until those braids formed into snakes. too late the rogue was turned to stone. The mage realising what had happened, turned aside and ran. The Barbarian not listening to the words, turned to see what had happened  and too turned to stone.

The Mage running back to her companions.. they climbed the pitons, slid back across the chasm, raced to the carriage and set off as quickly as they could.

Upon returning to their family castle, they relayed what had happened and wrote down notes to teach their siblings and cousins. They Vowed to return and save their cousins from this stone curse. The Mage put their time into dispel magic.

What happens next? in 2025 at Concentric, I'll continue the Castlevania quest for the next group of Beaumont siblings, and we'll see if they can figure out the dancing ghosts, the stables, the werewolves, the kobolds, the Zombeez and the Medusa heads in time to face off against the 2nd major boss.        

Detection Magic

While designing an adventure, I needed my players to have an excuse to cast 'detect Poison' on several items. Knowing that the spell is a little expensive, I felt that plausibly something could be done, sure, I could make it more obvious, by giving them a scroll or two, or have someone teach the spell to a mage in the party, but even then it needs to be used more often.

And I asked myself.. What is Detect Poison? What is Detect Magic?

What is detection magic:

Consider first, how does it work. Is the magic sending out sound waves, when it hits the target object, it detects 'waves' of magic, and sends back to the caster some feedback his/her brain interprets as an Aura, and lets them know, YES this is magical?

Is it then, that they take that skill, and further it, identifying the particular waves to determine what KIND of magic it is? 

What about the other direction, if they reduced its ability, and lessened the cost. could the spell merely detect 'something'?

Side Note: Would Detect Magic, detect Radiation? would a caster assume its 'magic' but of unknown variant, and take it home, expecting to find out from a more powerful mage, and slowly become sick?

Would it make more sense, that the early mage, in learning the spell, would have gone through the weaker version? 'detect something'?

In which case, would it make far more sense that a "detect" Spell be learnt far earlier? and that spell likely improved on also.

I'd like to think, given that magical items are rare, that its far more cost effective for a mage to learn to cast 'detect' far in advance of 'detect magic/poison/undead/evil'

I give you the Detection Spells:

Detect

Base Cost: 5mp
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction.
Range: Touch
Initiative: 1 Round.

Caster concentrates and absorbs the sense of the object, If the Object is imbued with any effect, or is of pure metal, it will give a positive feeling to the casters hand.

Detect- Enhanced

Base Cost: 5mp [-10%mp*]
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction. [+10%]
Additional components: 5% gestures, +5% somantic CR
Range: Touch [+1/2m]
Effect: [directional focus: 180o 120o 90o 75o, etc]
Multiple senses: [+1]
Initiative: [Half Round, Action, Half Action, Free Action]

As Above, the Enhanced spell can be improved to detect objects at a distance, using the component to search in a direction or a whole room. A Caster could in effect search a room for 'any' effected item, and sense the direction of the items.

Example: Search Room, lvl 4
Base Cost: 17mp. & 20% imperfection. Final Cost 2mp.
Components: glass lens [-8mp], 4 small candles[-3mp], small rug[-1mp] and humming the incantus majori[-3mp]. 
Range: 5 x 5m room

Caster seated on the small rug, a lit candle in each cardinal direction, peering with one eye through the monocle, and humming the incantus majori, concentrates for 3 rounds and absorbs the sense of the room. If any item of importance exists in the room, the candle nearest will glow, giving the caster (and anyone watching) the direction of the most powerful object in the room.

Quick Detect lvl 1
Base Cost: 2mp,  & 3% imperfection. Final Cost 1mp.
Components: glass/crystal object [-1mp]. 
Range: Touch

With a small quarts crystal in hand, The caster quickly detects the item in the same hand, is effected of some force. Most magi would take their detect spell to this level with only 3 restudies.

But if they want to take it further:

Free and Easy Detect: lvl 6.

Base Cost: 0mp,  & 30% imperfection.
Range: 1.5m, no line of sight

As a Free Action, The Mage is able to hold their hand within a metre and a half of an object and detect if it may have an effect. This is a more likely end point to such a spell, taking it further to search rooms comes at such cost to negate the effectiveness without serious levels of study. 

Conclusion of Detect Magic 

As you can see, having some improved level of magic detection, which is inexpensive, is far more effective than attempting to cast 'detect magic' on every single item. The cost of studying 'free and easy detect' might seem worth it, yet, given a mage has limited study time between adventures, the player has to determine if indeed this is worthwhile, and is maybe influenced by how often you include small to mundane magical items in your campaigns.

So What of detect Poison? Undead? Evil? or just plain 'pure' metal?

In theory, they should have some kind of similarity, yet we have a few modifiers.

Undead and or Evil, might have tell tale signs before the mage/priest/monk even attempts the ability to detect, and the detection merely confirms what they suspect. Where for example a mage might look at a glowing stone, and assume its magical, so the exertion to determine is quickly ascertained as a yes, should mean some kind of feedback cost reduction. 

i.e. if the meta-physics is that mid expenditure of power, you confirm what you already expect, you can cancel the spell before it comes to completion. So then we need to add to the above spells, casting on already obviously magical items can have a -1 cost to cast. This allows GMs some good story telling arcs and plot paths, where maybe the item is glowing from paint, small bugs or some other bioluminescence, and the players just assume its magical. The Mage casts 'detect' and gets nothing, either assuming he failed the roll, or that the item has counter magic on it, to prevent detection. So they need to track down a better mage to properly counter the magic. Along the way they can meet other people for other plot paths.

   

What is a Dungeon Crawler

 If you are unaware, I'm heavily involved in Dungeon Crawl Board games, and in an effort for a comprehensive list of what one is vs what one isn't, I've amalgamated this list.

Dungeon Crawlers

Top Down, in Order of Importance, These are the items that I classify as needed in a Dungeon Crawler, and a small blub about each. I will start off with a few critical points. 

I prefer Story over Stats. I would like players to choose items that match the idea of their character, rather than the 'best' item to defeat the monsters. Wiggle room permitting, a player might have a choice between a Greatsword and a Two Handed Axe, and their Barbarian is wondering what's going to chop harder. But if the same barbarian has a choice between a Greatsword that will do 7dps, and a wand of fire, that even after modifiers, does 9dps, that's too far. 
How Far is Too Far. There is often a line, between a Dungeon Crawler and a RolePlay Game. Its a grey area, sometimes I see RPGs that try to simplify things too much/quickly, and you lose the depth of an RPG, and they really should just be a Pen & Paper DC. More often, I see a DC adding in the kitchen sink, and ending up with a bloated RPG with too many tokens, too many miniatures, and too many rules to look up. Worse, if the players have to read all the rules, and act like a GM, without a GM.  

A Party of Characters/Heroes

While Solo Play is ok, I'm not ok with the idea of a dungeon that's "designed" for a single Hero. Dungeons are designed, by Evil Overlords to be impenetrable, dangerous places, where armies have failed to defeat them. A Good solo player should work for it, that said, to be honest, I'd love to see a set of quests which the townsfolk warn them are too dangerous for 1-2 heroes, and point out some crypt missions that might suit them better, so they can improve their abilities before going into dangerous places.

Character Customization

There is a middle ground, Not being able to make any choices at all, doesn't feel like your character is progressing, often pre-chosen upgrades come along with increasing enemy levels, so you never feel like you are getting anywhere. Vice Versa, full open choice, can lead to making poor choices, ones that hamper the game for everyone, its less likely in a DC than in RPG, but I do see it creep in.

Exploration of unrevealed areas

If I know, the whole layout of the Dungeon in Advance, its because I found a map in a previous location, not because the game gets me to set it all out on the table. A good DC should have some rules about placing rooms after opening doors, or setting out structures as the story progresses, especially if the game, rightly, makes it clear I should retreat and return in the future (with better preparation). 

Scenario / Mission Scope

The Idea that the players are 'crawling', at some slower pace, because its dangerous, as the core 2/3rds+ of the game. This can be split up, allowing an average pace for the town->dungeon-> travel, faster pace 'in' town, to get supplied, and the location itself being the round by round speed. Any more than 1/3rd time spent in the 'setup/packup' phase doesn't make me feel like I'm Dungeon Crawling, instead I'm RPGing.. (see above & below)

Character Progression

If we're creating a Boss Battler, Level up after the boss is defeated. But if its a Dungeon Crawl, there needs to be the ability for players to progress mid dungeon, it doesn't HAVE to be structured that way, but it feels great when it happens. One way is to have the the macGuffin be specifically an upgrade for 1 character, "Lets go into the Forests of Alderrell, and retrieve the Bow of Swiftness for our Halfling Archer." Alternating between story progress and upgrade quests is a way for RPGs to progress, why not do the same for DCs, Heroquest did it.

Scenario Goal

Which Ties in with Scenarios having specific goals. This one is important to differentiate between an open ended PRG and a story specific DC. The DC is a boiled down, quicker, faster, focused RPG. The quest is straight forward. Players know what the quest is, so they can buy specific weapons and equipment. They know why they are going, where they are going and what they expect. THEN a surprise twist is more impactful.  

Campaign Story

A little less important (to me) is the overarching campaign. I don't mean, at al, I mean, The Scenarios goals should be following a path that makes sense, but I don't need to know the names of all the NPCs that may be affected by the plot. Include a 1 paragraph TLDR at the beginning to read out to players, and hand the 1 page backstory to the person who likes to know the extra details.

Miniatures vs Standees vs Tokens & game boards.

I don't think a good DC needs miniatures, but it most certainly makes a good DC a great DC, unfortunately it also makes a poor DC into a half-decent DC, for the purposes of Kickstarting / Buying at Discount. Mostly, because I can use those minis in other DCs or RPGs. That said, it needs 'something' otherwise, theatre of the mind is purely RPG territory. Also If I'm drawing layouts on paper, for the minis/tokens to sit on? Again, RPG land. The very nature of a DC is the board, the tokens and some other parts make a DC 'exist' as a board game.

Combat; Enemies to kill/overcome

What Crawler would be complete without the reason your crawling. Monsters, While a single monster type would be the bare bones minimum (Adv Heroquest, 3 forms of Skaven) A Variety to make the game replayable, and introduce varied levels of difficulty make it even better.

Traps, Hidden objects/items/enemies, Discoverable loot.

I think of these more as, interesting quirks. Not every Dungeon is set up as a death trap for heroes. Some might be the homes of creatures, and unlikely to use Traps, easily forgotten, deadly to the inhabitants, while Crypts, expecting to be looted, would be covered with all manner of ways to dispatch intruders. Loot is likely to be hidden in secret compartments, but regular weapons should more likely be found in the hands of the guards, AND should be acquirable by players.

Other Aspects of DCs that others like: In Order of, Yes these are nice to have vs oh no, please don't.

Focusing the game on Heroic Individuals

This.. hmm, maybe it just me, but every peasant, with hard work, and the right contacts, should be able to train and become a hero. The idea that an Individual must be destined to be a Hero isn't my cup of tea. I like character progression, and I like the idea of the poor no-body, becoming the winner. BUT maybe the idea of this one, is that the game should be focused on that hero, and not side-line them for sub-quests.  

Unique Skills

Yes, a DC is supposed to be boiling things down to simplify choice, but setting aside specific skills starts to approach the line in the sand. Ok, sure, this character has trained to fight with a staff for years, and has some cool maneuvers, Why is it that no other character 'can' choose to train in the staff too? I get that the rules to allow more cross-class abilities would make things difficult, so I can sit on the fence for this. It breaks my heart when RPGs even attempt to do this, So I'll allow it for DCs only.  

Class Specific Loot

Again, a little on the nose, but maybe that's my GM/RPG Designer coming through. A sword is a sword. and the idea that a mage, cannot pick up a sword, at all, for any reason, is dumb. Yes a DC is supposed to simplify things, but this is the line in the sand, and given a choice, I want players to be 'able' to choose the sword, and wield it, (poorly) in rare circumstances, to save the day, because the rest of the party is down, the bad guy is immune to magic, and the silver sword is the only weapon that will kill him. Maybe that's just for RPGs. Because this usually doesn't need any extra rules, why its enforced I don't know. 

Tiered/Scaled Loot.

Worse still, the game actively only 'hands out' items because of the level of the group. No. Seriously No. The Dungeon is designed way in advance of the players, If my group of level 7 heroes want to slum it, and go wipe out a Goblin warren, they should not be finding a few dozen magic swords. No. The opposite side of this, it should be a small, but interesting chance that a more powerful item can be found in an average Dungeon, that 'sets' the players apart from an average heroic party. Maybe finding a Wand of Firebolt in the first dungeon, was the reason this party has succeeded where no other could. 

Scaled Monsters.

To Take things to their ultimate Doom, a Dungeon that, no matter what level YOU are, the difficulty is set to 'slightly below hard'? NOOoo. Its boring, its repetitive, it loses all meaning, now your just rolling dice for the sake of an activity with friends. Also, games are about learning too, and once you've learnt the singular tactic of taking out the dungeon, every experience after will be a pointless task of repetition. 

Dishonorable Mentions

Space vs Fantasy

While you might consider a sci-fi concept, still a Dungeon Crawler, I posit that there are certain aspects of what makes a sci-fi.. feel sci-fi. The majority of which will destroy the vibe of a 'Dungeon' and 'Crawl'. 

I Played XCOM as a kid, its certainly got a LOT of the 'dungeon crawl' feelings of the above, yet the key sci-fi things, shooting lasers down corridors, remote access to locations from a terminal, radar pings to find enemies, the focus far more on pre-preparedness, as the statistical likelyhood that any weapons you find are geared for human hands is nigh on impossible.  It all leads/lends itself more to a tactical game.
You almost need to have some military training, to structure HOW you'll enter the location, scout ahead, burst through a door guns blazing, against those green blips on screen. You might secure some tech to take back to base, but forget using any of it now. You only have what you brought in. Sci-fi doesn't feel sci fi without those elements, and Dungeon doesn't feel Dungeon *with* those elements, Can you imagine a crack team of Soldiers, bursting into the Dungeons of the Necromancer.. it's be comical.

Sure, I'd love to see that, and it might be a great and fun game. but, just don't call it a Dungeon Crawl. 

i.e. I don't like my Dungeon Crawlers to feel like a tactical game, which ties back to story vs Tactics. I prefer players to choose weapons and armour because of theme, not strategy, or at least theme first, strategy second. So a Space Marine Battle, even in corridors of a space hulk, is too far gone for me to count them.  

AG13 - The World Killer

 Just a thought.

Imagine your a astrologer from 5126 years ago, you have been trained to track the stars and the moons and the flow of all heavenly bodies, and your calculations point to a far off future date of 2012 as when an asteroid will collide with the earth.

So imagine all these people, 5126 years later, looking at the calendar and thinking, 'oh no, the end of the world' 

It didn't happen, but why not? 

Is it possible, there were some small minor miscalculations?

If this were a journal, and not a blog, it'd be my responsibility to research all the links to find the evidence for this, but.. as its a blog, I'm just going to leave these clues.

The Calendar was changed, a few times, because it was getting a little out of sync, and also because apparently (and I could be wrong) some princess didn't want to get older, so they kept resetting the calendar for her, and after she passed, they didn't turn them 'all' back. I'm sure you can google this, but lets just say, its not far fetched to think we 'might' have got the 'date' wrong in the last 5 thousand years.

For arguments sake, lets say we got it wrong by a mere 0.1%... 5 years.

Ok, so end of the world was going to be 2017.. Do we have any proof?

um.. well.. yes. AG13.

This planet killer, missed us by a mere smidgen of a hair, in astrological terms. it came closer to us, than the moon is, it certainly disrupted our gravity and likely our position in our rotation of the Sun.

Is it possible, its still going to be responsible? is it possible, that for all the 'data' about climate change, we missed the fact that AG13, bumped our orbit by just enough to raise temperatures by 1%? (on top of what we were already doing?)

food for thought. no evidence, just stuff in my brain. discard or research at your leisure.

 

  

One Robot Policy [WIP]

Earth has advanced once again.

Robots now do all labour, manual, creative, business, any form of labour is done by a robot, and autonomous robots.

But we were clever, only just, to incorporate the 1 robot policy before it all got out of hand.

The One Robot Policy.

Abstract:

Robots (Automated Devices, i.e. self driving cars, factory arms, Solar panels which move to catch sunlight) are owned by humans who receive income based on the job it does and the requirements put on it, and modified by the level of maintenance it has received recently. The robot cannot be owned by a corporation or by groups of people. Basic minimum wage robots are awarded to all 15yr olds upon passing yr10 in school, and robot maintenance is a require subject by all yr 8->10 students.

The Idea is that humans will still need to put in some effort, but only enough to keep the economic machine rolling, give them income enough to survive and time to be creative or productive in moving humans forward.

To advance in income, a person should save some of their income for improvements of their robot, OR to buy an upgraded version OR to buy a better robot that earns more money in a different field of expertise. The common idea is to buy a robot in an area where the human has an interest and has possibly made some creative advances, and can improve their robots performance.

A human can own more than one robot, and can possibly pay others to maintain their robots, but their income is taxed on thresholds, based on both the amount of income and the number of robots in your ownership.    

1. All Robots must be owned by humans. 

1.a. All Robots must be owned by 1 person and only 1 person. 

1.a. Corporations and Companies may hire robots from their humans, at competitive rates, based on the robots specs.

1.b. Individuals may hire Robots from their owners at agreed upon rates.

2. The first Robot will not be taxed.

2.a. The first Robot is awarded to a child at age 15, who will be trained in its maintenance for 1 year.

3. A Robots owner is require to maintain and repair their own robot(s) 

addendum:

A Robot is an Autonomous machine which performs a task, and can maintain itself to perform this task for at lest 1 week. 

Its Tasks can be manually or programmatically entered into it, and for the sake of Safety, will need to be passed by the ROHSC dept in any given city. 

Wall Storming #78

 The Season is Upon us, The Shamblers have started warming up, the Kids with fire in their bellies want to partake in the battle, so sad as it is, we must give them a chance. 

Open the Tunnels, Let them throw their lives away, so we might live on.

Blood Rayne

[For those catching up, this is the blog of the events of 3 gaming sessions at the Convention AVCON 2023, Set in the BloodRayne Campaign, ongoing for now 11 years.]

The Grand Ceremony Ended, the Young Hopefuls took up their staffs and blades, donned their armors, and started down the corridor towards the final gates. 

Fear, and Yet Excitement, it was their turn to prove themselves, Fight back the hordes of Undead, Claim the Treasures of the Past, Return as Heroes, or Not return at all, and relieve the burden upon their families.

The Youth always seek out faster means, the returned ones from the past had better lives, more wealth to begin, young men returning had their pick of girlfriends, young ladies, sought after by the highest lords both asked to join the adventurers guilds.

The Traeger Brothers

The First Group to Venture out, Three Strapping Lads, The Traeger Brothers, not by blood but by friendship. Exited one of the newly built tunnels, and finding themselves in a back alley, entered the very first door they saw. It creaked in the mild breeze down this alley, so they opened it to discover a small back room to what appeared to be a bar. Old empty barrels stood here. A second door, more secure, proved to needed some force to open, and by doing so alerted 3 residents to rise from their slumber. 

But Standard residents they were not, Scantily clad ladies of the night, dressed in flimsy apparel, they were both horrifying and mildly intriguing to the male eye, unperturbed and or possibly disgusted in themselves, The Leader lept the bar, smashed down the first zombie and plunged his staff through the face. The creature seemed to stop dead, glancing aside, the other two were somehow trapped between tables, unable to navigate between. Walking back to the bar a 2nd door presented itself, clutching the door in hand, he accidentally tore it from the hinges, and so threw it behind, atop the first zombie, which shuddered back to life.

The 2nd brother quickly incapacitated it, hamstringing its feet and removing its hands. The Third brother roared at the excitement, bursting through the door, and screaming his name!

Ignoring the rest the first two entered this room, where they encountered a slimly red liquid pool, covering the floor of this depressed back room, stone floor and lower half of the floor, The 2nd brother crossed the room to a barrel which didn't seem to have been affected by decay, strange, His Brother pulled the barrel from the wall, and inspected the space, a crack in the wall, caused sunlight to break into the room, it fizzled and retreated, awakening and beginning to form a creature.

Quickly The 2nd brother threw the half barrel over the beast as it formed, the first discovered a Trapdoor and opened it, revealing more blood beast. Instead of closing it again, He backed away into the main room once again, and now spotting the other two zombies draw out his weapon, and promptly stepped upon a rotted part of the floor, he fell partway, legs scratched by the old wood, into the ooze, which quickly took over his body.

His Brother, Leroy, instead of asking, just grabbed him by the waist and attempted to haul him out, but his brothers eyes had glazed over, his skin turned white by the creature, he now grabbed his blade and plunged it into his neck. killing him, but now also opening a wound to allow the creature to crawl from his eyes and mouth out, down his arm, and into Leroy.

Leroy was a fighter, from a young age, he liked to call out his name and run into enemies, slamming them into the ground, so as the life left him, leroy attempted to run into the sunlight, sadly his brother was in the way, and the creature had begun to take hold of his mind. He ran at his brother, smashed him through the wall and shards of broken wood stabbed into his shoulders and thighs. The blow was too much, his ribs crushed he called out to his brother, but too late, the creatre had left that hust and now entered his own mind.

The Brothers were no more, sadly now the last zombie and the blood creatures are free to exit the Tavern at this location, endangering any group to venture this way again. 

Befreinding, with the new Charisma rules

 A new advantage to the Charisma (verbal combat) Rules is befriending animals.

Befriending and Animals

So, We start with the same 'Trust' score between two parties, In this case since an Animal is instinctual you start with distrust (unless the animal is already domesticated) and violent/afraid. (fight or flight response)

The Player performs actions that would appear to be friendly, but since they are different species, would either require animal handling, knowledge of that animal type, and/or knowledge of perfumes & scents of that animal, to provide enough bonuses to have any impact.

The Player performs a Charm vs Distrust roll, (attack vs defence) and the pass by ratio might have a + modifier to the effect roll. (just like STR / DEX or skill rolls can affect the pass by, CHA / WIS / LKS and or skills can affect this roll) to 'build trust' in the animal.

Any fumbles or fails, will result on the creature making that fight/flight roll. If the character defends themself, trust will be often lost as the creatures attack was likely a 'telling off' for the transgression, rather than an actual attack. 

If Trust ever reaches Zero, the creature cannot be befriended for game purposes, Dragging out prolonged trust/distrust scenarios between a player and a creature will likely bog down the game, and the rest of the players will be unhappy to continue.

Standard ways to improve the Charm roll, might be, offer appropriate food, or for semi-intelligent creatures, offer shiny or items with the right kind of smell, such as a leather strap worn by its mother, 

As of now, the levels are:

Enemy->Hated->Disliked->Neutral->liked->Friend->Brother

and

Complete Distrust->Distrust->wary->Neutral->general->trust->absolute trust.

Either side of Neutral (0) are levelled skills in terms of how much 'trust xp' is needed. 

i.e. to get from Neutral to Liked, you need a score CHA (+ LKS bonus) + liked of 24. 

to get from Liked to Friend, you need a lvl 2 liked score of 24. 

Trust starts not at Charisma, but at your own trustworthiness score. If you score at a 7, then you will start trusting others at a 7. 

In the FULL Rules version, Trust and Friendship also have 'high' and 'low' moment variants, So the modifiers will change based on past behaviors, this is more for Solo play rules, but can still be useful for introverted players who wish to play charismatic characters. 

Deck Builders and Worker placement: A few ideas

 I've been playing games more frequently of late, and my two favourite genres are worker placement and deck builder. So of course I come up with ideas in that 'genre'.

Board Game Ideas List:

Herbs and potions

The Idea is, to have a herbal gatherer, either by worker placement or by card draws, gather herbs. You then use some kind of tools to change the herbs from their raw form into a more accessible form, then you combine them into potions that you can sell on the market, to afford more to upgrade and to create the final 'prize' which ends the game.

My Initial thoughts were pure deck builder, where playing of certain cards allow you to draw from certain decks: Play a sickle and draw a card from the herb deck (or maybe one of many herb decks), play a backpack to allow you to draw more or hold more.

i.e. 

sickle: draw 2 cards from the herb deck. You may keep 1 + any number of storage items.

satchel: you may store 1 extra dry ingredient.

vial:: you may store 1 extra wet ingredient.

bottle: you may store 2 extra wet ingredient of the same type.

pouch: you may store 1 extra dry or moist ingrediatnt

Once you've got some ingrediants, you might draw them in your next hand, and you can play them with their relevant tools, such as pestle and mortar to grind into powdered form, 

Once you've drawn the powdered form, you can attempt to create potions, by combining the ingrediants, drawing random effects cards, and doing some quick calculations to see what kind of potion it is. 

i.e. 

Dandelion seeds, ground into 'sage powder' which has +2 rest, but +1 stomach ache.

Pig snout root, ground into 'concoction sap' which has +2 healing but +2 stomach ache.

Frogs Legs, boiled into 'slimy soup' which has -3 stomach ache, but -1 comfort.

and

Rosemary Leaves, ground into 'herbal rememdy' which has '-1 any'

combined, this would result in +2 rest, +2 heal. Which consulting a chart = a 40 gold potion.

You'd use the 40 gold to buy an upgraded sickle, maybe a apothacary kit, and a +1 satchel, so in future turns you could get 5-7 ingrediants in a turn.

Once you can get as high as 10 ingediants, you'd be able to make the famed "Healers Broth" which is needed for the Kings sick son. It needs 10 ingrediants, and they need to heal +5. Or some game setup sickness which lists a preset number of ailments all to be cured by the potion. 

Possible, doesn't need to be 1 potion, but does need to heal the child in one turn.

The King Awards 500 gold to the player who heals their child, and players can add up their gold & wealth to determine who actually won.

The Castle

Akin to Stone Age, you place workers in regions to gather resources, but, with some complexity.

Soldier meeples, will 'move away' enemy meeples, on resolution. i.e. blue places 4 peasants in the stone mines, red places 2 peasants and 1 soldier. the soldier moves 2 of blue away from the mines. 

Players can't just breed, they also need houses, you start with 5 thatch houses, which can house 1 meeple. you can upgrade to other forms of houses that can cope with more meeples.

You also need to breed animals for food for happiness, else, instead of negative points, the meeples don't come out of their house. 

So you could try to build some places which help happiness, 

At the same time, you have tech trees to invent better things, improve the number of resources that come out. i.e. SWORD All soldiers are worth 1 extra point,  but its done on a turn by turn basis to improve your deck. put meeples into the 'science places' to draw cards, to add to your deck. but also those cards can improve other cards. 

Stone age has 'tech' cards, but you only get them, you don't use them, the game is a static move of choices. but by adding the 'randomness' of your deck, as to 'improve' your actions, you get a sway of the strategic 'worker placement' and the random effect of 'deck builder' 

Health, and Death... again...

 So, The Human body, as I understand it, does not 'die' as instantly as we think it does

How Does Actual Death change the rules

On a cellular level, most of the body lives on for hours and even days after 'death'. This means many, many things for roleplay. 

Firstly, lets look at Health. 

When the human body takes an amount of damage too much for the consciousness to handle, the body shuts down the consciousness. This might not reboot the system, and we refer to that as a coma.

For the longest time, I used 'fate' and 'luck' to be this factor. The body takes damage beyond the 'death' score, and the player determines, ok. I'll spend a fate. If the party manages to best the monster, they revive their friends from their unconscious state, and begin the healing process. preferably in a nice warm tavern.

BUT if the whole party is 'killed' they all 'wake' in a witches home, or a wizards tower, or some place 'nearby' enough that makes enough logical sense that someone had rescued them, possibly including the party members themselves that were 'less' damaged.

The GM has a nice 'out' for the group, it often introduces a NPC for the players to rely on in the future, as they obviously owe a boon/debt to, and can introduce new plot hooks, or provide higher level access to information or goods.

But beyond that, we also allow for death to actually occur, and yet be rolled back. If the players can retrieve their friends body, and get to a healer within a few hours to days, they might still be brought back. The consciousness is shut down by the body, and once healing applied, is re-awoken by the spell casters or priests.

IF and only IF we have gone past the point of no return, do we now need actual resurrection spells.

This adds the benefit, plot wise, that our players are not 100% lost to us, and plot paths can continue beyond death. provided the resurrection is made cheap enough by plot economics. 

That's the TL;DR of my notes on death. 

Coins Currency and Genies

 Genies? wait what?

When the economy of your world can be messed up with wishes

Ok, gave the plot away with the header, but hey, lets just make it clear and simple:

TL;DR; A Wish, can ruin your game. 

I Wish for a room filled with gold coins. for arguments sake, its 10,000 coins.

So, now, the Kingdom that used to have 10,000 gold coins in circulation, has 20,000.

The King used to be the richest with approx. 5,000 in storage, but he's not a stupid king, or at least the people in his city are not, so they mine gold, silver, copper, tin, and maybe some rarer platinum, zircon, etc, at an approximate rate that keeps the currency values around a 10:1 ratio,

except now, the gold in total has just flooded the market.

Are the players going to not spend it? um, no.. So there will be some very large purchases, which will put handfuls of the currency into the hands of a myriad of merchants. they in turn will buy more goods to replenish stock, but also some of their own purchases of personal reasons, and the trickle down happens, as it would / should in a medieval society. 

But it also means people are less likely to haggle, why bother wasting time over a 5% price difference, you can afford it, so you pay more, the shop keep gets used to this and doesn't need to sell his goods at a discount to feed his family, so his prices stay high, and his other customers seek cheaper goods elsewhere, or must raise their own prices to compensate for the rise of costs.

If you follow it along, ALL prices will, over the course of a few weeks and months, go up. people are greedy. Without some kind of agent to sweep in and force prices to stabilize, they'll always go up.

In comes the wizard. He casts a spell, and determines the price that a good should be, "mirror mirror on the wall, what was the price of fish last week?"

With some threats, or a charm spell, the prices are forced back to normal for this elite class, and people will come to grips with the ability of magi, thaumists and priests to divine more realistic prices. The Magi know.. if this gets out of hand, spell ingredients will go up in price, and master magi will be forced out into the forests to procure the weeds and flowers they need to create their potions and spells. Magi don't usually sell their goods to lowly folk. they sell once-off items, to the big fish.

Mid to low level adventurers buy healing potions, and sure that's come a little mainstream as a result, but all other magic rings, swords, gems, scrolls, these things are all once-off bespoke items and the magi only sells one every so often, usually for a years salary. So he's not used to having to deal with day to day price increases, no.. he comes to the little shop that has a boy that goes off into the forest once a year and pick the elderflower from the tall oak, that blooms only on 2nd winters solstice, and he pays 100 pewter for it, no more, no less. and if the boy didn't make it.. the magi will weight the costs of a teleport spell to go get it himself this year.. 

No, no no.. If a Priest was to enter the markets and found out he needed to pay double for all the candles and saffron and gold leaf and statues and marble, he might start flipping tables, and calling his god to come down and smite these greedy heathens. 

We, poor saps in the modern world can only grumble at the price of milk going up every year, We look at the real price increases on our expenditure and hope we can ask for an equal pay increase to match it.. just so we can 'stay still', but if we could summon a demon or a god or just the force of the universe to stop it in its tracks, I'm sure we would.

So, this gold.. since its got less ability to create inflation of prices.. the opposite happens.. its own worth changes. After the few months of prices going up and back down.. the gold is still so much more commonly about. more people have it, so people start to say, 'hey, I know I should give you 10:1 ratio on your gold, but I don't have as many pewter, so how about I give you 9:1, and since I kind-of don't 'need'  as much, as I got paid in more gold last week, I don't need more, then you make the choice, 9:1 for my goods, or go find a money lender, who'll exchange money, and take his cut.. greedy bastards.

That's right, you probably don't know. people didn't carry around large sums of cash in markets. they'd get robbed. the 'till' we have today would be emptied by thieves in moments. No, they had mobile bankers.. or moneylenders, who'd roam about with a couple of thugs for protection. thugs cost money, so the lender would charge a fee on exchanges and loans. If the going rate was 10:1, you might get 9.5:1 from the lender, or vice versa 1:10.5 if you wanted a lighter purse. You could call him over when a customer had currency you couldn't deal with, 

Now, lenders are more aware of the current flow of cash, so if they know there is a bucket or barrel of gold flowing into the purses, they're not going to stick with a 9:1 ratio. no, no.. they'll want to be ahead of the game, and have some street urchin go find out how much gold the heroes are accompanying themselves with. 

So, GMs, have you got that? Players enter town with chests or bags of goods. The Urchins should come up and ask, lots of questions, make them seem interested in what the heroes are brining home, what monster was killed and how much gold they've procured. As soon as the number is given, have the younger/dumber kids run off straight away, have the older kids ask more serious questions, make like they're not actually interested, maybe offer services or information on the town, have them very curious to look inside the adventurers purses..

Players will think they're going to be pick pocketed. Instead have all the money-lenders change their exchanges right away. No-body brings money into a city without 'paying' some kind of tax.

Which reminds me.. if your hero walks into a city with the same wealth of the city.. the king and his tax-man are going to want their share. if nothing less than to protect their currency rates.  Just another money lender really, with bigger guards and bigger pockets.