Trash setting

Well of course it's trash: It's the Apocalypse, smartass ;-)

But what's in a setting, anyway? What distinguishes your Yoon Suins from your Creations from your Greyhawks from your Dark Suns from your All Under Heavens?

I've gone on-record about how the simple length and game-mechanic-relevance of a setting's presentation distinguishes a playable setting from bad prose. But we're digging deeper than presentation here. What makes a setting one you want to play versus one you don't?

I've been giving this considerable thought as I create playtest areas for the game. which, by the way, tease time:

Yeah I haven't gotten those typed up but they're comin', folks <3!

But I've found the settings that excite me as a player and GM aren't just cool places with interesting stuff and cool creatures/societies: they're places where some kind of intrigue is going down.

Which makes sense: every great fictional setting that I've ever encountered is ultimately just a backdrop to a well-constructed, character-driven plot. Castle Amber is a fantastic setting, but it's empty without the war for the throne going on. Gotham is a brooding gothic megacity sure, but it's impact is in its relationship to Batman and his fantastic rogues gallery.

Namek is the perfect example of this. Because it kinda sucks as a setting, but some of the most memorable stuff in DBZ took place there.

LAAAAME

The genocide of the Namekians tugs at our heart strings; we're thrilled by the tense game of cat-and-mouse the characters play with godlike Frieza and his terrifying henchmen, we're fascinated by the growing power of Vegeta, interested in his relationship with the rest of the DBZ crew, excited and saddened by Nail's futile heroics.

Cool shit is transpiring like a motherfucker in THAT trash setting.

Megadungeons share this feature in common with beloved settings in that things are happening there. The distinct topography of different areas, coupled with the mixing effect of encounter charts, allows a fascinating and living co-mingling of the game-elements. sometimes you encounter that werewolf roaming the ghostly halls, sometimes he's out of his designated room and you get a chance to wait in ambush. But there's a deeper layer to this that distinguished great dungeons from good ones: relationships.

Because the great megadungeon describes the relationship the werewolf has with the witches coven in the haunted reliquary, that he's feuding with the gorgon in the sickly garden, and that he's the loyal pet of the chief vampire in the throneroom.

So the context of encountering the werewolf serves the function of informing players about the living setting. It turns it from monsters keyed to room and randomly remixed to a living, vital area with a history and characters and intrigue.

That's the spark that LWF's setting has been missing. That vital layer of relationships, interwoven plots, mutually incompatible plans, hostilities, rivalries, unrequited loves... The human element isn't there. It needs to be.

The Method

An excellent discovery, but how to implement it? As usual, in lieu of pioneering my own innovation, I'm just going to steal from somebody talented. In this case David McGrogan and his gem of a book, Yoon Suin: The Purple Land.

Buy it, you hacks!

Yoon-Suin has an elegant little system for establishing a setting that is the opposite of trash. It works generally like so:

1. You choose a broad chunk of the setting (a Domain, in LWF terms)
2. Flip to that area of the book and roll/choose one of the broader areas within that chunk (roughly equivalent to a Tract)
3. Roll for what the terrain is and contains (including some history and adventure hooks, possibly treasures)
4. Roll up what intrigues and problems the inhabitants are experiencing (This often hooks them into neighboring or otherwise connected places and peoples)

It's very fast, but it provides not only the cool places, creatures and peoples of the setting, but vitally, their relationships and intrigues with one another.

I've already stolen so much from Yoon Suin that I'm not shy about going back to the well: in this case, I'm going to dip out that all-important layer of Intrigues and plunk it wholesale into my Content creation rules.

In this way, you'll now generate:
1. Stable Content, in the form of terrain, inhabitants, and features
2. Dynamic Content, in the form of events that can transpire (similar to keying content to hexes in D&D)
3. A relationship web, including hooks into both of the content types above
4. Volatile Content, which is the equivalent of Encounter Charts and derived from all the above

Now to type up my notes for that Domain I've been working on up there. Stay tuned, True Believers!

Playtest thoughts and other things that are happening right now

Man, never try to write an RPG mid-semester. You'd think I'd have learned that lesson watching poor John Mørke practically kill himself on EX3 but no, I just gotta time everything like a complete idiot.

Playtests so far:

1. My primary in-house, consisting of 3 sessions total. Set in the Demon City fighting the nascent dark prince Rebi Ra, the party has yet to make contact with him directly.
Thus far:

• Biker gangs have been punched down in bloody-knuckled combat
• A meat stall owner was spared a grizzly demise
• A miniboss fallen Golden Lion was put down after a thorough emotional flensing from the party's pet demon
• The rooftop garden slaves were freed
• The party was forced to retreat from the fire-demon guarding the approach to Ra's palace after it summoned a Rank 6 wall of wraithly fire to keep them at bay. Also, they were thoroughly burned by it's ghost meteors.

2. My secondary live playtest, which you can listen to in all its glory right here. 

Stuff that happened:

• Our heroes combined their efforts to leap over the moat leading into the Demon City
• Some evil cultists were Akira-exploded with a gory use of psychic powers
• A kung-fu rivalry sprang up between the party and an invisible psychic prince

3. My tertiary one-off playtest, which also encompassed character generation.

• The only cool thing of note was a kung-fu battle where yet more unfortunate bikers met a fiery end at the hands of Fire God's Breath. 
• Are Radioactive Scorpions a draw for female players? Seems to be the case!

Additional stuff:

A series of videos about solo play are also in existence! Perhaps you'll find them entertaining, perhaps informative! In any event, here they are! 

There's a fourth one too, but the audio is missing so. I'll skip that one!

SO! What have we learned from all this? What's going into the next (and final!) draft?

I've got a few things from the starting-level playtest:

• Character build options are a bit lacking. I mean, past the design intent; I need to finish character equipment options. Some options are a little cloudy (like which Gupt Kala/ Skill Masteries are available to Ronin, for example). Some tightening is called for.
• Movement needs to be split into speed and maneuverability. There's clearly a divide there in the mechanics, but it's not adequately defined or supported.
• Fields are too big, but zones would be too small. More thoughts on this directly.
• Movement and traveling are still too fast.
• There's some cloudiness between attacks, sustained actions, and hazards (what counts as what?).
• The action economy has a lot of central corner-cases, like how many 1-die actions you can take. This is kind of inevitable, but annoying.
• You need more Prana. There, I said it.
• The content rules for how to prep still aren't as table-friendly as I'd like. There's too much asked per field; you just can't go from imagination to content as smoothly as I'd like.
• The crafting and resource rules need some examples. Really, everything does, but these more than the rest because they dangle without support from the rest of the gameplay (Why am I making people mine iron ore again?).
• I need to limit how high non-magic Emotional Imbalances can go Rank-wise; they don't have the same defense infrastructure as typical wounds, making them an easy way to get debilitating imbalances against a foe.

All that and some general tightening of things like the encounter rules and scene transitions would really make the stuff I've tested sing.

There's more to do than what I've been able to cover (god I'm so busy, then I got sick...). For example, I need to know how mid and higher degree characters interact, both with the environment and in terms of single battles and ongoing campaign play (such as linked battles, wars, shadow wars, etc.)

I guess this means I'll need to do some higher-degree testing in the near future: I don't want to overhaul anything really significantly until I see how the higher-level stuff feels in play.

Other notes:

• The Gupt Kala need another pass. Maybe add some more Imbalance-based stuff, certainly add more terraforming stuff. I meant to put it in there but uh. Didn't.
• There's a lot of little errors that an editor would have caught in the current text. I should give it a pass just to face-lift it. Ditto with outdated references (like to the Elephant Board, which doesn't exist since I changed Content) and double ditto for the layout, which is an eyesore.
• Also need to change the font. Times is pretty hard on the eyes for extended reading.
• The art's also pixelated, although I imagine I won't be able to fix that until I do the proper layout since my program for it came free with my computer (not a mark of high quality).
• Even absent additional playtesting, I can tell the higher-level Techniques are going to need the logic of their costing and their place in the game examined more closely. As it stands it looks VERY likely that you'll not be able to access them without charging up significantly, which doesn't reflect their actual utility.

All this stuff is a bit dull, eh? Well, welcome to playtesting! It is a bit marginal and edit-y; that's the point! But I DO have some more exiting stuff to talk about!

For example, Lore are getting finished! And they're shaping up to be very ease, intuitive and modular bits of setting design. They've got lots of places to fit into the rules, what with Stable/ volatile/Dynamic Content and the Web of Masters and Dharmas and such, not to mention the resources, manufacturing and crafting systems. Lores are turning into a comprehensive "chunk of the wuxia setting" style resource, complete with intrigues and scheming masters and places to fight and reasons to war and character motivations and all the trimmings! Which is pretty exciting!

Another fun thing: Magic item examples are in the works. Right now they're largely refinements of things that exist within Techniques (has anyone noticed I changed the name of these to the Yuddhukhala? No? I like that better). But there's an additional layer I'm working in: magic items allow you to take magical things you find in the setting and turn them into sustained advantages. For example, if you happen across one of those "cures any ailment but only blooms once every century" style flowers, you could use it as an ingredient in a "cure-any-ailment-every-time-you-use-this" style magic item!

Doesn't stop there, though! As I work up content examples, I'm realizing that individual places and magical architecture features are extensions of this principle. Maybe there's an all-curing sauna that incorporated that flower in it's design, or a demon chained into a room where it has to answer riddles or grant wishes.

This is a great place for imagination to seep into the game; I need to do another, cleaner and more platested draft of the content preparation rules to bring that element to the forefront and give GMs confidence in doing it.


NEW KUNG FU

Yeah I'm gonna be making seven-ish more styles. Why? Few reasons:

• Both of the precursor games have about that many styles, so it's a tradition
• Most of the games in this genre have about that many individual powers total
• I want to further clarify the design method of creating your own styles for nascent GMs and this is best done through considerable amounts of example
• It makes me happy

What I'd ideally like to do is seven additional styles (one per clan) which are "full" with 10 Techniques apiece. Additionally, I'd like to do some "broken styles" with only the lower bounds of Techniques which can be encountered as fun easter eggs while exploring the wastes (like maybe there's some fallen clan that whip out an unknown style on you, or a lone master with a bunch of secret forgotten moves, or maybe the remains of the style are written in hieroglyphs on a forgotten temple wall).

I did some rabble-rousing and asked for style ideas. Here are some of my favorite candidates for inspiration/development:

• A style where you gain the strength and characteristics (both real and mythical) of the woolly mammoth
• A style based on Edgeless Blade from Thunderbolt Fantasy
• A style that serves as a descended of Fox Spirit Song from Legends of the Wulin
• A style internalizing the playstyle of classic "Suicide Black" decks from Magic:The Gathering

Clearly I need at least 3 more, but that's a solid start. Feel free to toss some ideas at me on our Discord and I'll absolutely steal them without paying you Listen!

YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT NEW FIELD RULES?

Oh yeah, I forgot I typed that.

Playtesting has revealed a design gap between my intention and the at-the-table experience: Fields are too vast for the kind of movement nuance the game has been designed for: there's a missing gulf between exploring an area and strategically moving within one.

So I need something smaller than Fields, but I'm having an issue because creating sub-fields defeats the purpose of making them that big in the first place. Let me demonstrate their development.

Here's the King's Road:

If you were to place tokens representing the character's position onto this map, they'd fit neatly into the squares. You'd track movement as taking a number of squares. This is familiar to most of us; it's what 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder use as their movement system. It's high-fidelity and gives every participant an exact measure of the tactical positions of every participant in a combat at any given moment in time.

It's extremely cumbersome to use this model though for a few reasons:

• you need tokens representing every participant, which makes big crowds nearly impossible to model. 
• It's also self-defeatingly static; characters don't actually move, then stop, then wait for their opponents to move, then stop, before moving again. They're constantly moving in a way that the "freeze frame" of this model doesn't adequately model. 
• They kill imaginative description: why should I describe my guy moving and darting around, doing cool backflips and generally Jackie-Chaning their way across obstacles and terrain when you can SEE that your little token is just, doing a normal "move across the squares" move?
• It punishes players for interacting with the interesting terrain: those bushes, ocks, all the remotely interesting stuff to interact with? Movement penalty, ranged attack penalty, attack of opportunity to approach a foe bunkered in it... It's all negative or, even worse, positive if you're doing the least interesting thing (which is squatting on it). This leads to tactically staid battles where behaving dynamically is punished and turtling and conservative movement is king (note that the vast majority of this "battlemap" is a ROAD or  featureless FIELD).
• You need to onerously map every five square feet of an otherwise unremarkable landscape to allow any encounter to take place. The best-case scenario for this rings the death knell for any non-scripted fights, while the WORST case requires you to map entire cities in five-foot-square grids.

Basically it's a lot of work to use the squares model for ultimately uninteresting combats. I mean, just look at this monstrosity: it's legit a road in a field, but every painstaking inch has been placed on this (necessary?) map, so that all the tiny, niggling details of strategic movement which so much of Pathfinder's class system balance depends on can manifest and function. 

That's some agonizing over-design there, and it encourages a GMing model where you only have a fight if it's part of an "adventure path", rather than something that organically arises from the workings of the world. In other words, it's antithesis to the kind of game I'm trying to make here.

Clearly, I needed a different model.

Legends of the Wulin was a good place to start, obviously; so, I did. They used Zones from Fate, which are certainly better but still have drawbacks. Let me show you an example:

The organic, uneven lines here are a lot closer to the kind of battle-mapping is appropriate for spontaneous combats. You could sketch a hexagonal "wheat field" in seconds and surround it with irregular zones representing copses of trees, or houses, or adjoining fields. That comes with some hefty advantages:

• You can define an area not by it's exact dimensions, but by it's tactical significance: the Hayloft Zone's precise size is less important than it being Above the Barn Zone and having the characteristic of being Full of Flammable Hay
• As mentioned, you can sketch this out on a napkin in a manner of seconds, so spontaneous and emergent combat is preserved
• It still allows both tracking of position and of tactical interaction based on positioning, but without the time-and-resource consuming fidelity demanded by the square grid
• Movement within and between a Zone can be described dynamically and have a real game impact; in this case, the lack of clear boundaries and the presence of "fuzzy" edges defining them gives players a crack to wriggle through for tactically influential descriptions.

A better fit, certainly. But not a perfect one:

• The lack of standardized boundaries is a recipe for tactical frustration; why can my spear reach into and through the houses, road and tree in that fat Zone in the middle, but fail to reach across the well in that tiny one in the dead center of the map? You have to torture logic to justify this kind of space-bending.
• Describing a method for creating these organic areas is incredibly difficult; why are some Zones big enough to contain entire houses, while others are rooms within those houses, even different parts of the same room? Where do you draw the line between the apartment and the balcony? 
• Worse, what about characters moving along the Z axis? Is the Side of a structure it's own Zone?
• Abstracting the movement within a Zone has problems too; what's the mechanical distinction between a fast and slow character if they're both moving within the same Zone? The fidelity of the square grid allows a marginal advantage to accrue to the speedier character, but the abstraction of Zones erases this small but significant difference.
• Positioning is also problematic; what's the mechanic difference between holing up within that house or standing in the open street in that fat Zone in the middle there? Clearly there need to be more lines, but again, where? Does it cost 0 movement to enter the house there, but 1 to move through the line that bisects the house in the adjoining zone? Why?

Although you may be able to individually resolve each one of these things, they each require their own, uniquely crafted logic to sustain the veracity of this model's internal reality; the second you forget one of these rulings, the model won't provide the answer any more. That's a big cognitive load, big enough to shoot the utility of this model right in the foot each time I tested it.

Enter the current model: Fields.

Fields are the current rule's attempt to find it's own battlefield space that solves the problems of the previous models.

• They're big enough that they allow the kind of descriptive movement freedom that the genre requires; they also don't distinguish a Z axis, leaving that up to the relative positioning of characters in the Tactical Infinity
• The abstraction of their separating lines aligns with both a descriptive and strategic difference: when city becomes wilderness, or when swamp becomes forest. This is top solve the "abstract boundaries" problem mentioned earlier: their boundaries contain the logic-answer as to why their imagined game-distance exists ("Your sword can't reach all the way from the neighboring building to to grassy field, you haven't left the building yet!")
• Although unclear (missing, currently?) in the text, the advantage of occupying a piece of terrain is a modifier to actions: -1 Rank to you foe's attacks (effectively +1 Rank to your defense) if you've got a sizable advantage and  -2 Ranks if you've got  an overwhelming one (difference between the being in the high ground and being on the other edge of a concrete wall)
• They're easy to prep and allow for any number of spontaneous combats to manifest in them due to their ease of use

You might I kind of threw my hands up at the whole "abstract but strategically sophisticated" angle; I leaned towards abstract because, at their core, these are places where you describe awesome thing happening. Lots of the tactical nuance of the game isn't so much in the moment-to-moment freeze-frames of characters caught in a specified XYZ coordinate, but in the interplay of Effort Pools, Prana and Technique loadout. The freedom of description was simply much more important than whatever imagined advantage I could grasp from refining movement and positioning with any deeper specificity.

At least, that was the idea.

The truth is my reach was exceeding my grasp here: modeling the complex 3-dimensional movement of characters WAS tactically important to gameplay in much deeper detail than this level of abstraction permitted. I just didn't know where to draw those lines that:

• Allowed ease of prep and mapping, so both imagination and spontaneity were encouraged
• Satisfactorily charted the positioning of characters in a complex 3-dimensional world (so that the nuance of speed and positing was preserved)
• Upheld the tactical reality of that world without bogging down the system in undesirable minutia, so players and GMs could intuitively use positioning and movement based tactics to enhance play and fully engage the existing rules

That's a tall order for a set of rules. It also wasn't immediately clear which parts of the movement rules to work on to even begin solving any of that; should I work on the Effect Chart for Agility first? Should I put more development into Fields? How? Where? Where was I drawing the lines for Fields? How do you move between them, within them? What even is "moving within a Field", like what does that do?

It was a lot to think about. And it was a cognitive load on top of school and the rest of the bloody system. So yeah, I tossed my hands up and moved on. It was... Functional, if imperfect. Hell, that's more than a lot of games and enough to playtest.

So I defend my laziness in this case, while admitting that yeah, I did back away here.

And I followed through and playtested it. Sure enough, the Fields need more. Here's my current thinking.

1. Fields are largely functional as bigger "areas" that represent unique tactical "situations", terrain-wise. A tangle of twisting back-alleys and a bustling city square are defined cleanly both descriptively and in the tactical movement situation that they present to characters. In this regard, they're a triumph on the purely strategic level. No change needed there.

2. However, they fail to take to mechanically account for positioning, utilization of terrain for advantage, or the vertical axis.

3. Further, areas within the Field need enough definition that moving between them is necessary mechanically, not merely descriptively (although yes, you should be able to do both: there needs to be BLEED). Moving from the market stalls to the open area between them, leaping from that to the park area and splashing into the fountain there needs to be an exercise in boundaries that are crossed in mechanical and descriptive terms.

So I think, as part of the creation of a Field as Stable Content, I'm going to require the list of the Field's composite Zones. Let's take a gander at what THAT might look like by giving you an example of a Field from my Demon City playtest:

CURRENT FIELD: Aqrabuamelu's Territory

Description: Blood-streaked banners festoon the looming grey buildings here. They depict the crescent-claw of the scorpion. Blood-red lanterns, the stink of burning flesh and heavy incense invade the streets like a bright red tumor while the screams of human sacrifice echo across the concrete labyrinth. Occasionally, an inhuman voice will boom out, demanding tribute.
Terrain: Body-choked streets and 12-story buildings with macabre decorations.
Elements: Piles of bodies, burning censors, "x" crosses with human sacrifices writhing on them.
Inhabitants: Gasmask-wearing cultists of Aqrabuamelu (100 fanatics), sacrificial slaves (150 victims), Aqrabuamelu the Scorpion-demon and self-styled god.
Secrets: An entry to the subway leads underground

Pretty lovely, eh? What I've found though is that I'm not getting either the exploration I typically enjoy from dungeons nor the tactical decision-making that the described terrain implies. People aren't really spider-manning across buildings or anything neat, beyond a very superficial level. It's also not entirely clear where things are in relation to one another; I have yet to have the Scorpion Demon actually show up, despite being ostensibly "here".

What I'm thinking is that I can subdivide the broader Terrain description into Zones to solve these problems. My thinking is, I can capture the function of a map without requiring one to be modeled in complex 3-dimensional space (which would also be a nightmare to try to track in play)

Zones would work like this:

• They would be separated by their Z-axis into tiers, one on top of (or below!) the other. 
• Each tier would have it's own list of elements and terrain, with mechanics implied through it's description (by reference to the scene-actions and Effect Charts). 
• The specific layout of the elements in a given tier would be descriptive, rather than mapped, with the default that all segments are "adjacent". 
• Moving from one Element/Terrain to an adjacent one is free, but additional moves require Agility actions. 
• Ditto with moving between Zones. 

FIELD UPGRADED WITH ZONES

Add the following to the bottom of the above Field

Zones
Ground: Bodies tied to crosses (various states of living), piles of hollow sacrifices, burning dumpsters, outlying streets, central podium with sacrificial altar
1st-7th tier: Blood and body-filled office building floors
8th-11 tier: Partially intact office building floors, broken windows lead to wires and hangings that link the outside in a spiderweb of steel and filth
12 tier: Rooftops

Look at how much more area is implied by the addition of a few simple Zones. They're more relationship-based than mapped, but there's a clear implication that, for example, you can't see the central podium (where I'll set Aqrabuamelu and his priests) from the outlying streets (where players will enter the Field). However, you probably can see the central podium form high enough in the buildings, even tightrope-walk above it for some Batman-esque shenanigans.

This isn't done; I need to run through the logic and see if there's more harm than good done by requiring the additional work, if this makes combat movement too muddy and unintuitive to track, what other parts of the rules need tweaking to make the change work (and decide if it's just way easier to do something else instead) etc. etc.

But I offer it to you, gentle readers, for your edification and enjoyment. If you've got some feedback, Come on over to our Discord where I happily read all of it and reply as often as I can. Until then, True Believers!

Lone Wolf Fists open playtest

Finally! Got this beast written to my satisfaction. And it only took an entire year longer than I thought it would! Yay!

Also still fiddling with the cover. Go! Get it!

Here's some ways you can thank me for making this awesome game:

Go and download it it for free! This helps my Dtrpg numbers and makes me happy!

Go and download it and pay literally any amount of money above that! This will be used to continue adding art and other fun stuff.

Become a patron and get access to a ton of additional content I'll be writing for the playtest and the final game! What will that content be? Places! Monsters! NPCs! New Kung-fu! Vehicles! Magic items! Disasters! Encounter lists! Mutations! And all sorts of other goodies that will eventually grace the full game.

Tell your friends about this game! This spreads my precious word of mouth and that's super important for running a kickstarter!

Run a playtest with your friends! You can do it privately or publicly; both help! Especially if you provide your feedback on our Discord server, the Fistoverse!

Make posts about it on gaming forums! I'll probably show up and answer questions and it'll be a great chance to let folks know about the game!

Do all that social media stuff the kiddies do nowadays! Like twoot, or go to facesbook and make a... Group? Chat? I'm a confused old man!

Ah man, I'm so excited. Thanks for the ride everybody; let's push this a bit further so we can get a physical book in existence.

The social arts (No I still haven't finished re-writing Heart! Bug off!)

Full disclosure: the Courtier's Arts were my favorite secret art. They had some strong contenders too; the prophecy-creating Scholar arts were conceptually brilliant (they did more for Sidereals at my table than hundreds of awkwardly-written charms ever did) and the Priest's arts essentially encapsulated all of the most gonzo stuff I love from stuff like Inuyasha and A Chinese Ghost Story.

Still, nothing truly compares to twisting somebody's heart inside out with your words. My favorite characters are always slimy social bastards. Take this beautiful monster for example:

Image beautifully crafted by Craig Mulligan, by the way

My Dune homies certainly recognize Harkonnen #1 the late, great reincarnate Baron Vladmir Harkonnen. A character so morbidly and deliberately obese that he cna barely move, much less defend himself in a galaxy filled with posthuman super martial artists who can see the future.

Yet, he's one of the most dangerous villains in the Duniverse. Hell, he's so dangerous that he effectively threatens one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy long after his death (at her hands, none the less!). The hell how is that sassy cow capable of being that deadly?!

He's smooth as iced milk is how. He's cunning and treacherous, and he knows how to leverage the darkest parts of the human heart to his inescapable advantage. He's a social manipulator par excellence; he can bend your desires into needs and ensure that he's holding the purse strings to your loyalty. His armor is reputation, his weapon is grace, and he coats in in the poison of your most shameful desires.

There's a lot to detest about him (read for yourself; Dune enriches the soul), but I love his insidiousness, his never-ending and self-justifying systems of intimidation, manipulation and cruelty that feed his invincible vanity.

Really, he's just the best bastard.

But, there's not really a good foil for him in Dune. His self-serving evil is countered by an equally self-serving practical literalism, misguided but sincere zealotry, and a futile and unproven appeal to the nobility of the human spirit. Not exactly a philosophical rebuke, it's all held up as essentially identical. At least, on the immortal and cosmic scale at which the characters of Dune operate.

But Legends had solid foils for their philosophical evils; at least, on paper. Every good virtue was balanced by an evil one; there was at least a well-set-up battleground for battling characters to test the rightness of their chosen virtues against their rivals.

The problem with Legends, as always, was that it was perfectly balanced; this is really the same problem spun in a different way. Our minds and hearts recoil from the uncanny valley of moral ambivalence that's implied both by Legend's stalemate and Dune's hyper-zoomed-out minimizing of the entire moral struggle. Our issues are too immediate, too hot in our blood to be answered in such a tepid way; especially at a table filled with intrigue, heroes, villains!

We want our good and evil to be immediate! We want consequences! Wicked villains! Justice-thirsty heroes! Glory! Righteousness! HONOOOORRRRR

Legends actually did a great job of this with the courtier Arts; you could totally adhere to good or evil philosophies, and your adherence to and spreading of them had in-game results.

My efforts were a bit mixed; I already made it so that anyone could be a social bastard by causing this game's analog to Passions, so I put the ability to be a philosopher sage and redeem people socially in the Gupt Kala.

This actually mirrors my personal relationship with emotions and philosophy; I've always been haunted by painful emotions, but it took a ton of sincere work and effort to learn about philosophies that gave me the tools to live an ethical life.

It also incidentally makes the art of healing with social interaction feel lost in the apocalypse, which makes characters that learn in rare and skilled; sort of psychologists of the fallen world, healing the broken hearts and minds of its people.

But don't get me wrong; they can also send them straight to hell with magically-reinforced contract law. Check it out:

...

Art of the Sage

Skill: Heart

Taught by: Golden Lions, Silver Phoenix, Five Star Spirits

Sadhana: The Seven Wisdoms

The devious manipulators of society can sow discord easily; a poisoned word in the right ear can twist the heart, filling it with anger, sadness, or obsession. But the sage learns a nobler path; the way of discipline, philosophy, and proper action. The Seven Wisdoms are destinies of proper thought and deed, doctrines echoing with the noblest aspects of the universe. 

These philosophical outlooks are created like Imbalances: however, rather than punishing characters and driving them into mad fits of passion, they inspire and reward them for noble and high-minded actions.

That is assuming of course that you’re working on a tight time scale (an Action scene) and that your target is unwilling to listen to your teachings. For willing recipients in Real-Time scenes, you need to spend only a single action to create the positive Imbalance. In Montage scenes, you may so empower any number of recipients to the zenith of your ability.

The most potent Imbalance that can be created depends on your Mastery level, according to the following scale:

Initiates: 2

Artists: 4 

Masters: 6

Grandmasters: 8

After it is created, any of these passions may be Inflamed by a Heart action from anyone, just like a normal Imbalance. However, only a practitioner of this Sadhana of sufficient mastery may “break the cap” and increase it beyond these limitations. 

The Seven Wisdoms

Earth Wisdom: Stoicism

Earth teaches this lesson: you can endure. Those taught the wisdom of the stoic withstand the hurts of body, heart and soul unbent. They stand where others fall, unchanged at their core no matter the agonies they suffer. When a Stoic chooses to act in accordance with a Dharma in the face of pain, danger or other hardship, they may claim their bonus.

Fire Wisdom: Joy

Fire teaches this lesson: joy can live in your heart. Those taught the wisdom of the joyful keep an undying zeal alive within them. When they act in accordance with a Dharma by sharing the joy of life with another, or defending that joy, they may claim their bonus.

Water Wisdom: Tranquility

Water teaches this lesson: all things seek balance. Those taught the wisdom of tranquility become islands of calm in a chaotic world. When they seek to fulfil a Dharma in the face of chaos, panic, terror, danger, or any other emotionally turbulent force, or when they defend natural or societal tranquility from violent disruption, they may claim their bonus.

Air Wisdom: Detachment

Air teaches this lesson: nothing is permanent. Those taught the wisdom of detachment comprehend that even the universe must one day return to nothingness. Not nihilism, but rather a recognition of the temporary and fluctuating nature of reality; a conscious rejection of the illusion of ownership and permanence. Their untroubled minds allow them to claim their bonus when they must make a significant sacrifice to fulfill a Dharma.

Wood Wisdom: Growth

Wood teaches this lesson: that which lives must grow. Those taught the wisdom of growth understand this vital direction; they seize, encourage and cherish growth and the natural blossoming of life. When those following the natural way seek to fulfill a Dharma by protecting, encouraging or experiencing growth may claim their bonus. Note; cancer grows as naturally as a flower: encouraging the growth of a wicked philosophy fulfils the requirements of this advantage.

Metal Wisdom: Logic

Metal teaches this lesson: with thought and effort, you can comprehend this world. Logicians seek to understand their world through careful thought, experiment and deductive reasoning. When logicians seek to fulfill a Dharma by approaching a problem which thwarted them with a new strategy, they may claim their bonus.

Cosmic Wisdom: Enlightenment

The Cosmos teaches this wisdom: truth exists in impenetrable mystery, necessarily beyond the knowable and known. Students of this recursive and elusive wisdom achieve harmony in the absence of mind, what the ancients called Divine Emptiness. When an adherent seeks to fulfill a Dharma by enlightening an enemy of its true meaning and purpose, they may claim this bonus. 

Mudra: Mandate of Fire and Stars

Treaties are the laws that bind societies; how much more so when sanctified with the implacable will of Heaven and backed up by the cruelty of Hell? The Shadow Arts Master ratifies the agreements of nations, codifying their rules of engagement, drawing their lines of battle, and ensuring their conjoined loyalty with the all-destroying blade of the gods dangling precariously above.

This Mudra allows the creation of Divinely Sanctioned Treaties; these agreements are backed not by arms and threat, but by the deep and vengeful sorcery of the cosmos. Those that dare break their sworn word face the wrath of Heaven and all the furious reprisal of Hell.

This Gupt Kala expands the Heart skill, allowing the creation of divinely-reinforced agreements between parties. These magical contracts are constructed thusly:

 Two or more parties agree to be bound by a sworn covenant. Anything might be agreed to, but there must be some tangible benefit for all parties involved; the divine withholds its blessing from an agreement which lacks some token peppercorn of consideration for all involved.

All parties further agree to be punished under a sanction should they violate their agreement. The degree of the Sanction determines the difficulty of the required Heart action to bind the treaty (1 Step= Rank 2, 2 Steps= Rank 4, 3 Steps= Rank 6, and 4 Steps= Rank 8)

Any caveats which allow exceptions to this are clearly laid out and agreed to as well

Finally, in the witnessing of the Shadow Artists, all parties formally swear to the covenant

To successfully bind the treaty together, the Artist must use a Heart action of appropriate Rank. Greater levels of mastery allow ever more terrifying sanctions with powerful enough action.

When used to sanctify agreements between individuals, this Mudra may be used in a single Real-Time action. To bind larger Populaces together, it requires a Montage action and representatives who Heaven and Hell recognize as speakers for those bound by the covenant.

Covenants last as long as specified in the agreement. If an expiration is not agreed upon, then it lasts for either the lifetime of all parties and their inheritors, or until dissolved by mutual agreement; whichever comes first (usually the death one).

The classic covenants

Over the long cycles of history, some covenants have emerged countless times as useful and predictable agreements between societies.

Trade Agreement: The parties involved agree on terms of trade between their societies. This might involve tariffs for importing foreign goods, or allow only certain items to be traded, or certain people to traffic in certain goods. It might restrict certain varieties of trade, or place minimums or upper limits on certain types of goods.

Alliance: A formal declaration of comradery and cooperation between societies, especially useful in times of war and other strife. May require allied parties to join forces in the wars of any ally, mutual defense for a shared border, or merely monetary support of one another’s war efforts.

Non-Aggression Pact: A less cumbersome agreement than an alliance, this covenant formalizes a lasting peace between its signers. Although lacking the reward of a full alliance, this agreement has been skillfully maneuvered into effective wartime defenses as nations select foes and non-aggressors to cover their flanks. It is also a classic first step on the road to trade agreements and alliance, so makes an effective “gateway” treaty.

Honor Duel: Sometimes wars last so long and claim so many lives that everyone involved gets completely sick of the entire affair; still, honor must be served. In these cases, a formal covenant outlining the rules for duels of honor is extremely helpful to create some token bloodshed in service of a greater peace.

Letters of Marque: Civil society sometimes has need of skillful scoundrels to selective break their own rules. In these fringe cases, it’s best to be legally clear about what these ne’er-do-wells are officially allowed to get away with. These covenants codify selective wicked deeds that their bearer may perform under the full blessing of the law. This protects the sanctioned wrongdoer from the consequences of their own actions and legal reprisal.

Sanctions

Destiny itself upholds the covenants of the Shadow Artist; those who break their sworn vow must face the furious wrath of the heavens and vengeful universe for their trespass. Less skillful artists negotiate for direct and temporary punishment, while the legendary grandmasters call down curses to ruin civilizations that dare dishonor their treaties.

Sanctions are Dynamic Content which is unleashed if a covenant is broken. The more powerful the Shadow Artist, the more steps are added to the content. An Initiate only has one, while a Grandmaster has all four steps.

The Catalyst for these is all the covenant itself. If there’s some dimension of the agreement that allows those breaking it to squeeze out of punishment (such as a Caveat, p.XX) then this can remove the Catalyst and cease the sanction. 

When a covenant is created, the master chooses the depth of the Sanction, up to the limits of their capabilities. For example, they might create less onerous treaties with lighter sanctions, if they wish.

Plague Sanction

A wasting sickness seizes all those who trespassed against the covenant. The graveyard of the world is still choked with the bones of those claimed by this horrifying covenant. Weaker levels of this sanction effectively create weaker illnesses; the higher echelons, adding as they do ever more horrible symptoms, 

Montage Dynamic Content

Initiates (Step 1): The oathbreakers come down with fever, sweats, and a hacking phlegm-filled cough.  This is a Rank 1 Sickness Imbalance. It’s dramatic penalty is identical to a chest wound, as character double over in hacking fits due to any strenuous activity. Characters that come into contact with a plaguebearer suffer this and all other stages of the cursed illness unless they succeed on a Rank 2 Endurance roll to fend it off.

Artists (Step 2): The fever breaks, and the plaguebearers devolve into shuddering chills. This a Rank 2 Sickness Imbalance. It’s powerful to kill between 1-10% of a Populace that contracts it after one Montage scene (roll a d10). It’s dramatic Penalty is akin to having both legs broken; the character’s cold chills and shaking make grace and speed impossible.

Masters (Step 3): The chill takes it’s next form; hideous boils, vomiting, diarrhea, and thick, yellow sweat. This kills and additional 1-10% after the conclusion of a second scene (roll another d10, adding to the first’s body count). Characters this sick have a Rank 3 Deadly Sickness Imbalance; if they take the dramatic penalty and roleplay the horrific symptoms above, they gain 1d10 Aggravation.

Grandmasters (Step 4): Those few unlucky survivors begin to rot; their flesh deepens into the color of a bruise and their flesh necrotizes. Their tongues swell with pus, and their eyes bleed out of their skulls. Only 1-10% of an affected Populace will survive this horrific malady. Characters with this plague have a Rank 4 Deadly Sickness Imbalance; its Dramatic Penalty is a complete shutdown of both arms and legs, and comes with 1d10 Aggravation for trying to act at all.

Famine Sanction

The material wealth, typically food but really any possessions, of the oathbreakers crumbles away, putrifies, rusts, or otherwise gradually becomes worthless. Much of the wealth of the ancient world melted away due to this merciless sanction. Weaker levels of this sanction impoverish or starve those who dare to break their word, while the higher levels turns all the world’s wealth into their foe; taunting them but offering no comfort, no sustenance, no shelter, and no aid.

Montage Dynamic Content

Initiates (Step 1): What could be chalked up to bad luck causes 25% of a Poulace’s Productivity to become worthless (locusts swarm wheat fields, cave-in bury precious ores, machines go awry and delay production, etc.). Each affected character additionally loses a random 25% of their least valuable material possessions due to accident, carelessness, and annoying misfortune. 

Artists (Step 2): Clear and unambiguous misfortune causes the loss of the next quarter of the Populace’s productivity (up to 50% now). Characters lose the next 25% of their material possessions, sparing their most cherished and powerful but otherwise ruining whatever else they claim as their own.

Masters (Step 3): Horrific, clearly magical misfortune destroys the lion’s share of a Populace’s Productivity (an additional 25%, for a total of 75%!). Character’s lose 75% of their worldly wealth and possessions, even cherished, irreplaceable and powerful items.

Grandmasters (Step 4): Heaven withholds even the barest mote of fortune from the doomed Populace that advance to this stage: the entirety of their wealth and worldly good (even food!) is annihilated in a cursed disaster, leaving them to starve. Characters are similarly impoverished. Furthermore, any who dare offer them aid are quickly stripped of their wealth and food as well, suffering the curse along with the unfortunate character!

Mischief Sanction

Bad luck, misfortune and a generally miserable fate befall those unfortunate word-breakers that defy this sanction’s covenant. This ranges from annoying and only modestly dangerous to full-blown cursed with an inescapable fate. 

Montage Dynamic Content

Initiates (Step 1): Troublesome and irritating coincidences, misfortunes, and a general souring of luck plagues a Populace under this sanction. Although not enough to do more than annoy them, their Status Quo changes to reflect their bad temper and poor fortune, and NPCs will comment on their bad luck. For characters, they must roll twice for any Volatile Content, accepting the result of the GM’s choice.

Artists (Step 2): Incredible and dangerous bad luck befalls a Populace at this level; this counts as a Minor Hardship, and NPCs will be desperately praying, practicing taboos, or otherwise indulging in any superstition to assuage their horrible turn of luck. Characters labor under the burden of a Rank 1 Bad Luck Spiritual Imbalance. It’s Dramatic penalty requires the full engagement of either a hand, foot or sense in the practice of a weird ritual taboo to ward off their misfortune.

Masters (Step 3): Legendary misfortune plagues a Populace at this level, counting as a Significant Hardship. The people cry out to the gods for mercy and are desperate for a cure to their woes. Characters must content with a disastrous Rank 3 Bad Luck Imbalance, Further, They must roll for Volatile Content no matter what they’re doing at the start of every scene.

Grandmasters (Step 4): Doom befalls the luckless Populace that suffer under this sanction; this counts as a Major Hardship. NPCs you meet are wrecks, bemoaning their cruel fate. Characters endure a crippling Rank 5 Bad Luck Imbalance, in addition to the increased Volatile Content above.

Monstrous Sanction

The World of Ashes and Ghosts once was known by another name, when it belonged to the merciful and creative hands of humankind; in this fallen age, it is gripped instead by the claws of crueler masters. This sanction steers the destinies of ever deadlier monsters towards those foolish enough to go back on their oaths.

Montage Dynamic Content

Initiates (Step 1): Vermin plague the oathbreakers. Populaces have their food stores eaten and spoiled, losing 1d10% of their food: this might cause a Hardship if there’s not enough food remaining to feed everyone. Characters have a terrain-appropriate swarm of vermin arrive as Volatile Content to trouble them.

Artists (Step 2): Opportunistic beastmen, mutants and other dangerous creatures are drawn to the oathbreakers. Select an appropriate local Populace of monstrous humanoids to prey upon a Populace; they become keyed to the area and the Status Quo changes to reflect their parasitic nature. For characters, this monster Populace hounds them, sending Groups alongside any Volatile Content encountered to opportunistically attack them.

Masters (Step 3): A powerful monster (Effort 7+) arises from the deep, dark places of the world to wreak havoc. Populaces endure a Significant Hardship as it lairs in their territory, permanently changing the Status Quo as it uses them as a food or slave supply. Characters must deal with the creature as though it were Volatile Content.

Grandmasters (Step 4): A monstrous demigod (Effort 12+) is summoned to rain horrors on the oathbreakers. A Populace endures a Major hardship and, should they survive, must live under the bootheel of the creature (either as it’s favored food supply or as a conquered people). Characters must vanquish the beast as though it’s Volatile Content; if they fail to kill it but otherwise drive it off, it will heal and trouble them again at every opportunity.

Caveats

As they say: rules are meant to be broken. In the case of caveats, they can at least be bent. A caveat is a specific, intentional exception to following a covenant. Although a player is always free to plead their case to the GM, the existence of caveats helps strengthen a Player’s ability to break their word and worm out of the consequences. 

The classic caveats

Over the long stretch of history, a few classic caveats have emerged.

Trial by Duel: A trespass against the covenant must be ratified by a public accusation. The accused may absolve themselves against wrongdoing by challenging the accuser to a duel to the death and winning. This caveat is favored by the Gold Lions and other martial brotherhoods, since it encourages justice through martial excellence.

Caste Immunity: Certain societal castes are simply not bound by the covenant; such is the privilege of power. This caveat is favored by the Silver Phoenix and other royal-minded clans, as it solidifies their power and keeps their subjects in their place.

Knife in the Darkness: If the trespass has no witnesses, the covenant ignores it. This is a favorite among the Shadow Vipers and other groups of assassins, as it encourages the sharpening of killing skills and subtlety by rewarding it with freedom from consequences.

Ritual Exception: If certain circumstances are met, the covenant selectively does not apply. For example, a covenant against killing might be waived against those that betray their clan. The Emerald Kirin and other ritualistic clans favor this caveat, as it ensconces the rules of society within the framework of religion. 

Committing to things is hard! Gupt Kala, I summon thee!

I baked my very first cherry pie today

Took it on easy mode; I did not hand-make the crust, I just bought it from a store. Also, I just got canned cherries; Fresh seemed like they'd be too tart? Maybe not; I don't know much about cherries.

Look at that; I pied

I also watched Tank Girl on amazon. Not bad.

Gonna check out that comic next. Looks like it rules

Anyway. I gathered you here today to talk about the game! Specifically, that I want to get the Lone Wolf Fists playtest Done already!

It's been kicking my ass a little. So I decided to jump around in my trademark fashion and work on the Gupt Kala.

The Secret Arts

There were these things in Legends of the Wulin called the Secret Arts. I've talked about them before; they were basically ways of manipulating all the status effects characters tended to drag around with them due to whacking out their Chi with irresponsible training or being passionate, violent assholes that got injured and fell in love and hate constantly.

There were five:

Warrior's art - Your strategy and combat philosophy

Doctor's art - Your traditional acupuncture/magic medicine to change your Chi wuxia doctor. Classic.

Priest's art - Blessings, curses, and other magic woo that came out of strong emotions

Courtier's art - The assholes who were causing and manipulating said emotions and

Scholar's art - Somewhere between Sherlock Holmes and the Sidereals from Exalted, you made predictions and they wouldn't so much come true as just hang around and make trouble for everybody

Some of these were way, way better in play than others; there's a reasonably famous example of a courtier in one of Arik's games hanging on the sidelines of a duel and just talking while stealth-unleashing these punishing Courtier's Arts and this sad sack who effectively couldn't fight back. That's not even the most heinous thing courtiers did; I loved them devious assholes.

The Ups and Downs

Weapons of the Gods relegated the secret arts to an appendix; Legends had the balls to put them center-stage. You didn't have HP in that game, you got dice put on you that got rolled if you were hit hard enough; any sets would turn into Chi Conditions.

There were some benefits to doing it this way; it was a cool system, making it central meant it got more play. On the other hand, it was just complex enough that it tended to slow things down, so that was a pretty big drawback.

Chi conditions manifested in an uneven way too; like, I once had a player burn the palms of somebody's hands, so they had to drop their weapon, which had this cascade effect where they couldn't use their external style anymore. So it was a choice between two different numbers of penalties: that's not really a choice, you choose the small one.

There were some rough patches in the writing, proofreading, playtesting and editing. Like, read back through any of my stuff; it's decent, but a hot mess in dire need of a solid proofread and re-write. Imagine if I had a deadline and that stuff was printed in your hardback. You can see why the editor got frustrated with how that book was released.

Since the chi condition stuff was so central to how the secret arts worked, that system being equal parts chore and mess had the knock-on effect of obscuring some of those problems I talked about with the secret arts. And there were a ton of cool, unique ideas in that section; so much that it would've been extremely hard to playtest all of them prior to release.

The Bottom Line

The end result of all this was a glorious hot mess of a game that's beloved to this day. So much so that I spent my last weekend before semester writing over three thousand words trying to create my own system for Lone Wolf Fists based on that design.

I've got 1.5 written: my take on the warrior's arts, and half my take on the courtier's arts.

Since you fine people decided to show up and read, I post the first here for your perusal.

....

Gupt Kala

Secretive sibling of the mystical martial arts, the shadow arts or Gupt Kala are a subtle discipline. Strategic, comprehensive, and attentive, they offer their students new ways of perceiving the world. Some are mystical traditions, some are schools of deep philosophical thought, but all offer versatility and power beyond simple martial excellence.

Learning Gupt Kala

Each school of thought and discipline in the Gupt Kala are known as Arts: Art of the General, Art of the Seer, Art of the Diplomat, etc. They are learned as encompassing arts, rather than as single Techniques: those that master the Novice level of the Art of the Sorcerer will have a comprehensive suite of powers and charms at their disposal, rather than a single powerful special move.

Because of their holistic nature, they tend to permeate more widely than the mystical martial arts: no single clan lays claim to a given Art. They’re more widespread: a Shadow Viper organ-reader might clash with a Brotherhood of Freaks tortoiseshell-cracker over a mighty prediction of the martial world’s fate.

Characters of any faction may begin the game with an Initiate-level Gupt Kala from their Clan’s list; all clans offer more than one. Achieving greater power in the arts requires learning a higher Discipline from a teacher or manual, similar to Techniques.

Initiates are novices of the secrets; they have mysterious and unexpected abilities, but their powers are subtle and weak

Artists are established and skilled experts; their command of the arts grants them a library of deadly and unanticipated tricks

Masters are recognized powers of the secret ways; their powers are unknowable and dreaded

Grandmasters are the secret lords of the mystical world; living gods of inconceivable magic might

Costs of Mastery

As with Techniques, you need a master or manual to teach you the shadow arts. If you find one which has the type and discipline level of Gupt Kala you wish to master, then you must spend a Montage scene training and spend Kharma equal to the Cost of Mastery.

Initiate: 20

Artist: 40

Master: 80

Grandmaster:  160

Although the levels are similar in power and cost to Techniques, they operate very differently.

Powers of the Gupt Kala

Like Techniques, the Gupt Kala are special disciplines characters may use to gain a tactical advantage. However, they’re more subtle and comprehensive than Techniques, offering a tactical toolkit of useful abilities.

Every Art is centered in a single skill: generally Heart, Intellect or Spirit. By infusing their knowledge and mastery of the skill with Prana, characters can push their abilities with the skill to beyond human levels.

This functions identically to using a Technique: the Cost and Rank depends on the Discipline level achieved, although they’re considered to have any Facing the player wishes:

Initiate: Rank 1/ Cost 6

Artist: Rank 2/ Cost 13

Master: Rank 3/ Cost 22 / Achieve up to Rank 7 effects

Grandmaster:  Rank 4/ Cost 34 / Achieve up to Rank 8 effects

In addition to this gross display of power, Gupt Kala offer a wealth of unique tricks and powers to their adherents. These take the form of mystical spell-like powers called Sadhana, and ritualistic investments of magic force called Mudra.

Sādhanā

Sadhana are the quick works of magic practiced and perfected by a Shadow Artist to round out their tactical capabilities. They function similarly to Imbalances, Techniques, and other powers that function on the truncated timeframes of an Action Scene. 

Here are some example Sadhana that many Gupt Kala offer:

Advantageous Imbalances: Like typical Imbalances, a player chooses whether their character will adhere to the Dramatic restrictions during a round or action. However, if they do, they are granted additional Effort Dice to roll during your turn. The number of bonus Effort are equal to your Discipline level (Initiative 1, Arist 2, Master 3, Grandmaster 4). While adhering to the Dramatic restrictions, the GM has final veto over any proposed action if they feel it violates the spirit of the restriction.

Mystical Manipulation: Like Techniques, these special moves cause no physical harm. Rather, they build aggravation towards an Imbalance. The kinds of Imbalance that the artist may create are detailed within the Art. These function exactly as Techniques, with Facings, Rank and Effects. These can be defended against just as other attacks.

Elemental Awareness: The Six Earthly Elements underlie all reality: Metal, Earth, Wood, Air, Fire and Water. Beyond these are the Divine Elements of Heaven and Hell. Secret Artists learn to move, think and act in accord with these all-permeating principles of the cosmos, granting them powerful insights and unique advantages.

Mudra

Mudra are the rituals and long-scale works of deep sorcery mastered by the Shadow Artist to establish and consolidate their magical powers in the world. They function as long-term projects, environmental interaction, puzzle solving, resource acquisition, and other actions appropriate to the delicate, longer timescales of Real-Time or Montage Scenes.

Here is a selection of Mudra offered by some Gupt Kala:

Magical Summoning: Adherents to the laws of the cosmos can call on strange and powerful allies. They can call up demons, call down small gods, or draw forth elemental beasts from the earth’s stygian depths. The length of alliance and reliability of the ally vary, but the general power level of the summoned being is determined by the Discipline level of the artist.

Environmental Conversion: Holy places are sanctified to heaven; haunted locals cursed by Hell. Sanctuaries of the natural world are consecrated in the green touch of the old earth. A Shadow Artist can infuse an area with magical energy and thereby bring ancient magical laws to bear on the reality of the place.  The specific alteration to reality are detailed within the Gupt Kal, while the area converted is reliant on the artist's Discipline Level: Initiates can convert one Field, Artists a Tract, Masters an entire Domain, while Grandmasters can convert a whole Region.

Spiritual Covenants: Gupt Kala allows mortals to bind and control the immortal forces of the world.  Whether these be demons demanding wickedness, djinni wish-granting, or services to the small gods, the weird spirits of the universe grant powerful favors to those with the mystical skill to bind them.

....

QUICK BREAK

Hey I know you're probably all chompin' at the bit to check out some examples; that's rad, I was eager to write 'em too. I just wanted to squeeze in some stuff about why this take at the warrior's art rules and what I was tryin' to do here.

Okay so, the warrior's arts in LotW worked thus:

1. You choose a tactical approach based on one of the five elements

2. You did that and got a bonus

3. If you saw somebody else doing that, you could fuck with them and take away their bonus

There was a touch more nuance than that, but that's the bones of it. This made the warrior's chi condition bonuses way easier to get, and gave them a new tactical approach to nullifying it that other warriors had the best chance of exploiting.

Which is actually pretty great! In theory.

In practice, warrior's simplicity and self-focus made them really vulnerable among the secret artists; without investing in social or magical defenses, they could get rocked pretty hard and didn't have the fine manipulation to manage bad chi conditions or cure themselves.

They also merely strengthened a very obvious and universally used combat approach, rather than getting a more flexible and unexpected tactical approach. All the other artists got tricks, the warrior merely grew their beatin' stick to max size.

This effectively meant that they were "half" secret-artists; they could boost themselves up, but could only sabotage other warriors.... And only sometimes.

LotW also didn't have super-well developed strategic gameplay; leading armies and other badass warrior things didn't have the mechanical muscle to manifest at a table in a satisfactory way. This further injured the appeal of the warrior's secret arts; there just wasn't a war system for them!

But hey, guess who's got two thumbs and just wrote a war system for LWF?

What.... No ME you idiot!

This post needed more Tank Girl.

Anyway war rules in the post apocalypse. Also, I wanted all my favorite mass combats from Avatar the Last Airbender to be things in this game. So they are.

Aww yeah. that's the spice.

The tactical approach idea was gold, so I kept that as the bedrock of the Gupt Kala. But you can also train your post-apocalyptic legions into benders while you're at it.

What's the worst secret art NOW, fool?!

....

Art of the General

Taught by: Emerald Kirin, Golden Lions, Radioactive Scorpions, Five Star Spirits

Sadhana: The Fourteen Strategies

Laid down by the warring elements shortly after the dawn of time, the ancient laws of warfare have governed the molding of reality ever since. Generals learn to see the influence of elemental balance and imbalance in everything. These things being plain, they can adopt a strategy of boon or bane against the prevailing element, whether in the war-torn terrain or the heart of their foe.

Adopting one of the classical strategies is a Sadhana. It manifests as either a Harmonious or Discordant Imbalance, aligned with or opposing a particular element. In this way, there are a total of fourteen strategies, from Harmonious Earth to Discordant Cosmos.

Harmonious (Element) Strategy

Absorbing the tactical nuances of your surroundings, you bring yourself into strategic alignment with a combat strategy forged in the cradle of existence. This functions as an Advantageous Imbalance: the specific actions dictated by the strategy are outlined in the element list below. For your tactical superiority, you gain a bonus Effort die commensurate with your mastery level as indicated below:

Initiate: 1

Artist: 2

Master: 3

Grandmaster:4

Discordant (Element) Strategy

Every strategy has a weakness; masters of the Art of the General recognize the strategic nuance of the foe’s battle plan, even when they are blind to it. By adopting one of the Elemental Strategies, they rob the foe of their assumed advantages and  leave them defenseless in the face of their superior skill.

Against an opposing (Element) Strategy, foes benefiting from advantageous terrain have their benefits reduced against your actions. If this penalty is severe enough, then you gain a bonus to the Rank of a single action against them so long as they otherwise claim the advantage during their turn. For example, if they benefit from increased defense against your allies by taking cover under a concrete rampart, then you may claim an Earth Strategy bonus against them this turn.

The Elements oppose one another like so:

Wood opposes Earth (roots break through dirt)1

Earth opposes Water (mud drinks the river)

Water opposes Fire (rain drowns the wildfire)

Fire opposes Metal (heat softens steel)

Metal opposes Cosmos (iron tames the lightning)

Cosmos opposes Air (the heavens direct the gale)

Air opposes Wood (the tornado uproots the tree)

The Ranks of penalty faced by our foes depend on your mastery level, as indicated below: Initiate: 1

Artist: 2

Master: 3

Grandmaster: 4

Elemental Strategies

Earth: Taking advantage of the literal battle ground, you adopt a defensive position. You must act reserved; offense is only possible from a position of defense, such as archery from a rampart or a spear poking through a concrete bunker. You may adopt a smothering, encompassing strategy based on earthwork traps, landslides, avalanches, falling rocks, or similar strikes.

Water: In a fluid environment, the dominant strategy is reactive. You must go with the flow of your surroundings, attentively waiting for the opportunity to act. You are purely responsive; you may attack when attacked, act when acted upon. You can initiate strikes, but only if being carried along by the surrounding environment in the form of a current, strong wind, or surprisingly an explosive force.

Fire: Fire does not wait; it acts. You must be as fire; relentless, destructive, and overwhelming. You must adopt an all-out offense, attacking or attempting to destroy parts of your environment. Defense is possible, but only until you have the opportunity to use all of your available resources to attack. You cannot hold back or show mercy, but may choose to cripple rather than kill a foe.

Air: You are as the air; unpredictable, powerful, and elusive. You adopt an evasive, unpredictable strategy, meeting offense with evasion rather than defense. You might strike from concealment, or use a secret advantage to surprise and confound your foe. Highly unusual and unlikely strategies are encouraged by this approach. You cannot remain still, either to press a sustained offense or defend an entrenched position; air is not patient enough for such activities. 

Wood: You are as inevitable as the root, as supple as the leaf. You move purposefully, slowly gaining and consolidating control of the battlefield. A favorite strategy of chain-fighters, grapplers and those who control and overpower their foes, it allows for powerful (if straightforward) offense and defense. You may not use surprise or speed, but must act predictably and gradually to overpower the foe. The greatest restriction of this approach is its reliance on the root; your feet must stay firmly on the ground and your stance must be strong to benefit from this approach.

Metal: Metal bends and cuts, striking precisely from a specified angle with precision and focusing its force for full impact. You must be like metal; precise, focused, and specific. Your strategy need not be predictable, but must be tightly focused. Although you remain both flexible and tough on the defense, surprise and redirection can blunt your cutting offense. A blade cannot cut from it’s flat side; a foe which directs your offence nullifies it.

Cosmos: Magic is powerful, but relies on its mystery as its true strength; so to, does your strategy. You adopt an unusual strategy, relying on surprise and mystery to overwhelm the foe. Your approach is as bound by predictability as the unbending laws of magic; a foe that sees through the mysterious element of your strategy can utterly unravel it’s advantage.

Mudra: The 7 Tactical Approaches

The art of the general is the art of war itself. It is an encompassing art; war is waged over many terrains, it permeates all space and time. The laws of conflict are the laws of the universe. Masters of these arts learn the secret sorceries of this truth; they train their armies to conquer in the endless theatres of war.

The Seven Approaches are part magic, part martial; the master’s ritual is somewhere between training and meditation, forging the soldier’s minds, bodies and souls according to one of the seven ancient strategies. 

This training occurs during a Montage scene. The listed Rank of Action must be achieved with a Spirit action for the training to be successful. If it is, the Army/Group acquires a new Tactic. Note that multiple Tactics may be taught with sufficient additional Spirit Actions of appropriate Rank.

The Rank required and Tactics taught are: 

Initiate: 2

Artist: 4

Master: 6

Grandmaster: 8

Tactics of the 7 Approaches

Earth: Tactic of the Siege

The Tactical Approach of Earth concerns its training with the art of siege warfare. It’s adherents become experts at defense, able to weather enemy raids and artillery bombardments as though ensconced in the invincible belly of the world.

Impervious Mountain Strategy

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 0

Expert: 1

Master: 2

Ultimate: 3

Facing: Any

Effect: The defense positioning, phalanx drills and shield-wall strategy empowered by this maneuver are without peer. In addition to defending against an assault, this defense creates a (total defense -1 Rank) defensive fortification that houses the army against future attacks. 

Keywords: Defensive, Counterattack

Water: Tactic of Naval Warfare

The Tactical Approach of Water trains captains and sailors to master the art of naval warfare. Marine assaults, ship-to-ship melee, even the bizarre warfare of submersible craft are all empowered by this comprehensive aquatic training.

Captain of the Tsunami Approach

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Empowers only attacks from ships; this includes amphibious assaults, boarding actions, broadsides, even coastal bombardments. Additionally, defends against any such actions, or against any attacks targeting a sea vessel.

Finally, may be used by an entire army to cross a body of water; their swimming fortified by it’s elemental magic. This is the only way in which it empowers Endurance.

If used for defense, the Army can command the seas to harden into defenses structures made of ice; this ice is mundane and will melt at sufficient temperature. This structure provides defense equal to (defense roll -2 Rank)

Keywords:

Effect: ...

Keywords: Versatile

Skill: Endurance

Fire: Tactic of the Scorched Earth

The Tactic of Fire is as destructive and viciously effective as a surging wildfire; defenses are smashed, cover burned, buildings razed and the earth salted. Devastating and short-sighted, this tactic is more often used as a threat against intractable foes due to it’s hideously destructive nature. If only the architects of the Apocalypse had been so frugal...

Slashing Wildfire Offense

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Defensive positions used to defend against this Tactic are permanently reduced by 1 Rank as they’re scorched, cut and broken.

In addition, this Tactic creates a Bonfire Disaster attached to the target Field. It is beyond the control of the army that created it; it is much easier to start a fire than to control it.

Keywords: Elemental, Destructive, Offensive

Air: Tactical of Aerial Warfare

The Air Tactical Approach teaches mastery of the skies; it emphasizes ranged warfare, superior positioning, and unusual strategies such as the use of hang-gliders to gain height advantage over earthbound foes. It opens the vertical as a strategic consideration, granting an impressive advantage over less maneuverable foes.

Peregrin Sky Mastery

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Through basic lightfoot training, this powerful Tactic allows an army to soar over their foe’s heads or leap up to intercept flying foes. It allows the Army to launch Attacks as though Ranged and above the defenders, meaning they can only be struck back if the foe has weaponry that can return fire. Additionally, it allows attacks against aerial foes even when the Army is otherwise unequipped to fight back. 

Finally, it allows the Army to take Agility actions as a character.

Keywords: Offensive

Skill: Agility

Wood: Tactic of Guerrilla Warfare

The Tactic of Wood trains its adherents in the brutal art of guerrilla warfare. A darling of revolutionaries, beleaguered defenders and impoverished soldiers, the ruthless and efficient strategies taught by this tactic are a nightmare to face.

Jungle’s Hungering Teeth

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Uniquely, the Army may take a Senses action to hide themselves so long as they’re in dense terrain (it need not be natural terrain: dense urban ruins or rotted factory depths work as well as dark jungles). 

Opposing Armies who take damage from this Tactic take an additional 1d10 from disease and exposure. Additionally, they lose 1 Loyalty at the end of this scene from the demoralizing psychological warfare.

Keywords: Versatile, Stealth

Skill: Senses

Metal: Tactic of Mounted Warfare

The Tactical approach of Metal concerns itself with mounted combat; from the thundering charge of ancient cavalry to the earth-quaking onslaught of tank legions. It is the tactic of the lancer, the blitzkrieg, the penetrating flank that rolls up a battle line and crushes the foe beneath hoof, wheel or tread.

Iron Horse General

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Mounted armies using this powerful Tactic simultaneously create both an Attack and Agility Action. Empowers only attacks and Agility actions from mounted Armies: this might be horses, tanks, even motorcycles might be launched between rooftops.

Keywords: Offense

Skill: Agility

Cosmos: Tactic of Mystical Warfare

The Cosmic Tactic empowers soldiers with rituals and meditation techniques allowing them to cross between the mortal and spirit planes. Such mystic-soldiers are a powerful police force against wayward gods, a potent defense against marauding demons and an outstanding strongarm to knuckle rebellious spirits into submission.

Ghost-Fighting Fists

Cost: 

Novice: 6

Expert: 13

Master: 21

Ultimate: 34

Rank: 

Novice: 1

Expert: 2

Master: 3

Ultimate: 4

Facing: Any

Effect: Allows it’s practitioners to both strike immaterial spirits and defend against purely mystical attacks. Further, it empowers them to interact with the spirit realm as long as acting ritualistically and in concert together.

Keywords: Versatile

Skill: Spirit