The Gorgon: DD12 Cataclysm & Beyond

Backstory: DD12:Cataclyzm is the survival horror scenario for Dungeon Delvers Twelve world/system. Your group has 'arrived' on this world, and before they have time to even think, something in the shadows and darkness has decided that you are its next meal.

The Male Gorgon.. minus snake hair...

The Gorgon:

So what is a Gorgon?

According to several mythological stories, the gorgon gets a wide variety of descriptions, from snakes, snake haired, bulls with volcanic or metallic flesh, other things with scales, wings, claws, tusks, mixtures of all the above, even the sphinx, satyr, hippocampus and mermaid are considered a gorgon.

All of the above.. maybe

So likely gorgon means demon, more than specifically Medusa and her sisters, of which they are likely demons.

So what is a demon? well, for a medieval peasant, anything that's scary enough to have come up from the depths of hell (if that's their local religion).

So Gorgons are just labels for demons.. but more commonly, demons that are mashed together bits of other animals. So, a hybrid right?

More like the Colchis Bull or the D&D gorgon here

Except, not theriocephalic, because that's just head of an animal, body of a human. and we're not talking humanoid, because that's a whole nother set of monsters.

So Gorgons, are hybrids, Heads like humans, or at least faces like humans, and then a whole mixed bag of what the rest of it is..

Except also, that any of those body parts, could be parts of humanoids, or theriocephaloids?

Whoa, where is this going?

So In Cataclyzm, the idea is that anything could come from anywhere, and as such, alot of it, might not so do well on a world with gravity, or air, or sunlight or a lack of sunlight (like nighttime) and so, a Gorgon, in this context, is any creature of anything that the GM comes up with, a mishmash of bits and peices, resulting in something the players might run away from, get eaten by or manage to hack apart and use.

Cataclysm was about lack of resources, cave-people of the Coyn World, you start with nothing and you build something, on a wider scale than a standard RPG where you start in an existing culture, and rise a little bit in comparison to all that is around you, to a well known hero.

Catacylsm won't have grand overarching bag guy plots, or heroic status when visiting nearby towns, not instead people will probably just have a general Awe and Fear for someone who managed to travel from one location to the next, and not get eaten.

Googling Gorgon can produce many varied results

So, The Gorgon is a multi-roll (or choice) on a chart that gives the GM a thing that he can describe, maybe its a bull body, a fish tail, arms of a rhino and the face of a chicken, it breathes air, but lives in a 0.5x gravity. As a result the GM can double the creatures Initiative costs, making it slow, it has a peck attack, and horns, it stomp around on two legs and maybe has a slap attack with its tailfin.

More interestingly, when you defeat it (if you do) you've gained access to cow leather, fish scales, large fore-arm bones, horns and probably a strange beefy-fish meat, with intestines, organs and the like.

Surprisingly, no Heart as Meat Potion images exist in google

While Early DD12 Cataclyzm notes had leather, horns and bones, more recently I've added in the organs, intestines and such so you can play as a shaman who gathers strange exotic liquids and meat sacks to attempt to brew up some very weird things indeed.

The Gorgon, gives us the ability to create some truely weird things, without the need for the exotic locations and the plot on how your group got you there.

Cataclyzm works well as a "westmarches" style game, each week you can have a whole new set of players, make up characters based on the villagers that still exist. They go out into the wilds to discover whats around, maybe they survive, maybe they don't, they bring back information, resources and new skills, so that hopefully, an established location can be added to the historical maps.

Gorgons should be used somewhat sparingly, once a month if you're playing weekly, its a freak of ... well not of nature.. it might be defeatable, it might be able to live in the world and become a re-occuring nightmare.

While the name Gorgon, brings up images of snake headed women, or metallic bulls for some, I do wonder if the controversy of keeping the generic "abomination" called a Gorgon would be a good idea or maybe the old adage, "All publicity is good publicity", if they're talking about my game, who cares if its trash talk?

When Sterotypes hurt your Game

Something I've strived for in a lot of my games is an attention to detail. You always see posts, articles and stories about how the designers added so much background, and the user barely notices, but overall the game/movie does better for it. I never expected it to backfire so badly as my last roleplay session.

When your players stereotypes clash with each other

  I started a 4 week stand alone session about Pirates, Sailors and their dealings with a strange phenomenon called magic.

  The Session started with quicker than normal character creation, we even had to skip formalized equipment and their stats (though proved humourous) so we could get started and into the basic plot quickly enough.

The basics were thus: There are two sides, Arabian Pirates, who come from a land which has outlawed magic in all forms. Consequently the majority of the pirates are actually magic users. And the European Sailors, having had their entire city wiped out by undead magic users because their race managed to invent gunpowder (magic users everywhere have banned the invention) those politics aside, the players know that they consider their 'guns' to be anti-magician guns.

  Throw in a Knights Inquisitor, whose sole reason for infiltrating the pirate ship is to root and rat out the mages to be beheaded at the next port.

  So we have two sides, with conflicting inner struggles. I expected some emotional and political conflict, as did the players.. but we didn't expect what did happen.

Arabian Indians & German Gunners

Some of my players like to put on voices.. the 'Europeans' jumped for German, and for some strange reason, the Arabians decided to be Indian (some jumping from Scottish to Iroquois mid sentence) alot of funny moments for a later blog.

  What happened was a misunderstanding of ranking.

  Some of my players are older gentlemen, they have families, kids, wives who expect their husbands home by 10pm, and the rest, Uni students, not so serious, just having fun with it all.

  The Serious players, want to get to the game, get it happening and enjoy themselves, while the younger players have yet to learn that sense of urgency and self control.. so already different tensions started in, players not respecting the game, monty python quotes, etc etc

  The Pirate 3rd Mate & the Ships cook were instructed to take this group of sailors and pirates of equivalent by slightly lower rank out to inspect the island, look for fresh water and food. The Cook can of course identify plants & poisonous varieties, and the 3rd mate bossed people around, to get stuff done..

  But The Pirate player, had previously played a D&D adventure on the high seas, and the campaign had extremely poor understanding of life aboard a ship, crew, rules, emotions and the like. Far worse than the stereotypes of the movies. The players had been press-ganged into ship slavery, whipped, beaten, half rationed, disease & seasickness, it was a brutal campaign (I never played, I just got this players impression)

Now, does that Officer look like he's going to run him through?

  Also, in games prior to 2000, I used to run many of my campaigns with a strict iron fist. Players who would encounter guards and give them flack, would likely end up in prison for unruly behavior or beaten up and left in the gutter. Players learned that they might be the heroes of the story, but they are certainly not given free reign to do as they please.

The Skirmish

So, this player, felt that his 3rd mate, was in charge, and should/would deserve the respect of his position, to the point of almost bashing the back of the head of the German gunner who was giving him a little flack, at which point, the gunner drew his flintlock pistol and told him to back off.

  This set off the 3rd mate, insisting that the rest of the crew, imprison the two germans in a discovered stone room, til he could summon up someone of higher rank to have them flogged. The germans went in the room, but not so much as punishment, but instead creating a nice walled barrier against the feral mate, so they would obviously only have to guard the one entrance with flintlocks. Strategically, a good move.

  I, at this point, honestly thought the player was playing his pirate like this on purpose.. to create angst, or disrupt the possible inquisitor from discovering that he was actually a mage.

  It turned out, he honestly thought that pirates were blood thirsty bastards who would sooner run in a scurvey prisoner than take lip. While 6 of the 9 players had other ideas.

 The Key point had been pointed out earlier in the hand out text, which I'll quote:

A Ship of European style, A Galleon, 14 Guns (Extremely rare), but a crew of only 50 (The Galleon needed 75 to operate at full ability, but sleeps 150) Lost a Battle to a Pirate known as Twin Blades McCrowly and his crew of 40 pirates. The Pirates has (rightly) never encountered guns, and thought the booms were a storm coming over the bow, while 8 of them were killed on the opening attack, the remaining 32 managed to kill the captain of the galleon and 15 crew so effectively, their scrimshaw blademanship was so deadly, the remaining crew gave in (it was fairly obvious these warriors were so deadly, they would slaughter the crew and burn the ship)

The Master Gunner, knowing that the future of his culture was at stake, pleaded with the pirate captain, to take them on as crew. McCrowly took a look at the 8 dead, holes blown through them, and looked back at the massive hole blown in the side of his own ship and realised. He had now gained some of the most powerful “magic” that existed.. but it was not actually magic, somehow, this would be perceived as “evil” and the Knights Inquisitors might be pissed, but since it was not magic, their anti-magics would not work..

So, the Crew of the Galleon was given a choice, Join the Pirates, Plunder the Seas and if they want to get off at the next safe port, they may do so, AFTER they train the replacement crew member how to operate the guns & cannons.

The Ship has been anchored off the coast of a small, uncharted island, The Captain has ordered you lot, to go investigate, gather water, see if supplies exist and buried treasure (he adds with a laugh).

Beautiful Tropical Island, filled with Deadly Creatures, Crazy Terrain and Wild-men, must be Australia.

  So, you can see The Galleon Crew are on 'probation', to prove their worth, and become pirates, as equal ranking to the rest.
  For myself, I've always thought that the idea of a Pirate Captain, treating his crew like scum, would eventually result in mutiny. The concept that any higher ranking sailor on the sea, trying to act all big and tough, better be chummy with 80% of the crew, and only try that kind of thing with the least well liked persons on the ship.. that said.. close quarters, no where to go, I don't like the odds of anyone being less than amicable on a ship, but idiots will be idiots, and that's why the quartermaster exists.
  
  Returning to the situation, 'the 3rd mate thinks he's top sh*t', not because the player wants the character to be played that way, but thinks that this is how higher ranked pirates are supposed to act. The Pirate Stereotype has 'forced his hand' so to speak.
  No one else agreed with him, and began to belittle the player( in and out of game) because he was playing an a**hole. The Player didn't want to be boxed in, Some of the Pirates were siding with the Germans, which the Player insisted was against the spirit of the game.
  So suddenly we're all raised voices and getting angsty about whats going on.. I blame myself, not providing enough material to the player about how pirates should be played.. because quite frankly when you have a group, it is, sorta, the responsibility of the GM to set a scenario that the group has a reason to bond & team up against the GM.

  We had to pull the session to an end, so I could write up several pages based on historical data to show the more truer version of history and why the stereotypes would destroy the ability on pirates being pirates.. but it really got me thinking..

How many sessions of roleplay are disrupted by this kind of clash, players playing the 'classic trope' which ultimately ruins everyones fun?

Topics to Discuss - Pandoras Box

I thought I might get down some Ideas that I'm keen to discuss, both in gaming general and in relation to DungeonWorld(tm). Having worked on a Dungeonworlds game engine for 20+ years, through iterations of complexity, then simplifying, then complexifying again, There are many small nuances to game development that I've studied, read about or even just played with the basic mechanics.

If anyone has some key point they'd like me to address over the next few months, feel free to add it to the List. I know many of these topics are things other gamesmasters and designers have discussed, so sometimes they'll be my own 2 cents, I like to think that pretty much every GM/Designer that decides to blog has to cover these topics to establish themselves first.. but maybe a few will be unique

In No Particular Order, I would like to discuss:

• Encumbrance, backpacks and Lists vs Encumbrance Points.
• Electronic Character Sheets, good or evil?
• What to do in downtime? Why Healing Spells suck!
• NPCs and Levelling the non-Hero
• Hit Points, health and Falling off Cliffs
• City Campaigns, Do Politics?
• Weapons Hit Points.. Will your Sword break
• Ammunition boxes or chips?
• Time Tracking between 7 Gamesmasters & 50+ characters
• Perception, Lighting, Smells and Intuition
• Player Morales & Roleplay Decisions
• Killing Everything, just in case, doesn't make me evil.. Right?
• Mega Games & Rumours
• Should GMs ever let players see the Monsters Manual?
• Is an Orc Always Evil, Should a Paladin Always kill him?
• As the world shuns violence, will roleplay games cease to exist?
• Toilet Time, should GMs inform players, mid dungeon, that its time for no.2?
• Initiative vs Peasant Rail Gun
• Non Magic effect Tower Shields of Invisibility
• Minecraft tree to Stick rules of D&D Crafting
• Rule Zero vs Physics

I May add more to the List, I encourage others to add to the list, things that you've seen or read in other GM blogs. (or just stuff that would be fun to read about)

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

I felt it necessary to include this little caveat at the beginning of many of my posts, as the average reply seems to be completely off topic, sure, there are trolls, but I find the average gamer to be more intellectual, so I get smarter trolls!

1. Blogs

When I began Blogging in the mid 90's they were webpages I had to write out the HTML for. It was considered then (and to much of an extent now) to be a log of events by a developer, written on the web for a chosen audience to view (often the dev team, but sometimes publicly).
Later Blogs became more public, more open, allowing readers to identify with the author, wanting to read things they agreed with.. Later still Trolls started to disagree with what was written, rather than just going somewhere else.
I wrote my early blogs as tech manuals for my player base, but for this Blogger site, I've rewritten them into a kind of diary about what I did back 30 years ago, when gaming was still viewed as a 'nerdy satanistic unhealthy thing'
I hardly ever edit what I write, If I wrote "thought of the day" expect it to be brain vomit of ideas about a topic, often unresearched, which I admit does entice trolls to come puke their own thoughts.. sometimes I learn something new from their 50 hour long posts on why I'm wrong.
I do use click-bait titles, because, quite honestly, I've always done that, even in real life I start topics with a more controversial way of thinking about things, I get more honest answers out of people that way. I'm not doing it to gain readership, because this blog is for me to ensure I get it out of my head and onto (e)paper, and maybe, just maybe one person might benefit and their gaming will get better.

2. Dungeonworld is a World Simulation Roleplay Game.

It concentrates on the ideas that a good story can be told in a way that doesn't need to break the existent universe they are in. Dice are used to measure the degree of randomness in a world, yet they should not make the world random, they should merely indicate to the GM & players, in which direction should the decision be, and how 'strong' it should be.
Dungeonworld core mechanic is an open 2d12, 1's and 12's modify the result for 'extra' boosts. We also use Open Ended d100s for more realism.
Dungeonworld is a far more realistic Roleplay System, health is based on real life health, pain, wounds, diseases, infections, stress etc, Players will have to think, not only about how to take out the creature, but how to survive the trek back to camp. Much Pain has been taken to ensure that the realism is as close as a roleplay game can get, and yet, still be fun to play.
Dungeonworld is a more complex game, because complexity gives players more choices, takes away the heavier thinking, compartmentalises the aspects of play so that you only use what you need to use and get into the game & plot and adventure without worrying if your character is min-maxed to perfection.
Dungeonworld is supported with an Online World, allowing GMs to sit back and relax, think more about the situation they are in, rather than figuring out the complexities of an entire world every session. Players can be more relaxed in the knowledge that their GM isn't going to miss out on something critical, because the Online world will cover that.
Lastly, Dungeonworld is a Live World, if you kill the goblin hoard in the forest of thieves.. other players won't be able to.. their already dead. The actions of players have consequences on the world.

3. Dungeonworld(tm & r & c)

Dungeonworld(one word) became a name in 1992, I trademarked it then and have owned it since then. Australian Trademark & Copyright laws state that I have full ownership of that name, and anyone publishing in Australia would be in breach of those laws.
I have only recently become aware that a UK based games company is publishing under the name Apocalypse World: Dungeon World, I have written to them to express how this violates my trademark, they did not write back, but instead threatened the two other Dungeon World companies that exist in the world(and failed).

In the beginning

In 1990, Students of Modbury High were instructed to contact businesses, to organise work experience.

I organised to work for a Printing press, where I learnt about separation of prints into Red, Yellow Cyan and Blank. To demonstrate my knowledge, I was asked to take an Icon, Logo or Title of something and make it work with both this YCRB system, and an old B&W PhotoCopier.

I chose to do my 'club' name. Dungeonworld.

From there, my friends and I began a club for roleplay & boardgames.

In 1992 I was employed at the Modbury South Primary School After School Care. I was helping look after kids ages 5-12. Some, between 8-12 wanted to play board games. so I began bringing my games to the after school care. We played Heroquest, Talisman and Monopoly. more...

By the end of 1992, 12 kids wanted more, so I formed the Official Dungeonworld Club, Registered my business name, Trademarks and bought some more board games with my meagre inheritance when I turned 18.

By Christmas of 1993, I had 30+ members, we played Advanced Hero Quest, some guys came in to play D&D, Traveller, Vampire, Gurps. There seemed more interest in roleplay games than board games, I looked at many of them, over the shoulders of the other players. I gave them a go, as a player, but I always suspected there was something very wrong in what they were doing.

So Sometime in 1994, we started development on our own system. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay + Dragon Warriors + a little D&D, Some Rolemaster for good luck.

And thats how we started...