Reminders

So, most of this week has been hammering away at the Primeval Bastionland Playtest and today I sit down to write the editorial but... the writing part of my brain is crumbling.

There's a lot I want to talk about in relation to Primeval. I rambled quite a bit about it over here but small things have already changed since then! 

I'm holding back on making significant gameplay changes, but I wanted to tweak the way Omens are rolled, and fine tune a few of the specific Knights and Myths, so I've snuck in a few alterations. 

This post was originally going to be a plea for mercy. "Hey, I released that free pdf this week, so do you mind if I'm too tired to write an editorial too?"

But here we are. I'm writing it. And I'm afraid it's not going to be pretty.

I thought I'd share the current mantras of my notes document for Primeval. These are things that I hold to be so important that I shove them at the top of the doc in big bold caps.

In Electric Bastionland they were:

ALL GAME NO HISTORY NO FLUFF NO LORE
MAKE THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING
IS THIS BETTER THAN WHAT A GM WOULD MAKE UP AT THE TABLE?
STOP ADDING SHIT

Well I think those are still relatively solid, but Primeval is its own beast. I want it to be a game that still fits my values, but has an identity beyond just being ITO or EB again. 

So here's what I have currently yelling at me each time I open my notes:

MYTH NOT HISTORY

For a while this was subtitled with NO ROMANS NO ROADS. A reminder that just because I'm drawing on some elements of Arthuriana and Early-Medieval Britain doesn't mean that I should be grounded in reality. This is a world based on the idea of those sources. The myth, not the history. The feel, not the specifics. 

You know how it's weird when you see a picture of Lancelot wearing shining plate armour that's probably more 16th Century than 6th? That's what I want to embrace. A world where that's real, because it's the myth. 

THE GAME IS THE WORLD

This is similar to the ALL GAME note I had for Electric Bastionland. Since ITO I've embraced the challenge to see how much of a world I can present without having any pages of raw exposition. 

Pedants will note that I have one or two pages just explaining setting elements in both of my previous books (and indeed this one), but y'know, shoot for the stars, aim for the moon or whatever. I'm talking about getting as much setting into the actual game tools as possible. 

In Electric Bastionland I boasted that the Failed Careers were the world, and I stand by that, but I think I can go further. In their current state the Knight/Myth spreads already do a better job of giving you what you need at the table. The plan is for any given spread to give you a knight, a steed, a seer, a building, a person, a beast, a landscape, an object, a wonder, some encounters, and a couple of mini spark tables. Maybe I'll add more too. As close as I can get to a one-stop shop without just cramming each spread full of 8pt text. 

MAKE IT ALL STICKY

Horrible words to live by, but named after this blogpost. Omens are basically encounters, but I've given myself a little more freedom to make them broader little packages of stuff. 

In spite of that, I want them all to stick to the players. I can't stop them just walking past certain Omens, but I want most of them to make a lasting impression. Maybe it's something they'll want to come back to later, maybe it's something that needs dealing with right now, or maybe it's just something that lingers in their head. 

See, I had an editorial in me after all!

And I'll end with a note that these are giant reminders because I need reminding and haven't fully internalised these yet, so don't be surprised when the current version isn't quite there yet.

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

Designing for Minimalism

I spoke about this on last night's stream, but wanted to dwell on the subject a little.

I've made a bit of a point about wanting to make games that push up against the minimalist end of the spectrum, rather than drifting toward the middle. So what does this actually mean when it comes to the process of making a game?

I'll be referring to some parts of Project 10 as examples, but it's the same process I use when working on RPGs.

My thoughts on this can be summarised into a few main points. This isn't intended to be an exhaustive thesis on the matter, so much as the things that are currently at the forefront of my mind.

Minimalism is Compromise

Minimalism in games goes hand in had with abstraction. You're using a few simple rules to (typically) simulate something complex. In Project 10 terms you could break down every clash between units into its own game lasting hours. You'd consider the qualities, position, and condition of every individual soldier on the front line, and the wealth of specific manoeuvres and tactics that they could implement. 

Instead we roll the deliberately swingy Combat Dice and accept that all those factors are tied up in that roll. An attack came up with maximum damage? I guess the defender's front line got broken wide open. Roll a single point of damage, which got blocked by their Shield trait? Guess they pulled up the shield wall and held strong. 

The compromise is that the players don't get to have input on those little fictional details, but in return they get to focus on everything else. Which leads to...

What's the Point?

Making a quick, simple game is all well and good. You sit down and play it in less than an hour, pack it away, and declare it a good, elegant game. Then you forget it exists and start thinking about that monster-sized boardgame you've never managed to get to the table, or that RPG campaign you've been planning since you were twelve. 

In its current state, Project 10 runs nice and quickly, has a balance of strategic manoeuvring with chaotic drama. But what's the point of it all?

In all honesty, that's something I'm still working out, and it's all part of the process. I like that you can run battles so quickly that you can bash out a short campaign in an evening. I like that it's easy to make new army lists that feel different to each other. I like that the short, chaotic games lend themselves well to weird, asymmetric scenarios. But I need to put this all into practice on the page. The sample campaign and army lists are a start, but there's more room to grow here.

For a more complete example look at Electric Bastionland's single spread of rules being supported by hundreds of pages of flavour-filled characters, conducting procedures, and an oddendum of essays. Because the reader isn't spending hours learning the system I can bank on them actually exploring and absorbing that other stuff. 

Table Outranks Desk

It's so easy to sit at your computer and think about rules that this game should have.

I mean of course there should be a rule that lets skirmishers move after shooting. Of course these rocks should slow down units that move over them. Of course pikes should get a specific bonus against cavalry. People who read your game might even suggest these changes, whether they've played the game or not. Some people just want to help, after all. 

Don't go too far down the rabbit hole. Make the minimal viable game and get it to the table yourself, even if you're playing both sides. The stuff that happens on the table is the real test of whether a game needs to have more rules or not.

When you're getting feedback from others, ask for how the game felt at the table, not what they think they'd change or add if they were making this game. Ask them for their problems, you don't want their solutions. 

Cost Every Rule

At this point it's worth pointing out that I love rules! I think every game should have at least one.

And things get really interesting when you have two rules (see below) but for now let's look at the two sides of every rule.

Every rule has a cost. There's the cognitive load on the player of learning another rule, the literal space on the page, the indirect problems that could arise from its interaction with existing or future rules, and even an opportunity cost that comes from closing up an area of the design space. 

Sure, they sound bad, but remember the point here is to weigh them up against the benefits. I recently added a rule to P10 where units that are halfway to being destroyed are Shaken and no longer benefit from the second of their two traits. This rule definitely adds complexity, and it meant I had to reconsider each of the individual traits, but so far I feel like the benefit has been worth it. Now a unit with Shield and Brutal is significantly different to a unit with Brutal and Shield, and there's more incentive to pull your shaken units away from combat so that they can regroup, which is the sort of manoeuvring I want to encourage. 

But really the most interesting thing about that new rule is how it interacts with the traits and prebuilt units. It's almost like...

When there's less, each part matters more.

This can be both a good and bad thing. It's great when you have two simple mechanics that interact with each other in an interesting way, but finding those moments can be tough. It's a bit of a cliché to say that designing a simple thing is more difficult than designing a complex thing, and I don't necessarily think it's true, but it definitely carries a different sort of challenge. You've got to look out for those moments where things click together and jump on them before they escape.

Indulgent Epilogue

Last year I wrote about my early experiences with tabletop gaming, specifically how I spend the months before I actually owned any Warhammer rules or miniatures pouring over issues of White Dwarf, especially the battle reports with their armies arrayed and top-down maps of the battle as it played out.

I think Project 10 is all about trying to capture how those battles felt as I read them at ten years old. 

Bastionland Editorial #11 - Essence

This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site two weeks after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.

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Two of the Methods of the Bastionland Manifesto are Distillation and Filtration.

Clearly these are in reference to spirit production, and the examples given in that post suggest a focus on mechanics, but I've found myself using the same methods for setting design.

Bastionland saw the sister states of Rosevine and Starfall crushed to dust, leaving Bastion as THE City.

And of course we have THE Underground. An infinity-below made up of the very Essence of Underground-ness.

Of course the Planescape inspiration is there, and as I work away on Intergalactic Bastionland I find myself tapping into this idea of essences even more. I've always said that the Living Stars aren't really Space as we know it. Of course there are stars, and ships that fly between them, but it's really a place of ideas. A galaxy of Essences. The Infinity-Above.

Places that start with The. Places vast, but distilled. A single word spun out into infinity.

We've seen it in the Signs, so that philosophy could easily carry over to the fundamental cosmology of the Living Stars.

Can there be a river in the Living Stars? Not a river, but The River and everything that concept represents. A one-way route, from a humble source to a sprawling delta. Water babbling over rocks, sometimes tiny, sometimes the size of mountains. A temperamental force of nature that bursts its banks to flood those that cling to it for life. 

Wanderhome touches on this, where an Island might be a literal island, or any "place kept secret and separate", and I'm eager to explore further.

Not even places, really, but forces that weave between the stars. Each a single tone on the cosmic palette that can be mixed, splashed, or spread. Illuminated by the light or twisted in the darkness.

Through The Forest. Weathering The Storm. Into The Void.

Bye for now,

Chris

Specific vs Generic: Ornaments & Bricks

The settings that really grab my attention have a way of drawing you in with little details. Servo skulls in Warhammer 40k. Carrion Priests in Spire. The noise of a TIE Fighter in Star Wars. Here it pays to be very specific, and if you get it right then the reader/viewer/player should feel their imagination racing to life around this one small piece of your world.

To counter that, a setting that's overloaded with specific elements can feel restrictive, intimidating, or tonally inconsistent within itself. Sometimes a world that's thoroughly planned out is less interesting than one with gaps. There are times when it pays to stay generic. We hardly need to know more about the' Empire and the Rebellion than their name to start to understand them. 

It's a bit like what I wrote about here, but more focused on the overall structure of a setting than the artwork. Let me apply an over-important theory to this.

Specific elements are your Ornaments. These are the things that give your world life and identity. In Electric Bastionland this could be any of the Failed Careers or Oddities. You aren't a Fighter or a Rogue, you're specifically an Avant Guardsman or a Counterfeit Taxidermist. 

Generic elements are your Bricks. These are basic pieces that aren't interesting on their own, but imagination unlocks their potential. In Electric Bastionland most weapons are Bricks. They have a damage die, maybe they're Bulky or do Blast damage, but that's about it. There's no list of fifty weapon types with subtly different mechanics here. The differences between a Sword (d6) and an Axe (d6) exist largely within your imagination. 

Really I was thinking of Lego with this analogy. Think of the Specific Ornament elements as those fancy pieces like a crocodile or set of wheels. They're designed to catch your eye and do a mostly specific thing. These are the pieces that might give you the idea to build a crocodile-car, but it's only the generic bricks that allow the idea to become a reality.

With Electric Bastionland most of the Ornaments are weird characters or objects, but they're held up by a bare-bones system and a vague approach to setting specifics. Bastion is a specific city, but beyond a few core principles it's actually more of an expansion on the generic idea of a city.

When the system and world are both so simple it's easy for me to give the Avant Guardsman a trained attack bear when all of the required mechanics fit neatly on a single line and I don't have to worry about the canonical impact. If I got fancy and designed a new specific sub-system for bear-training, and slipped in a paragraph about the impact of bear-training guardsmen on the city of Bastion as a whole... well you can see how things would get out of control after a while.

GRIMLITE is slightly different. As with so many other miniature games, it's very much designed to be an excuse to kitbash miniatures together and face them off against each other. Here it pays to be vague, but if I use nothing but generic lego bricks then why should anybody care? What's the point in me making this game for anybody but myself?

This is where the balance comes in. There are specific elements in there, but they're also functioning as bricks. Maybe this analogy is falling apart, but where a wargame tied to an official line of miniatures might want a very specific visual identity for their units, I want to keep things vague enough that you and I might both have very different miniatures representing the same unit, but both are equally valid.

This wouldn't be the case if I was overly specific, like this:

Argastes, Rust Priest (3+)

A lithe, brown-robed priest overrun by the nano-corrosion that he serves. His melted-face is hidden behind a skeletal mask and his legs replaced by a mass of iron tendrils.

Oxidiation Pistol (T1x5, one-handed: A sleek, glowing pistol with optic sights)

Shock Pick (T1x3, two handed, connected to Power Pack. Bears the symbol of his order, a half-corroded skull)

Ever-Server - Bipedal Rust-Acolyte and Scroll-Bearer: Once per battle ignore one wound as Ever-Server conjurs an immaterial shield from his texts.

Tactic: Invoke the Nano-Prism - All your units attempt a Free Recovery.

And equally, things quickly become entirely uninspiring when you get too generic, like this: 

Priest (3+)

Gun (T1x5)

Melee Weapon (T1x3)

Accessory: Once per battle ignore one wound.

Tactic: All your units attempt a Free Recovery.

So the actual entry looks like this, which I'm hoping gives enough inspiration to spark your imagination but doesn't tie you down to needing the exact miniature that I had in mind:

Argastes, Rust Priest (3+)

Oxidiser (T1x5)

Shock Pick (T1x3)

Assistant: Once per battle ignore one wound.

Tactic: Arise - All your units attempt a Free Recovery.

The Oxidiser is perhaps the best example here. The name conjures ideas around what the weapon could be, but it really doesn't limit how that weapon might look. I have it as a weird pistol, but you might model yours as a slender beam weapon or a chunky, experimental energy cannon.

It's a tough tightrope to walk, and I think every game should carefully consider how it balances its Specific and Generic elements.

Small Decisions, Big Impact

Working on a miniatures game has been an interesting contrast to RPG design. It's a narrative-focused wargame, but the fact is miniature games rely a lot more on their rules than RPGs do.

With RPGs so much of the joy can come from situations outside of the rules. Even with a narrative wargame I don't feel like I can let go of the mechanical wheel quite so easily. As a result the mechanics in GRIMLITE feel like they're carrying a lot more weight than the mechanics in Electric Bastionland. You can tear through a good RPG session on pure GM and group cohesion alone, barely touching the game itself, but that just isn't possible on the miniatures table.

But I've quite enjoyed that. It lets me really focus in on every single rule in GRIMLITE, thinking about the impact it has on the game. Even more so, it lets me look at typical wargame rules that GRIMLITE doesn't include, and what effect their omission has on things.

I thought it might be interesting to look at some specific examples here. It's too early to judge GRIMLITE as a whole, but I've done enough test games now to get a grip on the impact of some of the individual parts.

Advancement through Trophies and (sometimes) Dying

In GRIMLITE there are two ways to improve your warband: getting trophies from killing Horrors or getting a lucky roll (1-in-3 chance) on your Casualty roll falling in battle. I considered having units gain experience through killing enemies, but much as with D&D I found that had undesirable consequences. Battles would be more about wiping out the enemy than actually chasing your objectives, and the first side to get a numerical advantage would be encouraged to grind away at the remaining enemies rather than focusing on the trophies.

This approach is very much the equivalent of "Gold for XP" that's so popular in OSR games, and I think it translates nicely over to this format too. You'll still want to kill your enemies, but you'll be doing it for strategic reasons instead of chasing abstract points.

Withdrawal or Slaughter

There are two possible triggers for the battle to end. Slaughter is easy, one side is wiped out. Withdrawal can be triggered by either side at the end of a Round if at least half of their remaining units are touching a table edge, with these units immediately leaving the board safely. 

After either trigger occurs, players perform one final Round, trying to sweep up the remaining Trophies.

Endgame always felt weird to me in wargames. I remember playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles and wondering what happens at the end of that last round. My heavy infantry that got so close to charging the enemy now just turn around and go home? Everybody agrees to stop shooting each other?

It's an abstraction of course, and a necessary one. It might be more realistic for battles to end on a whimper but it's more satisfying for a game to have a clear finish. I think the Final Round element here at least gives a bit of narrative sense to the whole thing, and on Husk 28 it's easy to imagine a dust storm sweeping in or more Horrors on the horizon to provide that time pressure. 

My goal here was to make Slaughter generally less common than Withdrawal. This is a wargame, and the two warbands should fight each other, but again I wanted to keep the focus on the objective, not a fight to the death. The opponents are rivals more than arch enemies, at least until grudges inevitably form.

So here if one warband takes losses it's relatively easy for the remaining members to form a retreat, but giving the other warband a full Round of uninterrupted action means Withdrawal isn't seen as an absolute solution for any battle that's going against you. 

No Stacking

Each type of roll you make has exactly one modifier that can ever be applied to it, and it's always plus or minus 1.

Shooting into Cover is -1.

Fighting a Downed target is +1

Recovery is +1 when an Ally is touching you.

Moving is +1 when you can see your Leader.

Resist is the exception here, currently having no modifier applied to it. I'm leaving that design space open but also I'm not going to put a rule here just for symmetry's sake. It's also arguably the most useful type of roll, so any modifier would have to be very carefully considered.

This was an outright goal early on (No Stacking, No Tracking) but as well as the desired effect of keeping things simple I think it also shines a spotlight on that particular modifier. Without dozens of little +1s to remember you know that when somebody is Downed you should get a melee fighter in there. You know that your Leader is best kept in sight of your units, and your Initiates are more survivable if kept in pairs to help each other back onto their feet. 

By honing in on a single modifier for each type of activity it makes those modifiers feel all the more important to exploit. 

No Weapon Ranges

As you'd expect, when you remove the range element from shooting it becomes all about line-of-sight. Precise range management gives way to getting into a position where you can duck in and out of cover while having a clear view of the battlefield. Makes everybody feel a bit more daring and active. Less incentive to sit still in that ideal firing spot. 

This certainly relies on a small board and dense terrain, but that's clear from the start of the document. I think with anything above 3x3ft you're going to run into weird niche situations where a unit gets just-about line of sight on an enemy 48 inches away and gets to fire their pistol across a football field.

Weapon Transparency

Barring the weapon mods, weapons are generally split into two types: one high-damage shot or several one-damage shots. In terms of raw damage potential the former are always more efficient, but you're putting all of your eggs in one basket. And maybe you just don't need that much damage.

If you're shooting an Initiate, they're resisting damage on 5+, so 3 damage will on-average kill them. This happens to be the damage score of a basic high-damage weapon. But even hitting this Initiate with a one-damage shot will likely Down them, and their chances of recovery are low, especially if they're on their own. Do you really NEED that full three damage or are you better using a 2x1 weapon that can reliably down these low-quality troops?

Meanwhile, against a Leader or other powerful target that's resisting on 3+ your 1 damage probably isn't going to do anything. Even if you hit with both your 2x1 shots you've only got just over a 50% chance of downing the target, and an 11% chance to kill them. 

Hit with that 1x3 Rifle instead and you've got a 70% chance of Downing them and around 33% chance to kill. A lot better, and even if you just Down the target you've got an opportunity to get a Melee fighter in to finish the job. 

So you might be looking at all those percentages and think "this isn't very transparent", but the key is that there are really only two types of weapon. Those that are good for killing grunts, and those that are good for killing high-powered targets. Not that each of these can't also perform the other task, but the specialisation is clear. You don't have to look a target and consider 3 or 4 ways in which they might be mechanically "tough". 

Are they hard to hit? High Toughness? High Armour? High Wounds? Have an invulnerable save? Some other bullshit? No, forget all that. You know that your rifle is good for toughies and your shotgun is good for grunts. Now get your attention back on the battlefield and out of the stat-blocks. 

Shoot Once, Fight Twice, Move Thrice

I wanted the game to feel mobile, so having three potentially long-distance movement actions in a turn was scary at first, but combined with the need to roll for Moves after your first I think it gives the game the desired mobility. It especially makes the Nimble skill feel impactful, a fact you'll appreciate after your first few attempts to get your QL5+ units to move where they need to be.

With Ranged having an innate advantage over Melee combat I wanted to give Melee some sort of advantage to even the scales. An easy fix is just making Melee weapons cheaper than their Ranged equivalents, but this isn't a game of finely balanced point costs. Shooting was already limited to once-per-turn, so allowing two Fight actions felt right. If you could charge in with your first action then getting to wail on your opponent twice felt nice and deadly, especially if you Down them with your first attack and get that juicy +1 on your second attack. My Exile Hounds (Nimble 5+ T2x1) were especially useful in my last game, darting around the battlefield somewhat reliably and proving especially useful for finishing off downed enemies, especially considering their cheap cost. 

There's plenty more work to do on GRIMLITE but I'm pretty happy with the core right now. Expect to hear more as I try and polish this up into something a bit more complete.

Three Step Dungeons

I recently ran a group through the start of the Tomb of the Serpent King, and thoroughly enjoyed it. My dungeons often end up as ultra-non-linear piles of weird toys with a notable lack of anything that's an outright hazard or reward, and definite lack of a climax.

Sometimes it's nice to pull yourself a little closer to sanity, so I'm going to write a small dungeon that teaches players about its more unusual concepts as they are introduced, with a focus on leading towards a challenge for a reward, and multiple opportunities for an end-of-session climax.

In doing that I created a sort of procedure, because of course I did.

The Three Step Process:

1. Introduce First Concept
2. Introduce Second Concept
3. Challenge involving both concepts and an additional twist, typically with a reward. 

Concepts

First think of a bunch of interesting concepts you want to include in your dungeon. They can be monsters, items, hazards, or anything between.

You don’t really need to include things that are dead simple like “skeleton warriors” or “pit traps” but if you plan on putting a twist on them then add them in too. You can also skip out anything that has no real element of danger, say a crystal ball that lets you see other areas of the dungeon.

For this example let’s steal some fun stuff from other dungeons. Forget making a coherent theme for this, we’re just looking at how we would introduce these concepts.

• The Green Devil Face
• Wraiths
• Portal Gun
• Crossbow Snipers
• Smoke Elementals
• Reserve-Gravity
• Quicksand

And we’ll be introducing them two at a time. This could be a small dungeon that only introduces two new concepts, or a sprawling dungeon comprised of smaller sections that each focus on two concepts.

The Introductions

Ideally this is an opportunity for the players to get information about the concept in a mostly safe way before it really challenges them. It needn't even be a direct encounter, the common example being a statuary that introduces the presence of a Medusa.

For the Reverse Gravity example you’d have a Reverse-Gravity room with one majorly obvious hazard so that they can get used to how it works, and the Sniper would be introduced as a lone sniper in an area with plenty of cover, and make them immediately visible (even if not immediately accessible). The Intro and the Challenge could even feature the same individual monster encountered in two separate environments, if the Intro leans towards a non-hostile introduction.

I lean pretty heavily into giving lots of information, so you may find that less works for your group.

The Challenge
Sometimes just combining the two concepts is enough, but usually it’s better to add something else in. Some ideas could be:

• A beefed up version of the regular concept. 
• Adding an “opposite” element to the monster, such as a hyper-intelligent variant of a previously dumb monster, or a pacifist version of a hostile monster. 
• Adding a load of basic monsters.
• An environment that makes things more difficult for the players. 
• A restriction on how the players can act.
• Removing a safety net that was previously in place.
• Remember to put a reward in there, Treasure being the most obvious but even just passage to a new area would work. 

Adding Extra Stuff

If you go straight from concept one to concept two to a combination of both it can end up feeling quite game-y, like you're playing a Megaman level that's built around new enemies rather than a real place you're exploring. This isn’t a bad thing if that’s what you want, but if you want things to feel more organic then consider that a Three Step Dungeon need not be a Three Room Dungeon:

• You can have simpler areas in between that don’t require introductions or just give some clues for the larger dungeon. 
• You can include basic elements that don’t require explanation or previously introduced concepts. 
• You can have nonlinear layout but keep the Introductions on the “main path” as best you can. 

Example- Wraiths in the Quickbog

We’ll assume this is a branch off a larger dungeon, linear except room 4 which branches off from room 3 as a dead end.

1. Wraith (Intro 1) patrolling a hedge maze. 
2. Precarious ladder. 
3. Ghouls (let’s say these are civilised Ghouls, so more NPC than monster) hanging around Quickbog Patch (Intro 2). It's quicksand but gross and boggy. 
4. Ghoul shrine (mostly just some fluff and to give the Ghouls a bit more territory to roam)
5. Flooded cavern
6. Treasure being guarded by three Wraiths, surrounded by Quickbog (Challenge)

This is all very vanilla so go back through and add another layer of detail on top. A nice trick is to add an unexpected or opposite element, rather than just adding another layer of the same coloured paint.

1. Wraith patrolling a hedge maze is a pathetic lonely outcast looking for friends, but can’t help inflicting its chill touch. 
2. Precarious ladder leads down a shaft, Ghoul Graffiti covers the walls and it’s mostly terrible poetry. 
3. Ghouls hanging around Quickbog patch. They’re having a banquet, half sunk in the bog themselves, and arguing over which of them is going to give themselves up as the main course. 
4. Ghoul shrine. The altar has a valuable crystal skull and the Ghouls say anybody that takes it is cursed. 
5. Flooded cavern. A ghoul is chained to the bottom, doomed to drown forever. If rescued they reveal themselves to be a life-worshipping Ghoul-Heretic. 
6. Treasure being guarded by three Wraiths, surrounded by Quickbog. The treasure is a helmet being worn by one of the Wraiths, the other two are jealous. 

Now what's happened is the Ghouls have almost ended up being too interesting to count as a basic element, but I figure they're fine if they're mostly interested in their own affairs, not hostile to the characters. 

Knock out a handful of these Three-Step Dungeons, have them branch off a hub area or lead into each other, and you've got yourself a decently sized dungeon ready for your next game.

It might look like this:

I messed up some of the labels in that diagram, but you get the point.

Each boxed-off section represents a Three Step Dungeon, with our example being D2. The hubs and "fluff" sections in between can still be fun, but they should either be safer areas or deal with simpler concepts that don't need introduction.

Oh and I should write up those monsters at least:

Wraith
10hp (immune to physical damage). Chilling Touch (d10, ignores Armour)

• Repelled by light or fire. 
• Mostly want their tombs to be left alone. 
• When a victim takes Critical Damage they will continue to drain them until they reach STR 0 and become a Wraith.

Civilised Ghoul

3hp, Claws (d6. Critical Damage: Bite to paralyse and drag away), Surprisingly Fancy Clothes. 

• Revel in the macabre.
• Fetishise death but have no appetite for killing. 
• Try to maintain their humanity in spite of their horrible lives. 

D&D Magic Supercharger

Earlier I wrote about applying Into the Odd's Decisive Combat to D&D 5e, so it's only fair that magic gets the same treatment.

Art by Luka Rejec

Into the Odd has Arcana/Oddities in place of Spells, but they fill the same niche. Weird powers that break the rules. They have a few major differences, though.

• They're tied to items.
• No level/class restrictions for use.
• They're often unlimited in use.
• Usually their effects "just happen" rather than calling for a Save. 

5e's Spells are pretty tame by comparison, but rather than a total rewrite you could focus on the final bullet point and make everything feel a bit more impactful.

Spell Supercharger

• Any spell that allows a Save to completely negate its effect now automatically succeeds. 
• If there's a complication (typically something that gives the target Advantage on their Save) the target gets to make their Save as normal. 
• Saves that allow the target to "shake off" the effect afterwards are applied as normal.

Balance

• Accept that this a super dirty solution and is going to mess up the careful balance of spell levels. 
• Cantrips are the real danger here, but I don't think it would be a massive issue at the table. The mild-option here is to keep Cantrips are they are but I can't bring myself to recommend that. 
• If you're worried about the boost in spellcasting power, remember it works for enemy casters too. 

Examples

Charm Person now automatically charms somebody as long as you're not already hostile towards them. The more interesting payoff here is that the target still knows they were Charmed by you, so you've got to brace yourself for the consequences of Charming a powerful individual.

Fear this works, because they still get their Save to shake it off when they get to safety, after which they're presumably coming for you.

Acid Splash d6 damage to two nearby targets isn't all that bad, smart opponents will break formation.

Unaffected Spell Examples

Sleep is based off hp, so no change here. There's still the chance that nothing happens here, but it's relatively low if you plan correctly.

Grease is an interesting one, because its primary effect is to coat the ground in grease, with the DEX Saves for anybody passing through happening as a result of that. I'd leave it untouched, as even if nobody falls over, your Grease spell has still had some impact on the world.

Finger of Death for cases like this where the Save is to avoid half the damage, just leave it as-is. It's a bit weird when you've got other spells causing auto damage, but this whole thing was always going to screw with balance.

Stone Age to Space Age

In stark contrast to my work on a Stone Age game earlier this week I've spent the last few days taking another shot at an idea I've never quite been able to make work. A Rules-Lite Science Fiction RPG.

Until now, that is.

I feel like I've made some real progress with a game I haven't got a name for yet. For now it has the project name Futureworlds, and I hope to post more about it when it's further refined.

So here's an imagedump of sci-fi settings that have been on my mind while writing the game.









The contrast of serious and more comedic strands of sci-fi in there is quite deliberate and something I'll go into more detail on at another point.

Targets for The Adventurer's Tale

Just some thoughts on things I'd like to achieve with The Adventurer's Tale in the next couple of months.

- Complete the currently-unnamed Starter Adventure Module and find GMs to playtest it without me being present.
- Make use of Otherworlds in the first session of a game.
- Test the Mass Combat and Mounted Combat rules in play.
- Update the One-Sheet Quickstart to include a few minor rule changes.

Anyone volunteering as a GM to help me with my first target can get in touch with me, as I'm eager to see how the game plays without having me as a GM or player.

One Page? I can do that (sort of)

A couple of days ago I was linked to Searchers of the Unknown, which is a one-page trimming-down of classic D&D. Despite being dubious about its limitations and holding on to descending AC at first I soon found both of these were good things.

Firstly the limitations meant you had very little to consider, as a player, mechanically. We encountered a pit very early on and rather than rolling athletics to leap over it we went back and unscrewed a door, using it as a makeshift bridge. This is extremely basic D&D stuff, but it felt so much more encouraged with such a minimal ruleset.

Secondly, descending Armour Class actually made sense for the first time. It was a roll-under target for attacks and was used for things like sneaking in a way that made the smaller=better idea actually fit.

Not to be outdone, I remembered that I had my own very-light system, The Adventurer's Tale. Although this game is very simple in itself the document is still pretty large with the optional rules, monsters and spells. Could I trim the core of it down to one sheet? I could. All the rules for creating an adventurer and playing the game are on the front of the sheet, with the back filled with spells and monsters for characters to encounter.

So here's the Adventurer's Tale One-Sheet Quickstart. Grab a few friends and run a pickup game today!

GAME OVER!

I'll level with you. This game idea is almost entirely inspired by the Street Fighter movie with Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia that everyone hated. I can say without a hint of irony that I thoroughly enjoy this film. Yes, the characters mostly bear no resemblence to their videogame counterparts. Yes, they're mostly awful characters even if you forgive the first point. But something about the film just keeps me entertained from start to finish.

With that in mind I wanted to play around with creating a game where you could take that concept of martial artists fighting off mobs of masked soldiers before going toe to toe with the boss but draw it a little closer to the videogames that inspired it. Yes, in this game I'd like my hero to be able to throw a fireball or two.

All very preliminary. The idea is little more than 30 minutes old but FreeMind has drained the words from my brain and I present them infront of you in a foetal stage.




Stay tuned for what will inevitably turn into another game document. I should clarify I'm aware of a few RPGs out there that tackle this subject matter, but none of them have really grabbed me. Besides, more game design practice is never something I shy away from.

Fantasy Boyscouts and Resurrecting Old Projects

Been a while since my last post, so time for a quick update on what I've been working on. 

• Working on Lookouts adaptation of The Adventurer's Tale after being truly inspired by one of Penny Arcade's latest projects.
• Being wowed by another awesome map from the Tao of D&D
• Scouring my contacts for someone with good pdf layout skills and a little free time they're willing to offer up to help me finally turn A Wanderer's Romance into a nice pdf
• Realising more and more that Greywulf speaks a lot of sense
• Considering bringing Inheritance back onto a front burner to see if I can improve it significantly and eventually have a completed document for mechanics and fluff

It's the last of these things I want to talk about today.

Back when I spoke about Inheritance in January there were two main areas I felt needed improvement. Firstly the setting needed to be made more accessible and presented alongside the rules in the document rather than seperate in a wiki. I have an idea for how to do this, but it can wait for now while I deal with a more mechanical issue. This second problem was that combat options mostly consisted of "attack" or specialist options like disarm, grapple, charge and so on. I wanted to present more options for character that just wanted to hack away. In addition to this issue there was often a rather high "whiff factor", which I've come to hate in games. Here's how I plan to tackle both of these, without going too far into specific Inheritance mechanics.

Attack Focuses

At the start of a character's turn they may choose an Attack Focus if they wish. This will provide both a bonus and a penalty in combat.

Speed: The character gains a +1PL bonus to their Initiative roll but suffers -1PL to hit on all attacks.

Damage: The character gains a +1PL bonus to Damage rolls but a -1PL penalty to their Initiative roll.

Accuracy: The characters gains a +1PL bonus to hit on all attacks but suffers -1PL to Damage rolls

The desired effect of this is that if a character is whiffing a lot in combat, be it through missing or being unable to hurt a target, they can shift their focus as required. On the other hand, it needn't slow down play as the DM is advised to not use them for NPCs and Monsters and even the players can ignore them if they wish. 

Bring on a playtest!

Invisible Eyes made Visible

Well, I've teased at this for two posts now, so it's finally time to unveil my new game in its first stage. Far from complete and pretty much untested, here's Invisible Eyes.

My target was to hit a couple of design goals I've been mulling over for a while. 

• Make Exploration and Travel key elements of the game.
• Have very little focus on combat and replace rewards for killing with consequences.
• Use a real-world modern setting that can be "spiced" to the GM's liking through conspiracy theories and supernatural happenings.
• Encourage teamwork in as many areas of gameplay as possible, while not making a small group unplayable. 

As it stands it seems like I'm hitting all four. Exploration is the name of the game, as is pushed through the sample character, sample groups and gameplay examples. Investigation goes hand in hand with exploration and the Knowledge and Insight mechanic makes this a focus of the game too, somewhat supported by the Connections all characters have (explained later). Travel is enforced through the parkour-inspired movement mechanics and the fact you're going to doing a lot of sneaking-in and  running-away.

There's very little reward for combat. The hostiles you're likely to encounter will be security staff or policemen, if you follow the suggestions in the document. Leaving dead innocents wherever you go is going to make you public enemy number one, not desirable for supposed "invisibles". What's more, combat can be nasty, especially against someone you're outclassed by. It's not a matter of getting killed in one hit, but if a trained security guard catches up with you and he's probably going to pull you to the ground and put on the cuffs. In many ways a breaking and entering charge is scarier than death for a PC. Finally, there's a Shock mechanic that means you don't want to be constantly being shot at unless you have a steady mind and a good psychiatrist.

Teamwork is encouraged most simply through the Helping mechanic, which can literally be a lifesaver. However, a couple of secondary methods enforce it further such as every character having connections. These connections mean that even in a solo game the character will have some friends to call in favours from. In addition, starting characters have a relatively small pool of points to put into Stats and Expertise. This encourages specialisation and means a group are likely to have  a variety of personnel that depend on each other in certain area.

As always, the game is free, but remember this document is little over two days old. Changes will be frequent and there are sure to be lots of mistakes riddled through. It's good enough to get across what I want out of the game, though, so check it out.

Another New Project

Another new game has taken over my brain. I'll be posting about it in more detail after I've worked on it a little more, but for now I'll summarise it with four pictures.

It's this sort of place...

Being explored by people that can do this...

With the teamwork of...

And the occasional thing that might interest...

It could be fun! More about it soon.

Brief Thoughts on Monster Design

Now with more stealth-links. 

As I've been tweaking monsters for The Adventurer's Tale I've decided to post the key points I've been keeping in mind for each monster, each of which consists of one paragraph of text followed by the data.

• Why would the adventurers be fighting this?
• How does this monster behave when the adventurers encounter it?
• What are its relationships with some other monsters?
• How can the GM easily adjust this monster to make it more or less powerful, or simply different?
• Does this monster really need its own entry?

And I'm going to briefly expand on the last point. I mentioned in a previous post about races that I didn't like Gnomes and Hobbits barging in on what I felt should be Dwarfish traits. The same can be said for monsters. Especially when combined with the fourth point about making my monsters tweakable from the ground up, this allows me to have a great selection of classic monsters in a more compact list. Examples below:

• Sprites: One monster entry for pixies, brownies, (real) gnomes and even gremlins. Simply make pixies more agile and give them wings, give gnomes a higher Craft stat and give Gremlins the goblin dodge ability that makes them extra slippery and mischievous. 
• Beastmen: This entry covers your warhammer style goatmen, hyena-like gnolls and even stretches to ratmen and lizardman. The last two being more sneaky (higher Grace and maybe some Rogue perks) and tougher (scales counting as light or heavy armour) respectively. 
• Chimera: You've got your lion/goat/dragon chimera here as well as Griffons, Hippogriffs and Manticores. Minor differences between them are noted but really one entry covers large, ferocious, winged beasts like these. Tone down its Melee stat and Damage and you could pull off a Pegasus if you need one.
• Giants: Here you have a base for your standard hill giant that can easily be altered into an ettin or cyclops. In addition, Ogres are really little more than small cave giants, so they're part of this monster too. Simply knock some Body off your Giant to trim him down to Ogre size. 
• Ooze Blob: This covers all sorts of ooze. Really, coming up with your own twist on them is so easy!

It's all in aid of stressing that there is no definitive statblock for an Orc. Some of them will be tougher than others, some better at fighting, some might even be smart. If you're the GM use the monster stats given as a guideline and tweak them however you like! That's exactly what this system is designed for. There's a reason there are no levels or challenge ratings provided! (a topic for another day)

Yet somehow I still have three different types of dragon... hypocrisy at its finest.

The Game I Thought I'd Never Write

Well, it was bound to happen. After working on games with relatively original concepts for so long I've finally given in and designed something where your fighter or wizard kills orcs for treasure, under the temporary name Underworld and Overworld. It took a while for me to decide what exactly I wanted out of this project, but I finally found the answer below.

What is this game?

There is nothing new or shocking in this game. It is intended to be a very simple base system for a GM and group of players wanting a game with deadly monsters, huge armies and characters that gain fame and become Kings. It is perfect for a group wanting to quickly have a fantasy adventure as there are very few rules to learn and the document is free.

From this foundation a GM can create their own monsters to break from the classic examples given, using them to populate a world straight out of his imagination. It could be as simple as a one-off dungeon crawl or it could be a full world with empires and warring gods. With this in mind the rules are intended to be as straightforward and open to modification as possible to aid creation of new content and keep the amount of calculating, memorising and paperwork at the game table down to a minimum.

The game is mostly inspired by my happy, younger memories of Fighting Fantasy books, playing Ultima Underworld and enjoying board games like Heroquest and Dungeon. 

You can see the game as it stands here.

Enjoy!

Lessons Learned from Out of the Pit

In case you're not familiar, Out of the Pit is the Monster Manual equivalent for Fighting Fantasy. The series was mostly known as choose-your-own-adventure-style gamebooks such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Deathtrap Dungeon, but there was a short series of books branching out into a basic RPG system. I'm yet to get my hands on the other books in that series, but my lust for them is a separate topic.

Out of the Pit was probably the first thing resembling an RPG book I owned. I borrowed it from a friend shortly after getting into Warhammer Fantasy Battles and long before I delved into D&D. Back then, like so many of us at that age, I was mostly interested in reading about monsters and looking at pictures of them. Back then I didn't really give much thought to things like mechanics, random encounter tables or designing locations.

Years of RPG delving later what can this still greatly enjoyable book teach me about gaming?

Limitation Breeds Creativity - Part 1

I love this little mantra and can't recommend it enough. In this case I'm talking about how monsters are largely represented by just two stats, their Skill and Stamina, the majority falling between 5-9 in these scores. Monsters to 2 Damage as standard and those that do 1 or 3 instead will have it noted in their text. There's no talk of movement speeds, specific skills or perception abilities here (although Intelligence does get a mention). Mechanically it doesn't even seem to matter if the orc is carrying an axe, sword or spear. My initial childhood response to all this was bafflement, as surely there must be monsters that are pretty much mechanically identical. So what's the point of making them different?

But they were different. Every monster had at least two paragraphs talking about their behaviour, how they'd fight and often detailing a special rule. This is where a good GM will make the monsters shine. Slykks and Wild Hill men, for example, were almost identical in mechanics, only differing in Intelligence and the Wild Men having a missile attack. The real difference was that the Slykks were described as being unable to unite themselves because of their different colourings (gee, subtle commentary) and always fighting civil wars, as well as being ravaged by local predators such as giant leeches.

Wild Hill Men also had to deal with predators but instead of fighting each other they banded together for protection. Characters could easily find ways to get troublesome Slykks to work against each other or even earn the trust of one colour by presenting heads from another. Their proud leaders are also described as wearing luxuries stolen from humans. Seems like this is an enemy you could really cut a deal with and then get rid of later. Wild Hill Men don't seem like they'd be too easy to sway in this way and are described as being much less open to outsiders.

Look at the mechanically and thematically similar Neanderthal and the text says that they are easily amazed by real magic, something that wouldn't do much to impress Slykks or Wild Hill Men. When we have all these useful nugget do we really need to know the Slykk's Charisma score or their specific skills?

Limitation Breeds Creativity - Part 2

Now for a different point of view. I may have sounded as if I love monsters being mechanically identical, but I don't. I prefer it, in many ways, to D&D 3e style half-page stat blocks and lists of spell-like abilities. What I genuinely like is the concept behind 4e monsters. I'm talking about striving to make fighting Orcs feel very different to fighting Gnolls or Hobgoblins rather than making one of them hit more often, one of them hit harder and one of them take more hits to kill. This is something I can really get behind and is something I feel works really well with my previous point.

Indeed, in my latest design project I've strived to have monsters be limited to the very few stats and skills that they need and then have every one of them possess a special ability that gives them a unique feel. To me this is where the sweet-spot lies in a combat heavy game where you're going to fight lots of different types of opponent. Give me a few important numbers, a special ability and flavour text that tells me where this monster is found, why I'd want to fight it, who the monster will work with and how they behave.

And this very nicely foreshadows an upcoming post about my Fighting Fantasy inspired game. The game I never thought I'd write. Stay tuned.

Lessons Learned from Teaching

Alright, quieten down and get in your usual seats. You two stop fighting, you three put your gum in the bin. Put that crossbow away.

After doing over a year of teacher training you start to notice similarities between learning theory and everything else in the world. Mostly this is down to having so much of it crammed into your brain but with game design and GMing there are genuine links!

Flow

I've seen the graph below crop up in both game design and learning theory but it makes a great, simple point. Between anxiety and boredom lies the optimal zone for a satisfying challenge. 

Simply put, if your players are bored either increase the challenges you're throwing at them or hinder their own abilities somehow (this one is trickier to pull off well...). If they seem overly stressed either give them an extra boost of power or lower the challenge slightly. Try to keep them in the zone of flow and remember individual failures are perfectly acceptable if they result in a more satisfying overall session.

Starter, Development, Plenary

These are the three ideal components to a lesson's structure and they can be easily ported across to a successful game session.

The starter is a short, usually fun task that has the main aim of engaging every single member of the class. Often they involve getting them to do something physical or loud, it wakes up their brains and reminds them all that they're in a class now and are here to do things. 

The development is the meat of the lesson and focuses on progressing the group's understanding of whatever the topic may be. 

The plenary is a recap of everything that's been covered in the lesson, cementing it in their minds.

Try using this structure for your next game. Hit them hard with something interesting as soon as they sit down. Combat is a great example for many games but most importantly this scene should engage every single character and give them all something to do.

After this you can progress the plot in the meat of the session, after that big start the players should be in the right mood to get some productive gaming going.

Finally, before you finish you should have the Plenary, where you wrap up everything covered in the development and close off the session, right? Not necessarily. I don't like to wrap everything up at the end of a session and I do love a good cliffhanger. However, the end of the session is a good time to summarise everything that's happened so far. This could happen out of game by quickly taking input from the players as you write bullet points for a session summary.

Cater to Different Types of Learner

A theory tells us that most people sway towards being either Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic learners that learn best by seeing/reading, hearing or moving/touching respectively (guess which one kids come out as more?). In any lesson plan you should cater to every one of these learning styles as much as possible. Activities can easily cater to two or three of these at once.

Uh oh, am I going to delve into the somewhat questionable GNS theory or threefold model or all that stuff? Thankfully just a very shallow dip. I do think that a good GM will use the ideas present in these theories to cater to players that might favour either plot-heavy sessions or a more "gamey" experience with more tactical choices and rolling of dice. The third group often identified are players that enjoy the simulation aspects of a system. This group can be satisfied either through the realism of the system itself or how the GM presents it. Even with a highly abstract system I believe a good GM can make the players believe they're interacting with a real-feeling world through consistency and quick thinking. 

Oh, and I really don't buy into the idea that a game has to focus on being either Gamist, Narrativist or Simulationist. But that's a topic for another day.

Get your class to do as much of your job for you as possible

Ask any teacher, this is a great piece of advice. Rather than having misbehaving pupils wash my car at break-time I'm talking more about the idea that if a lesson is going well the teacher will often look like they're not doing much at all while the pupils will be a buzz of activity. Ideally they'll be asking appropriate questions, answering the questions of other pupils, supporting each other in difficult tasks and challenging themselves with new ideas. If the teacher is talking a lot and asking a thousand questions that are getting one-word answers then it could be going better. 

This topic has arisen elsewhere so I'm going to knock out my points quickly.

• Encourage your players to ask questions and make suggestions of their own rather than waiting for you to prompt them. Do this with rewards and praise. 
• During character creation have each player create one or two NPCs concepts for characters that are linked to their character in some way. As well as this have each suggest a key location or two that are important to their character.
• Consider giving the players full control of one or more NPCs. This also helps avoid the dreaded GMPC situation. 

Take out your homework planners. For next lesson I want you to consider how your own career or studies have given you surprising tips for GMing or game design. Put them in the comments box and the best suggestion will receive a house point.

Robot World - Preview

For a while now one of my back-burner projects has been a game and setting called Robot World. It was all inspired by the thought that a robot wearing a cowboy hat and riding a horse is a great image. Think less this...

And more this...

I'm clearly not the only one with a love for clearly mechanical robots in human clothes, so this is a sound basis for any game. I'm going to talk about designing the game in later posts but you can expect the following influences and features to crop up.

• Dealing with extremely varied characters from humanoids to self-aware tanks
• Avoiding permanent death through backups
• How much setting info do you give when the setting is Earth?
• Unifying experience, wealth and character points to one resource
• Breaking a setting down into smaller settings with tighter focuses (WoD?)
• The importance of memorable races (in this case, factions), each with their own appeal and balanced claim to being superior

On the topic of factions I've managed to fit in a few of my favourite robot schticks as individual factions, so hopefully everyone's favourite type of robot is present and playable.

• The "Brain in a Jar" equivalent, only the jar is a mechanical body
• The previously mentioned human-mimicking clothed robots
• Your purpose-built type that might resemble an intelligent bulldozer or roaming security camera on wheels
• Robots built by robots. When you remove the need for utility and have robots for robots sake suddenly so many of the Futurama robots make sense
• Creepy flesh-growing robots longing to become the next stage of organic life

Specific info and eventually playtest rules to come soon. In the mean time who's going to help me out with some inspirational robots?

• 
  

Swordmountain - Concept Brainstorming

Yes that is a terrible placeholder name for any game. But I find that good placeholder names end up staying as final names in my projects! So this one will be replaced gladly as soon as I figure out what exactly the game is.

My initial idea was a game that shifted the scale of a traditional fantasy RPG upwards. Instead of spending an hour of game time travelling through some woods and playing out an encounter with giant spiders I wanted the characters to be able to spend that hour travelling through the woods, killing some spiders, finding a the bandit camp within, training them up to be an effective army and leading a strike against a nearby oppressive kingdom. I wanted one session to feel more like a whole Lord of the Rings book rather than just going through the Mines of Moria. I envisioned mechanics to encourage narrative and character development in this macro-scale world and a focus on travelling and interacting with whole kingdoms rather than barkeepers. A band of heroes that gained and lost members along the way. Raised and defeated armies and altered the world itself.

Then I heard about some game called HeroQuest...

At first it looked like my idea had already been done, unknown to me, many years ago. But should that put me off? Of course not. A game designed by me is likely to be much lighter on mechanics and I'm getting confident enough with design now that I'm sure I can match it in gameplay, with some hard work. I certainly wouldn't be tying the game to a setting like HQ and Glorantha. Most importantly, games have a habit of going into directions you don't always expect. So who knows, after a few more brainstorming sessions there might be very little in common left with HeroQuest. Just in the past few hours as I thought the game over some more I've considered moving into a no-GM direction that would put more of a focus on players collaboratively creating a story and setting as they go. Could some nice old-fashioned random tables fill the gaps left by a GM? I'll let you know as I carry on with this concept, but for now here's a rather hastily written Core Story to describe how I see a typical session of this game going.

A young warrior leaves his home in search of glory. Upon heading into the nearby forest he meets an aging woodsman, who helps him pass through some dangerous man eating vines. Here they find a young noblewoman fighting some flying tree-goblins and help her defeat them.
The three travel together until they reach the city of Kark. This city is at war with the mummies of the Empire of Dust and has been resisting their attacks for decades, becoming weaker each time. Trade routes have been cut off due to this war. The noblewoman gains an audience with the king and he sends the party out to kill the Dust Lord and end the war. They are given horses and a bodyguard of Karkian Heavy Cavalry.
They head out into the desert but are met by Mummy Chariots and their Obsidian Hounds. They battle and many of their guard are slain, but gradually the young warrior's strength forces the enemy back into the desert.
Upon arriving at the Tomb City the party are attacked by Dust Wraiths, which wound the Woodsman almost fatally. The young warrior presses on and into the Dust Lord's Palace, where he meets the Lord himself, cutting his head from his body and remembering the guidance of the king, burning the remains. Howls echo around the Tomb City and the very walls crumble as the Dust Empire's power collapses. The party hurry to find help for the dying woodsman, and a band of travelling nomads offer to help in return for escort to Kark. They heal the Ranger and upon being taken to Kark they reopen trade with the rest of the world and a celebration is held in honour of the heroes.
That evening the noblewoman is declared as heir to the throne of Kark but until her time of glory comes she agrees to continue travelling with the heroes.

I might have overdone it on the fantasy cheese but it gets across the sort of things I want the players to do. Now to go and see if I can hammer any effective mechanics into place for:

• Travelling and Exploring
• Promoting Character and setting development in-game
  
• Interactions between Characters (Individuals only), Sites (Dungeons, Woods, Cities), Resources (Items, Armies, Monsters) and Factions (Guilds, Kingdoms)

Those four categories of entity were troubling me slightly but I'm happy that any device I can think of fits int one of them. Using the Core Story above we have...

Characters: The Young Warrior, Aging Woodsman and Noblewoman. The King of Kark, the Dust Lord.
Sites: Kark, the Desert, Tomb City, Dangerous Forest.
Resources: Mummy Chariots and Hounds, Dust Wraiths, Karkian Heavy Cavalry, Nomad Trade Caravan.
Factions: The Nomads, Kark, The Empire of Dust.

It's starting to make most sense in my head now. Stay tuned for progress.