It’s the modern day, and you are all paranormal investigation / conspiracy theorist youtubers. You uncover the truth that the man doesn’t want people to know! Sure, many of your “ghost” tips turn out to be teens doing drugs in an abandoned building at night, or similar mundane explanations, but a little video editing can solve that problem. And sometimes—sometimes—you stumble upon something real.
This campaign is about the real ones.
Player buy-in: The player characters are a bunch of obnoxious youtubers who’ll willingly put their lives and sanity at risk just to increase that view count. No playing it safe here. I also strongly encourage you to really get into it, to narrate what you’re doing as if you’re presenting a video to a skeptical audience, and to have over-the-top reactions to things. The campaign will be a very episodic mystery-of-the-week style game with little in the way of an overall plot.
Your good friend Jackson Elias, an author who infiltrates and writes about cults, contacts you out of the blue in a panic. He says he’s found signs of something big, some sort of conspiracy, but he won’t go into details over a channel which could be tapped. He can’t do this alone and needs a reliable team to help him. He sets a meeting: New York, January 15th, 1925.
You arrive, but are too late. Jackson is dead, freshly murdered. A strange symbol carved into his forehead, a symbol seen in a series of other murders. There’s more here than meets the eye, you don’t know what’s going on, but you do know that Jackson found something. And now he’s dead.
Player buy-in: The player characters have to be motivated to solve the mystery their friend left behind, even at risk of their own lives and sanity. This is a nonlinear campaign which has several major parts with clues pointing between them, and which can be visited in any order: but it’s not static, your actions in any one part of the campaign will have ramifications in other parts. This is a long and detailed campaign, you will have to keep careful notes of clues and discoveries, or you just won’t know what’s going on, and you can expect it to last somewhere between 1 and 2 years.
The year is 1933. In South America, the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay is in full swing. You’ve been employed by a humanitarian charity, the Caduceus Foundation, to deliver medical aid to civilians caught up in the war. Caduceus has flown you to Asuncion in Paraguay, from where you travelled across country, escorting doctors, nurses, and medical supplies to an aid camp deep in the jungle of Gran Chaco.
The truth, which the player characters don’t know at the start, but which their team leader will fill them in on, is that the Caduceus Foundation is a front for an organisation which battles the Cthulhu Mythos. For now, the player characters are just heroes who have volunteered to help a humanitarian charity, but soon they will be pulled into combatting the mythos.
Player buy-in: The player characters are a heroic bunch who volunteered to help civilians caught in a war, but don’t bat an eye when it turns out the organisation they joined is actually fighting more than just humans.
Dolmenwood is a mystical fairy-tale forest setting inspired by British folklore and stories like The King of Elfland’s Daughter. It’s a large dense forest with threads of civilisation, roads and towns and inns, running through it.
But if you move off those threads, the forest becomes dark and magical: fearsome frost elves prowl the forest glades, looking for ways to open the doors to Fairyland and begin their dominion once more; pagan cults venerate the many standing stones, and jealously guard their secrets; and the corrupted forces of the Nag Lord, chaos godling from the north, expand their reach bit by bit.
Player buy-in: The player characters are Dolmenwood natives, who have decided to leave behind the safe towns and fields that we know to head off in search of adventure. They’re typical loot-motivated adventurers. You’ll start off with an incomplete and inaccurate map of things people generally know of, but will need to explore to get concrete information. There’ll be plenty of rumours and strange happenings to give you ideas.
It’s the year 1125. Emperor Strephon, once a fit and handsome man, now pale and thin, consumed by stress, sits in a chair, resting his head in his hands as he studies the latest report from the front. This report, now over half a year old, confirms one thing: the Aslan are winning the war. Pax Rulin, the fortress world of the Trojan Reach, has fallen, the Reach itself is all but lost, and who knows how much further they’ll advance?
The other sector fleets have been displaced to assist, leaving skeleton defences elsewhere, and the Imperium’s other neighbours have been quick to take advantage. Incursions by the Zhodani Consulate, the Solomani Confederation, the Sword Worlds Confederation, and the Vargr, have resulted in the losses of dozens of worlds. Terra once more belongs to the Solomani.
Strephon reflects on how all this began, two years ago. It was supposed to be a great day, the highest ranking Aslan ever to make the trip to Capital: a representative not just for his clan, but for all the clans. One who could speak with the voice of the Tlaukhu. But there was a bomb. The ambassador immediately, bravely, honourably, selflessly, threw himself between Strephon and the explosion. The ambassador died in the blast, Strephon survived with only minor injuries. When the news made it back to the Hierate, they accused the Imperium of some sort of human trickery. It was the spark that ignited the powder keg, the fragile peace was shattered, and tens of thousands of territory-hungry ihatei poured over the border.
The independent worlds of the Trojan Reach were taken in a few months. The reborn Kingdom of Drinax put up a good fight, but was also lost. The imperial border was overrun, and it’s just been worse news since then. Eventually the Aslan will tire of war, and settle down to rule the worlds they’ve conquered, but how many more will they take before then?
Strephon sighs, and leans back with his eyes closed, massaging his creased forehead.
Then the door bursts open, a naval intelligence officer rushes in, glances around to make sure there’s nobody else in the room, and says “your majesty, it’s Project Longbow, it’s picked something up!”
Strephon’s mind turns to Project Longbow. A highly classified, beyond top secret, project to use a series of detectors spread across the whole Imperium, and all pointing at the same patch of sky, to make a single satellite dish dozens of parsecs wide. All to investigate some anomaly deep in space, close to the galactic core.
“Your Majesty!” the officer snaps, drawing Strephon out of his memories, “It’s a ship. A ship unlike any design we’ve ever seen before, coming from the core. And sir, it’s travelling at a speed of jump-10.”
Player buy-in: There are at least two campaign ideas here, both set against a backdrop of the collapse of the Third Imperium. We should decide what we want and flesh it out some more. Option 1 is a naval campaign where you’re fighting against one of the hostile forces, either the Aslan themselves, or one of the other factions taking advantage of the chaos. Option 2 is a scientific campaign where you’re part of a research crew sent by Imperial Naval Intelligence to investigate this mysterious high-tech ship coming from deep space. I guess there are some more options too, eg you could play a crew of regular people trying to get by in this societal collapse; or you could even play members of the invading forces, like a ship of Aslan seeking to make their names.
Drinax, once a mighty interstellar kingdom but now a bombed-out radioactive husk of a world, lies along two major trade routes and is close to two of the most significant interstellar empires in all of Charted Space: the Aslan Hierate and the Third Imperium.
The current king has a daring plan to recover some of Drinax’s lost glory: he needs a band of privateers and agents, who can curry favour with worlds once part of the kingdom, and also cause trouble along the trade routes between the Hierate and the Imperium. No empire is willing to allow another to establish a large permanent military force close to their borders, but they may be willing to delegate the job of policing the space lanes to a newly-reformed kingdom which they could easily squash if it starts trouble.
The king’s plan is to bring the old worlds of the kingdom back under the banner of Drinax, stir up piracy in the region enough that the empires agree something needs to be done, and then use that to get their blessing for a new interstellar state. Of course, if they learn too soon that Drinax is behind the upsurge in piracy, it’ll all fall apart…
Player buy-in: The player characters have two very different roles: negotiators and space pirates. Both of those have to sound fun. You will be able to (and are encouraged to!) play the faction game to some degree, making allies (or enemies) of powerful NPCs and groups, and so could delegate one side of the campaign entirely to some trusted aides, but it will take a while to get the resources to do that, so you’ll be doing both in the beginning. Furthermore, this is a sandbox-style campaign: there are several key adventures and missions, but player characters are expected to go above and beyond just those, and will need to think about how to curry favour with factions and cause trouble on the trade routes themselves.
The Ziru Sirka, the great interstellar empire of the Vilani, lasted for two thousand years. But inability to manage such a large expanse of territory caused a slow decline, which ultimately led to its conquest by the Terrans, and the establishment of their great interstellar empire: the Rule of Man.
But the Rule of Man lasted a scant few centuries before it, too, collapsed under its own weight. This time, nothing replaced it. The galaxy fell into anarchy, worlds were cut off from one another, technologies were lost, and many civilisations simply failed to survive: this is the Long Night, and this is when our game is set.
In the Long Night many small pocket empires rose, and fell. You are all scouts, ex-military, and similar sorts, employed by the government of the Sylean Federation, one of the larger pocket empires of the Long Night. It’s survived for 650 years now, but Sylea, too, is feeling the strain of administration at interstellar distances, and is also currently at war with two other pocket empires: the Interstellar Confederacy and the Chanestin Kingdom. Can Sylea solve its problems, or will it perish like so many others?
Player buy-in: The player characters are all explorers working government contracts to reach out to worlds not heard from in centuries (or millennia), to establish peaceful relations where possible, or maybe just to plunder them if the world is dead—after all, who’s to say you handed in everything you found to the government inspectors? It’s post-apocalypse in space. There will be space dungeons. But it’s also about the rise of the Sylean Federation into something even greater, so there’s plenty of scope for this to turn into a more political game if you want.
It’s the year 2090AD, the planets of the solar system have long-since been settled and exploited, and are governed by the Planetary Consortium based on Earth, which is essentially a puppet government run by the megacorps.
Everything changed a few years ago, with the invention of the Jump Drive, allowing ships to travel an entire parsec in a mere week. The Planetary Consortium saw this as the solution to the ongoing population crisis and lack of resources, and started constructing and loaning out jump-capable starships to competent crews, funding exploration, prospecting, and research.
Now, there are a few permanent colonies in the closest suitable systems. Further out, there are exploration hubs staffed by semi-permanent crews of outcasts, consortium officials, and explorers. Exploration is dangerous and proceeds slowly, at the cost of many lives. Lucky crews have found bizarre alien creatures, they’ve found resource-rich worlds which one day will be exploited, they’ve found suitable sites for new colonies, and some have even found artefacts and ruins from ancient civilisations. Nobody has found a living intelligent alien species yet, but First Contact is the dream of every explorer.
Player buy-in: The player characters are brave (or perhaps just foolhardy) space adventurers. They risk death every time they jump into uncharted space, and are motivated by the thrill of the unknown. Whatever you do and wherever you go, chances are you’re the first humans to do so.
A sandbox campaign set in the standard Traveller setting. This will probably be in a border region like the Spinward Marches or the Trojan Reach just because I think being set entirely within one of the vast space empires reduces the scope for small-scale interstellar politics: it’s either big-scale dukes-plotting-against-the-emperor kind of thing or power-tripping planetary governments, with nothing in between.
You will have a ship and a mortgage to pay off, or maybe a free ship from someone you owe favours to, and will need to do whatever it takes to meet those obligations. Carrying freight and passengers is easy but kind of dull, seeking out patrons to undertake missions for pay can be better but also risky. You’ll occasionally unintentionally stumble into trouble or adventure. You can follow rumours to find wealth, or maybe just disaster.
Player buy-in: This is essentially a job- or planet-of-the-week / “do what you want” campaign: I’ll prepare interesting locations, people, rumours, and opportunities, and you engage with whatever seems fun. This campaign can easily transform into a more focussed one if we want.
]]>However, while the standard combat system does manage to feel dangerous2, I don’t think it manages to feel fast-paced or chaotic. I’ve found combats to be a drag at times, with a short amount of in-game time taking a much larger amount of out-of-game time to resolve.
Call of Cthulhu uses a pretty standard combat system: combat is divided into rounds, in each round there is an unambiguous order in which each combatant gets to act, and after each combatant acts another round begins with (probably) the same order. This is great for D&D-style tactical combat, as it allows the players to treat the fight almost like a boardgame, putting their effort into figuring out the optimal moves. I don’t think it works so well if combat is supposed to feel chaotic though.
This memo does away with the strict turn order, and brings chaos back to combat. The system is based on Phased Real-Time Combat.
This has not been play-tested yet.
A round is broken down into these phases:
All actions resolved in the same phase conceptually happen at the same time.
The Keeper’s Rulebook lists the following actions which are suitable to perform on your turn during combat:
Additionally, you can choose to wait for another combatant to act before performing your action if your action is in the same or an earlier phase.
In each resolution phase, there will generally be clear groups of actions which have to be resolved together and which can be resolved independently of any other groups. For example, if there are four combatants engaged in melee as two pairs, each pair can be resolved independently.
Even within a group of combatants all fighting each other, order only matters in some situations. For example, all attack rolls can be resolved simultaneously, unless a combatant will be incapacitated or killed, in which case their attack and the killing blow need to be resolved in order.
Where order matters, combatants make an opposed DEX check. If there is a tie:
Concentration and interruption: certain actions require the character performing them to have uninterrupted concentration. For example, casting a non-instantaneous spell requires the character to maintain concentration between declaring the spell and casting it. If a character making such an action is successfully attacked, grappled, or otherwise interrupted, the effect does not take place.
I think this approach has a few big advantages over the standard round structure:
More closely matches the fiction: with a sequential round structure, we’re often told that things are really happening at the same time in the fiction, but I think that is basically impossible to justify. You know everything that happened before your turn in the round, so you’re almost certainly going to base your move on that. But if things are happening simultaneously, you shouldn’t be able to do that.
To use the needlessly complex-sounding jargon term, this is an example of ludonarrative dissonance: the narrative and the mechanics are in conflict.
Less disjointed: if everyone acts in turn order, a round of combat just becomes a monotonous recital of disjointed actions, jumping between all the combatants. Have you ever read a combat scene in a book, or seen one in a film, where it just shows what everyone is doing, one after the other? No! The narrative jumps between groups of characters, showing their part of the fight as its own miniature scene before jumping to another group.
By focusing on these small integrated scenes, the combat as a whole feels faster-paced.
More chaotic: because you have a much narrower view of what’s going on—you know the orders the PCs say, but only get hints of what the NPCs plan—it’s much harder to strategise like you would in a D&D-style tactical combat minigame. The fight becomes much more unpredictable and chaotic, as you have to take into account the fact that: (a) you don’t have perfect knowledge of what many of the other combatants are doing by the time it rolls around to your turn; and (b) you don’t even know the order in which your part of the fight is going to resolve.
This ties in very well with other themes of the game: investigators being just normal people thrown into dire situations over their heads; the mythos being a terrible threat which you can rarely confront directly and live; and for combat to be almost a failure state, when investigation and other more subtle techniques fail.↩︎
Investigators have low health relative to even mundane weapons: a single lucky bullet can kill someone outright.↩︎
Some monsters can perform multiple attacks in a single round.↩︎
Breath of the Deep (KR#247): fill the target’s lungs with water. Ongoing until resisted. (Currency of the Blue Sea, The Sailor’s Curse, Kiss of Brine)
Cause/Cure Blindness (KR#249): make the target blind without damage to the eyes or nerves, or undo blindness if those are intact. (Grant Sight, Shade of Darkness, The Pharaoh’s Curse).
Cloud Memory (KR#250): block a specific memory in the mind of the target. (Befuddle, Dumfound, Mystify)
Clutch of Nyogtha (KR#250): damage and paralyse the target. Ongoing until interrupted or resisted. (The Vile Wrench, The Insidious Wrath of the Dark Wizard, Ye Loathsome Tickle)
Curse (MoN#632): temporarily reduce the target’s attributes.
Curse of the Putrid Husk (KR#254): the target perceives their flesh as rotting. (The Insidious Nightmare, Summon Seven Devils to Afflick Thine Enemy, Wither the Mind of the Weak)
Death Spell (KR#254): set the target on fire. (Ye Dreadful Prickling, The Curse of the Fiery Doom, Cthuga’s Embrace)
Dominate (KR#254): bend the will of the target to the caster. (Command of the Wizard, The Chant of Possession, Baleful Influence)
Dread Curse of Azathoth (KR#254): drain POW from the target. (Utterance of the Last Syllable, Ye Doleful Leeching, By the True Name Thy Power is Sapped)
Dust of Suleiman (KR#255): harms an extraterrestrial being. Harmless to creatures made of earthly matter. (The Egyptian Powder, Protection of the Dead)
Enthrall Victim (KR#258): put the target in a trance until they are shocked. (Strike Dumb, The Silver Beguiling Tongue)
Evil Eye (KR#259): afflict the target with bad luck. (Ye Rite of Ill Fortune, Dark Curse, Witches’ Hex)
Fist of Yog-Sothoth (KR#259): strike a target with an invisible force and propel them backwards, with a chance to knock them unconscious. (Channel the Strength of the Opener of the Way, Smite Down Thine Enemy, The Hideous Blast of the Foul One)
Flash of Ra (MoN#635): create a blinding flash of light, which can also harm some creatures.
Grasp of Cthulhu (MoN#635): temporarily immobilise the target.
Green Decay (KR#259): turn the target into a pile of green mould. (The Creeping Mold, Ye Rotting Awfulness)
Hands of Colubra (MoN#635): temporarily transform the hands of the caster into venomous snakes which can reach 2m away.
Implant Fear (KR#259): fill the target with dread and disrupt their concentration. (Finger of Doom, Eibon’s Jinx, The Evil Eye)
Melt Flesh (KR#259): heat flesh (living or dead) to its melting point. (Rite of the Dissolution, Liquefy Skin)
Mental Suggestion (KR#260): the target carries out a single command of the caster. (Domination of the Will, Master and Servant, Bend Quarry to Thy Power, Mesmerise, Bend Will, Shake Resolve, Govern Mind, Implant Suggestion)
Mindblast (KR#260): attack the target’s sanity. (Curse of Enfeeblement, Wave of Doom, Abyss of the Mind’s Eye)
Mind Transfer (KR#260): permanently take over a target’s body, leaving the caster’s a dead husk.
Mirror of Tarkhun Atep (KR#261): the caster’s image appears in a mirror the target is looking at, the caster can also see through the mirror. (The Silvery Warning, Reflection of Hate, The All_Seeing Eye)
Pharaoh’s Breath (MoN#636): emit a poisonous vapour affecting everyone who cannot dodge.
Pharaoh’s Wrath (MoN#636): strike the target with lightning.
Power Drain (MoN#636): drain magic points from the target.
Red Sign of Shudde M’ell (KR#261): creates a sign that injures all those near to it. Those closest quake and spasm, unable to move normally. Ongoing until interrupted. (The Red Sign, The Mark of Fiery pain)
Shrivelling (KR#261): injure the target for a variable amount of damage. (Shriving, The Withering Blast of Death, The Black Words)
Steal Life (MoN#637): drain the life of the target, ageing them as the caster becomes younger.
Song of Hastur (KR#262): attack the target’s CON. (The king’s Cry, Music at the Court in Yellow, Bring Forth the Festering Boil of Great Agony and Torment)
Strike Blind (MoN#638): melt the target’s eyeballs.
Wave of Oblivion (KR#265): swallow the target in a great ocean wave. (Song of the Ocean’s Fist, The Salt Gift, Ye Watery Doom)
Wither Limb (KR#265): permanently wither the target’s limbs. (The Song of Pain, Shrivel Thy Enemy, The Wasting Burn)
Words of Power (KR#265): thoroughly convince an audience of what you are saying. (Serkhmenkenhep’s Words, Beguile the Unrighteous, Mastery of the Mob)
Wrack (KR#265): temporarily blind and incapacitate a target. (Woeful Agony of the Wretched, The Festering Blindness oft he Seven Hells, Rend Enemy)
Banishment of Yde Etad (KR#246): banish human-like unearthly intelligences that are not being controlled by something else. Requires multiple casters (at least 3). (Banish Spawn of the Seven Hells, Cast Out Demon, Curse of Awful Fire)
Bind Animal (MoN#630): compels an animal to perform a single specific command.
Bind Creature (KR#265): compels a creature to perform a single specific command. Name varies based on the target, eg:
Call Deity (KR#248): physically brings an avatar or god to the caster. Name and requirements vary based on the target, eg:
Contact Creature (KR#250): inform a random member of the targeted race that you wish to communicate. One or more representatives will arrive in the near future unless the distance is too great. Requirements vary based on the target, eg:
Contact Deity (KR#252): opens telepathic communication with a god. They tend to respond in visions, dreams, and nightmares.
Dismiss Deity (KR#249): send away an avatar or god which doesn’t want to leave. No specific names or requirements.
Summon Creature (KR#263): physically brings a random member of the targeted race. Normally also binds it and compels it to perform a single specific command beore returning. Name and requirements vary based on the target, eg:
Time Trap (MoN#638): bring a creature or person through time to the caster.
Quicken Fog-Spawn (MoN#636): hatch a fog-spawn and command it.
Create Gate (KR#256): create a stable magical portal to a distant location. Normally anyone can pass through the gate, but some require a key.
Find Gate (KR#256): locate or reveal a nearby gate. This does not grant the ability to open, close, or pass through it. This also does not reveal where the gate goes.
Gate Boxes (KR#256): create a pair of magical boxes which form either end of a gate.
Time Gate (KR#256): create a gate to the future or past of this area.
View Gate (KR#257): see what is on the other side of a gate, without travelling through.
Bless Blade (KR#246): make a blade capable of harming creatures invulnerable to mundane weapons. Enchantment is lost if the blade is broken. (Imbue Might of the Elder Ones, Ritual of the Seven Cuts, Spirit’s Bane)
Brew Space Mead (KR#247): create Space Mead, a drink which permits survival on a journey through space. (Breath of the Void, The Traveler’s Portion, The Quicksilver Draft of Blackest Night)
Create Charm (MoN#632): enchants an object to temporarily improve luck, dodge, etc.
Enchant Book (KR#255): creates a magical book which aids with the summoning and binding of Star Vampires.
Enchant Club (MoN#633): creates a magical club which can harm creatures unaffected by mundane weapons.
Enchant Knife (KR#255): creates a magical knife which aids with the summoning and binding of Dimensional Shamblers, or in sacrificing animals.
Enchantment of the Living Flame (MoN#634): creates a magical torch which can be ued to summon and bind multiple fire vampires.
Enchant Pipes (KR#255): creates a magical knife which aids with the summoning and binding of Servitors of the Outer Gods, or in other spells which require music.
Enchant Dagger (KR#258): creates a magical knife which can be used to kill and drain the POW of a victim.
Enchant Whistle (KR#258): creates a magical knife which aids with the summoning and binding of Byakhees.
Enchanted Dust of Anubis (MoN#633): creates a powder which is harmful to the undead.
Powder of Ibn-Ghazi (KR#261): create a powder which makes unseen things, including auras, visible. (Dust of Seeing, Witness of the Unseen, Compound of Perception)
Prinn’s Crux Ansata (KR#261): creates an ankh that can banish individual mythos creatures. (Sigil of Banishment, The Icon of Expulsion)
Seek the Lost (MoN#637): divine the location of an item.
Apportion Ka (KR#246): enchant and remove organs, gaining conditional invulnerability (eg, lungs give immunity to drowning and airborne poisons). The brain cannot be used. (Imbue Essence, Extraction of the Will, The Deathless Breath)
Blessing of Bast (MoN#630): restores HP and SAN.
Body Warping of Gorgoroth (KR#246): shape shift, possibly into a larger or smaller form. (Mastery of the Flesh, Skin Walking, The Black Pharaoh’s Touch)
Chant of Thoth (KR#249): gain a bonus to a single knowledge-related task. (The Rite of Cerebral Acuity, The Song of Erudite Addition, The Scholars Chorus)
Consume Likeness (KR#250): take on the form of a freshly dead person. Transformation is undone if hurt. (The Snake Skin Cloak, The Valusian Mantle, The Gift of Yig)
Deflect Harm (MoN#633): turn aside attacks for magic points.
Earthly Serenity (MoN#633): feel no pain and do not fall unconscious for an hour.
Empty Mind (MoN#633): temporarily gain POW for the purpose of defending against mental magic.
Flesh Ward (KR#259): gain additional defence. (Protect Thee from Mighty Blows, Armour of the Will, Blood Shield)
Healing (MoN#635): restores HP.
Journey to the Other Side (MoN#636): enter a trance and send the spirit to another plane (eg, the Dreamlands).
Mind Exchange (KR#260): temporarily swap minds with a willing target. (Vice versa Incantation, Rite of Exchange, The Cloak of Another’s Flesh)
Power of Nyambe (MoN#636): gain bonus magic points.
Send Dream (MoN#637): send a short, specific, dream to a target.
Voice of Ra (MoN#638): temporarily increase the caster’s APP and social skills.
Voorish Sign (KR#265): increase the potency of the next use of magic. (Sign of Power, Cunninge Pass)
Create Barrier of Naach-Tith (KR#253): creates a transparent 100-yard-diameter spherical barrier around the target. Anything bisected by the edge when is cast is pushed outside. (Great Ward of Naach-Tith, The Unseen Sphere that Traps the Demon)
Elder Sign (KR#255): activates a ward which protects against the mythos. For example, it disables a gate. (The Elder Seal, The Omen Branch, The Five Points of Wisdom)
Eye of Light and Darkness (MoN#634): a more potent version of an Elder Sign, needs several people performing the ritual overnight.
Seal of Isis (MoN#637): protects inanimate objects from magical attack. Does not protect people or act as a barrier to entry.
Seal of Nephren-Ka (MoN#637): creates a barrier against spirits and spells. The caster of the Seal is able to cast other spells within it unrestrained.
Ward of Anubis (MoN#638): create a ring of stones which alert the caster if disturbed or crossed.
Warding (KR#265): like Ward of Anubis, but does not warn if the stones are only crossed. (Stones of Safekeeping, Leave Thy Burden to the Rock, Circle of Protection)
Augury (MoN#630): reveals portents of the future.
Cast Out the Devil (MoN#631): frees a target from possession by another entity.
Create Mist of R’lyeh (KR#253): create a dense volume of mist in front of the caster. (Ye Terrible Cloud, Breath of the Dark Sea, The Dank Fog of Sailor’s Lost)
Create Zombie (KR#253): turn a corpse into a zombie which obeys the caster. The zombie continues to rot. (Ritual of the Undying, Black Binding, The Ashen Cowl, Raising of the Dead)
Create Ciimba (MoN#632): variant of Create Zombie. Ciimba are better at guarding and fighting.
Dismiss Spirit (MoN#633): variant of Cast Out the Devil.
Resurrection (KR#262): reduce a corpse to its essential salts, or resurrect a creature from the salts. (The Rite of Knowledge Long Lost, Recrudescence, Rite of Salts)
I am a fairly inexperienced GM. I’ve been running games since September 2018, in three systems, and for two of those I relied heavily on pre-written modules.
I can get pretty lost when I have to improvise. I can get stuck with analysis paralysis if it’s clear that a rule applies, but it’s not clear which or how, and so I need to make a ruling. I’ve been guilty of the classic mistakes, like just shutting down player actions I wasn’t prepared to handle, and heavily railroading people through my plot.
But I try to improve. I read a lot of GMing resources, I reflect on my sessions, and I ask for advice.
This memo is a collection of my advice, to you.
PCs are, generally, competent. So when a PC needs to do something, there are four cases:
If the action is easy, the PC just does it. Don’t roll for easy things.
If the action is challenging, but there are no external factors which put the outcome in doubt (like a hard time limit, or a threat of discovery), the PC just does it. You might want to roll to find out how well they do it (maybe it takes hours longer than hoped), but fundamentally they do it.
If the action is challenging, and there are external factors which put the outcome in doubt, roll for it.
If the action is impossible, the PC just doesn’t do it. Don’t roll for impossible things.
We’ve got a case (3): the thing is challenging, and the outcome is in doubt. The player rolls… and they miss their target.
If possible, don’t just stop the action. Sometimes that is appropriate, but often it can be more interesting for the PC to succeed, but in such an awful way that they wish they hadn’t. Or maybe they fail, but still learn how they could succeed in the future.
For example, let’s say the PC is picking the lock on a safe and they miss their roll. Which one of these three outcomes do you not want to narrate:
“You pick the lock, but as you reach for the money inside your hand trips a laser sensor, setting off the alarm! You hear the footsteps of the guards outside, they’ll be here in seconds.”
“You carefully examine the lock, and quietly swear under your breath: you’ll need some explosives or special-purpose picks before you can crack this safe open.”
“You fail to open the safe.”
Here, (1) has the player succeed, but with a significant complication; (2) has the player fail, but gives them a path forwards; and (3) does neither.
In a fight, an experienced swordsman doesn’t just flail around with their sword and hope to do some damage. So if a player fails a combat roll, something happens in the fiction that prevents their attack from succeeding.
Maybe the environment is difficult: the ceiling is too low, the corridor too narrow, there’s an exposed beam in the way. Maybe the enemy parries, or they dive aside. Anything other than the PC just misjudging their swing due to incompetence.
Decide on why the PC missed, and narrate it.
The same goes for when NPC attacks miss the PCs: it’s because the PCs swiftly evade, or parry, or use their weapon to prevent the NPC from coming close enough.
Sometimes a player will want to do something cool just because it’s cool, and not to gain a mechanical advantage. I know this may be a shocking idea. Maybe a player wants to swing off a chandelier during a bar fight, or leap across a table.
If that’s just fluff, for god’s sake don’t make them roll for it! If players have to roll for fluff, then they can fail (which will have consequences), so you’re encouraging them to not introduce excitement.
Consider this exchange:
The wall jump didn’t give any advantage to the attack (if it did, it’s sensible to roll for it!), so here the GM punished the player for trying to make “I swing my sword at the orc” a bit more fun.
The actions of the GM and the actions of the players often appear opposed.
But you are not the enemy of the players or the characters. It’s not the case that one side “wins” and the other side “loses”. Describe the world and portray its inhabitants genuinely, that is all.
The players will do things you don’t expect, and that can be very scary!
It’s comforting to feel prepared. You can spend a long time thinking about everything the players could do, writing notes for every possible situation, preparing dialogue for all the NPCs… and then the players do something unexpected, something you didn’t prep for.
There are three ways to handle this, two of which are bad:
Telling the players “no” or tricking them into getting back into your prepared storyline are not good things to do. Those techniques rob the players of agency, making them feel that their actions don’t matter.
You can never anticipate everything the players will want to do, so your prep will always be incomplete. And that’s just something you’ll have to accept, and become comfortable with.
If a clue is required to keep the session moving, do your best to make sure the players get it!
Make the clue available in a few different ways, and be prepared to improvise new ways if the players depart from what you expected. Ideally don’t make it require a roll; and if you do, have the player get the clue even if they fail, but maybe at a cost.
If the players completely disregard all the hints you’re giving towards this clue, and do nothing even remotely appropriate to get it… then you might have to make the clue optional and figure out how the session is going to proceed.
NPCs know things about the world—for example, a royal order of knights tasked with protecting the realm might know quite a bit about what various monsters are weak to—so PCs should too.
If there’s a piece of information that an NPC with the PC’s experience would be reasonably expected to know, then just tell the player it. You don’t need to write a book of everything each PC knows before the campaign starts, just bring things up in context.
And don’t require rolls for common knowledge! For example,
A common mistake is to treat NPCs as only existing for the sake of the PCs. But the PCs shouldn’t be the driving force behind everything that happens in the world, that makes the world just feel flat and uninteresting. NPCs get up to stuff too.
Give NPCs their own motivations and concerns which don’t involve the PCs. If the PCs never showed up, what would Bob the blacksmith be doing with his life? Treat NPCs like real people, and the world will feel more alive.
Furthermore, most people won’t fight to the death. NPCs are the same! They will retreat or surrender rather than die, and this applies to intelligent monsters too.
Most RPG systems have a lot of rules. Even “rules-lite” systems can be difficult to wrap your head around when you’re new to them. This is a common source of panic for inexperienced GMs.
But don’t worry! If a situation comes up in play and you don’t remember the rule, you have two options:
They both have their pros and cons. (1) means you get a definitive answer, but it’s not great if you’ll take more than a couple of minutes. Watching someone flip through a book isn’t that enthralling. (2) is quicker, but you could get it wrong. It’s ok to make mistakes, just check your rulings after the session, and adjust in sessions going forward.
Sometimes you will disagree with a rule: you might think that it’s clunky, not fun, or just plain wrong.
You can change it if you want to.
But before you do, make sure you understand the rule first. Game designers are generally good at what they do, and games get playtested before publishing. If you’re confident you understand the rule, and you still don’t like it, go ahead and change it. But make sure you clearly communicate that to your players, and that you adjudicate your new rule consistently.
RPG systems have rules for situations the game designers thought likely to come up, but each individual game is a unique thing. Your campaign might go in unexpected, and unusual, directions.
For example, your players might end up becoming pirates, but there are no rules in the book for ship-to-ship combat. By all means, make something up to fill the gap.
RPG sessions are usually multiple hours long. Three or four hours is common.
The longer the session, the more likely your players will need a break. Someone will need to go to the toilet, or to stretch their legs, or to get a new drink.
You could play continuously until someone interrupts play because they need to stop for a bit, but that’s not great. It puts pressure on your players, because people generally don’t want to interrupt everyone’s fun.
Alternatively, you can decide when the breaks will be, and let the players know in advance. Maybe you have a 15-minute break in the middle. Or a 10-minute break every hour and a half. This is good because it removes the pressure from the players. Sure, someone might still need to stop play before the scheduled break, but usually people will be able to hold out.
A player finishes talking, and nobody else starts.
What feels like minutes pass. If you’re playing online and can’t see your players faces, you imagine that everyone is just sitting in silence at their computers, waiting.
Are they waiting for you? They must be! The silence is so long! Nobody knows what to do!
And then another player starts talking. In reality, 15 seconds have passed.
When you’re the GM, silences always feel like they last forever, even when they’re only brief. Before you panic too much, glance at the clock.
As you get towards your scheduled end time, start to look for a good point to end the session. A cliffhanger or a bit of downtime are good for this.
You don’t want to have to choose between running late or stopping in the middle of the action. Much better to finish early.
I’ve found these (and more) resources useful as both a player and a GM:
]]>The result is more or less a theory of Ideas1, with bits added on to make the magic work.
The Arts and Academe sourcebook talks about the Aristotelian theory of Ideas, which I don’t think is inconsistent with the system put forward here, as it’s mostly a way of categorising properties. Also, that book doesn’t explain how Muto and Rego fit in with the theory.
Hermetic magic is based on several different techniques and forms, collectively known as arts. This forms a verb/noun system: the technique is the sort of effect you want to apply, and the form is the sort of thing you want to apply the effect to.
In this memo we’re most concerned with the techniques, which are:
The forms are:
To summarise the techniques:
This seems to be referencing a concept of Ideas: individuals belong to some sort of ontological groups and have “natural” properties and “unnatural” properties.
Elsewhere the core book talks about the Essential Nature of a thing. For example, a person could have “blindness” in their Essential Nature: such a person would have been born blind, and cannot have their sight restored by Creo, even though that fits under the umbrella of making things into a better example of their kind.
This suggests that either Ideas are more specific than “man” or “dog”—are more like “blind man” (and presumably “brown dog”)—or that Ideas only explain part of the story, and things have a secondary set of natural properties. I adopted the second approach (see the alternative theories section for why), and call this secondary set of natural properties the Individual Nature.
Now we can define Essential Nature:
Here is our first attempt at explaining the techniques:
This sort of works, but not fully. Where do the properties added by Muto go? To the Idea? To the Nature? How come Muto can only remove properties which were added with Muto? Why cannot Perdo remove such properties? How does an object “remember” properties removed with Muto or Perdo (so they can come back when the magic ends)? Is Intellego fooled by Muto or Perdo? The broad strokes of the theory seem right, but there are gaps.
Let’s add a new bag of properties for Muto:
To solve the problem of remembering removed properties so that they can come back, there are three options:
I went for option (3). Option (1) adds three new bags of properties, which feels like a lot. Option (2) opens the possibility of things having disabled-by-default properties, which doesn’t feel right, and why would properties have a state anyway? Option (3) feels pretty contrived, but less so than (1) and doesn’t have the problem of (2).
To remove a Muto-added property from the Quasi-nature, Muto can add an overriding anti-property to the Quasi-nature. But what about Perdo? Perdo can only remove properties a thing could naturally have, so Perdo’s anti-properties cannot be put into the Quasi-nature. Consider this sequence of events:
Is the weight of the stone 20kg, 10kg, or 0kg? As Perdo can only remove natural properties, surely it cannot affect the unnatural weight produced by Muto. Therefore the stone must weigh 20kg. However, if Perdo added an “anti-weight” anti-property to the Quasi-nature, then the 20kg would be nullified, as Perdo was cast after Muto, making the stone weigh 10kg! The only way the stone could weigh 0kg is if Perdo overrode Muto, and an anti-property overrode all matching properties.
So we also need a bag of anti-properties for Perdo:
Perdo cannot override Perdo (there are no anti-anti-properties), so unlike with Muto there is no need to track the order in which spells are cast, and so an unordered collection is fine.
Both Perdo and Muto can override the Essential Nature, but Perdo cannot override Muto. So we have an unambigious way to combine the bags of properties, giving the Nature of a thing:
Now we can explain the techniques:
The obvious alternative to the above theory is to unify Idea with Individual Nature: each individual has a highly-specific Idea, which encompasses both what sort of thing it is (eg, “horseness”) and also the unique traits of that individual (eg, “brownness”).
The question then becomes: how are these Ideas related?
Each individual has its own Idea, and there is no inherent relationship between the Ideas of different individuals. Any relationship which humans use is merely a human theory with no ontological significance.
This has two main downsides:
There is no inherent reason to group individuals together in one way over any other way: if any two horse-like beings have totally unrelated Ideas, then in what sense are they both horses? All groupings become arbitrary.
This would suggest that God didn’t create “horses”, He created many similar individuals which humans have since grouped together as “horses”. However, there clearly is some ontological significance to the group “horses”, because horses can breed with other horses, and they cannot (for example) with crocodiles.
There is no justification for why you could make a spell which operates on any arbitrary horse, rather than needing to be reinvented for each individual.
The Ideas of individuals have some inherent grouping, which forms a hierarchy of Ideas.
There is an Idea of “Bob the horse”. There is an Idea of “Daisy the horse”. There is also an Idea of “horse”, which Bob’s and Daisy’s Ideas are sub-Ideas of.
The has three main downsides:
It’s not clear how many levels the hierarchy should have: are there other Ideas between “horse” and “Bob the horse”? For example, are there Ideas for each breed of horse?
This splits Ideas into two types: those which correspond to individuals, and those which correspond to groups. In what sense are these the same? And if they’re not the same, isn’t this just the Idea / Individual Nature split in the main theory expressed in a more complex way?
What direction does the arrow of causality go? Does the Idea of “horse” have properties because all sub-Ideas have those properties; or do those sub-Ideas of “horse” have properties because the Idea of “horse” does?
The theory explains the techniques, but not the forms. How do they come into it?
There are a few possibilities:
There’s a “hierarchy of Ideas” thing going on, where the tops of the hierarchy are the Hermetic forms. I don’t like this for the same reason I don’t like the hierarchy of Ideas: the form-Ideas seem qualitatively different to other Ideas. This also feels like it implies God came up with the forms before creating any other things, and that Hermetic forms reflect the fundamental building blocks of reality, which I’m not too satisfied with.
Form is another category behind Idea, making a thing’s Essential Nature the combination of the Form, Idea, and Individual Nature. But if each aspect of Hermetic magic theory requires a new bag of properties in the metaphysical theory, is the theory really explaining anything?
Forms are actually properties4, for example the form Ignem affects all things with the property “is affected by Ignem” in its Idea. However, if forms are properties, then there are no corresponding anti-properties, as you cannot Perdo away a thing’s ability to be affected by a certain form. Or maybe you can but your Perdo is immediately dispelled, as it can no longer affect the object. This feels pretty ad hoc.
I’m leaning towards the third option as it’s the least unpleasant, despite the Perdo behaviour.
Whatever the answer, one thing we can say for certain is that forms are just a crude approximation to how God built the universe.
More popularly known as “Forms”. For example, all round things are related to the Idea of “roundness”, which exists independently of any individual round thing, and indeed cannot be perfectly represented in the physical world, as all real things have imperfections. To avoid confusion I’ll use “Idea” to refer to the Platonic concept, and “form” to refer to the Hermetic forms.↩︎
SPEH-kee-ayss. The fundamental particles of sensory data. All things emit species of different sorts constantly.↩︎
Perdo is a bit of an outlier, because it seems it can do two qualitatively different things. Is there a Hermetic breakthrough awaiting discovery which splits Perdo into two arts which can be mastered individually?↩︎
This is essentially the difference between Platonic realism (Ideas exist independently of any particular instance) and Aristotelian realism (Ideas do not exist independently of their instances).↩︎