The Mushroom Press Design Blog

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.