Hea- no, wait.... Content? Again?

Bear with me on this one: I promise I was trying to work on the Heart rules.

Here's what happened: Heart is pretty much what it needs to be. So much so, as a matter of fact, that it made me realize that I needed to re-design more of my previous writing in order to be as good as Heart.

I'll get around to it: I need to fix up the Populaces it can influence at once and a few other minor things. Really though, it's almost exactly what it needs to be; it even works with the new scene rules just fine. Very pleased.

Also, mildly drunk.

Because what I did instead was to re-write the Content rules. Since I'm apparently crazy.

No but I had logic behind this: I didn't have rules for the Norms/Customs/etc. that Heart referenced. I had Populaces, but no real way to bring them into the game like I could with Monsters or NPCs. It hit me; why not just make them act like entries in the Monster Manual?

And from there I spiraled deliriously out of control into a full-blown re-write of the Content rules.

...

Ultimately, the first go at Content didn't work. I couldn't figure out how to use my own rules in play. You've got to count that as a failure, right? Like that just won't do.

But what I did was, I ran a few sessions of D&D to cool off and get my head back in the game. Think of it like a sanity check (a business sanity check, not a Call of Cthulhu sanity check although, they have a lot in common).

Anyway. I realized that, at a foundational level, I knew how to make dungeons: I knew how to run them, how to map them, key them, how to build encounter lists for them. I could actually explore the worlds I made in D&D in a way that I couldn't in LWF.

The new run at the content rules is an attempt to translate that knowledge, that ease of creation and use, into my game. I'm super excited about this take on them, I think I really got the mix right in two ways:

1) Game Masters can now confidently build explorable areas, monsters, populaces, and NPCs and run them at the table with ease

2) You can use pre-existing dungeons in my game now

So I can finally, finally, run the outstanding House of Paper Shadows in Lone Wolf Fists. My life rules now.

These bad boys make creating content for your table much friendlier. Take a gander.

....

Creating Content

As the Game Master, your head is doubtless filled with radical ideas about the kung-fu post-apocalypse. It might be intimidating to figure out how to translate all of those cool thoughts into this game: that’s what this section is for. Here, we’re going to teach you how this game approaches Content; that is, the persons, places, things, and events that fill your world and allow you players to explore the ruins of your own personal vision of the World of Ashes and Ghosts.

Another brief look at playing the game

Imagine this: you’ve got your players gathered around your table. They’ve got their characters made, sheets and dice at the ready. They’re all looking at you expectantly: it’s time to start the game!

But, how do you do that?!

This is a moment of panic if you don’t have a plan. If you’re a complete rookie, you might not know anything about what’s expected of you. Even if you’re an RPG veteran, you might not know what this game expects from you.

Thankfully, since you’ve read the example of play, you have a pretty decent notion of what you’re going to be doing in either case: You’re going to describe what the characters are doing, recap any recent events, tell them where they are and what they notice, and start asking players what they want to do. 

That’s the basics of how you run everything: you describe what the character’s senses and intuition tell them, you describe the actions of NPCs, you ask players what they do, and use the rules and your best judgment to resolve the outcome of their actions.

Content is what you’re going to use to inform those descriptions: it’s the places, the people, the terrain, the dangers, the monsters, the events, even the weather of the game’s world. There are three varieties:

Stable Content: The places, populations, inhabitants, etc. of the world. “What’s there”
Dynamic Content: The plots, intrigues, plans, catastrophes, and goings-on of the world. “What’s happening”
Volatile Content: The movement, habits, coincidences, fate, and unplanned chaos that mixes up 1 and 2 above in new, unpredictable and interesting ways.

Stable Content: Locations, Populaces, Monsters and NPCs

Stable Content is stuff that tends to stay the same or return to the same state after a while. A building is “stable” in that, when players visit it again, it will still be a building. A village is similarly “stable”; even though new things will be happening, the general tone and type of activities (scavenging for food, watchmen at their posts, children sharpening primitive tools etc.) will not change. This section teaches you how to craft such consistent things that players might visit time and again.

When you begin to create Stable Content, it’s best to start from the ground up. Literally, I mean: you should design a location for the characters to explore and interact with.

The smallest building block of places is a Field. Fields don’t map to a specific amount of ground or space, nor do they have easily quantifiable dimensions; they’re closer to “your immediate surroundings”, a nebulous but nonetheless comprehensible concept of “here” in your mind. 

They’re made this way on purpose: you want to have enough breathing room in the finer details and dimensions to allow for awesome kung-fu action descriptions, without getting bogged down in the minutiae of an area’s measurements. Think of them as having “fuzzy edges” that allow you some descriptive elbow-room when the kung-fu lightning bolts start flying.

If the players ask you a question about the size, scope etc. of a Field, use your best judgment, based on your conception of the Shared Mindspace, in conjunction with your notes, to adjudicate an answer. The “how big” of a Field is determined by your answering of these questions.


Elements of a Field

Fields are a bit mushy on the edges, but are otherwise very real to the characters: “Downtown” isn’t very easy to draw a border around, but it still exists in your mind as a place you can visit. So it is with Fields.

Fields are composed of the following Elements:
Description
Elements
Inhabitants
Terrain
Secrets
Rooms
Let’s examine each in turn.

Description
What do characters see when they enter a Field? What’s there? What do they hear, smell? The description tells you: it’s the broad strokes of what a Field is and what’s in it. Ideally it should be a very brief and punchy entry: “A desolate patch of irradiated wastes, haunted by mutant coyotes” is enough to tell you what it is and what’s there, as well as fire your imagination and fuel your description at the table.

Elements
Everything you describe as “being there” is a part of your game’s Shared Imagined Space; it can be interacted with, broken, used as a battering ram, etc. You might think of this as “applying rules to the game’s imaginary world” on an ad-hoc basis. To contrast, Elements are specific features of a Field that you’ve given rules beforehand. These might be in terms of specific game mechanics (“A Boulder requiring a Rank 4 Power action to lift”) or descriptive (“A mystical statue that answers any single question truthfully, once per lifetime”). Only the most noteworthy and interesting features should be included in this entry: otherwise, it’ll quickly get cluttered.

Inhabitants
Who lives in this Field? Are their desperate haunters of the wastes here, scavenging for survival? A slumbering Arquabamalu, hungry to mete out vengeance on those that dare disturb it’s rest? A pack of mutant rats? Whatever: if it inhabits the Field, it’s mentioned here. Generally this is a very simple “what’s here and what it does” entry: “A pack of mutant rats lairs here” or “A terrifying Scorpion Demon slumbers here fitfully”. Note that, because this is a living description, the entry describes the creature’s Status Quo: that is, the activities that they return to most frequently, rather than what they’re doing “now”. This is to allow you some flexibility in describing them: a group of barbarians might generally be in camp sharpening their weapons, but if the characters sneak in after dark, they’re more likely asleep. 

Terrain
This is a game of kung-fu action in the post apocalypse: characters are going to fight over any ground you put under them. This entry describes that ground, including any notable dangers, obstacles, or other features.

Secrets
Not everything present in an area is evident on a casual inspection; hidden dangers await the unwary and secret treasures reward the bold explorer. This entry is an extension of the Description, listing things hidden to casual inspection of an area. Anchors for Dynamic Content (described later) are also listed here.

Rooms
However you slice it, Fields are pretty big. They’re also “outdoors”; they describe locations, patches of ground, neighborhoods, etc. Sometimes you’re inside though, or sometimes players go indoors within a Field; like, are those abandoned apartment buildings really abandoned? Rooms are just that; they’re the individual rooms in the larger Field. They’re made just like Fields; they have Description, Inhabitants, etc. They’re just smaller and located within the Field. If a Field has a sufficient density of Rooms, it’s designed like a Tract (p.XX) which is to say, a place of enough detail that it’s explored the same way as a much larger area.

...

Fields aren’t on their own; they tend to cluster together in geographically linked groups. We call these groups Tracts. Bigger than Fields, Tracts are still “a place” but are broader; if a Field is a block, a Tract is a neighborhood. 
Within a Tract, neighboring Fields bleed together somewhat; their inhabitants move between them, events in one influence neighbors, and the general character of the entire place is codependent and intermingled.

Elements of a Tract

When you begin to create your own content for this game, you’ll want to begin by thinking on the scale of Tracts. This is because a single game session’s needs are ideally met by the character’s exploits within a single Tract; it is a place the characters explore, the populaces they influence, the monsters and villains they battle, the treasures they uncover. Everything you need for a satisfying session of Lone Wolf Fists should be contained within a Tract.

Tracts are composed of the following elements:
Area Map
Field Key
Terrain Type
Encounter List
Notes
Let’s examine each in turn.

Area Map
This is a graphical representation of the layout of the Fields which comprise the Tract, along with its borders and points of egress between them. It looks something like this:


Note the numbering: this allows you to look up the specifics of each field in the Key, described later.

The map is important because it reveals to you, the GM, how the different Fields are arranged in the game’s world. For example, looking at the above map, you can tell that areas 5 and 3 border area 4; characters would have to pass through 3 if they wanted to get to area 2. This provides a way players to interact with your world by genuinely exploring it: places are solidly “there”, and the spatial relationship between them is constant and unchanging (barring some earth-shattering kung-fu!). It also means that players cannot simply “teleport” to where they want to go; they must play out the clambering over intervening places, making them an ongoing tactical consideration.

Key
The Key is simply the numbered list of all the Fields within your Tract. The full entry for each Field is present under it’s entry. This allows you to quickly reference the details of each place the players enter as they explore the Tract (this is detailed under the exploration rules p.XX).

Terrain Type
The predominant terrain in the area. Deserts, ruins, shanty towns, toxic mires, primordial jungles, poisoned oceans, and cursed cities are all common varieties. Determines what sort of creatures, phenomena and weather are present in the area by providing a Terrain Encounter Chart (p.XX)

Encounter List
The population of a Tract, comprised of mortals, monsters, even weird environmental phenomena, don’t stand still; they move and blend and fight in unexpected ways. Fully covered later in Volatile Content, this important facet of Tracts allows these interesting and unpredictable movements of content to manifest in your game.

Notes
Any important information about the Tract is described here. This might include its local politics, history (ancient or modern), noteable secrets, it’s owner, notable inhabitants, destinies, curses or blessings, strange weather, etc. Whatever is listed here generally applies to all of the Fields in the Tract and helps define them as a single “place” in the minds of the players.

...

Of course, you’ll ideally play more than a single session of Lone Wolf Fists; a single Tract isn’t going to cover an entire campaign’s worth of adventure and intrigue! You’re also most likely brimming over with ideas for Tracts; before you know it, you’ll have a dozen or more prepared. 

When Tracts are clustered in the same area, they are grouped together as a Domain; if a Field is a block and a Tract is a neighborhood, a Domain is an entire city. A single Domain contains enough linked Tracts to supply your table with entire campaign arcs, even entire campaign’s worth of play sessions. Within it, boroughs and towns lean against one another, their populations forming an interlinking web of plots, intrigues, conspiracies, alliances, rivalries, and all manner of weird organic relationships.

Elements of a Domain

A Domain should be the focus of your preparation for your fledgling campaign. A single Tract is great for your first session, but to really give the players a solid area to explore, you’ll want variety and complexity: what better way to get it than to simply create more than one tract together?

Domains, composed of multiple connected Tracts, are ecosystems of adventure and intrigue. Players might retreat from their initial adventure and find themselves embroiled in another. Perhaps they’ll get an early taste for conquest if they trounce the first Tract: a bordering one with a powerful warlord could provide a fantastic continuation of this adventure as their blitzkrieg envelops the entire Domain in a war!

Domains are composed of the following elements:
Overview
Domain Map
Tract Key
Notable NPC Headquarters
Tract Encounter Key
Resource Output Tally
Let’s examine each in turn

Overview
This entry sums up what the Domain is “about”. Part history, part conflict thesis, the entire reason that you’d want to adventure here is spelled out in a few punchy sentences for easy in-game reference.

Domain Map
Similar to Tracts, Domains have an eagle’s-eye view of their entire area and its constituent parts.

Each of the keyed areas here is an entire Tract. This serves the same function as a Tract’s map, establishing and maintaining the spatial relationship between the constituent Tracts.

Tract Key
A list of the component Tracts. Each entry references it’s Tract’s full entry, which is detailed above.

Notable NPC Headquarters
A brief list of all the major players and their place in the Domain. This comes in handy when determining the events that transpire in the Domain during Montages, as well as what the fallout of certain activities might be (for example, if the player’s invade a warlords territory, he is likely to retaliate against them!).



Tract Encounter Key
A list of all theTracts in the Domain. Useful when characters travel fast or far, this entry blends the disparate denizens of a Domain in interesting ways as players adventure through it. Fully described under Volatile Content (p.XX).

Resource Output Tally
A brief list of all the Resource Nodes, where they’re located, what Resources they produce (and how much), and who currently controls them. This is incredibly useful because it quickly communicates to you who has control of the food, wealth and weapons of the Domain!


Now that you know where the action takes place, you’ll want to know who (and what) lives there. This information is also considered Stable Content but, unlike the landscapes listed above, it is much more fluid and changeable. 

Populations are the mortal humans which inhabit the world (they are also known by the archaic name Ningen in the fallen World of Ashes and Ghosts). Huddled together in primitive sietches and clans, they rely on one another to eke out their miserable existence in the devil-haunted graveyard of the world.

Populations are composed of the following elements:
Description
Status Quo
Number and Archetype
Loyalty/ Morale
Statistics and Equipment
Group
Fashions, Norms, Traditions
Sanctions
Castes and notable NPCs
Let’s examine each in turn

Description
A small blurb describing the population. “ A starving tribe of spear-wielding scavengers” or “A musclebound band of wasteland barbarians, smeared in warpaint and blood”; you don’t need much to give you an idea of who they are and what they’re all about. Keep it punchy.

Status Quo
The general state of affairs that the Population maintains. This is what they’re doing when players first encounter them. Similar to Description above, this only needs a brief entry to give you an idea of what they’re doing. “The tribesfolk scavenge the irradiated wastes for food” or “The barbarians torment captive, participate in bloodsports, and binge-drink moonshine distilled in radiators between raids”
Status Quo is a very important spice to get right. It’s not the static “t-pose” that lifeless pre-play NPCs revert to when not interacting with players; it’s what a small society does without the player’s involvement. It’s the lives of the world; a description of what these people would be doing without heroes messing with their lives. It’s not static, it’s stable; this is an important distinction to keep in your mind. 

Populations will generally return to their Status Quo unless massively disrupted (ie; unless they;re conquered, brainwashed, killed or otherwise have their whole way of life disrupted). This means players might encounter a Populace, leave, and come back to them and effectively encounter the same situation. This makes sense; very few people change a city by visiting it; it’ll be effectively “the same city” when they return.

Number and Archetype
The Number is simply the total number of people in the Population. Archetype is one of the six varieties of Scavenger, Farmer, Harvester, Builder, Acolyte or Soldier which describes what the people do and where their competencies lie.
Scavengers have no resources, not even food. They have a high mortality rate, living like desperate animals in the world’s graveyard.
Farmers have a plot of arable land or other means of producing a food crop, or hunt from a renewing population of game animals. They are healthier and live better lives than Scavengers, but are vulnerable to conquest if not protected.
Harvesters have a non-food resource they’re extracting from the environment, like oil, coal, or gold. They trade this resource for their needs, like food and protection. They are proud and comparatively affluent, but powerfully reliant on their labor for their prosperity.
Builders manufacture the raw materials from harvests into more sophisticated final products. They are considerably more affluent than the lower castes, but rely on a sophisticated infrastructure of machinery and factories to support their lives.
Acolytes are monks, cloistered away from the ravages of the world. They create no physical goods, but trade in secrets, knowledge, and mystical rites for their wealth. Because of their rarified and potent knowledge and capabilities, they tend to be materially very wealthy, even if they technically eschew material indulgence and leisure.
Soldiers are fighters, warriors, and other warfighters that earn their living in blood. They either prey on less warlike people, or protect them from other raiders for their wealth.

Loyalty/Morale
Fully described elsewhere (p.XX), this trait measures the Populace’s belief in and loyalty to their leadership. If it’s low, they tend toward rebelliousness and opportunism; if high, they’re more disciplined and obedient.

Statistic and Equipment
The game mechanics of a typical member of the Populace, listed in terms of Effort, Focus, Health, etc. Also includes the gear that an example member of the population would possess. 
Examples:
Wasteland Scavenger
Effort 1
Health 1 box (-d10 damage from deprivation, might result in encountering a recently starved corpse)
Gear Tattered clothing, a piece of rusted metal used as a knife, a hand-carved trinket coated in filth

Mutant Barbarian
Effort 2
Health 1
Gear Repurposed scraps of armor (2), Chainsaw refitted into swords, axes and polearms (As Heavy weapon)
Note fights in a berserk rage, never retreating and always pursuing foes that flee

Group
Going alone is dangerous in the World of Ashes and Ghosts. This entry describes the typical group encountered by players; for example, mutant barbarians might be encountered in a “Warband of 10, supported by a rocket-wielding ordnance mutant and a leader with Effort 3 and Health 2”. This is useful if players start attacking the Populace, as it tells you how they organize their defenses and what resources are at their disposal. 

Note that most members of a Population will be self-sufficient to just survive the harsh conditions of their fallen world. If fully mobilized, divide the total Population Number as evenly into Groups as you can; any remaining members of the Populace are defenseless members; children, the elderly, the infirm, etc.

Fashions, Norms and Traditions
These three entries describe the current beliefs, social mores and laws of the Population. Each of these has its own entry, with room for three sentences describing them. Most primitive or isolated Populations will have a single “slot” in each category, while more sophisticated, urbane and established societies will have more. When a new Fashion, Norm or Tradition is introduced, it removes an older one if there’s not an available slot for it.
Fashions are the current trends and popular subjects of debate and modes of thought the Population is experiencing. They inform and color your description of the Populace and act as a conversational jumping-off point when interacting with characters.
Norms are the ways the Population behaves: are they courteous to strangers, hostile? Do they make contracts or rely on their word as their bond? What are their greetings, their goodbyes? Not every cultural nuance is outlined here, only the ones that invite social sanction if violated. For instance, breaking your word is a great recipe for making enemies in most cultures!
Traditions are the laws of a Population. They enforce, prohibit or demand certain kinds of behavior. Violating the edicts of a Tradition invokes a Sanction (see below).

Sanctions
When the laws of a Population are violated, the ways they respond are detailed under this entry. Sometimes simple and brutal (mutilation, execution, trial by combat) sometimes esoteric or bizarre (being coated in honey and hurled into a mutant insect nest, branding, summary judgment by a local spirit), they are as varied and weird as real-world law (which is to say, this is an outstanding place to show off just how unusual the World of Ashes and Ghosts can be!).

Note that, the Population may lack the power to enforce their Sanctions against the mighty Lone Wolf Fists; this is fine, but their society demands they try to.

Castes and Notable NPCS
Societies often have positions of influence and leadership that are served by a traditional Caste; the most-capable of a generation inhabits each of these roles. The name and duties of any extant Castes are listed here, along with their current title holders.
Additionally, any notable NPCs (either in important or raw power) are listed here.

Before we move on to shaking up all this stability, one final word on inhabitants: they’re not just humans. Monsters, Spirits, Demons, Ghosts, etc. can all be keyed into places. The rules for these fantastic and terrifying beings are detailed elsewhere (p.XX)



Dynamic Content: The World in Motion

Sometimes that ol’ Status quo gets royally shaken up; all it takes is a mutagenic cloud rolling over a peaceful village to alter it forever. The Lone Wolf Fists tend to rock the stability of places and people they visit; what do you do with “stable” buildings when they blow up? Or “stable” villages that devolve into flesh-eating mutants?

That’s where Dynamic Content comes into play.

Changing things

Any Content can become dynamic; it should all start in it’s Status Quo, but when something big happens (disasters, construction, frenzied zeitgeist, etc.) they begin to change. This change is tracked with two simple additions to their elements:

Catalyst: The cause of the change.
Stages: The number and type of Scene over which these changes take place. Includes sequentially numbered descriptions of each stage of the change.
Let’s examine each in turn.

Catalyst
Something has to knock a piece of Content out of it’s Status Quo and get it changing. For landscape, this might be a powerful destructive force (okay it’s really likely to be that) but also maybe a construction project, building it up from ruins back to habitability. For Populaces, this might be a new leader rising up and forging them into an invincible fighting force (or press-ganging them into cannon fodder, whatever). 

Sometimes the Catalyst must be constantly present to affect the change: if builders stop working, construction halts. If a fire stops burning, any remaining structures are spared it’s ravages. Other times the Catalyst merely sets events into motion; punching the top of a mountain with the force of a scud missile starts the avalanche, but after that momentum takes over.

In whatever case, the Catalyst is listed here, with a brief description of how it’s causing the change.

Stages
Change doesn’t happen all at once; even a volcanic eruption happens in stages (granted that first one is a doozy). The number of Scenes over which the change takes place are listed here, along with the type of Scene (Action, Real-Time, Montage) the change occurs in.

What does it mean for change to take place over a type of Scene? Let’s unpack that a bit
Action Scenes are explosions. They’re disasters, they’re something that happens fast and has bad consequences. You’ve got to move fast and think on your feet to survive being at ground zero of one of these babies.
Real-Time scenes are weather; they’re crowds panicking, poison gas clouds rolling over a city. They’re acid rain, typhoons, roiling toxic sandstorms. They stick around and define a big chunk of time; you leap away from an explosion, but you’ve got to endure a sandstorm.
Montages are slow but permanent changes; construction, erosion, magical transformations. They’re big and ponderous and obvious, making them paradoxically vulnerable and inevitable, like a dinosaur with a big, exposed neck.

The specific number of scenes determines the relative speed of the event unfolding.
1-3:  Quick; these are the fastest of this class, closer to happening in a faster scene (or lightning quick in the case of Action Scenes)
3-4: Average; these events set the bar for their speed category. 
5-10: Slow; these are the snails of their category, bordering into the next slowest type of scene (or agonizingly ponderous in the case of Montage Scenes)

What is happening during each step of the event? These entries describe the change in both descriptive terms and mechanical ones. Each Stage lists the following:
The number of Scenes or Turns it lasts
What is happening during this Stage
Mechanics that the Stage brings with it
For example, a collapsing building might have the following stages:
Collapsing Building (Action)
Stage 1: The entire structure sways and groans ominously; all Agility actions require +1 Rank to resolve as the floor tilt crazily. Lasts 1d5 Rounds
Stage 2: 1d10 random rooms implode during this stage (Rank 5 crushing to all occupants). Glass explodes and sprays in all directions (Rank 2 cloud of cutting shards). Lasts 1 round
Stage 3: the entire building collapses, floor by floor, into rubble. 2d10 floors, starting with the bottom and continuing upward, totally collapse per turn until the building is completely demolished (Rank 5 crushing to all occupants). Lasts as described.
Stage 4: A cloud of concrete dust billows out from the ruins, causing a lingering choking and blinding hazard to everyone in this Field. Lasts for 1d10 rounds until the dust settles.

Let’s take a look at a few more examples

Action Scene: Spreading fire
Catalyst: A Fire Hazard. Heats up surrounding terrain until it combusts.
Stage 1: Terrain immediately surrounding the Hazard begins to heat up, becoming a Rank 1 Burning Hazard if touched. This Hazard increases by 1 Rank every round until it equals the Catalyst’s Rank or until it reaches a Rank sufficient for the material to combust. If it combusts, move on to Stage 2.
Stage 2: The terrain combusts. Air and gases explode as a one-time (Catalyst’s Rank +1) Hazard (only this round). Water and liquids evaporate into non-combustible gasses, creating a lingering obscuring and choking effect (Catalyst's Rank -1) (1d10 rounds). Wood bursts into flame, creating new Fire Hazards (degrades and burns over 2d10 rounds). Stone melts into magma and Metal into liquid and flows into its surroundings (3d10 rounds).
Stage 3: Neighboring terrain to the newly combusted material begins to heat up as Stage 1. This affects all terrain at (the current scale of the Hazard +1). So, if a single element is burning, it spreads to the encompassing Room or equivalent material, then to the Field, then onto neighboring fields, then the entire Tract, then neighboring Tracts, etc. This stage lasts as long as the previous stage, running concurrently.
Stage 4: The material begins to cool as the heat bakes off into the surroundings. Air rushes in to the void left by combusted gases. Wood turns to ash. Stone and Metal begin to re-solidify and take on the shape they most recently held as liquids. Water and other liquids form into clouds and scatter to nearby areas, forming into smaller liquid elements (1d5 per Rank lost per round). Rank of Hazard reduces by 1 per round until totally dissipated.

Real-Time Scene: Atomic sandstorm
Catalyst: Weather pattern; there is an Eye to this storm that maintains it for its duration. It can be disrupted with a sufficiently powerful crosswind or other disruption (Rank 7+)
Stage 1: Ominous winds prevail as the storm bears down; it’s gigantic, a wall of roiling sand and multicolored lightning that blots out the sky and is visible for miles. Creeps closer for 1d10 Turns.
Stage 2: High-energy winds and sand particles whip the characters as they enter it’s curtain of tempestuous matter. Rank 2 blinding effect. Lasts 1 round of turns.
Stage 3: The characters are engulfed in the storm. Roll a d10 to determine what happens to them this round:
1-3: Buffeted by high winds (Rank 4 push Effect, as throw)
4-8: Disoriented by chaotic innards of the storm (Rank 4, blinding and deafening effect)
9-10: Struck by bolt of static lightning (Rank 5 electrocution attack)
Lasts for 10 turns, or the length of 1 Action Scene. After this, the storm disperses.


Montage: Wasting plague
Catalyst: Patient Zero; the first carrier to manifest this illness as a mutation of some otherwise non-deadly disease. They pass it on to a host Population; it doesn’t matter if they stick around, the damage is done once the sickness begins to spread.
Stage 1: Silent carriers, the Population is highly contagious but shows no outward symptoms of the illness. Coming into close contact with a member of the Populace spreads the disease to a character unless they fend off the infection with a Rank 3 Endurance action. Lasts 1 scene.
Stage 2: Contagion bursts forth in revolting form. Whenever a member of the Populace is encountered, roll a d10 prior to describing them; if you roll 3+, they are obviously infected and miserable or dying. This counts as a Major Hardship. Lasts 2 scenes.
Stage 3: The pestilence mutates and moves on, or the survivor’s immune systems evolve to fight it off. The area inhabited by the sick Population becomes infested with a horde of vermin appropriate to the area that gather to feast on the dead. This stage concludes after 1 scene, but the new vermin are a permanent addition to the area unless exterminated.
Volatile Content: mixing things until they explode

The predictable changes created by the other types of content are not sufficient to model an entire world, even an imaginary one. Of course, actually tracking all of the complex schemes, movements and the frustrating and unending intervention of cosmic destiny is far too much work to offload onto our beleaguered Game Masters (you’ve got enough to worry about already!). Still, the messy, chaotic interactions of the world demand to be included. 

Enter Volatile Content.

Volatile Content seeks to model this churning mishmash of interaction and chaos and keep your game’s world fresh, dynamic and unpredictable.

The Process

Some actions or activities invite trouble; they do this by calling for a Volatile Content check. Here’s how you do that:
Pause the action
Roll a single d10 against the Trouble of the party’s current location. Roll against the Tract unless in a Montage scene or unless the players are moving across more than a single Tract this action; in these cases, roll against the Domain’s Trouble
If the check succeed in summoning Volatile Content, roll on the appropriate Encounter Category Chart. This selects one of the four Encounter Charts for an area
Roll one final time on that encounter Chart to determine what shows up
Introduce the Content into the scene

There is another, much simpler way to call up Volatile Content: pause the action as before, then spend some of the party’s accumulated Zui equal to the Content’s Zui Cost. The Content enters the scene in exactly the same way. Note that you can do this at any time, not just when Volatile Content is triggered!

Building Blocks of Volatile Content

Volatile Content has two major components:
Encounter Lists, which randomly introduce elements of the game’s world to the game itself
Zui consequences, which models the inevitable comeuppance that befalls characters who dare to cheat fate!
Let’s examine each in turn.

Encounter Lists
Encounter Lists simulate the movements of the creatures, people, weather, and legends of an area. Every Tract has an Encounter List; it is composed of 6 parts:
Level of Barbary
Trouble
Encounter Category Chart
4 Encounter Charts (Terrain Encounters, Keyed Creatures, Keyed Populations, Named NPCs)
 Master Encounter Lists, possessed by Domains, possess an additional element:
Tract Encounter Key
Let’s examine each of these elements in turn.

Level of Barbary
The world’s graveyard is a wild and untamed place; mankind has fallen from the world’s throne, and the reigns of the wastes are warred over by monsters, demons and the strongest and most vicious of humanity. To represent Mankind’s desperate struggle to regain the lost and cherished treasure of civilization, the Level of Barbary is employed. This is represented by a simple 3-point scale:
Savage lands are ruled by monsters, or are utterly ruined and inhospitable
Conflicted lands have no lord; Monsters and men war over them, with no clear master
Civilized lands are ruled by humankind; this is not to imply they are good, but they have leadership and laws and so are part of humanity’s triumph, even if otherwise cesspools of reprehensible vice
The Level of Barbary determines the Trouble rating. Additionally, each Level has its own unique Encounter Category Chart. The Level of Barbary can change due to the events of the game.

Trouble
This element represents the likelihood of danger finding the characters while in an area. Any time something triggers a check for Volatile Content, roll a d10: if it is equal to or above the area’s Trouble rating, then trouble finds the unlucky characters!
Savage Lands have Trouble 3+
Conflicted Lands have Trouble 5+
Civilized Lands have Trouble 8+

Encounter Category Chart
Untamed lands are more dangerous than those mastered by humankind; wanderers are more likely to encounter monsters, demons and worse than potential allies or fellow heroes. Conversely, as places become more tamed, wanderers are likely to encounter groups of questing humans, or powerful characters patrolling their lands.

To simulate these trends, the Encounter Category Charts are used to determine which of the four Encounter Lists produce Volatile Content. Each Level of Barary has its own list, below:


To determine which Encounter list to use, roll a d10 and consult the chart; the number on the die will correspond to one of the 4 categories.

The Four Encounter Charts
The things encountered in a place come from that place; either they are inhabitants of the wilderness, or their lair is nearby. In untamed lands, wastelands and monster-haunted wilderness, monsters and creatures of the land are more common and encounters are savage and deadly affairs. In civilized lands, mortal humans and heroes are more commonly encountered, and these meetings might be neutral or even benevolent; challenges tend to be social in nature, rather than purely physical.

Each of these four categories of encounter (Terrain, Creatures, Populaces, NPCs) has its own Encounter Chart in an area. They are constructed very simply: for each type of content (Empty Tracts, Keyed Populaces, Keyed Monsters, and Keyed NPCs) follow these steps to construct the Tract’s Encounter Charts.
Divide 100 as evenly as possibly by the number of Fields where the type of Content is Keyed. For example, if there are four Fields with Populaces keyed, divide 100 by 4 to get 25
Key the chart with each portion going equally to each entry. For example, for the 4 Populaces, each would have a 25% chance of being encountered (1-25 Population A, 26-50 Population B, 51-75 Population C, and 76-100 Population D). The lowest entries should be the “weakest”, with higher numbers “stronger” in sequence, “strongest” on top.
Any non-equal remainder should be smaller than the other entries. This is assigned to the most powerful entry, making it a comparatively rare encounter.

To roll on these charts, roll a d100 rather than a d10 (this is done by rolling 2d10, counting the leftmost as the “tens” column and the rightmost as the “ones”; treat a result of “00” as 100).

This takes care of Tract Encounter Charts, but what if the characters are exploring a larger area? Real-Time and Action scenes are generally localized enough that Tract Encounter Lists are sufficient, but characters acting in Montage scenes or those traveling at incredible speed might find Volatile Content from anywhere within their entire Domain!

There is one final element of Volatile Content necessary to blend an area’s Content on this scale; the Tract Encounter Key.


Tract Encounter Key
To make the Key, follow the procedure for creating an Encounter Chart, above, but distribute the 100 equally among the Domain’s Tracts. If there is a “remainder”, it should go to the Tract which houses the most powerful single NPC.

The Domain’s Level of Barbary is Savage if most of its Tracts are Savage, Civilized if mostly Civilized, and Conflicted in any other case. This sets its Trouble.

To use the Tract Encounter Key:
Any time the characters move across more than one Tract in a Domain, roll the Domain’s Trouble
If Trouble is encountered, roll d100 on the Tract Encounter Key. This determines the Tract in which the Content originates
From here, follow the Volatile Content procedure normally for that Tract

If characters move beyond the threshold of a single Domain, then decide which Domain should generate the Volatile Content freely. They’ve invited significant danger with that kind of reckless travel!


There is another way to invoke Volatile Content; the character’s own bad kharma, or Zui, might draw down a misfortunate encounter with the denizens of an area whenever it tickles Fate’s fancy to do so. We call these deliberate and necessary misfortunes Zui Consequences

Zui Consequences

Fully described in the Destiny section (p.XX), Zui is additionally a dimension of Volatile Content (albeit one you choose rather than roll randomly!).

The Zui Consequence list
Below every Encounter list there is another: rather than being keyed, each entry has a cost in brackets. This is your game’s Zui Consequence List: the troubles of destiny, chosen by the players, to plague them when they fight the edicts of their chosen fates.

Unlike other Volatile Content, you may interrupt any action and introduce these disasters into a scene. Simply pick up Zui from the player’s character’s equal to the listed cost in Brackets and introduce the Content as normal.

As players accept Kharmic burdens for their characters in the form of Dharmas, your Zui Consequence list grows. Each Dharma comes with it’s own Zui Consequences, which add to your list for as long as the Dharma benefits the players (usually for the entire campaign, unless something utterly destroys it). Players will tend to fatten the list considerably over the course of your campaign, giving you myriad options for troubling them if they accumulate Zui!

However, you may also summon any available Volatile Content for a Zui cost. This is because lands, peoples, even monsters each have their own destinies; Zui may choose to entangle the heroes in these struggles in lieu of acting in a more predictable fashion. Such is fate! 

Assigning Zui Costs to Volatile Content
Populaces, Monsters, Hazards and NPCs may all be assigned a cost in Zui to summon them. This obeys the following metrics:
The Power of the Content
The Threat Level to the characters
Let’s examine these.

The Content’s Power is calculated as follows:
For Populaces/ Monsters
+1 Zui cost per
2 Effort (minimum 1 cost) (Each Effort comes with 1 Health Box)
Focus Slot
Open Chakra (comes with 1 Slumbering Chakra, max 7 total Chakra)
Per unique power, Rank 1
Greater unique powers are +1 Zui per Rank
For NPCs
2 Zui times Degree of Mastery (2 Zui for Degree 1, 4 Zui for Degree 2, etc.)
For Hazards
1 Zui per Rank of Hazard

The Contents Threat determines its initial danger or hostility to the characters
Is it a mere inconvenience? Content that isn’t harmful or hostile to characters might be closer to an opportunity than a threat. This follows the cost listed above.
Is it potentially dangerous, but possibly an opportunity? Multiply the cost by two to account for the risk.
Is it exclusively a dangerous threat to the players? Multiply the cost by three to account for it’s purely deadly nature!

Place the calculated cost in brackets next to every entry on your Encounter Charts and viola’: you have a full suite of Zui options with which to bedevil the heroes!