Christ life is a kick in the balls. Here's some montage scene rules.

Whew. That was a bit of a disaster, huh?

No I'm not dead. I mean, life is trying it's god-damndest to kill me, but I seem to be weathering it without too much more than delays and deep, agonizing depression.

Apologies for the delays; let me give you guys the 10-4.

So, I started this project:

• Married
• A stay-at-home dad
• Between college courses in summer

I'm none of that now. My full-time course load had to get exchanged over this summer (the summer I planned to dedicate to finishing the writing on Lone Wolf Fists) for a full-time, start-you-at-5-in-the-morning job. I'm on week 4 of said job, so I still haven't either fully adjusted or gotten a full paycheck. I'm gettin there, no need for a pledge drive or anything; I'm just not adjusted to this yet.

Yeah I got divorced. I don't want to talk about it. But since then, I've been battling some major depression so it's. Uh. Put a crimp in my productivity.

There's been a lot of upsets, both in the realities of my life and in the way I have to live it. It's been... Pretty rough, not gonna lie. I even put my patreon on a 1-month hiatus and refunded everybody a little while back, when that wound was still brand-new.

But, I am writing this goddamn game. I really don't care how much sense it makes anymore, economically speaking. It's gettin' writ, dammit.

Some other shit that happened, just so you know I got to pay all my bad kharma at once:

• My cat got bitten by some wild-ass animal and the vet bill was over a month's rent
• Month-long UTI with no funds to see a doc
• Stiffed $500 on my loans with no explanation, throwing my finances into panic mode

It's just been a series of nut punches that I'm only now really staggering back from.

But I've been writing. Because back when my playtest group (of which my now ex-wife was a star contributor) ran LWF, I realized that the scene rules were the golden key to making this game function. They needed to get fixed, so fix them I've been.

Let's talk about that.

...

HOW I RUN RPGs

I've been gaming for a while. The best sessions and campaigns I run all proceed in a similar fashion. 

It's not complex. Actually, I strongly suspect we all do this ultimately:

1. I talk with the players until a general consensus of "what we were doing last time" emerges. On the rare occasion that I wrote it down or remember, we just start there. (If it's a very first session, I'll just tell them what they were up to before the adventure began and start them a little ways into it. For best results, they're up to their waists in trouble)
2. I set the scene. "Here's where you are, here's why, here's what you see: now, what do you do?"
3. The players start tellin' me what they do. Generally they've got a "most active to least active" kind of pecking order that naturally emerges; if not, I'll have some catch on fire or something. The clatter of random encounter dice behind my screen prods most players out of indecision.
4. Every time somebody does something, we resolve it by either just description ("You do that; this happens") or we engage the mechanics ("You want to do that? Roll these dice and let's see"). Zak Smith once waxed a bit poetic about how important rolling dice is; I agree with him on this point.
5. We go along until a fight breaks out, or something starts burning, or until someone does something stupid, or until a monster/murderer of some variety shows up. Then we resolve that disaster. Usually, this is where a game's combat engine revs up and it lives or dies for me. Most RPGs have rules exclusively here; those can work. I like a little more meat on the bones, but if a game is just punch mechanics and "you can do what a person can do"? Still basically works for my style.
6. When everything is plundered/dead in an area (or the players just want a change of scenery) they go somewhere else. This is basically "It takes this long and you see this, mark off rations" interspersed with wandering monster rolls until they're ambushed or come across something they want to dig into.
7. The players occasionally encounter people who say things to them without murder being involved. I make a note of it, and they become the supporting cast of the game.
8. We go on like that until the players have become powerful enough to buy themselves some downtime to build castles and such. Then, we look up those rules and a lot of writing ensues.
9. Repeat until the game world is utterly conquered by my unstoppable dragon-taming powergaming murder hobo demigods. With occasional pauses to laugh at the dismal fate of characters that get eaten/turned to stone/ gutted in a dark alley.

WHAT GAMES THEREFORE NEED

When I'm writing Lone Wolf Fists, if I can't run it that way, it's essentially a failure. This realization (brought about by actually playing the game I'm writing) was a clarifying moment for me, because it means I only need a few things for the game to work:

1. Enough grist for the world and for what the characters are in it. In D&D, you've got some kind of pulp fantasy/scifi world and freebooters/treasure hunters lookin' to get rich by diggin' up that coin. In my game, you've got a ruined hellworld and kung-fu heroes chasing their destinies. Check.
2. Good combat and death/injury/healing mechanics (which include ways to not die/get injured). This covers man VS man, man VS environment, and man VS monster. In addition, the badass Imbalance mechanics give you some man VS god and man VS society, with some man VS self thrown in for good measure. Now I got lots of ways to torment and prob my poor heroes, and they got ways to flip that off and keep rockin'. Check.
3. Advancement mechanisms. Again, D&D got gold; you get it, you get two rewards: you get more powerful with XP, and you get rich you decadent pig. My game has the start of that; I got resource nodes and Kharma, kung-fu and magic stuff, but it's underdeveloped. Need to build this up more, clarify it. It's important because this is what you point players toward: "This is what you want and why you want it"
4. World-interaction mechanics. How to break and build stuff. How fast stuff is. How to not burn to death in volcanoes, stuff like that.
5. Stuff to kill players; monsters, villains, sicknesses, robots, catastrophes, etc. etc. Working on it. This doubles as the whole reason I game, basically. "Kung-fu guy punches giant monster" is the thesis of everything I'm seeking to accomplish here.
6. Travel mechanics that function, at their root, to get players to the next cool thing.
7. Some charts filled with stuff for GMs to pull from. NPC names, monsters, hazards, landscapes, situations, treasure, traps, stuff like that.
8. Something to discharge all that wealth and power on. Castles of scrap and Bartertowns and cults of personality, kung-fu brother and sisterhoods, mystical blades to forge and deep magic to weave. Sorely lacking that stuff.

That's at. I figure, I have that stuff, my game functions on a basic level. I can run games, I can prep stuff. That's the building blocks of a game for me.

...

That stuff isn't comprehensive. Obviously there was more to a masterpiece like Legends of the Wulin, but it was also missing some vitals parts of the above; so it was more "incomplete" in that regard. A LOT of modern RPGs fail for me on several of those fronts; I wind up inserting workable chunks from other games into them, sometimes it's an awkward fix. My theoretical ideal is a game that has all that stuff functioning when I pick it up, so I can get going right away.

Anyway. Bringing this back to the playtest: there came patches where I needed travel mechanics and they weren't functioning. There came points where the players had time on their hands, and I didn't have an idea of the upward reach of their power. There came really kickass ideas from players which I fumbled to manifest mechanically (well okay, I ad-hocced it since I wrote this game, but I don't expect someone picking it up to be able to do that out of the box with zero guidelines).

So the new paradigm got made and the three kinds of scenes had their roles clarified a lot. Travel and Downtime have a clear "slot" now in Montages. The time taken to do stuff got nailed into the mechanics of scenes, which made pacing less messy and tighter (You're not just "rolling forever until you get the best set" in slow scenes, now, and you can't do certain things in slower scenes anymore).

And with all that came the responsibility of defining how your actions (ie, your skills, the spine of this game) work in those different kind of scenes.

I'm writing those right now. And we're gonna talk about 'em.

...

Power

What's the strong guy up to in the different kinds of scenes?

In action scenes, he's clearly supposed to be the dude throwing dump trucks at people. Maybe he can grab you and crush you like a beer can, or throw you through a mountain. He's got a big fuckoff hammer certainly, better for skull-smashing. 

Action

Heavy Weapons

Heavy objects may be lifted and used as crude weapons. Such colossal objects deal d10 additional Damage per Rank of Power required to lift them, but only if they successfully strike a foe. The dice are rolled and added to damage from the attack. For example, successfully smashing a foe with a polar bear (Rank 3 to lift) would grant +3d10 Damage!

For objects requiring Rank 5+ to lift, this damage increases by an additional flat +10 per Rank after 4. So a Rank 5 object (like a train car) deals 10+4d10 additional damage when it hit (Ouch!)

Generally, such improvised weapons are smashed on impact or dropped onto the foe at the attack’s conclusion. If the Power Action used to wield the weapon is Sustained however, then the object may continue to be used as a massive weapon.

Note that the Attack with the weapon must be made with a different action; you cannot use the same action for more than one purpose.

Throwing

When you attack a foe, you may use a Power action to hurl them into nearby scenery (or launch them to the horizon). 

After you declare your attack but before they declare a defense, spend a Power action to enhance the attack. This doesn’t change the Rank of the attack, it’s damage or any other characteristic: it just charges your strike with a powerful kinetic energy.

If the foe manages to successfully defend against the attack, the extra empowering is wasted. If they do not, they go flying!. 

Grabbed foes may be subject to throwing without defense.

If aimed at an Element, the structure takes damage as though it were attacked at a Rank equal to the Rank of the Power action. If aimed at the horizon, the character travels a distance equal to an equivalent Agility action to move.

When the character impacts, they take an additional 1d10 damage per Rank of power action used to launch them.

Lifted objects may be hurled as projectiles. The maximum distance thrown is 1 range category per Rank of Power over what is required to lift them, with a minimum of 1 adjacent battlefield. 

For example, If you hefted a battleship with a godlike Rank 8 action, you could throw it into a nearby foe. If you instead picked up a car single-handed, you could hurl it across the continent.

Causing Havoc

Power may be used to break the environment.

The action is directed to the Integrity of the feature you’re breaking. This serves as a sort of defense: reduce the Rank of your action by the feature’s rating. Apply any remainder as Damage against the feature.

Unlike living beings, who manifest Imbalances as their Health boxes are filled in, features simply wrack up punishment until they break. For every Health Box filled in, you can break up to a person-sized chunk out of the feature.

If a feature’s health ever becomes 0, it is totally demolished.

Note the contrast between this action and the environmental shaping available in slower scenes: this method is significantly less effective due to it’s unfocused nature and briefer timescale.

...

Okay, rad. So what does he do in those slower scenes? How can freakish, superhuman strength be used by a player during my game's equivalent to a dungeoncrawl?

I bet they break stuff.

...

Real-Time

The skill of physical might grants characters the power to shape, move and destroy elements of the environment in Real-Time scenes: this is known generally as Demolition. Keep in mind that characters may take any action available in an Action scene in addition to these more focused and deliberate ones available in Real-Time scenes.

Demolition

Shaping or Breaking the environment

Power can be used to bend, warp, and otherwise re-shape materials into more useful forms. The harder the material, the more strength is required to shape it. Alternatively, you can use it to break things. Because sometimes it’s just more expedient to kick through a concrete wall.

When players use Power to reshape or break the environment, consult the Power Effect Chart to determine how hard of a material they can shape/destroy.

Shaping the environment involves bending and moving materials into a shape chosen by the player. So long as a player’s action is of sufficient rank, it takes and retains the shape of their choosing. It also retains its integrity, making this an ideal way to create favorable defensive terrain. Some materials or shapes are too fragile to be molded in this way without shattering or otherwise collapsing; the GM will determine when this is the case and inform the player prior to their action.

Breaking the environment is easier; the character demolishes up to a person-sized chunk of the targeted material. Most Elements are effectively destroyed, while terrain tends to have holes torn into it by this action. The specific manifestation is determined by the GM. 

A Person-sized amount of material is affected by a single action. This represents a character focusing their strength into their hands (or striking appendage) and exerting enormous, focused force.

Larger volumes of material  may be shaped or destroyed at once:

•  If the Power action exceeds the Rank necessary to destroy the material by 1, then a Big amount of material is affected. This is sufficient to topple a wide brick wall with a single shove.
• If the power action exceed its requirement by 2, a Room-sized amount of material is destroyed at once. A blow of this force carries the kinetic impact of a wrecking ball!
• If it exceeds the necessary Rank by 3, than a Field is affected. This is sufficient to collapse a concrete bunker into a pile of rubble, or punch a street so hard it crumbles into the sewers below.
• If it exceeds by 4+ Ranks, then the kinetic impact is sufficient to cause a Tract-sized Disaster. See p.(XX) for full details on how this might manifest.

...

That allows for some strategic use of raw strength, but what about the more removed, tactical play of Montages? What does it mean to apply raw power for days or weeks at a stretch?

Well, that'd be like using a bulldozer, basically. Those do all kinds of cool things.

And now you do, to. With your bare hands.

...

Montage

What does it mean to sustain a given output of raw physical strength? Lifting a bulldozer over your head for weeks at a time is impressive but doesn't accomplish much. A better question is; what use can that same output of raw physical power be put to in that big patch of time?

In the World of Ashes and Ghosts, two answers spring out: heavy construction, or heavy destruction.

Construction and destruction

Using their own bodies as earthmovers, cranes and wrecking balls, characters may alter the landscape of their world, creating new areas by building them or breaking down old ones into more useful terrain.

The Rank of your Power action determines two elements of the change: it’s scale, and the difficulty of the material involved. When you propose a project, add the Rank necessary for it’s Scale to the Rank necessary for the type of material it’s most primarily composed of (in the case where this material is uncertain, the GM will decide based on their judgment). The resulting number is the Rank of Power action required to complete the project during this Montage.

Construction and Destruction Chart

Scale

0-Big
1- Room
2- Field
3- Tract
4- Domain

Material

0- Detritus and scrap; sheets of aluminum, splintered wood planks, unshaped clay, etc.

1- Wood; pylons, planks, tiles, boards, beams and similar durable, pliable material

2- Stone; pillars, bricks, concrete, and other incredibly heavy, sturdy materials

3- Metal; I-beams, arches, iron siding, and other ductile, resilient construction material

4- Mystical material; Prana-infused jade, holy Auric gold, Kafua-tech obsidian stamped with runes, and other wholly magical and nigh-unbreakable substance

Referencing the above chart, we conclude that an average inhabitant of the World of Ashes and Ghosts can, given days or weeks of effort, cobble together a small shelter (Rank 1 scale, room-sized) out of scrounged materials (Rank 0 Material, detritus and scrap) with dedicated effort ( Scale 1 + Material 0 = Rank 1 Power action). This seems reasonable.

Smaller structures of more durable materials are possible even for weaker characters; human beings have been building sophisticated structures with raw materials and primitive tools for a long time, after all.

It’s in the construction of large, sturdy structures that truly incredible power becomes necessary; the gods are known to fashion fabulous magical strongholds out of gold, jade and other exotic and magical materials. lesser mortals can only hope to achieve such deific feats of construction that same way we do by banding together, utilizing heavy equipment and the insight of brilliant minds.

Destroying the landscape follows similar logic, just reversed: the more powerful the actions, the harder of a material they can tear down, and the more of it they can effect at once. This reality is already a function of the Power skill, simply extrapolated over a longer timeframe.

Building Materials

Having the raw power to create structures isn’t enough of course; you need to have the materials necessary to complete construction as well!

The units of a building resource (Scrap, Wood, Stone, Metal, or Magical Objects, respectively) required to construct a structure of a given size are as follows:

Big: 10

Room: 25

Field: 100

Tract: 1000

Domain: 10,000

The enormous amount of resources necessary to complete epic-scale projects is one of the greatest limiting factors to new construction in the post-apocalypse.

Of course, destroying a feature of the environment naturally generates the same amount of raw (if damaged) material, which means that a mountainside can be demolished and later reshaped into an impressive skull-shaped fortress by a sufficiently burly character… So long as they have the Power.

The World Reshaped

What is the actual game effect of all this muscly bravura?

In either case of construction or destruction, the player redefines an area on the world map. This definition uses the same rules for area-building followed by GMs, but is limited by the scale of their action and available resources.

Construction projects might make shelter for a weary populace, dojos for followers in need of training, fortresses and walls to shelter a burgeoning civilization, or similar straightforward projects with ease.

Destruction might be used for such creative endeavors as leveling difficult-to-traverse terrain, making them open for easier travel. Or the alternative, easily-traveled areas might be ruined by sufficient destruction, making them dangerous to traverse. Hostile areas might be clear-cut or strip-mined down to pave the way for inhabitants, or a fertile land in enemy clutches might be razed and made useless.

The GM should use very limited veto power in cases of player-directed setting construction; the eye should be to uphold the general integrity of the Shared Mindspace, not to quash player creativity. A good yardstick for this is considering the most far-out, gonzo areas the GM has already put in the setting and honestly evaluating whether the player’s proposed alterations stretch credibility or playability in light of that madly creative element.

If the answer to both is no, then the change should be recorded with the other map entries. Congratulate your player on changing some small part of the world.

Constructing Nodes

Resource Nodes can be crafted by industrious characters. Harvestable Nodes, such as tillable farmland created by digging up fallow earth or minable veins of coal or metal punched out of the side of a mountain, are created with pure Power actions. Factories and similar industry Nodes require considerable planning, which is covered under Intellect actions later.

To create the Node, first discuss with your GM whether the Shared Mindspace allows for the logic of the Node to function. Clearly you wouldn’t be able to punch a coal mine out of the ocean, but you might instead ram a huge steel pipe into the seabed and create a primitive oil rig.

Next, determine with them whether Limit or Deposit is more appropriate for the Node. Renewable Nodes, like farmland, are best represented with Limit (they have harvests) while Deposit is more appropriate for things like oil and metal deposits.

For Deposits, the Scale of the project determines how much potential Units can be unearthed:

Big: d10 Units

Room: 5d10 Units

Field: d100 Units

Tract: d1000 Units

Domain: d10,000 Units

(To roll d100s or higher, simply roll the dice one at a time; the first is the “ones” column, with each subsequent d10 assigned to a higher column (10’s column, 100’s column, etc.). Read 10’s and 0’s as 0, as usual.)

Note that these Units must still be harvested by a hard-working Population; the Power action merely makes them available to these laborers.

For Limit, the hardness of the material broken determines the richness of the bounty beneath:

Scrap/Dirt: 1

Wood: 2

Stone: 3

Metal: 4

Mystical Materials: 5

...

Now note while you're reading this the places where the allowance of actions bleeds (or does not) between scenes; you can smash stuff in bite-sized chunks during Action scenes, dealing with it like an attack. To contrast, you smash stuff based on category in Real-Time scenes, and on a scalar in Montages. The scale of the same-ranked action re-contextualizes depending on the time frame experienced by players.

This insight is the driving logic behind the construction of the new scene rules. 

This is getting a little long and we've covered a lot of ground. I'm going to put a pin in this before we examine some of the more complex skills and the consequences of looking at them through this lens.