The joke was: Kory doesn’t like games.

Yes, Kory introduced me to some of the most important games I’d ever play. Yes, Kory designed many of my favorite games of all time. Yes, Kory introduced me to game design methodologies that made me the game designer I am today.

But we would say that Kory doesn’t like games.

Kory was an auteur game designer in every sense. Games he made needed to follow his personal rules. He wouldn’t settle for just a band-aid solution to an issue. “The potential space for games is infinite,” he’d say, so there was no point in settling for a lesser solution, one that wouldn’t hit his personal definition of elegance. (Elegance a word that Kory would often be associated with, and highly misunderstood when he’d say it.) Instead of just settling for some minor ugliness in a game that Kory was working on, he would try and come up with more solutions. This would mean plenty of tear-downs of game prototypes that plenty of designers would be happy to take to a publisher. Or the design would languish, waiting for the right idea to come along to fix it, instead of just saying that it was “good enough.”

Many know Kory from his design diaries about Zendo. Zendo was essentially a finished game when I became an intern for Looney Labs and became a part of their extended game design circle, so I wasn’t there for its creation. My only part was using Microsoft Publisher to layout a copy of the rules for Zendo for print, helping to turn it into a semi-apocryphal, almost oral tradition game into one with printed rules. I’ve heard from many modern designers that attribute Zendo as a prime influence in many games that they’ve created. You would think that would be as definitive a game as you could make, right?

In June of this year, I playtested even more changes to Zendo, still trying to “fix” those parts that weedled at his sense of perfection. (In this case, he didn’t like people having a pile of guessing stones and then spending a bunch of them.) Not only that, but we were still testing changes for Jewels of the Sultan, an unpublished game that he had been working on for over 20 years. Jewels of the Sultan is a game where we tried out an idea for it in roughly 2008, and he ended up scrapping, and I would take that completely cast off idea and turn it into Thief’s Market, which is getting ready to have its second edition soon. Yes, one of my successful games is built from the discarded parts of a Kory Heath game (with his blessing.) 

Then there was Uptown, later known as Blockers. The very first playtest just featured a grid with tiles for each space. Very quickly that became playing tiles into the row or column to match. There was basically no win condition initially – the group agreed the most natural thing was to try and make a big group, so we just spitballed something off that idea. It didn’t matter: the important part was that the core clicked immediately.

After that playtest, Kory sent out an email that said he was taking the game into the third dimension: each 3×3 block would have a symbol, so you’d have 27 tiles (and later, an added wild tile.) One simple change, and in retrospect so obvious, and suddenly, a core that we had never seen before. It had the elusive concept that he’d always shoot for: the feeling of “why hasn’t someone done this before?”  

It was during those years of getting Uptown published that Kory’s sense of perfection would manifest in other ways. The first publication was done on the cheap, with symbols that looked like clip art and cardboard tiles instead of his preferred chunky, etched tiles that would stay on the board. That endgame would also get tweaked in future versions. The production quality was improved, though never to the level he liked. And ultimately he seemed let down on the reception to the game, one that seemed like it could stand the test of time. I told him that I doubted it was the game design that caused that issue, but issues of marketing, presentation, etc. He didn’t disagree but felt like the game was ultimately flawed, and that unforgivable flaw in his eyes was that it was annoying to have to pick up tiles from the board when capturing. He would then spend at least 10 years obsessing over a captureless version, while also not compromising his other rules of perfection. I know for a fact he turned down other publication offers because a new, problematic-in-his-eyes edition in the world would bug him. The only way he wanted it in the world was perfection, while simultaneously knowing that there was no such thing.

The more years that would pass, the fewer games would come out that would excite Kory at all. The early 2000s seemed to come with plenty of new games that had that essential elegance, that concept plucked from the infinite that was just waiting to be manifested. Kory’s visions of what constitutes a flaw would be disagreed with by basically every game designer that you could consider an authority on the subject. Multiplayer wargame? Fundamentally flawed, according to Kory. Text on cards that you have to read? Too annoying to process from across the table. Special action cards? Often overused to cover up an uninteresting core concept. 

This is where Kory would get the reputation for not liking games. Even games that people were convinced would be right up his alley would fall flat. And the style of playtesting he helped drive in our group would be described as “brutal” when we applied those same perfectionist metrics to games outside of ours. 

This is why I list Kory as my game design mentor. Not because others didn’t help inform and guide my designer skills – John, Kristin, Jacob, Andy, and so many others I could name. Nor is it because I have the same annoyances and strict dictates that he did. But it was his particular way of seeing the entirety of the game design process that was so unique that I learned so many things from him over our 23 year friendship. It wasn’t just what he said, it was the way he thought about every decision. My games are different than Kory’s games, and some of them he definitely did not like, but I feel confident that because of him I know what I’m doing. 

In 2002, he and I went to one of the very first Protospiel conventions in Michigan. Many of the game designers we met there remain my good friends to this day. Kory’s Zendo diaries preceded him, immediately giving him credence in a room of talented designers who had the same or more experience than he did. We both came to learn, but he was teaching before too long, and years later, we can still see his influence.

There’s a lot more I could say about Kory, like how he was the most monk-like person I knew, while still beating me out for “person who most looks like a pirate” that determines who starts the game in Cartagena. His most recent release, The Gang, was a co-design, which started as a simple concept by John Cooper that the two of them ran with. I got to spend time with Kory traveling to Gen Con where The Gang made its official debut, selling out each day. 

While at the con, I spotted a new version of Expeditions, a game he and I played together over 20 years ago that we had fond memories of. I told Kory I’d buy it if he’d promise to play it with me, and he agreed. 

Kory is gone now. He’ll never fulfill that promise. But what did I expect?

Kory didn’t like games. 

Hey, how have you been? Yes, I still haunt this space, especially when my brain desires to share something that tickled its fancy in a way that Twitter isn’t suited to convey.

A short while ago, I was looking for a way to break the encroaching creative inertia preying on my brain. I decided to dig into my PDF library of RPGs and look at “The Magus“. I had bought it last year during a Twitter-driven “Sell me an amazing Indie RPG” thread but I hadn’t gotten to reading it yet. All I remembered was that it looked gorgeous.

The Magus is an award-winning tabletop solo journaling RPG…

Wait Chatty, WTF is a solo journaling RPG?

The tl;dr version of it is a roleplaying game you play out alone by interacting with its rules and whose output is a series of multimedia journal-like entries. You are roleplaying with yourself by reporting the story of your character in an analogue or digital medium.

The Magus was created by designer Momatoes, a Souteast Asian designer and published on itch.io in January 2021. Among its many qualities, it’s the first RPG designed with Power Point using AI generated art. As far as I know, this was considered one of the design challenges behind the game.

Fine, what’s it about?

Playing The Magus makes you chronicle the rise and fall of a powerful, yet isolated wizard, a character who craves power for reasons you explore through a series of semi-scripted events made of randomly generated writing prompts intertwined with difficult questions to answer. 

As you progress through up to 7 events and a few periods of reflections, you meet characters with whom you form bonds. Bonds you can either reinforce or outright betray for more power in later events. You also learn spells with randomly generated, yet profoundly evocative names, to further your goals. Each spell requires you to roll dice against your character’s stats to test if you correctly learn it and conquer the challenge that comes with it.

Failure brings consequence that invariably start a downward spiral that might lead to world spanning calamities. Partial successes leaves you scarred, subjected to complications that might come back later to make your life worse.,  

If your Magus manages to make it to the end of a 7th event, they retire and you envision how they spend their future and what how they handle the burden of their actions.

The game is somber and tackles heavy subjects like solitude, betrayal, and one’s care for others. It can go from “One to Dark” pretty fast. Fortunately, the game document has a section about the validity of skipping parts or how you should keep writing journal entries as long as you enjoy it and stop when you no longer do.

I recently played one session. Being the verbose writer that I am, I clocked in a 3000 words story I’m pretty proud of. I really had a lot of fun writing it.

Turns out I can write arrogant bastard pretty well. 

More importantly, this game gave me the desire to write creatively again, something I have not felt in more than a year. I’m really happy I bought it.   

Game Design Elements

The game is advertised as “crunchy”, a term I’ve grown leery to acknowledge.

In The Magus‘ particular case, this declaration by its designer rests in the use of several polyhedral-based mechanics. After establishing your Magus’ origins by answering a few key questions including the possibility to roll on some tables, you get to engage with events documented in the game’s 55 “slides”, which are mostly made of events you navigate by rolling a d6 and a d4 and “advancing” by the absolute value of their difference. So if you last played Event 3 and then rolled a 2 and a 4, you’d advance to Event 5 and play it out.

Each event is a one “slide” description for one of two types of events: Bond or Spell.

Bond events introduce a new NPC you are invited to describe as someone you create a new relationship with. Using dice prompts, you pick a name for them and determine who they are. Alternatively, whenever you have the opportunity to create a new Bond, you can decide to invest yourself into an already existing one, strengthening it.

Spell events describe a moment in your Magus life when they attempt to acquire mastery over new magic to further their goals. Evocative spells names are generated on tables and you’re prompted to describe what effect the spell has in the world you Magus occupies. But that’s not all, learning the spell comes with a challenge, something that tries to interfere with your casting it. That challenge, which you are asked to described based on specific prompts, requires rolling a series of dice based on your character’s “Power” stat. The further you progress with the game, the harder it becomes to learn and cast a spell without having to pay a cost.

Yes, that’s 100% the kind of thing I like in modern RPG design.

Total or partial successes and failure drive the game onwards. Your Magus might gain Focus from tremendous successes, allowing them rerolls in later events. Partial successes will come with a cost in the form of a narrative scar that forever marks your Magus unless a future success cancels it. Failures affect your Magus’ control over themself. Failure to control a situation gone awry leads to a Calamity, some apocalyptic event that leaves the whole world changed. When that happens, or when your Magus loses control over their own power, you must retire them, writing an epilogue based on the wizard’s remaining bonds and consequences of their actions.

How Was it, Then?

I loved it and I look forward to trying it again. I’ll soon share the whole journal in blog form for you to see how the game went. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading.

Full disclosure: I am not a journaling game fan.

Except.

I blame this story on Dave Chalker, who came home from a game convention and mentioned a journaling game called Hope is Not a Plan by Steve Wright, published by Deus Ex Minima and distributed online by Exalted Funeral. This journaling game is about project managers and projects spiraling out of control to horrific, inescapable conclusions where everyone gets fired and fed to the piranhas.

Part of me wanted to run in fear since projects that spun out of control to horrific, inescapable conclusions litter my professional career. Playing my typical day-to-day as a game didn’t feel like much fun. (I am not a project manager, but I have managed many engineering projects!)

But, I thought, if I made Hope is Not a Plan a Dungeonomics story, maybe something darkly funny would emerge. If there’s anything funny, it’s trying to figure out basic business rules in the broken mechanics world of Dungeons & Dragons.

Thus begins the pained story of Vierna Daliwin, Drow Project Manager at Zaphruil and Associates – Necromantic and Dimensional Engineering. “No body too mutilated! No raise too complex! Call us if you need a single vampire, a wight army, or any undead in between!”

This post is my run in a Hope is Not a Plan game. Hope is Not a Plan requires the following gear:

1. Either a Jenga tower or a way to simulate a Jenga tower to track sanity. This mechanic reflects project stability (i.e., the more stable the building is, the more stable the project). Still, the modification to a Sanity countdown sparks joy and reflects reality better.
2. A deck of regular playing cards with the Jokers removed.
3. A bag of tokens to track project success. I used handy Fate tokens.
4. A d6 die.

I made three modifications to the starting conditions of the game:

1. Move the Ace of Hearts (the “contract is signed start work!” card) close to the top to ensure the project starts since getting killed without the project kicking off does not make for a fun read.
2. Change out the Jenga tower for the 100d6 method – roll 100d6, remove the 1s, repeat. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great place to keep a Jenga tower undisturbed for a long time, but I do have Shadowrun 2nd-edition levels of d6s – i.e., a lot of them.

The game requires an initial “pull” on the tower as a starting condition— I rolled dice and pulled the 1s. My initial roll left me with 88 dice in the Sanity dice pool.

Let’s find out if this trap ever gets built. Hint: it does not.

Hope in the Dark Heart of Evil is Not a Plan – Full Playthrough

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 1

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

The project team assembled on the 4th floor of the tomb. We have staffed the team with two necromancers, a conjurer, a summoner, an enchanter, and a transmuter, which should cover all magic and dimensional engineering needs.

Everyone is in good spirits. The site was easy to find, and the team enjoyed the amenities. Would you mind thanking your Lord Dread Master for the gift of tiny chocolates? How does he get them into the shapes of tormented souls?

Although we have not yet signed the contract with your firm, we are confident of signature any day now. As initially discussed in the original correspondence, we intend to commit the team to 6 weeks of work, as per the current customer specifications and requirements from the point of signing.

We have commenced kickoff, initial planning sessions, basic logistics, and plans for generating the manual labor workforce. However, we will not bring on the additional labor or begin construction without the contract since that requires funding.

We plan to hold daily “stand up” meetings and have one-week “sprints” of work. We will report the overall project status once a week when we complete a “sprint.”

We’re excited to get started on your challenging project!

Change Orders: None.

Milestones

• Delivered: 0
• Pending: 10

Risks:

Our only known risk is contract signage to firm up the project requirements and craft the work schedule.

Turn 1 Summary:

I started with 88 Sanity in my dice pool.

Per the instructions, I did not turn over cards on the first turn, so the doom was yet to come.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 2

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Thank you for your hospitality during the extended contract negotiations last week. I have to say, your Dread Lord Master’s native land is fascinating to visit! The odd flesh-rending super lizards! The wandering hungry undead! The angry native residents and their delightful little death gods!

And the food was an educational experience. Remind me, what was in that dish again? The one with the floating fleshy chunks? In case I want to introduce the dish to the family back home in Amenasara Falls.

I appreciate the time you took to sit with Mr. Zaphruil and me to delve deeper and get aligned on the specifications and requirements for your project. I see you and Mr. Zaphruil share chemistry when discussing business requirements – I hope this bodes positively for the overall outcomes of the project.

However, I’m afraid we_still_lack a signed contract. My team is holding at kickoff for now, and the necromancers are getting itchy to start raising. As a reminder: without funding, we cannot begin work.

Risks:

We still do not have a signed contract, so we cannot begin work, putting the overall schedule at risk. The team is becoming restless and getting in a bit of “side necromancy,” which is eating our prepared resources. We will have to take apart these new servitors before getting to actual work.

As an additional risk, we need to begin sourcing materials for this project since some are rare and complex to attain.

Change Orders: None.

Milestones

• Delivered: 0
• Pending: 10

Turn 2 Summary:

I rolled a 2 on the d6 and pulled the 9 of Spades and the Queen of Hearts. The 9 of Spades was a flavor card.

The Queen of Hearts, though, was 100% doom. She put her thumb on all future specification and modification changes to the project, giving the client a bonus and upper hand. She ensured a downward death spiral. I could never complete any project requirements and add new ones to the pile until I lost the game or found a card that made it easier to complete the project.

Forward!

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 3

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

With the contract signed and funds released, I am happy to report we have completed the kickoff and have moved to a full feasibility study of your project.

I see you and Mr. Zaphruil negotiated a few upgrades and additional requirements to the project before you finally signed the contract. I see you made changes.

Initially, we agreed on:

1. 1 Dimensional mirror trap with activation and deactivation keywords
2. 6 Dimensional Cells of indeterminate size that holds beings indefinitely
3. 1 Randomizer Engine (installed in the mirror)
4. 1 Invisible Stalker (in a cell)

The new changes now add:

2. Doubling the # of dimensional cells from 6 to 12
3. 1 large troll (in a cell)
4. 1 adventurer, driven to murderous insanity (in a cell)

The team feels a little nervous about fulfilling these last requirements added to the work, as they’re expansive. But, I’m sure we will rise to the challenge and complete the project in the original 6-week estimate. Zaphruil & Associates has never failed on a project, and you can trust in us.

I also see on page 37 of the newly expanded expectations you penciled in the requirements for a gravity reversal trap in the room with the dimensional mirror. I agree, it_is_fun to watch heroes fight creatures that pop out of the mirror while standing on the ceiling. But Ethelin Noquth, our Magic Team Lead, asks if this choice over-complicates the purity of her original design.

She’s a stickler for elegance and vision.

Risks:

The team is flagging risks around materials and logistics:

• The expansion of 6-dimensional pockets to 12 in trap construction, and the time and/or availability of pocket dimensions;
• The sourcing of the invisible stalker as it is, by definition, invisible;
• The sourcing, trapping, and transportation of a large, angry troll.

We have put in a request for the additional supplies and the troll.

Also, the addition of the gravity reversal trap requires extra expertise and adds in design and construction time. The team says this will require additional time and/or more alcohol. Or both.

We feel the schedule might be at risk.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.

Milestones

• Delivered: Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
• Pending: 11

Turn 2 Summary:

I pulled the King of Spades.

The King of Spades was both a blessing and a curse. The contract was signed (and I added 10 tokens immediately). Still, it meant the company owner over promised the deliverables and made the project impossible to complete without breaking the laws of physics. I also learned 4 Kings == Game Over.

Also, a Change Request — a new customer requirement — was immediately added to the contract card. I placed another token on the contract card and admired the stack of tokens.

I no longer needed the Ace of Hearts. Of course, I pulled it as the next card.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 4

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Good news: we completed the feasibility study, completing another milestone!

Bad news: our Magic Team Lead, Ethelin Noquth, discovered during design that she estimated our original timelines against our original design and not the new requirements settled between yourself and Mr. Zaphruil. Because of this oversight, we are now severely behind in our schedule. If we stick to our current work progress, it will take 12 weeks to complete this project, doubling the time estimates. We will need to make trade-offs in time or quality to hit our milestones.

I also see you and Mr. Zaphruil had another round of negotiations, and he accepted two more changes to the design. These are:

• Ethereal swinging blades that swing from the walls when the mirror is activated.
• Randomly opening and closing pits in the floor, sending an unlucky adversary to a dimensional cell.

We are a little unclear how the pits function with the gravity change. Perhaps you would like the pits on the ceiling? Can you meet with the team and explain your vision to them so they can better understand and we can adjust both the design and the timelines?

Also, I understand that Noquth has been negative about these developments to the project. Again, she is a stickler for the elegance of design and perfection. She is displeased with the cuts we need to make to the project in quality to attain the original schedule and hit all customer requirements. We will need to have internal discussions around how to handle it.

We also suspect she’s a little off. We’re hoping to get her back on track.

Risks:

With the additions to the design and Team Lead Noquth’s missteps at the beginning of the project, we are afraid our schedule is severely at risk. As a result, we will raise more labor and work overtime to meet our goals.

We also have new logistical challenges that will need yet more additional raises of labor. To whit: undead that hangs upside down to dig pits. We are thinking of tiny vampires since they fly and hang from the ceiling, but as a risk: they are difficult to control. Should they escape, they may populate your tomb with themselves. I realize you see no downside.

We are planning to move forward with mirror fabrication regardless of these setbacks.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
• Pending: 13

Turn 3 Summary:
The 5 of Diamonds was as bad as the King of Spades. The lead underestimated the project — add Change Requests, and roll the Sanity Dice Pool. I rolled poorly for the Change Requests (a 0!) and added two more tokens to my contract card. Now I had 13 tokens stacked up on that card. The stack was beginning to list.

Also, my Sanity Dice Pool was reduced from 88 to 75. Already, I could feel sanity slipping away.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 5

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

We’re quite excited your Dread Lord Master shows passion toward this project! His interest is an honor!

However, we were not expecting him to show such passion as to add more to the design. While adding the attacking animated statues to the design is no problem — we have examples to work from — sourcing a Shrine of Chaos and adding it to the trap does have the team a little flummoxed. We’re not clear on why the trap needs further enhancing.

We understand the Dread Lord Master’s word is law, and we will add his requests to the project.

We are happy to report that we have completed our initial designs — if nothing else changes — and feel we can move confidently to dimensional cell fabrication next week.

Risks:

Sourcing and logistics are proving to be quite a pickle. Right now, the team is sharing concerns about sourcing the Shrine of Chaos.

We have put out a request to the Temple to see if the Priestess will craft one for us. Their price will be steep – possibly in coin, but more likely in blood sacrifice. We would like to amend the contract and have you cover the cost for the shrine in local adventurers or living servitors. The Priestesses are clear they need live blood – no undead. I will send out the meeting request.

Also, moving the Shrine of Chaos securely to the 4th floor of the tomb, installing it without breaking it, and without revealing possibly sensitive HR information is proving a logistics challenge. We should also discuss this in the above meeting.

We’ve also become concerned about the state of mind of Team Lead Noquth, who is working hard to develop her alcohol interests into full-blown addiction.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
• Pending: 15

Turn 5 Summary:

I drew the 2 of Clubs. The Dread Lord Master became interested, for a fleeting moment, in the project and added his own flourishes. 2 more Change Requests were requested. I added 2 more tokens to my contract card, bringing the token count to 15.

The Queen of Hearts was killing me quickly.

I also rolled the “Shrine of Law” randomly on a traps table. Touching it does damage to any Chaotic character in the vicinity. Since it reveals character alignments, the Shrine became an HR risk.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 6

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Why am I the one who ends up troll herding in the end? WHY? WHY?!? This is the Third! Project! In a Row! This isn’t any troll — it’s a troll that especially enjoys munching on the undead! We need those undead! They’re busy digging the pit traps on the ceiling! They are not snacks!

Can someone get this troll under control? Please? Before it rampages again?

The troll drooled on my best slacks, I’ve lost a left shoe, and the fireball slightly singled my right shoulder! Can someone please stuff this troll into that dimensional cell? Now?

However, I am glad to report that we have deposited the troll in a working dimensional cell attached to the mirror where it belongs. We have completed the first test of our initial design! The mirror + cells setup worked correctly. Progress!

I’m also glad to report the team is moving from pure fabrication to constructing the trap harness itself.

Risks:

While we are still severely behind schedule and now down several micro-vampires (who seem to be now wandering your halls), we made up time this week with no unforeseen disasters except for the troll (mentioned above). Team Lead Noquth is back on the job and seems plausibly sober.

If we have more smooth weeks of work, we can make serious progress on this project and deliver the quality promised, if not on time.

The Temple Priestesses accepted delivery for the payment for the Shrine of Chaos. We appreciate you agreeing to amend the contract terms to cover the costs of the Shrine to ensure we could meet the budget for this item.

However, we incurred extra costs overruns with delivery when the payment got, ah, feisty. Our hearts and prayers go out to those we lost in the ensuing battle. However, our Logistics subcontractor assured us the battle was “super cool to watch.”

We are working out the logistics of Shrine delivery.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
  • Begin Construction
• Pending: 15

Turn 6 Summary:
The printer broke. Or, in this case, the troll got loose and rampaged through the construction site. My Sanity Dice Pool was reduced from 75 to 60.

I was already 40% less sane on this project than when I began.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 7

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Team Lead Ethelin Noquth resigned today. She said she’d had it with “this damned mirror” and the constant change requests occluding her original pure vision. She especially objected to the extra hours we’ve been putting in to build the gravity pit traps, manage the extra troll, add the extra rooms, and wrangle the blood-soaked Shrine of Chaos. The troll chaos last week must have tipped her over the edge. Or perhaps it was the addition of animated statues to the build?

Regardless, she took a new position with a cult up in the far snowy north, something involving the sun – I wasn’t clear. She was pretty emotional about all this.

I apologize for all the structural damage she caused on the way out. We will, of course, cover the damages to the tomb. Please convey our heartfelt apologies for this outburst to your Dread Lord Master.

We will source a new Team Lead from the Home Office in Amenasara Falls. Meanwhile, we promoted Minyl Aleduis, Team Lead Ethelin Noquth’s backup, to a temporary lead. While not as senior (or talented) a Necromancer as Noquth, he will suffice for now, and work will continue.

Also, we learned the Dwarven wight engineers assigned to the tomb by your staff still have enough presence of mind to take time off for their racial holidays. Did you know this past week was Winterstide? And Winterstide celebration is five days long? Now we know.

The entire crew left us, and we could only make progress on the pure magical side of the construction for the trap.

The Shrine of Chaos and the Invisible Stalker both arrived on-site this week. Thankfully, our Logistics Subcontractors sprayed the Invisible Stalker with sparkle paint, so we could locate it easily. The sparkle paint will wear off in time so the Invisible Stalker will be, well, invisible. We have no concerns there.

Talverin Jusztyn, our Transmuter, has made good progress on those animated statues you requested. Rilma Philond, the Enchanted, finished the glue for mounting the mirror to the wall.

Risks:

The loss of Ethelin Noquth is a major blow to this project. While we still have her designs, an Aledius is a capable Necromancer, we have lost control over almost 50% of our workforce, including the micro-vampires. They are now loose in your tomb. Somewhere.

This job requires a full two Necromancers to control the workforce. This development with Noquth makes it difficult to raise more help from wandering adventurer parties until we source a second Necromancer to add to the team.

We need to discuss the spiraling costs of this project next week. With the loss of a Necromancer and the challenges to our schedule, we are considering sourcing hands from the local population. Even with Rilma Philond’s – our Enchanter’s – ability to charm and control, locals are considerably more expensive than undead assistance. They need feeding, housing, and actual payment.

And, of course, the costs for the structural damage.

We’ve given up on the schedule at this point as polite fiction.

I will put another meeting on your calendar next week to discuss the current risks and challenges.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
  • Begin Construction
• Pending: 15

Turn 7 Summary:
I pulled a King of Diamonds and a 6 of Diamonds. While both cards are technically flavor, one is a King, which moves me one step closer to losing the game.

The King of Diamonds, the Lead quits the project. And the 6 of Diamonds – one of the subcontracted workforces disappears for a week on an unplanned holiday. Winterstide! Who knew?

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 8

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

The Zaphruil and Associations Finance Team has questions about the contract and the cost overruns. We have long blown through the budget for the original contract, and we’re borrowing against the financing of other in-flight projects. Finance is, in a word, upset with us and our current expense reports.

Worse, we are paying for all the extensive damage the team has done to the walls of the tomb. Again, apologies for the extra damage, as the team has been boisterous in expressing their emotions and catching the rampaging troll.

No amount of creative financing can cover these issues.

We will need to renegotiate the contract to complete the project. We are out of both time and funding for this iteration. I will put additional time on your calendar for next week to see if we can defer some of these extra requirements and allow the team to finish the core MVP deliverable. Can we consider an extra amendment for us to fund and complete the added requirements in a “Mirror Trap 2.0” scenario post-delivery?

Hopefully, you’re available to discuss so we can reach quick alignment on the final launch requirements for this project and where we can trim back to complete our milestones.

Risks:

A quick roundup of the risks this project faces. We are currently:

• Down our Team Lead;
• Out of funding;
• Far beyond our original 6 weeks budgeted project timeline;
• Missing half our undead workforce;
• Chasing micro-vampires all over the tomb;
• Unclear where the Invisible Stalker went to (it’s here somewhere);
• Managing an escape artist troll;
• Incurring visits from local adventurers wishing to avenge their friends over the payment for the Shrine of Chaos.

And now, with Mr. Zaphruil demanding mandatory overtime for the team. Morale is at an all-time low. I can say, with clear certainty, this project is at risk.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
  • Begin Construction
• Pending: 15

Turn 8 Summary:
Here I pulled the 8 of Hearts, the Jack of Diamonds, and the 6 of Clubs.

Since the rules allow me to skip cards that do not make sense to the story, I gave the 8 of Hearts a miss. The card about the software not working on a VP’s mobile phone. But it does tell me to roll my Sanity Dice. I now have 50 in the pool, now half as sane as when I started.

The Jack of Diamonds is an audit from the finance department. Roll the Sanity Dice. I’m now down to 41 dice in the pool.

The 6 of Clubs is, thankfully, just flavor.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 9

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

I see your Dread Lord Master found a loophole in the contract. We don’t know how he found it, but he found it. We assume he found it during our “Mirror Trap 2.0” negotiations last week.

Regardless, reference document #72 was not adequately versioned, and he discovered a pencil. We assume he found the pencil on your desk. He added two more change requests to the project – even after we agreed to defer all these change requests to the upgrade:

• Place the Shrine of Chaos into a chest, and trap the chest with a Vampiric Touch spell;
• Add deadly spores to the pit traps on the ceiling so when the pit traps open (empty?), the deadly spores fill the room.

He also rejected the MVP deliverable, “Mirror Trap 2.0” plan. Not only are we already behind schedule, Necromancers and undead, we now need to figure out how to build a chest big enough to hold the damned Shrine of Chaos and go outside to gather spores. As if the locals weren’t already angry enough about us using them as human sacrifices and mind-wiping them to turn them into mindless labor.

You know, these changes will, of course, incur further costs and time overruns. We now estimate an additional full year of work to prepare the trap to your master’s specifications.

All Hail the Dread Lord Master.

Risks:

We have nothing but risks in this project at this point. Maybe we could have finished this with an MVP deliverable? But no more.

All is chaos. All is doom. We pray for the sweet release of death.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps filled with Deadly Spores.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos, in a Chest, trapped with Vampiric Touch.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
  • Begin Construction
• Pending: 17

Turn 9 Summary:
I pulled the King of Hearts. The client finds a document without a reference number and adds a few more random, non-sensical changes to the project for the hell of it.

I am now up to 3 Kings. The job is teetering at a knife’s edge.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 10

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Per your request and after due investigation, we have let Talverin Jusztyn, the Transmuter, go after referring the unfortunate incident with the gargoyle to Zaphruil and Associates HR. She has been removed from the project and the company.

We understand the gargoyles are important to you. We understand the gargoyles are your friends. We also understand that what happened to the gargoyle was inexcusable.

We hope that you will accept our sincere apologies and understand that we will cover any costs to rehabilitate your gargoyle friend, including mental services.

We are, however, alas, down a Transmuter and will need to source a new one from Amenasara Falls. Without a Transmuter, we cannot finish digging the dimensional cells, animating the statues, or building the traps to release spores.

Also, on a personal note, I missed a trip home to see my daughter’s first Temple ritual last weekend due to working overtime settling the gargoyle “issue.” I will be taking some future time off, and we will locate coverage.

Change Orders:

1. Double dimensional rooms + creatures.
2. Gravity reversal trap.
3. Ethereal swinging blades.
4. Teleporting pit traps filled with Deadly Spores.
5. Animated statues.
6. Shrine of Chaos, in a Chest, trapped with Vampiric Touch.

Milestones

• Delivered:
  • Project Kickoff & Contract Signing
  • Feasibility Study
  • Initial Design
  • Begin Construction
• Pending: 17

Turn 10 Summary:
I pulled the 4 of Clubs, where a senior member of the team is let go for inappropriate behavior. No other impact to the project, oddly.

I also pulled the 6 of Spades, where work caused me to miss a child’s event. This, however, did require rolling the Sanity Dice. My sanity fell from 41 to 36. I was spiraling further downward.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 11

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Re: Vorn Zaphruil
Amenasara Falls

Vorn —

How dare you throw me under the bus during contract renegotiations around rolling back the project to Mirror Trap MVP!

What do you mean you promised the Dread Lord Master this trap would be complete in the original estimated six weeks with all the bells and whistles? And now he’s pissed off because we’re late?

What do you mean he’s shocked? They’ve added a dozen major changes to the project! We’ve lost two team members and half our undead! We weren’t exactly a big team to begin with! You’re the one who kept telling the client, “they will find a way!”

Then you dared to blame me for the project’s failure. Me! I didn’t promise a Shrine of Chaos in a locked box protected by Vampiric Touch in a dimension cell powered by a soul-sucking mirror!

I have set clear expectations with the client week over week on progress. I have communicated risks. I have managed our subcontractors. I have managed through a crazy undead Dwarven holiday week.

It’s you who is currying favor with the Dread Lord Master with these crazy promises! Because you think you’ll land the more lucrative jobs on floors 5 and 6! Let me tell you. He’s already given those jobs away to another crew! We saw them carrying in ladders last week!

We’re all at the end of our rope. We’ve put in eight straight weeks of overtime. I’m at the end of my rope. No more.

Own up to this mess you’ve made, or I’m gone.

Turn 11 Summary:
I pulled the 9 of Clubs. My boss goes around telling everyone not to worry about it. Everything will be fine. He then blames me when the team misses milestones — tossed right under the bus. This pull seemed like a fitting ending to this run.

I rolled my Sanity Dice but only lost 3 this time, bringing my sanity to 33. It feels like the fast downward slide has slowed, but the project is still out of control. Hence the outburst.

Zaphruil and Associates: Project Status Report Week 12

Project Manager Name: Vierna Daliwin
Project Name: Dimensional Mirror

Overview:

Vorn –

After week on week on week of overtime, on insanity, and on constant new requirements, I am no longer choosing between my family, my sanity, and this damned mirror project. I quit.

• Vierna

Dear Zaphruil and Associates HR:

Due to the difficulties of the current project, I have decided to resign my position at Zaphruil and Associates, starting immediately.

I have decided to return home to Amenasara Falls to spend time with my husband. I’m leaving the Project Management profession and entering the Temple to learn to care for the little ones. I will be exiting the firm immediately with no notice.

Please see my badge enclosed in this packet.

Good luck with the Dread Lord Master.

• Vierna Daliwin

Turn 12 Summary:
I pulled the King of Spades. It’s the “choose between work and family” card. But because it was the 4th King, the game is automatically over. The protagonist chooses their family and quits this helljob. Probably for the best.

End Game Summary

I was a little shocked how fast I “died” playing Hope is Not a Plan. I pulled that Queen of Hearts in the first draw, ensuring the project would get stuck fast in quicksand. Then I drew the four Kings relatively quickly. The whole thing spirals into madness.

It’s a little bleak. But what did one expect from Drow project managers? In the end, though, do the adventurers notice that the trap is over-engineered? Or do they die in it all the same? That is the question.

Would I play a journalling game again? This experience was a little like documenting the first run of a rogue like. The game went into downward spiral and ended pretty abruptly with no way to save myself, so it left me wanting a bit more – or better pacing.

If you’re interesting in solo RPG of games, you can find a bunch on itch.io by searching for “solo rpg” or “journal game.” (Discoverability is a real issues on itch, unfortunately) and on DriveThruRPG.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that Exalted Funeral was the publisher. Deus Ex Minima is the publisher and Exalted Funeral is the online distributor.

Heya all, y’all. It’s been ages.

Many things have happened in my life in the last few months: The Sentinel Comics RPG came out, my contributions to Pathfinder 2e’s, a handful of monsters in the Bestiary 3 are published (look up the Slithering pit!), and I got a promotion at work… I’m now a Ubisoft Senior Scriptwriter AND a Junior Game Designer!

One of the things I do at work now is write micro reviews and/or design thoughts about some of the games I play. I thought it might be of interest to share them here.

So without no further ado I give you:

Dorf Romantik

“It’s like they put a high scoring mechanism on a Rainy-Day-Jigsaw-Puzzle session and realized it was (redacted) addictive.” -me on Twitter.

Dorf Romantik is an Early-Access German PC game created by three Berliner Game Design students who recently created Toukana studios. It’s a tile placing game where you build bucolic landscapes made of villages, farmed fields, forests, rivers, lakes, and railroads. You try to score the highest possible score while placing tiles from a stack (a bit like Carcassonne). Some tiles have challenges on them, asking you to build some elements of the landscape of a certain size (sometimes strictly) or more. When you meet these challenges, you are rewarded with more tiles. When you run out of tiles to play, the game ends. 

The game is relaxing. There’s is no timer, no rush to get anything done. It’s also got an unobtrusive soundtrack that blends in the background as you play.

The game IS challenging as some tiles are complicated to place properly. You must also place them carefully to keep as many of your options open. And as the game progresses, the tiles you get become more complex and the challenges you’re given to get more tiles get harder to complete.

It’s currently about $9 on Steam and I look forward to new developments!     

As a bonafide grownup for more than a decade after finishing law school, I’ve had the good fortune of a weekly gaming group that entire time. It’s membership evolved, but at its core its friends that have known each other for more than two decades. Between careers, kids, and spouses we have all experienced our own periods of lean attendance, but the unit as a whole has persevered. 

That is, until the Coronavirus. We stopped meeting immediately, but it took us weeks to finally admit that we all wanted an online alternative to our in-person meetings. As part of that, our DM decided to scale back to bi-weekly game sessions. Into this void, I volunteered my services to run a game.

When I look back at my nascent days of GMing, I always cringe about how my metaplot was often force fed to players. One of the biggest changes (which is hardly original) is to dedicate a whole session to system, setting, and characters. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll only be able to play/run campaigns in approximately 10% of the games that I’d like too, so I value player buy-in and interest over my favorite system and setting. So before I ran anything I chased everyone down electronically for feedback on what they wanted to play.

System: Sentinels Comics Role Playing Game

A spiritual successor to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, designed by good friends. I held out as long as I could for the actual physical book, but the timing was just too perfect to ignore any longer. The system impressed me (as I expected it would), the book wowed me, and I decided to run it. After discussing it with the players, and based on their own positive experience with Marvel, they were excited to play. 

Setting

Never content with making things easy on myself, and valuing buy-in, I proposed revisiting an old setting… that wasn’t Supers. The Players would take the role as new heroes returning to a near-future Earth system after decades of voluntary exile. They would have developed their own powers and examine the place of humanity’s brith for clues to the precious substance, Veredium, the key to their homeland’s super science and nascent superpowers. The pitch settled into Cowboy Bebop meets Guardians of the Galaxy.  

Key Hooks

We agreed on a few key points on the setting:

• Science Fiction over Cosmic: The characters could not fly around punching spaceships. Flight, teleportation, etc. were all fair game – but the scope meant there was an understanding that their characters were not substitutes for Ships of the Line. This is Guardians of the Galaxy, not Green Lantern.
• Artificial Intelligence: The singularity occurred – over and over again. The results were eccentric – complex programs with their own proclivities and idiosyncrasies as varied and mystifying as humanity itself jockeying in an overlapping world. However, instead of humanity typically existing in the virtual realm, AI created their own physical avatars to interact with humanity.
• Veredium: The settings deviation from hard science fiction originates with a mysterious substance that was used to accelerate the capacity of artificial intelligence and ultimately build a unique FTL drive. Superhuman weirdness seemingly derives from the mysterious crystalline substance and the aftermath of that FTL event. 

The Characters

The character creation process is much more unwieldy virtually than in person, but thanks to a friendly stop-in by the system co-creator it went pretty smoothly (aside from him uploading an out of date version of some rules, d’oh!). We ended up with a roster of heroes that looks like this:

• Jon: Veredium-Obsessed and Compelled to Explore. (Rasallon)
• Ben: A Sentient Space Transport to haul the party through the Sol System. (Bussy)
• Karl: Highly trained medical genius able to adapt to any situation. (Doctor Weird)
• Chris: A Power Suited Space Janitor. (Bobbie Sue)
• Isaac: A Druid Space Detective. (507)
• Justin: Loinclothed Space He-Man  with a cursed Veredium sword. (Gronk)

Sentinels Comics RPG’s evocative process helped kickstart ideas and concepts for all the players. I love playing games more than planning them, but I have come around to an “Adventure 0” being a necessary part of successful long term play as an adult. Hopefully, reading about Adventure 0 helps set the stage for some interesting and insightful campaign play next post. 

This article is not an official part of Swords of the Serpentine setting.  You are free to use it in your game but it is not canonical setting information. – ekd

The Great and Distinguished Eversink Guild of Letter Deliverers aka the Post Office

Eversink is a city of commerce, a city of marketplaces, and contracts, and deals. She’s a city of merchants who measures her power, not how many ships of war are moored in the harbor or if the Arsenal overflows with weapons.  She measures her power on her warehouses, her markets, and her global market power. 

Effective commerce runs on information: information about when the apples are ripe, what color of cloth is popular this week, or if everyone is into wearing spangly hats.  If pears are sparse this year because the on-shore crop was hit with a rare pear eating Mika Beetle, the Mercanti with the best beetle-free pear tree network makes a killing.  And if on a distant shore, Eversink beaded silk becomes all the rage, whoever can get that silk made, shipped, and into the market wins the season.

The insatiable need for commerce drives an insatiable need for the news.  From Eversink back alley gossip circles to the rarified circle of the Triskadane, everyone needs to know what’s going on everywhere, all the time.  Often, whoever lays hands on the news first, wins. 

From the hunger for the latest up-to-date information sprang the Great and Distinguished Guild of Letter Deliverers.  The Letter Deliverers are an integral part of the Eversink Government, with its Guildmaster reporting straight up to the Head of the Committee of Defense for Eversink herself.  The Guild’s agents are the unsung heroes of Eversink, operating as a secret black network across the known world dedicating their lives to delivering the mail.

The Guild’s agents spread out all over the world, daring rain or shine or danger or wars or death or falling rocks to message back, relay to relay, the post crucial to the functioning of the economy of a global world power.  This is dangerous work, and the world’s competing forces aren’t all that keen on having their critical plans fall into Eversink’s hands. They, too, have agents who are trying to steal information while murdering the Guild.

The Guild of Letter Deliverers is not an exclusive service to the Triskadane.  They are happy to deliver letters from anyone to the far-flung reaches of the known world for a calculated price and back again.  That price is not cheap and is derived via its own special kind of Sorcery. The Guild economists calculate the price for letter delivery against a complicated set of letter delivery pricing tables that are a higher-level multi-dimensional construction constraining distance, weight, time of year, time to day, sensitivity of the information, and whatever the Guild’s economist had that morning for breakfast.  

A rumor is going around that the Guild of Letter Deliverers economists are Sorcerers, and they dump their Corruption into the delivery pricing tables. This causes the table to twist and turn and shrivel and complicate beyond comprehension.  But others say that Actuarial Sorcery has no bearing anywhere in Eversink History, and such a thing is ludicrous on its face. The economists themselves only say they had a nice mutton and egg sandwich for breakfast off Goldie’s Food Cart.

No one is in the Guild… or Everyone is in the Guild

Since information about everything, everywhere, is crucial to the safe operation of Eversink, the Eversink Government pens large contracts with the Guild and pairs up teams of Letter Deliverers with Diplomatic delegations to far-flung cities across the continent.  The Government pays a hefty sum for this service to support the Guild’s network of secret and classified stations and relays across the world.  It is not unusual for the Diplomat representing Eversink and the Guild’s team lead being one and the same. 

Being a member of the Guild is a sensitive position, even in the city.  The Guild members who are not dedicated exclusively to internal Eversink mail delivery sorting and service hide their identity so they can’t be “outed.” If they are not nobles, a convenient cover story, they often pose as wealthy merchants, Thieves’ Guild members, or even Food Stall owners.  They dish up eel eyes on a stick to hungry shoppers during secret letter passing and gossip mongering. Guild members identify each other with a mysterious distinguishing mark – a tattoo of a swan emerging from a letter pouch on their right bicep.

Nothing is free in Eversink. That goes double for information, no matter how spurious.  If a free agent lays hands on that critical bit of news before the Guild does and can deliver it without getting killed, the freelancer can demand much more coin for the information than the Guild – and sell it to the highest bidder whose allegiance is in question.  Since the risk vs reward is go high, this spawned an entire industry of information freelancers trying to outdo the Guild of Letter Delivers.    

The best information for sale is information outside of Eversink.  Several times in Eversink’s history, a Diplomat who was a member of the Guild of Letter Deliverers and fully invested by Eversink’s Government, arrived on post to find another Diplomat already there claiming the full investiture of the Government.  Sometimes one Diplomat is fake, or both are real, or neither are real… the only way to tell in a world of easy freelancers is to compare secret marks.

Making it a repeatable sale and maintaining repeat business is another. Information is worth so much in Eversink, especially when it is sold to competing parties, freelancers band together to build competing Guilds.  Setting up and maintaining a network of drops, relays, and stations is expensive.  One freelancer sneaking information across a continent alone is one thing.  Some of these Guilds grow and draw unwanted attention.  The last was the Guild of Secure Package Delivery, claiming to specialize in moving secret parcels from place to place for lower prices.  They were so successful the Guild of Letter Deliverers went to secret war with the Guild of Secure Package Delivery to defend their turf and forced them into a hostile “merger and acquisition and acquihire.” 

Being a Post Man in the Outer Reaches

At the heart of it, the Guild of Letter Deliverers are a Guild dedicated to delivering the post. But, it’s a dangerous job. A Post Man in the Guild of Letter Deliverers must know how to keep a cover, survive in the wilderness, have an acute sense of the city, be entrepreneurial, be suave, lurk in the darkness, read a map, and work in a team.  She keeps a low profile and maintains a network of contacts like a calligrapher, a cryptographer, or a jeweler for crafting message smuggling earrings. She must memorize the locations of a series of drops, marked with a forward-facing swan head with an open mouth, for depositing letters.

The Secrete

Beneath the Hermitage in Ironcross lurks an enormous library of documents called the Secrete.  Few are allowed into the Hermitage in the first place, and fewer are allowed down the stairs into the Secrete’s depths.  The Triskadane deposits into the Secrete the correspondence from the Guild of the Letter Deliverers after consuming the information.

Despite being far under the water table, the Secrete is surprisingly cool and dry.  A long, thin, winding metal staircase opens into a vast warehouse-like space.  The space has no windows. It has only the one entrance – the staircase.  It’s dimly lit, and the place smells of seawater.

Filling the space is row upon row of bookshelves, and on each shelf is a set of boxes. Each box is labeled with an arcane code of numbers and letters. The librarian, whose office is right off the base of the staircase, keeps a set of books to translate to the location of a box and back. Some claim the librarian has no eyes, but he is simply ancient and squints. They’re under his hairy drooping eyebrows.

Inside the box is the correspondence returned from the Guild.  When a new Diplomat prepares for a new assignment, they will come down to the Secrete and read all the previous Diplomat’s letters and notes.  When a Diplomat returns from an assignment, they will deposit their papers in the Secrete.  Theoretically, all the most explosive secrets of Eversink hide in coded boxes here, somewhere.

Of course, Diplomats often keep a copy of their letters and notes for their private records where an enterprising thief can steal them or sell their notes to a higher bidder.  So it goes.  

Post Man Investigations

Each Post Man joins the Guild with a different set of skills and contacts.  How they leverage them is what makes them successful.  Here’s an example of the skills a good Post Man needs and how these skills work to get the mail back to Eversink.

Trustworthy: Your contacts feel they can trust you with their deepest secrets – and their mail.  Unlike everyone else in this dark and damned world, you provide that warm hug and the mug of tea, and they spill.  You’re the one they turn to for help on a dark day.  Luckily, while they’re nursing their warm mug and telling you their secrets, you have a scribe in the other room taking transcription.

City’s Secrets: You can work the city itself like a machine.  You know where the rich and influential people live.  You see where the powerful Thieves’ Guilds hole up. You know which back alley ledge will let you hear the best information wafting out of open windows.  Hell, you know where all the post office boxes are. You can find anyone in the city, anywhere, and use that information to build networks that you work, or let you flee at a moment’s notice.

Skullduggery: You’re a spy’s spy.  You dig up information through unethical means – blackmail, shadowing, surveillance.  You can find hidden people and information that doesn’t want to be seen.  It doesn’t matter your methods, as long as it falls into your hands.  You’re willing to go into the crime-ridden underground for your information, pay off who you need, and stab who needs stabbing.  And once you have it, you wrap it in a letter and start hoofing it for home.

Scurrilous Rumors:  You’re exceptionally good at following the rumor information network through the City.  Most of the time, it lands you in more rumors, but sometimes, it lands you in something real.  You’re a master of your gossiping network.  You can follow the rumors from under the Tangle to the Opera House in Alderhall.  You can work it like a magician, finding leads that will lead you to the truth, which you set down on paper and send through the Guild’s network.

Spirit Sight:  No information is worth more than the information about the murder of a highly placed individual. No one is better equipped to provide that information that the murdered person’s ghost.  With your Spirit Sight, you can speak to the spirits around you, pulling out secrets about crimes most heinous, or Sorcerous Corruption, or worse.  That information might save the lives of everyone in Eversink.   

Prophecy:  A prophet cannot divine what important information exists is out in the world, but she can see when something interesting will happen and help direct Guild agents thattaway.  A prophet can act as a controller, see flashes of leads in the future, and help guide the Guild away from danger and total profitability while ensuring the mail is delivered come rain or shine.

Ridiculous Luck:  What incredible luck!  Information falls in your lap.  Sometimes it falls right out of the sky and bonks you on the head.  You slip away from enemies through sheer blind luck.  You have this knack of being in the right place at the right time to pick up that bit of intel, or just… having it handed to you out of the blue.  You escape from calamity.  You can walk across the continent unharmed, diplomatic post in pockets. It is just a thing that happens.

Wilderness Mastery:  You have trained animals to deliver messages for you all over the world.  You specialize in one animal – pigeons, for example – that unerringly arrive at their destination.  Trained animals are faster and stealthier than humans.  But enemies can trap, or kill them, en route to their destination.

Every skill gets used – Felonious Intent, Tactics of Death, even Sorcery – in the Guild.  It’s not just these skills, but they certainly help.

Three Guild Member NPCs

Ermes Caroli, a Night Post Man of Roofs and Underbasements
Inoffensive, Stoic, Sly
Drives:  Cheating Death; A Shrewd Deal; Narcissism
Allegiances: Ally: The Triskadane 1; Ally: Ancient Nobility 1; Enemy: Mercenaries 1
Defenses – Health: Health Threshold 3, Health 6
Defenses – Morale: Morale Threshold 4, Grit 1, Morale 12
Investigative Abilities: Command 1, Intimidation 1, Liar’s Tell 2, Nobility 4, Servility 1, City’s Secrets 1, Ridiculous Luck 1, Scurrilous Rumors 2, Skulduggery 2
General Abilities: Athletics 9, Bind Wounds 9, Burglary 4, Preparedness 12, Stealth 2, Sway 2, Warfare 1
Gear: A thin dagger, tucked into the back of a high boot; His family’s secret of ancient treason; A great black billowing cloak that poofs out in the slightest breeze; A nurtured grudge against his father for wrongs once committed; A secret life in the information trade; This amazing black beard, because it looks great.

Torquato Comella, a Diplomat Spy with a Flair for Smuggling Secrets
Eloquent, Sensual, Aloof
Drives: Secrets; Spite; Evading Responsibility
Allegiances: Ally: The Triskadane 2; Enemy: Outlanders 1
Defenses – Health: Health Threshold 3, Health 9
Defenses – Morale: Morale Threshold 3, Grit 1, Morale 9
Investigative Abilities: Charm 1, Command 1, Nobility 3, Trustworthy 1, Laws & Traditions 1, Ridiculous Luck 1, Scurrilous Rumors 2, Skulduggery 1
General Abilities: Athletics 3, Burglary 3, Preparedness 3, Stealth 9, Sway 9, Warfare 3
Gear: A fabulous position as a Committee Diplomat with all the entourage and flourishes; A vial of poison, a drop of which kills in minutes; The darkest secrets of her political rivals; A double life as a spy, but only for the highest bidder; A wardrobe to die for.

Romina Sardi, a Post Man who Always Delivers the Post
Personable, Melancholic, Alert
Drives:  Validation; Fitting In; Being Acknowledged Or Appreciated By Family
Allegiances: Ally: The Triskadane 1; Ally: Commoners 1; Enemy: City Watch 1
Defenses – Health: Health Threshold 3, Health 7
Defenses – Morale: Morale Threshold 4, Grit 1, Morale 11
Investigative Abilities: Charm 1, Intimidation 1, Liar’s Tell 1, Nobility 1, Taunt 1, Spot Frailty 3, Tactics of Death 2, Wilderness Mastery 2
General Abilities: Athletics 2, Bind Wounds 9, Burglary 10, Preparedness 4, Stealth 1, Sway 2, Warfare 2
Gear: An aviary filled with trained pigeons; The sword of her father, now dead; Tattered leather armor handed down through the ages; A boundless pride in her work; An allegiance to her city and her people

“Swords of the Serpentine” is (TM) Pelgrane Press. For more information on Eversink, visit the Pelgrane website.

It seems the visiting my old blog posts about using index cards has rekindled my desire to handle something tangible while running games. Spending the last year running published adventures using online tools like D&D Beyond and Discord has made me less invested in preparing my games. I’ve gotten used to just run things as written and look up stuff online during play.

Yet one of the take home message from my recently completed Godless Chronicle D&D campaign was how the most fun we had as a group was when we played through encounters I’d rolled on charts beforehand, adding a few details to them to make them fit into the adventure’s narrative.

It became clear to me: the time I invested in prepping small, modular scenes added value to our combined experience. Which is funny because I used to be a prepping-heavy GM until I went near full-improv. It seems I’ve gone full circle in my evolution as a GM.

So here I was this morning, playing with the campaign’s stack of index cards. It contained a title card:

The Horizon Conspiracy – Summary

Something bad’s about to go down in Horizon. Chances are, our heroes are going to get blamed for it. That’s how those things go, right?

I made it during our last session (link to previous article) and added a card for each character, bearing their name, class, One Unique Thing, icon relationships and backgrounds. For instance the card for my son’s necromancer reads as:

[Title] Sivik Mirir Xer, Tiefling Necromancer

OUT: I will seek redemption by destroying all of the world’s undead and (eventually) free all wandering souls.

Icons: Lich King 2 (negative); Priestess 1 (positive)

Backgrounds: Exorcist 4; Preacher 2; On a pilgrimage 2

I then realized I should note any “facts” we had agreed upon during our prep session, including shit players said I thought should totally become fact. I picked new cards and titled them “[PC’s Name]’ Truths I”. I took this idea from the mini-RPG I had created a few years ago to play with my son. Each Truth would be a one liner which would accumulate into our combined world-building. I placed each Truths card right after their associated characters in the stack. When I’ll run out of space on any given card, I’ll just create “Truths II” cards, place them after the filled-up card and so on.

For example, when I established the party had worked together before, I used one of my convention games tricks, and asked them what went well in their last mission and what didn’t. The twin clerics piped in about how it was their 1st mission where no allies died, which was a apparently a big win for them. The Wizard’s player then indicated she had been unable to recover the intel she had been sent to recover on that mission.

Based on these story bits, I wrote “No allies of ours died on our last mission, that’s a first” on the cleric twins’ truths cards. I then wrote “Failed to retrieve crucial intel during previous mission” on the wizard’s.

As I was revising the stack, I recalled how someone had asked what kind of twins the clerics were. One of their players joked they were twins from different fathers. Everyone groaned and laughed…

Of course, I added this to the twin’s Truths, it’s just too good a tidbit to ignore.

I then realized I wanted at least one story bit on every Truths card. I went ahead and decided to add “unknown” Truths to the empty cards: things yet to appear “on camera” in the campaign. For instance, Sallissie’s One Unique Thing “Uncanny guide that always finds her way, always” kinda feelt like my friend who plays her was challenging me to bite into this. So on her Truth card I wrote “Sallissie got VERY lost once, but doesn’t remember it, at all… (unknown)” I look forward to explore that in a flashback in the campaign’s early episodes.

As I finish these quick blogiddy notes, I have a nice stack into which I’ll start adding cards about the Horizon Conspiracy and I’ll let the stack grow, split, and evolve as we play.

In fact, as I was writing this, I added a card called “Icons in play” to the stack to get a single place where the total investment in icon relationship points could be refereed to. It ended up looking like:

The Horizon Conspiracy: Icons in Play

• High Druid 3
• Archmage 3
• Priestess 1 + 1 + 1
• Diabolist 2 + 1
• Lich King 2
• Prince of Shadows 2
• Dwarf King 1
• Crusader 1

That tells me that 4 icons are going to play major roles in the campaign’s plot, 2 will get middling roles and 2 minor ones. This means I’ll create Icon spoecific cards and start putting schemes and key NPCs on them.

I’ll keep all y’all posted.

We recently completed a shelter-at-home, Timewatch adventure. The game, powered by Pelgrane Press’ Gumshoe engine, is an action-packed, hijinks-infused take on time patrol tropes. We liked the system a lot and look forward to revisiting it again in the future. At the end of the last session, we discussed what to play next. We’d recently reached a natural stopping point for our Godless Chronicles D&D game, but I wasn’t feeling it enough to pick it up again.

During the discussion, I suggested starting a new 13^th Age mini-campaign . It’s a system most of my gaming group is familiar with and, more importantly, like a lot. For those just tuning in, 13^th Age is a 2014 RPG created by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo, two of the minds behind D&D 3e and 4e respectively. The game was (and still is) a refreshing take on d20 fantasy that amalgams some of the best ideas from both D&D editions with simple world-building storytelling elements. It remains a favorite of ours and we keep returning to it on a regular basis.

It kinda helps that I spent the last few months designing official yet unannounced [redacted] for it. (Yes, I look very much forward to removing that “redacted” in my social media posts.)

We agreed to start as level 3 characters, as this is the 3 or 4^th campaign we start and everyone agreed that starting as established heroes would be cooler.

Let’s Roll… 20

I started looking for another online platform to support quarantine play. We’d been using Discord for a while, but it caused significant issues for Vero, my live-in partner, who’s laptop is a Macbook. Turns out Discord and Macs don’t make a happy marriage, causing significant lagging issues, sound drops and other annoyances that significantly ate into her enjoyment of playing RPGs online. That’s why I decided to give Roll20 a try. It’s getting a lot more traction lately, it has an integrated HTML-based video chat feature and has a free 13^th Age character sheet that does (some) calculations for players.

I spent a few hours making Vero’s character in it, she hasn’t played the game yet so I offered to build the mechanical parts of the PC and leave her the story part, with an understanding that she can re-engineer at a later date. I even went as far as entering her class features and powers on the character sheet (manually, of course).

I may tackle Roll20 in a future post when we master it more as a group. It’s promising.

See the character lineup below. You’ll see each character as a “One Unique Thing” (OUT) chosen by the player, not from a list but from what they envision for their character. Each character also has relation “points” with some of the game’s 12 icons, the faceless movers and shakers behind the game’s plots. The game assumes the world hangs barely by with each icon waging a cold war that could send everything tumbling down and end the current Age. Finally, each player invests points in backgrounds. Those act as the game’s skills but can also represent more depending on how they are phrased. You’ll notice that some players were more prosaic about their backgrounds while others took a more pragmatic path.

Dramatis Personae

• Sivik Mirir Xer: Tiefling Necromancer
  • One Unique Thing (OUT): I will redeem myself through the destruction of the world’s undead and wandering souls (after an undefined period of indentured servitude to him).
  • Icons: Lich King 2 (Negative); Priestess 1 (Positive)
  • Backgrounds: Exorcist 4; Preacher 2 ; On a pilgrimage 2
• Keştiyek mezin: Forgeborn Ranger
  • OUT: Clockwork acrobat, escaped from the Dwarven King’s circus of oddities with his BFF, a bear called Cornelius.
  • Icons: Dwarf King 1 (Negative); Prince of Shadows 2 (positive)
  • Backgrounds: Acrobat 5; Hunted 2; Survivalist 1
•  Sallissie: Human Druid
  • OUT: Uncanny guide who always finds her way, always.
  • Icons: High Druid 3 (positive)
  • Background: Herbalist 4; Guide 4
• Kiki: Thiefling Wizard
  • OUT: TBD
  • Icons: Archmage 3 (positive)
  • Background: Spy for the Archmage 4; Combat mage 2; Scheming manipulator
• Fynn (twin brother of Gröm): Human Cleric of Gozer
  • OUT: I am the chosen one, I will find the Master of the Door
  • Icons: Diabolist 2 (Positive), Priestess 1 (Negative)
  • Backgrounds: Busker 4; Ranking cultist of Gozer 4
• Gröm (twin brother of Fynn): Human Cleric of Gozer
  • OUT: I am the chosen one, I will find the Master of the Key
  • Icons: Crusader 1 (Positive); The Priestess 1 (Conflicted); The Diabolist 1 (Negative)
  • Backgrounds: Streetwise 3 ; Intimidating 5

Hatching a Campaign

My original idea of running an urban campaign in a city filled with monsters called Drakhenhall didn’t fit what was shaping up among the characters emerging stories. Yet, I didn’t want to end the session without laying the groundwork for our first adventure. I was thinking about it while the players were futzing on their characters and I found myself writing “Conspiracy vs…” on an index card (I really like index cards, see here and here.)

An idea came to me: I added up all the icon relationship numbers from the group and I created this chart based on their relative importance among characters:

• Lich King 1-2
• Priestess 3-5
• Dwarf King 6
• Prince of Shadows 7-8
• High Druid 9-11
• Archmage 12-14
• Diabolist 15-17
• Crusader 18
• I don’t know…Just pick something wild 19-20

I then had players rolling twice on that chart. The High Druid came first, the Archmage second. I also wanted to know where that conspiracy would play out, but somehow, I decided not to roll on this weighted chart. I wanted to leave it open to more possibilities. There are 13 icons in all, so I decided to chart all the icons except the Prince of Shadows on a d12. (I decided to keep the Prince as an Ace in the Hole for later). I once again asked my players to roll and got “Archmage” again, who’s city is called Horizon.

Then a question came to me: “Which icon is going to run interference in this scheme?” and asked for a final d12 roll and came up with “The Diabolist”

By then, my card looked like: Conspiracy: High Druid vs Archmage in Horizon. Interference: The Diabolist.

Damn! That chart is going to be useful, I’mma keep it within reach for later.

Now I’ve got two weeks to think what plot hooks, agendas, and events this elicits in my brain (Time to build an adventure deck). And my players have 2 weeks to think how they might get embroiled in all this.

I can’t wait!

Dennis and Dave take another spin through an Ikoria draft on Magic Arena, both of whom have had their win percentages drop a bit in the format. Can they cycle through up against the best deck in the format to ooze their way to victory?