Here is the essay version of a few very revelatory posts about the next game (After Saga, which is undergoing some decent levels of redesign), Parliament of Crocodiles.

The Mechanics

There are a few conceits of the design.

·       The game is about something. So the mechanics have to support and encourage and allow what it is about.

·       That something is this very specific “driven killer/ ubermensch” thing with strong horror overtones.

·       The mechanics must be easy to learn (to appeal to a large market) but have a depth which allows for strategy.

So that was my starting point. Here is what I came up with:

First, the core mechanics. There was a brilliant bit of design that I had codified making a previous game called Valid Actions. It was essentially a mechanization of a conceit that had existed since AD&D: namely, that you could do things that a person could do. By stating it in rules-terms, I was able to then deviate from it in different directions. What this did was create a framework for rules which could give you a binary yes/no answer to your character’s capabilities without rolling dice.

This freed up a lot of design space for where the dice mechanics would go. Essentially, the game could say “there is an answer for that, but the really important things you will roll for”.

The dice and stats I kept simple, like D&D of yore. I’ll admit some heavy influence from ACKS and Zack S. here: they both made their entire game grow out of the stats on the character sheet.

So I paired the really important stuff I wanted to roll dice for down to 4 core stats (the following is actually a quote from the design document):

Violence- Used to injure, kill or destroy. When you succeed on a Violence roll, you determine the amount of damage you inflict on a foe and how you inflict it, including killing them outright. This can also be used to break inanimate objects.

Hunting- Used to stalk, hide and sneak. If you succeed on a hunting roll then you are hidden and can get the drop on your adversary, even slaying them soundlessly from the shadows. You additionally use this stat to evade a pursuer.

Dominance- Used to frighten, coerce or browbeat. When you succeed on a Dominance roll, your foe is terrified, entranced or otherwise cowed out of fear. You can bully or terrify mortals into obeying your will this way, or leave them gibbering wrecks at your discretion.

Deception- Used to lie, wear a disguise or blend in. When you succeed on a Deception roll, you tell a perfect lie, totally convincing your target that you speak the truth. You can additionally use this stat to blend in with a crowd or fit in socially despite your monstrous nature

Astute readers will note the degree of power success gives you. This is actually a consequence of another bit of design that I did indeed crib from modern game design: shared narrative control.

When you succeed on a roll against a thing? You get to determine what happens to it, within the parameters of your success.

So, you win a Violence roll VS a guy: You can hold his throat in a death grip, or tear his head off, or get him in a figure-4 leglock. You get an “up to killing him and anything that could be accomplished through violent physical dominance” result for the rest of that scene/combat.

This rule was meant to allow player agency, empowerment and options. When you win that Violence roll, you have power of life and death over that guy. It’s up to the player how and when it manifests.

If you want to talk frankly about this mechanic, it is explicitly narrative control. You make your roll, there’s a little chunk of the narrative you own now. All of the stats do similar things.

The inverse however, is not true: failing a Violence roll just means you’re injured or driven off. So it becomes a game of risk; how much damage are you willing to risk to kill this guy? This effect had the happy result of making the character endure horrific wounds, shrug them off and keep kicking ass, which was great.

So, Diceless mechanics for the “needs to be answered but not that important”, very simple stats to allow easy entry, “win a chunk of the narrative” style diced mechanics to empower characters and grant them options.

The Dice? Right now, you just roll a D6 over a difficulty. Stat bonuses to the core 4 are provided by options in the power lists, which I will now talk about forever.

The full treatment of the Mechanics

(I quote here from the playtest document):

1. The Dark Power Die

The Dark Power Die (DPD)

This is a six-sided die, otherwise called a D6. When you want to overcome a mortal in any way, you must roll over their Capability (ranked 0-5).

If you roll higher, then you have carte blanche to narrate what becomes of your adversary (within the boundaries of reason and the scope of the effect rolled)

If you roll equal to their capability, then the mortal checks you. You cannot overcome them, though they can do no harm to you in return.

If you roll lower than them, then you are in trouble. Through luck or skill, the mortal has gotten the better of you. You suffer a consequence appropriate to the contest lost.

The categories of effect

1.    Violence. Any time you wish to do physical harm to another.

2.    Dominance. When you want to socially overcome a foe.

3.    Hunting. When you want to stalk or hide from a foe.

4.    Deception. When you want to create any sort of lie or falsehood.

2. Diceless Actions

All characters have certain actions they can perform or attempt without needing to roll dice. The following can all be a part of your description of the character’s actions. They are simply assumed to always be possible unless the GM explicitly says otherwise.

-Characters are assumed to be capable of anything a human being can reasonably do. Wearing clothes, driving a car, walking, speaking etc. Anything that can be done by a typical person your character can do with a similar amount of effort.

-In addition to this basic aptitude, monstrous characters have additional abilities:

Strength: Can lift a motorcycle over their head. Can flip a car.

Speed: Top speed comparable to a horse at full gallop.

Reflexes: Manual dexterity and coordination easily the equal of a world-class gymnast, parkour expert or acrobat.

Senses: Eyesight keener than an owl. Hearing, taste and smell equivalent to a wolf.

Mind: Can easily acquire new skills, master new ideas and learn new languages in a fraction of the time a human being can.

Lifespan: Immortal unless killed by violence.

Resilience: Does not die from disease (though may still be a carrier and suffer symptoms of truly terrible illnesses). Can endure knife wounds as easily as punches, bullets as easily as severe blunt trauma.

Needs: Monsters need never eat, sleep, breath, drink or create excrement. Their only true need is their insatiable need to kill.

For the rolled actions, there are mechanics for singular targets and multiple, mortal foes VS monstrous ones, and defensive VS offensive rolls. Whenever I get the tiers of play completed, then these actions will scale up and down the tiers as well.

The diceless actions merely generate a yes/no answer for the players/GM. Can I outrun that guy? Can I lift this thing? Etc.

The senses are also really sharp, which gets expanded in the GM chapter by explicitly directing them to give characters a huge wealth of information about their surroundings (this is to heighten the “player as hunter” feeling of the game).

In order to pace the game but allow for a non-nuclear play structure, I implemented a simple framework which shared the spotlight between all participants. Again, I quote the playtest document:

Scenes/Spotlight

Scenes, Acts and the pacing of the game

Every Night of game time there are three acts (dusk, midnight and darkest hour) per player. Every act is played in a strict order. Each character gets a turn to have the spotlight and drive the narrative.

ACT BREAKDOWN

The Dusk Act

Establishes or reintroduces the characters, plots and story.

The Midnight Act

Tension and danger mount during this act as the characters pursue their goals.

The Darkest Hour Act

All of the tension that has been mounting through the session finally culminates in an explosive climax of action!

Right now the structure is somewhat loose. I hope to mechanize it by refining what needs to happen in an Act and making certain that in playtest I can run a given Act within the parameters I define.

My hope is that this allows the game to flow (as good games should) but have a structure that allows characters to pursue their own agendas, even to the point of competition. So far this has been borne out in playtest, but it needs more defined parameters if it’s going to do its job.

…..

The Four flavors of Evil

I really wanted you to be able to build your own monster. I am slightly addicted to categories (and the game needed overarching strategies so that it wasn’t just a mechanical free-for-all) so I created 4 monster archetype power lists, each emphasizing one of the stats (and a particular playstyle).

·       Diabolical, which were your vampire/succubus style. These powers played on the fear of the spiritual; damnation and deals with the devil and losing your soul. Emphasizes Dominance.

·       Invasive, your body-snatcher style. These played on the fear of being invaded physically (like by a parasite) or mentally (like from hypnosis or memetics). Emphasizes Deception.

·       Primal, your werewolf style. These preyed on the good ol’ fashion fear of being eaten. Emphasizes Hunting.

·       Monstrous, your Frankenstein-style. Body horror, pure and simple. And a fair amount of general Squick. Emphasizes Violence.

These all manifest as lists of character options (Dark Powers is the working name. I might get a little more flowery in the final product). You’re not locked into one list either; mixing and matching is where the “build your own monster” stuff comes into play.

I’d like to give a more in-depth treatment of the four archetypes here. In the order in which they were conceived, I will now discuss them in as much detail as exists for them.

Diabolical

This once composed the entirety of the character concepts of the game. The original draft had a very general list of “dark powers”. They evoked such powers as the vampires in let the right one in, the lost boys, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and interview with a vampire.

However, when playtesting early drafts of the rules the players would throw curve balls at me. They brought some very unique and fascinating ideas for different monsters to the table. Since the game was in such a proto-state, if they wanted a power or ability that didn’t exist in the list, I just made one on the spot and added it in.

It got to the point where I found myself dreaming up new powers which, though they didn’t fit the “vampire” paradigm, were too cool to not make a few rules for. The list got big.

When I decided to add the deep levels of metagame and late-game, the need to have distinct strategies converged with the need to construct identity from the dark powers list. Hence the archetype lists.

The Diabolical list has all the cool vampire powers of that original list. In addition, I saturated it with a liberal dose of demoniac flavor, giving it a Faust-y vibe.

·       There is a set of powers that lets them forge binding magical contracts

·       They can grant wishes in exchange for services, devotion or sacrifice

·       Their magical rituals are powered by blood and have their own urges. They can use these rituals to summon demons, cast powerful spells and other “warlock”-y things

·       They are the lords of Dominance. They swiftly acquire and expertly leverage masses of mortal thralls

·       Even when not expressly using blood magic, their powers tend towards the “magical”: mesmerism, shadow manipulation, flight, ritual resurrection…

I wanted people to Choose from this list to have powers like the classic Dracula. But I wanted these abilities to share his need for a power base to leverage them. Without it, they are left vulnerable.

Primal

If you’re going to ape white wolf (and it cannot be argued that I’m not doing so) then the sequence is: vampire, werewolf, other stuff. Also, I have a big soft spot for werewolves. Maybe you can thank Ron Spencer’s awesome depictions of them. Maybe an American werewolf in London had something to do with it. I dunno, I just love the hell out of the little creeps.

But past the werewolves (or were-whatevers), my wife came up with a really cool idea for a Selkie character. She kind of blended mermaid with siren with angry sea goddess and made this fantastic character concept out of it. So “elemental” got added to the shape-changing and became a more general “nature red in tooth and claw”.

I like to think of these guys as the abominable snowman, or bigfoot, or wendigos. More abstractly, things like gargoyles or any clearly bestial or primordial thing can be represented with these.

·       Naturally, changing shape is a staple power. But it is more specifically “changing into something monstrous” Or “changing into an animal” or “Changing into a living embodiment of an element”

·       Elemental affinity and control grants them a broadly-applicable and thematic set of powers

·       To reflect their strong ties to their environment, their list emphasizes territory building and defense over acquisition

·       They are the undisputable masters of hunting. Meaning you can run AND hide, but you’re still screwed

·       In addition to human minions, they acquire a fierce and versatile army of beasts. They can also gain large bodies of a given element as a sort of minion

·       They can direct and enhance weather and plant growth to nightmarish degrees

·       They can acquire strange abilities mimicking such life forms as moles, bats, wolves, spiders, etc. They enhance nature’s tools to monstrous proportions

I wanted these guys to have a “don’t disturb the sleeping dragon” kind of vibe. Urban legends spring up around their small territories. Those who do not heed the warnings of these tales find themselves in the belly of the beast. Tactically they favor a defensive playstyle, growing with slow inevitability like the tide.

Invasive

The genesis for this archetype uniquely arose out of playtesting. I can’t really take credit for it! I had two different testers both of whom went for different versions of the “body-snatcher” type. In both cases they way outstripped the acquisition/power curve of the game as I’d envisioned it, so in both cases they broke the game in delightful ways. I learned a lot about what the game didn’t do and couldn’t handle from these testers. This archetype was adopted almost defensively; I needed to codify what you could and couldn’t do with this kind of character, and clean off a place for them on the power curve.

Also, these guys wound up getting some of the more “alien” powers. There are echoes of H.P. Lovecraft and Whitley Strieber in them.

·       Their signature power is puppeteering the body of a human being.

·       They have powers which leverage their inhuman anatomy. Prehensile limbs, masses of tentacles, elastic musculature, etc.

·       They can also spore and spawn in distinctly alien ways. Their method of acquiring minions is very “invasion of the body-snatchers”, including cloning or infesting human minions with psychic larva.

·       They can acquire telepathy, telekinesis and invisibility

·       They are masters of Deception. They worm their way into positions of power and make obedient husks of crucial personnel.

·       They have powers which aid them in espionage, sabotage, and shadow-wars of all kinds

The space I carved out for these guys in the long strategy of the game is one of trickery, cheats, and dangerous but quick paths to power.

The idea is that they can swiftly invade people of power and authority, but risk a lot in leveraging their power before they fully absorb the nuance of their stolen identity. Where the other archetypes are resource-management, this one is risk-management. 

Also, I lumped a lot of what I love from such classics as Alien and David Cronenberg’s Shiver into this archetype. I love the “monster as body parasite”, and baby, these guys are it.

Monstrous

This game is a monster mash, so I had to invite Frankenstein.

Something about dead, necrotic things shambling to life is too beautifully grotesque to leave out. The images of corpses dragging themselves out of graveyards was so intoxicating to me!

This archetype got a lot of classical “monster” stuff, hence the name. They got the undead thing (not the sexy vampire kind, but the nauseating zombie kind). They got some “unstoppable golem” elements from Jewish legend. Also, I was heavily inspired by the body horror of David Cronenberg, so I gave them a lot of squicky powers to bring that into the game. Finally, to add a touch of dark ages, I gave them the powers of plague and corruption (which synched nicely with their “despoiler” vibe).

·       Many of their powers corrupt and spoil resources cherished by other monsters. Monsters, however, may still use them (well, once at least…)

·       They can draw minions from the ranks of the dead, as well as transform victims into powerful, monstrous servants

·       They are the champions of Violence. Whether it be from sheer ferocity or a numb resistance to bodily harm, these guys are formidable foes

·       They create sicknesses that spread their influence with their symptoms

·       They use their flesh as both body and tool. They can spawn minions from themselves, forge their body into weapons, and so on

·       They are incredibly resilient to death. Even torn to shreds, they can sew themselves back together

·       They can survive and thrive in the most extreme and toxic of environments. Indeed, they often create such places of power for themselves

Strategically, these guys are pure powerhouses. They favor (and excel at) direct, uncomplicated confrontation. Their long-game strategy is lopsided though: because their larger-scale powers putrefy and destroy resources, they have a “boom and bust” playstyle which grants them blasts of overwhelming offense followed by cycles of surly defense.

As you can see, each list encourages a different playstyle, which I should get into because it is what I’m currently plowing through.

The Big, Invisible game

So here’s where I got clever.

Taking a nod from Settlers of Catan, Magic: The Gathering, Risk, etc., and combining it liberally with the “territory acquisition” aspects so gloriously illustrated in Damned Cities, I made a long game informing the night-to-night play of the game.

Let me expand exhaustively on that. In this game, you can steal money, use it to fund a shady criminal empire, and become a crime family kingpin. Or, you could hypnotize your way up the corporate ladder and become a CEO of a major corporation. 

Or if that’s too much, you could just hollow him out and live in his skin. Y’know, whatever.

What I’m saying is you can become rich, influential, politically powerful, etc. etc. In addition, if you just want to create an army of zombies or demon slaves? That’s cool, you can do that too.

But it takes a while, and there’s resistance. I mean, that’s kind of a no-brainer. Of course the cops and the government and concerned citizen groups are going to object to the zombie thing.

But you can acquire that power… And, there’s always the chance you turn that power on a fellow player. And take their stuff.

So that’s the implicit engine that drives acquisition of one kind of power or another.

But the Method….

That’s up to your choice of Dark Powers. Each list has its favorite play style, and like in M:TG you can mix and match to varying degrees of effectiveness.

To reiterate, the general outline of the styles is thus:

·       Diabolical: Get resources and minions quickly, leverage them to generate powerful magical effects (kind of like getting rich quick and making WMD’s)

·       Invasive: “Earmark” powerful late-game resources through your ability to infiltrate and influence them. Lots of risk, lots of potential gain.

·       Primal: Defensive. Slowly acquire and consolidate territory and use it to increase your personal power. Kind of like Green in M:TG, actually.

·       Monstrous: Boom and Bust. You burn through resources and territory, ruining them, but get a huge payoff in return. High offense style.

All of this cleverness and high-concept metagame design is the masterpiece underlying the engine. Which is to say, it’s complicated as hell and I hate it. I’m slowly, slowly cobbling it together, but GOD it sucks.

Big stick, subtle carrot

All of the territory acquisition stuff is the promise of the powers a character explicitly has. It’s the not-explicit carrot. But there is an explicit stick. Two, actually: Urge and Retribution.

Urge is a meter that builds up night by night as you play. As it grows, it makes your need to kill have a bigger and bigger effect on your character. When it maxes out, you do everything in your power to find somebody to kill.

It’s a simple mechanic, but it means that characters are constantly dealing with managing it (it drops down to 0 when you do the deed). It also means they’re dealing with Retribution.

Retribution rises as character rub the ruling powers the wrong way. At the start of the game, the ruling powers of course are our modern society and governments. So, breaking laws or just doing notorious and unpleasant things draws down Retribution.

This is another meter like Urge, but as it builds more and more powerful forces make life hell for the character. What starts as a nosy private detective often ends in a SWAT team kicking down your door.

The Scale, all the way up to Armageddon

Finally, I want to talk about scale.

You start out with a monster, a liar, and that’s it. You’re Norman Bates in his hotel. You’re Dracula in his castle.

You leverage your considerable powers first to fill your urge, but after that? It’s up to you.

If that invisible carrot motivates you, you’ll pretty rapidly climb in power. As the game progresses, ideally, you will start to influence entire districts of a city, then the city itself.

I’ve limited the initial design to “city” being the biggest thing, but this will likely get upped to “the whole world”. The trouble has been giving each “tier” some personality, verisimilitude, and a downward-cascading effect on lower tiers without the system getting cluttered.

But yeah, eventually your powers and Urge grow to the point where you’re a biblical terror. Streets run red with blood, etc.

Your foes upgrade too. Initially they’re gumshoes and desperate survivors seeking vengeance, but eventually you’ve got to stare down your own personal Van Helsing.

What Needs to Get Done

The resource system. I’m caught in a bind between realism and playability, between hyper-detail and necessary abstraction. I’ve been studying real-world economy and industry, crime family monetary structure, tax laws, accounting handbooks, etc. etc.

This system is so critical to the balance and verisimilitude of the game that it needs to be damned near perfect. Until something that is aesthetically and mechanically pleasing arises as a viable system through playtest or a stroke of genius, this crucial facet is going to hold back the rest of the design.

The Dark Powers. These have to uphold both the “cool” factor of the iconic powers and the strategy of the silent game. I’m very confident that I can flesh these out: the thing that was holding me back was the strategy aspect. Once I figured out that the rate of territory/resource accrual is the cornerstone of silent-game strategy, everything suddenly became gravy. I’ve just got to actually write the rest of them and playtest.

The tiers of play. The thing about these is that larger-tiers need to define aspects of lower-tiers. I also need to choose jumps in power that work with everything else and scale from “lives in a basement” all the way to “I just conquered Australia”. I’ve got it done up to “city”, but it just needs another round of cleaning-up and redesign before I add the bigger tiers.

The rest of the design hinges on getting all of that done. I’ll need to scale the rolled actions and dark powers with the tiers of play, but that kind of design comes naturally to me so it should follow on that big design’s coattails.

Once all of that is completed, it’s done and off to editing. 

Now, about Parliament of Crocodiles...

The Inspiration

This game came out of a weird mental alchemy. I had the great pleasure of picking up a horror movie I’d never heard about before: a little flick called Let the Right One in. It’s about a little girl vampire and the little boy who gradually becomes her thrall. It’s an extremely visceral and character-centric movie. Let’s say it had an effect on me.

A little bit later (like within the same few weeks) two other events added their weirdness to the soup of this movie in my brain. I got the chance to finally watch American Psycho (and I now understand why people love this movie) and I went to the zoo with my kids.

The zoo thing I think may have been the reactant. I was pushing the stroller with my youngest in it, checking out the crocodile pond, with both of these movies buzzing around in my head. This was one off those croc tanks where it’s on two levels: you can see it from above (like a victim would see it), where all the crocs just look like floating logs. But if you go down to under water level you see the crocs from below (as another crocodile would) and they’re perfectly visible animals, arranged like they’re sitting in parliament.

So there it all was: the metaphor, the name, and the central conceit of the game. You were a hunter living invisibly to your prey, but instantly known to your fellow monsters. You were in the Parliament of Crocodiles.

…..

In addition to the above films, I’ve always been a fan of two films my super negligent family let me watch at way too early an age. Those being Interview with a Vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Those two, most notably the powers of Dracula and Louie’s torments, had a strong influence on the game.

Books that have influence the game have come to include the masterful treatises on realpolitik (both penned long before the term came into existence) the Prince by Machiavelli and Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Also, in general, the works of Ayn Rand with her peculiar, sociopathic protagonists greatly influenced the tone of the game.

Other influences include Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Frankenstein the modern Prometheus, the films of David Cronenberg, and various bits of myths, legends, fairy tales and folklore.

…..

Vampire: where it succeeded and failed for me

I was a big fan of Vampire; the requiem’s later books. Damned cities and the Danse Macabre in particular. The reason I liked them was because they gave mechanics to…. Well, things that had needed mechanics since the core book. Namely territory and social rules. Both products also had a lot of meat and style which made them a joy to read.

I especially was a fan of Damned cities, with its descriptions of forgotten sewer catacombs and abandoned subways buried far from the light of day and the memory of man. I’m with Zack S. when it comes to dungeons, so this stuff really set my imagination on fire.

There was a lot that I couldn’t game in Vampire though.

For instance, there were too damn many vampires. It seemed like there was supposed to be a thriving community of dozens or even hundreds of vampires in a city (fucking… What?!). The factions, which never made sense to me, made no sense without at least this many vampires in a city. The Disciplines oscillated between useless and merely disappointing. The Mekhet never lived up to their own (humble) hype (and were a piss poor replacement for the awesome Malkavians of yore). There was no unifying antagonist, nor compelling reasons for protagonists to really…. Do anything.

Say what you will of old vampire, the punk added a needed kick in the ass to the gothic. It was a furious and directionless youth culture energy that propelled you to rise up and best your elders, or at the very least flip them off and pull the trigger on your shotgun. The name of the game is literally meant to evoke the ennui of eternity… Not really compelling stuff to play.

Also, the factions? Some of them had no representation in their own game. The Carthians, which I thought were awesome, didn’t have a clear goal that actually made any actual changes to anything. They were sort of vampire communists (but not really) as opposed to the vampire feudalists (which were led by capitalists? Kind of?). And their big thing was supposed to be that they wanted to coexist with humans, but actually that was a terrible idea if you paused to think about it. So, their main thing, if attempted, would kill a chronicle. If it was attempted in a big way (even just one city!) it would kill the setting. Not well designed.

So there was a ton of Vampire: TR that I couldn’t use. I loved it enough to run it anyway, and with some duct tape and some pruning shears, and liberally aided by Damned Cities and the Danse Macabre, I did run a few decent chronicles. Each one was plagued with problem from the setting, the rules, the pacing, the XP system… Yeah I could go on for a while but no. I’m not here to rant about Vampire and how it failed me. I’m here to talk about why my game is good.

…

Let me be clear, because it might seem like I don’t like V:TR. The contrary is actually true: I fucking love V:TR. What’s good in it is so good you guys, seriously. But as a game and as a product it was overall a failure for me, which has led me to having a very particular kind of blue balls for running something with just the good parts of the game.

So, the genesis of POC was this gaming frustration, plus all of the above mental alchemy from the inspiration sources. It is truly a strange game I have conceived.

What I was trying to do (whether I am succeeding is debatable)

…..

So the game. All of the above films portray either vampires or murderers who are…. Strangely driven in their urge to kill. So the characters you’ll play are similar creatures. They look human (or if not, have a suitably horrible way to pass for human). Much like the monsters in the films, they are a significant cut above the mortal herd in terms of power and genius. Each one of them is driven by an insatiable urge to slay human beings.

Like Louie, you can choose to struggle against this urge, or like Patrick Bateman, you can revel in it. But like them both, it has a powerful effect on you.

The other players in the game are not assumed to be your pals. Or, even necessarily know about your existence. They’re cast in the role of rival predators (which, they are). I had to create pacing mechanics where players get structured turns for this to work, but in playtest they run together pretty smoothly. Also, this helped to create all the natural consequences of competing powers: there are rivalries, and blood-feuds, and alliances of convenience, and whole rainbow of horrifying options for competition and cooperation.

Okay so I wanted to make a system that had all of the following:

·       You can make your own monster character with a lot of customization. You could be a vampire, werewolf, Frankenstein-thing, wriggling mass of lovecraftian tentacles, wendigo, ghost, selkie, sentient virus, demon, warlock, immortal alchemist, etc.

·       The scenes present in the above movies where the protagonist is clearly struggling with their overwhelming urge to kill happen naturally as a consequence of the mechanics of the game.

·       Actually, generally all of the major beats from those inspirations (as well as more specific ones depending on the monster built and the type of horror it evokes) happen as a consequence of game mechanics. I hate it when designers just say “Do Genre Trope please!” instead of actually designing rules that make it happen.

·       Characters would be powerful and dangerous to NPC mortals

·       Characters could compete against each other within the framework of the game, without ruining the campaign

·       Characters could die and revive with consequences. Or new characters could be built quickly and easily enough that players weren’t excluded from a game because their guy died. BUT, to make certain that loss had enough teeth that you’d fight to stay alive anyway.

·       A sophisticated resource and territory system that allowed for conquest and fruits of the conquest while remaining true to the horror roots of the enterprise (yeah this part has proven to be a fucking nightmare by the way. But it’s taking shape so…. Yeah, worth it)

·       A system with mechanical balance (or, more accurately, sophisticated imbalance leading to distinct strategies while retaining an initially level playing field and allowing for mid and late game surprises) AND satisfying genre fulfilment AND AND a sense of real-world verisimilitude.

·       Finally, it absolutely HAD TO HAVE a system which was simple, accessible, and robust. Like Chess, or Risk, so as a commercial product it could appeal to the juicy, juicy casual market. OPEN YOUR WALLET GRANDMA.

·       It had to escalate all the way from dirty murderers in the street to the end of the goddamn world.

As I have been designing it, it has sort of become an Objectivist Hero game, with a healthy smattering of murder and sociopathy. Characters are driven by their desires first and foremost, without any pretense of nobility or classic heroism. It’s sort of an id-release game where being horrible and selfish nets you huge in-game gains.

Also, it can be a competitive roleplaying game like Paranoia. As a matter of fact, the underlying threat of competition between players drives the resource-acquisition of conquering and enthralling the human populace, which in turn escalates the powers and reach of the characters in this awesome feedback loop of the world slowly getting eaten by monsters.

I'm sure I'll dump more about all this later. I just haven't talked about it much and this is like, the next game that is getting finished.

Okay, got the playtest documents up for backers on the Patreon page. So, if you want to be a living part of the design of Brahamanda!!! (or if you're just, like, really dying to play it) that's where you'll want to go. In addition, here in a couple-three days when David gets back to home from his trip we'll start fixing things for a general release. Stay tuned true believers!

Y’know I promised myself that I was going to update this blog twice a week.

Anyway, good news everyone! We just had another successful playtest of Brahamanda!!! The report from this one is awesome. It was ran by David Ramirez, and man did he elevate my material. I’ll let you guys check out his comments from the report he sent me:

“Now, a brief synopsis of the adventure.

- First Sun Wukong and Monk Tripitaka arrived at the Lord Androsphinx’s City of Vice. Like many thousands of new arrivals, they had to wait outside the massive gates and pass. Here we find our friend Pigsy, who also a player character, he had recently been demoted by Lord A, into being basically being middle management in the city, and he was not happy about it.

- At the gate, I described how some animal-people, were being mistreated, and that generally they were a lower class of people living as servants and slaves. Sun Wukong did not like this, I must add that I just mentioned that to add flavor to the scenery but it ended up driving the whole adventure. Again, it was great to be able to improvise within the module. 

-Basically, Wukong didn't like seeing his people like that and started rousing them. The Monk also thought that the animal people were being abused so he didn't do anything to stop the rebellious monkey and stood back. Pigsy arrived on a flying platform and tried to calm things down like an asshole, by activating some ultrasonic device that would affect only Animal-people. 

-Again Wukong was not happy and he trashed the flying vehicle, Pigsy ran away and into the city and called the guards, which I modeled using the bandit minions, I described them as some sort of low-level automatons.  Wukong decided to storm the city, so he destroyed the giant gates with his Power Pole. The animal people went into a frenzy and stormed the market.

- Pigsy realized that the cheeky monkey at the gate was no other than The Monkey King, someone even his boss, a demi-god talked highly about. So he tried contacting his boss, but the lord was inside his pleasure chambers in a massive demi god orgy, there was no way to reach him and nothing that happened outside would affect him until he decided to come out. Since the chamber was basically its own dimension.

-By the way, Pigsy had an explosive collar that prevented him from ever leaving the city without the deity's permit. But there was a guy inside the pleasure barracks that could deactivate such devices. Wukong entered the city followed by the animal people that had killed their masters, as well as other disenfranchised like robots, other types of slaves, and people who just wanted to fuck things up. The Holy Monk just followed them calmly and didn't do anything; this was the natural result of their bad karma.

- Wukong went straight after Pigsy, seeing him as the slaver of his people. Pigsy did what he does best: negotiate. He told the Simian King that he was simply middle management, that if he kept him alive and followed him he could take them with the one that could free them all from their controlling devices, including freeing Wukong from his crown. And so the Monkey King accepted and followed Pigsy into the pleasure chambers. Along the way they met up with the swordsman Iron Star, who was also a PC. He was a swordsman obsessed with death. He realized that if he followed the Monkey he would find an epic death so decided to join them for the time being.

- Meanwhile, the mysterious yet honorable gunslinger Red Herald came after the Holy Monk. I added some stuff to Red Herald, first, I made her a woman, although no one would be able to tell unless she would take off the mask as her costume covered her whole body and she spoke with a distorted electronic voice. I also gave her a motivation, she was very sick, almost dying (her costume was also a life support system, a la Vader) by harvesting the DNA or organs or whatever from the Monk she could save herself. But I made her super polite and honorable, so she challenged the Monk to a duel. I also gave her flute with which she would play a Sergio Leone style sad tune.

- So they start their duel on the main street. The Monkey King felt an intense pain, it was the crown’s way of letting him know the monk was in danger. So he rushed to help with Pigsy and Iron Star in tow. Monkey and Iron Star both attacked Red Herald without even saying a word. The Monk stopped them and told them this was an honorable duel, but now Red Herald had something against both of them because they humiliated her.

- The Monk and Red Herald continued their duel uninterrupted and we really got to use the system here. The fight was fast and fluid, it was really fun, both of them got some really good hits, we used the health system and conditions. In the end, the fight ended up in a kind of draw as the Monk took off her mask with one hit and saw she was in very bad health. Both decided to continue some other time.

- Meanwhile, in the pleasure quarters, our pseudo heroes found all sorts of bizarre sexual situations. Both Pigsy and especially Monkey, who had a thousand years of blue balls were… very distracted. But Iron Star wanted nothing to do with the pleasures of the flesh. Then he was contacted by an evil presence that both the Monk and the Monkey had sensed since they arrived in the city but that neither could pinpoint.

-This evil was the Void Servant, which I decided to use a sort of sinister presence manipulating everything instead of a physical adversary. This being which presented itself as an Anti-Buddha of sorts told Iron Star that the only way to bring absolute peace to the galaxy was to kill everything in it. It was the only true way to stop suffering, and so Iron Star had to find the Buddha and Kill the Buddha and also if possible bring Wukong, the avatar of chaos, to their side.

- For this, I gave Iron Star a Legends of the Wulin style imbalance. Basically as long as he acted like a man with a dark purpose and was actively conspiring or attacking the monk he would get an extra two points of recovery. The Monkey King got the same offer than IS but he told the Anti-Buddha to fuck off.

- They found the guy who could deactivate the collar at an S&M chamber. He was a disgusting worm, literally, he was a worm-like Preta, a hungry "ghost", a lowly being controlled by its own desires and vices. The Monkey and Pigsy roughed him up a bit but he seemed to enjoy it too much. Pigsy showed him what was happening in the city and then he freaked out, he knew that when Lord A would come out everything would be effed. He could not do anything with Monkey's Crown or with the animal people's devices (there was no master control or anything like it, he would have to deactivate each device individually). He created a smoke screen natural attack to run away. Monkey and Iron Star were hit by the attack but Pigsy defended successfully. He struck a deal with the worm: he would let him escape, meet him on his workshop and the worm would deactivate his device if Pigsy promised to protect him (this also created an imbalance on Pigsy, if he failed to protect the worm he would suffer a penalty, I don't remember what).

At the end, they all converged at the techno pagoda. Before we continue I have to point something out, we kind of broke the rules in one thing. I was basically allowing them to keep recovering chakra even in non-combat rounds. So all of them, especially Monkey, had a lot of juice.

-So they all converged in the Pagoda. Monkey believed he would find the worm who betrayed them, Pigsy, and the literal worm there. Iron Star knew he would find the Monk there. The Monk thought he had to go the center of the whole city and confront the demi-god or something, I don't know and Pigsy was meeting the worm at his workshop inside the Pagoda. Outside the pagoda there was chaos. All the rebels were trying to break in but there was some sort of spirit seal. The mechanic guards had formed a sort of Voltron and were trying to defend the gate. Then this demon jumped from inside the pagoda, did a super hero landing and challenged Monkey (I used the Red Demon stats, but described him as an elephant demon from Jade Empire).

-Monkey fought the demon and it was cool, Iron Star attacked the monk who was very weak from his previous fight with Red Herald and Pigsy used his "everyone ignore me, I'm no one" to sneak into the Pagoda undetected (since he was management he was allowed in by the seal).

- Since the Monk was in danger, the crown gave Monkey a massive headache again, so he had to leave the fight against the demon to save his master's bacon. Here I allowed the demon to use one of his unused sets for an attack of opportunity, so he basically attacked twice in a round, which I wasn't allowing until then. Instead of attacking Monkey Iron Star tried to convince him to take his side. He also tried to convince the Monk to kill himself as it would be best for everyone. It didn't work out.

- The techno pagoda was in chaos but Pigsy managed to find worm. He deactivated the collar and both made a beeline for the transports. Then Lord Androsphinx came out from his orgy. The feline god descended from above breaking through every floor of the Pagoda. The only people that worked for him that he could find were Pigsy, whom he immediately assumed had something to do with the chaos in his city, and worm. So he started giving them some shit.

- The god came out of the Pagoda by the roof with Pigsy and Worm in tow. He saw the chaos, and in a fit of anger flattened the whole pagoda with one palm. The argument-fight between Monk, Monkey and Iron Star was interrupted. The god calmed down and still wanted to find a peaceful solution, so his city could still be saved. So he sent Pigsy to convince Monkey to leave without causing further trouble.

- Monkey went all Mosses and said that he would go if the lord let all his people go. Pigsy told him that, and Lord A said that if he let Monkey come to his city and cause such a riot and then let him have everything he wanted, he would be the laughing stock of the gods, so he would just let him leave with half his people and of course he would kill the other half. Pigsy was almost ready to relay this message when Monkey got tired of waiting and decided to fuck everything up.

- He cashed in all of his chakra and turned giant. I know, I know, he shouldn't have been able to do it without opening at least another chakra. But I basically ignored chi limits and opening chakra rules on that session, because I really wanted to see him turn giant. He also used an amazing roll, in conjunction with Focus and a tech to get a 7 Rank set, plus being giant added a rank so he did an 8 Rank attack on Androsphinx. Basically an atomic bomb level of destruction on the city.

- This is where our first session ended.

-Now for the one from yesterday.

- Wukong was Kaiju size and was literally going ape shit on the city (what was left of it). Most of his followers were dead. Most of everyone was dead. Androsphinx came out of the rubble totally pissed. Since he only had one power I gave him the technique set called Katriyana Duty. In this session I also gave Pigsy the Trickster Monkey build power set and Iron Star, now calling himself Ascending Black Star, the Devil Star technique set and Red Herald, who I gave to yet another player that arrived late to the session I gave his full set on techniques.

- So the fight between Androsphinx and Wukong was epic. At first the god had the upper hand, even while in regular size, but then Wukong scored a massive blow and sent him flying with the Knockback feature of the Power Pole (while also doing like 30 damage or so). Then the Monk did a “Black Widow on the Hulk” lullaby and calmed Wukong so he returned to normal size. He saw he had killed the same people he wanted to free, and that had been his problem his whole life: that he basically lost his temper and fucked shit up. But what can you do?

- Then, The Ascending Black Star attacked the Monk, but between him and Pigsy they managed to kill him. (Because we had another game scheduled last night, we did not used the advanced wound health system, so basically we just went up to point 4 in the health rules. Once you were done with all your health boxes you were done for good, no second round of health). Then Red Herald appeared and attacked the Monkey with a really good attack, but he got an even better defense and tanked it. The Monk and the Gunslinger continued their duel and surprisingly Red Herald killed the Monk (he was already weakened from the fight with Ascending Black Star, by the way, on the second session I resent all health, but it was a session that was mostly combat and had very powerful techs). The Monkey was about to attack Red Herald when Lord Androsphinx flew back.

Then the most unexpected thing happened. Freaking Pigsy made a great attack (6 Rank) a mix of a good roll, focus, and one of the trickster techniques and he basically killed LA. But he couldn't go just like that, so I had him do his Eye of Ra attack (I cheated a little bit there, giving him the roll he needed to make the attack, but he had to go out with a bang. I always cheat with bosses, and I think this should be suggested in the game, like bosses have an advantage, like they may already have Focus filled with whatever number the GM may need, and/or a partially filled Chakra Pool, things like that to give them an edge) Monkey King was hit hard but he was still standing without much of an issue. Pigsy survived with four HP and Red Herald with 2, so they were pretty beaten up. The game ended with me declaring the Monk was not the dead, but needed medical attention urgently and the four of them escaping the desolation of Androsphinx in a space ship (The adventure right now seem to happen in a single planet, I want to make it so that each scenario is a planet).

 In the after credits, Ascending Dark Star was revived by the Anti-Buddha as something else.”

So that’s the report. I could not be happier about how much fun everybody had. Again I have to stress how much awesome badassery was added to the module I wrote (which was bare bones) by David. That guy knows his stuff when it comes to Wuxia!

His crew seemed pretty rad too. One of our other designers, Victor Andrade, was playing in this one too. I know that guy is awesome from personal experience!

So, talks are shifting from the core design to the release. Good news for everybody who’s anticipating the game!

Also, although I am currently in the process of uploading this module to the Patreon site for certain backer levels, there is some talk about a general release with quick start rules. So, looks like you guys will have some options for picking it up here in the very near future!