Category: Game Settings and Systems

Margol’s Defiance – a light in abyssal darkness

The name of Margol Endlessein is lost to the cataclysm that reduced their home civilization to dust and ruin. Little remains of the once great and magically empowered nation whose mighty structures stand only as sparse ruins, so thoroughly scourged that little history is to be gleaned from the few crumbling walls and sunken chambers.

The one remnant that hints at the power harnessed by this ancient empire is the vast array of magical items that serve as weapons against fiendish enemies. Margol’s defiance is one such item that empowers the wearer in their battle against the abyss.

This golden circlet houses a small yellow gem which rests in the centre of the wearer’s forehead. The gem contains a small mote of sunlight which can be harnessed to bring light in the darkness and guide the wearer’s hand against creatures of darkness.

The circlet has 5 charges, and it completely regains all charges when it is touched by the first rays of dawn sunlight.

An attuned wearer can say a command word and expend 1 charge to cause the gem to glow as if the Light had been cast on it. While the gem is glowing, the wearer has advantage on all attack rolls against fiends and undead, and such creatures have disadvantage on all attack rolls against the wearer.

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Staff of Soul’s Fire

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This magical staff is made from blackened redwood, and infused with magic that stirs up energy and emotions. It can cause the air to burst into flames, and stir up the passions in one’s soul, even to a point of madness.

Staff, very rare (requires attunement by a Bard, Sorcerer, or Warlock)

While attuned, you can cast the  fire bolt cantrip as long as you are holding the staff in at least one hand.

The staff has 10 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC: heroism (1 charge per target, up to max. 4), enemies abound (3 charges),  fireball (3 charges), or wall of fire (4 charges).

While holding this staff, you can use it as an arcane focus for casting any spell that requires an attack roll, and expend 1 charge to add 1D6 fire damage to the spell’s effect. Any target that takes damage form this effect is set on fire, and will take 1D10 damage at the start of each of their turns, until they spend an action to extinguish the flames. A maximum of 1 charge per spell can be spent in this fashion, and this ability cannot be used to further enhance the casting of spells contained in the staff.

Anyone who attempts to attune to this staff who is not a Charisma-based spell caster must make a Charisma saving throw (DC15). They take 4D6 fire damage on a failed save, and 2D6 on a successful save.

The staff regains 1d6 + 4 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the staff instantly ignites, crumbles into cinders, and is destroyed.

Staff of the Elemental Master

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This is a homebrew item for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. Modeled after the Staff of Power, it exists to represent the idea of a caster gaining a degree of mastery over natural elements.

Staff of the Elemental Master

Staff, Very Rare (Requires attunement by a Druid)

This 5’ staff is made of the gnarled, petrified branch of an ancient redwood. It weighs over 240 pounds; however, once attuned, it becomes as light as fresh cut timber and can be used as a magic quarterstaff in Melee.

A Druid attuned to the staff can always draw breath in any environment, and gains resistance to fire and lightning damage.

The staff has 20 charges, and regains 1d8+2 charges every sunrise and sunset. The staff can regain an additional d6 charges per day by submerging it in a large quantity of any natural element that is highly active (e.g. a raging river, a burning conflagration, a gale-force wind, etc). If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the staff retains its ability to grant breath in any environment, and damage resistances, but loses all other abilities. On a 20, it unleashes a level 9 lightning bolt directed by the wielder, using normal spellcasting rules.

Lightning Strike: When you hit with a melee attack using the staff, you can expend 1 charge to deal an extra 1d6 lightning damage to the target.

Spells: While holding the staff, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC and spell attack bonus: Gust of Wind (2 charges) Plant Growth (3 charges); Move Earth (6 charges); Lightning Bolt, 5th level version (5 charges); Wall of Fire (4 charges); Control Water (4 charges); Control Weather (8 charges)

RPG Setting Rumours: street brawler edition

adult-ancient-armor-289831.jpg[NOTE: This post sat in my drafts folder for over a year. No, I don’t know why.]

There are two things I like to do when developing RPG settings:

First, I love to populate settings with rumours and local legends. These give a feel of being living places, and also you never know when a rumour will spark a plot hook that leads to a fun new adventure.

The second thing I love to do is crowd source ideas so that a) I don’t have to do all the work and b) I end up with a more varied and interesting range of possibilities to work with.

This post contains a series of ideas shared on twitter in response to this post:

Continue reading “RPG Setting Rumours: street brawler edition”

‘Uphill Battle’ – my NYC Midnight short fiction entry

Having not written any fiction for some time, this year I entered the NYC Midnight short fiction competition to kick myself into gear.

My prompts were: Fantasy, A picnic, a single mother.

As a result I produced “Uphill Battle”.

Enjoy, critique, ignore at will.

UPDATE: I received an Honourable Mention for this story, being one of the three stories in the heat to receive a commendation but not make it through to the next round. I’m pretty happy with that result, and am currently working with the feedback provided to produce a second draft (which is unbound by the competition’s word limit!)

Continue reading “‘Uphill Battle’ – my NYC Midnight short fiction entry”

The First Singer – A DnD 5e Bard variant

E.g. Chorister / Cantor / Hazzan / Muessin

This Bard is the leader of a religious rite or congregation. Their songs are drawn from the myths, legends, and rituals of a particular god or gods and their chants are part poetry, part prayer or mythic storytelling.

As a First Singer, the bard might be a part of a temple, leading worship and rites for the crowds, or they might be a wandering preacher, carrying the word and songs of their gods across the land. They are adept at engaging a large audience, and capturing a crowd with their mythic storytelling and song.

A First Singer is different to a Cleric, in that they find their inspiration in the stories and music, rather than more devout forms of worship. A First Singer need not even be a true believer, and may find religious songs a helpful ruse as they ply their crowds for donations and rumours.

Inspiration for a First Singer bard can be found in many cultures and times. The ancient greek chorus used to chant and sing and dance their epic tales as part of grand religious festivals, wearing masks and using small drums, cymbals and beat sticks. Among the many variation of Christianity you will find the Cantor, who leads a congregation in prayer. A similar role is played by the Jewish Hazzan, while the Muslim Muezzin leads the call to prayer to bring people to the mosque for worship.

Alignment: A First Singer’s alignment will usually partially align with the god whose stories they tell, or the temple in which they lead.

Instruments: Instruments that keep rhythm, like tambourines, drums, prayer cymbals or bells are very common among First Singers. Some may have stringed instruments, though would favour those like a lute that have a chamber for resonance and can be heard over a larger area.

Bard Colleges:

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Johan, a Cantor of Pelor. Image by @EthanMAldridge

College of Lore: A First Singer who joins the College of Lore may pursue the greater truth of the universe beyond the teachings of a particular god or belief. They may become mystics or gnostics who recognise a greater mystery of the world beyond a single deity.

Their spell choices will likely favour detection and dispelling, and the ability to perceive and cross into the meta-planes in pursuit of the ultimate, world-creating song.

College of Valor: It’s an easy step to go from leading a choir in song to inspiring an army with a battle hymn. First Singers who walk the path of valor may become the heart and soul of a fighting unit, crying inspirational charges and rallying songs, and soothing soldiers during brief respite.

Spell choices will favour those that inspire others to greater feats of heroism, heal the wounded and aid the Bard’s own fighting skills.

College of Whispers: These First Singers use their knowledge of ancient tales to invoke holy terror in their enemies in order to seek out heresy. Their chants and songs take on a darker tone as they seek out enemies of their god and deliver appropriate punishment. These questioners are not well liked, because they are often the vanguard of a full blown inquisition, and sometimes even their very presence, if known, is enough to create a religious panic and invite all manner of accusations between neighbours.

Questioners learn spells that distract and terrify their targets, compel truth or otherwise give the Bard an advantage in squeezing confessions – true or otherwise – from the subject of their investigation.

Netflix’s Bright and the problems of world building

Netflix’s Bright is certainty getting a lot of attention, as is the division between critics and fans, genre fans and fans of the movie, and just the general disagreement over whether it is actually “the worst film of 2017” or something to be acknowledged for its originality.

I’ll say up front that I’m glad this movie exists, because it’s bringing new attention to genre fiction in film (or, in this case, genre mashup fiction), and that Netflix chose to make its first big budget movie production something of this nature is not insignificant.

As a long time fan of Shadowrun, I’m 100% behind the aesthetic of fantasy races and magic in a familiar urban setting. But from the perspective of world-building and setting development that are intended to inform a cohesive story, Bright offers many examples of the dangers of being lazy in your approach.

The setting of this movie is so incongruous and lacking in internal consistency that I was unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to be taken anywhere by the story. It seems the writer, director and producers just flat out ignored some simple premises of setting development – namely that when you add an element to a setting, it has a ripple effect over time that affects the world around it.

In Bright we see a lot of world-shaping elements added without any evidence of those elements having had an impact on the development of society over time.

In Shadowrun this works because the story is that the world as we know is developed, and then in the early 20th century magic returned to the world, transforming a section of the population into elves, dwarves, trolls and orcs. And as the magic rose, long slumbering dragons woke up.

But in Bright, we hear about the 2000 year long history of the races having lived together, and yet see little to no evidence of those significant changes to human history having shaped the contemporary world in which the story takes place. Somehow, after centuries of social development that includes humans, orcs, elves, centaurs, dragons, magic, fairies and even more magical creatures that are never seen on screen, they still ended up with modern day suburban L.A.

This blog post arose from a conversation on Twitter, and so this next section gathers together the many questions I have of the setting which I just couldn’t rationalise based on the information presented in the movie.

It started here:

We see no evidence of the many races having had even a superficial impact on the shape of society.

‘Elf-town’ is a part of the city, and elves are described as a race of people ‘running everything’. So either they’ve always been around and in a position of influence, or at some point there was a war or some other takeover when elves took charge. As there is no mention of any elf war, or elf take over, or even any great resentment shown towards elves as you might expect of a conquering people, we can only assume that elves have always been there, and yet have had no more meaningful impact on the shape of society than to fence of a section of a large city.

Humans do that without being magical super-beings.

Elves seem to primarily exist in this movie as analogies for the wealthy, and this movie gives them little more depth of representation as a people than to make them look like the high end of New York or Hollywood. Everyone drives a super car and looks like a movie star, but they live in mundane looking buildings on asphalt streets that are identical to contemporary America.

However, in a world with magic and non-human races, why does America exist at all in it’s current form?

Many of America’s early settlers emerged out of the religious turmoil following the reformation, so in this world of magic and elves and orcs, did the Catholic church still dominate Europe for centuries? And was the reformation a multi-species issue?

How did Catholicism, or any form of Christianity, dominate in a world where an actual war was fought against a ‘Dark Lord’ of unknown magical power? We hear mentions of the orc saviour who unified the races against the Dark Lord (and are then expected to ignore the fact that despite this, orcs were still the subjugated race for thousands of years) yet see no evidence of that having any real influence on religion or belief or societal structure.

And then there’s dragons. Are they apex predators or super evolved magical beings?

Either way, for a dragon to fly, unmolested across the city (as shown in an almost throw-away establishing shot) is to suggest it has some accepted place in society, but where is that reflected in any part of the setting we see?

We are shown a dragon flying over a city that, in the movie, shows no sign of accommodating, protecting against, or interacting with dragons. They don’t even talk about them; Will Smith’s character makes a Shrek reference, but no-one mentions dragons.

This same question applies to the design of cars. If giants and centaurs are millennia-long allies of humans and elves, living in an integrated society, why did they develop cars that neither giants nor centaurs could ride in?

While xenophobia might provide an answer (thanks Litza) the movie doesn’t really bear this out.

The races are millennia-long allies, supposedly living with a level of integration that makes the exclusion and oppression if the orcs a singular thing.

The first orc to become a cop is a big deal – it’s a major subplot of the movie – but when we see a centaur cop being part of an orc beating, no-one bats an eyelid. Centaur police are an accepted part of the police force, suggesting that, in contrast to orcs, they’re a more accepted part of society.

In that scene, not one car looks capable of comfortably accommodating a centaur. There isn’t even a contemporary horse float! (something I imagine centaurs might find a bit degrading). Nor do we ever see such a thing anywhere else in the movie.

We know there’s a centaur police officer who, in stature, stands quite some distance above his human colleagues, but every doorway we see in the police plaza is the same width/height as contemporary human buildings. Do centaurs never come inside? Even as part of their jobs?

Was the centaur, like the dragon, just set-dressing without thought given to the implications of what it means to have centaurs in this world?

We simply see no evidence of society accommodating centaurs.

Finally, there are the orcs. As well as being another fantasy race, they’re super-humanly strong. In onc scene we see an orc single-handedly lift a car to retrieve a kid’s ball.

This means that humans, elves and all the other races had enslaved, or at least oppressed, a race of super-strong warriors for thousands of years, and the world they built off the back of that labour force was identical to contemporary downtown L.A.

So what does all this mean…

For a setting to be engaging and immersive, elements that define the setting have to be evident in the details. Sure, there is a certain amount of handwaving that goes on, but when creating a setting in which you want a story to play out, it is worth considering the broader effects of each new element you add. This ads depth that helps bring the setting to life, and it is what is painfully missing from the world of Bright.

In many medieval fantasy settings, different races are often segregated and, while they may trade and interact with each other, it’s more reasonable to expect such a thing as ‘dwarven architecture’ to be different from ‘human architecture’ to meet their different physiological needs in their own, somewhat closed-off regions of the world. But in an integrated multi-racial society that has supposedly developed over centuries parallel to our own society, many of these gaps are simply too big to overlook.

Still, I reiterate that I’m glad this movie exists and that it’s apparently getting a sequel. If it is successful in kicking off a new trend of urban fantasy in big-budget film and TV production, I just hope that there’s a bit more thought given to the details of the setting in future. beyond “let’s throw a dragon in the background, that will look cool!”

Night brings the sun (a tale of heroic sacrifice)

[Image: ‘Night brings the sun’ by Jen]

I’ve been running an Exalted 2E game for about 2 years, in which time we’ve managed 14 sessions.

A recent session included the culmination of several plot lines and resulted in a large battle between the PCs, who were leading a militia of a few hundred hastily trained refugees, and a force of spider-like beastmen created by a sorcerous second-circle demon. The beastment were led by terrestrial exalted who were bound to love and serve the demon by mind-bending sorcery. However, the beastmen were only distraction from the army of war ghosts marching up from a nearby shadowland to overrun the refugee township the PCs were defending.

The fight with the beastmen took a hard toll on the PCs, with most of them drained of essence and suffering a few injuries, but one PC (a night caste martial artist) was crippled in the fight. As they were assessing the outcome of their narrow victory over the beastmen, the PCs became aware of the army of ghosts marching from another direction.

As the army of ghosts approached, the PCs – having recently gained access to a salt mine – tried to build a salt line around the village, but realised they wouldn’t have enough to do so, so instead they built a defensive salt line between the village and the army, planning to use some of their various travel charms and magic to encircle the army of ghosts with salt once they drew closer, and then just wait for the sun to rise.

They didn’t consider that the demon would be leading the ghostly army, and one casting of Magma Kraken (a powerful spell that summons tentacles of molten rock from the ground to fight) was able to disrupt their defensive salt line and gave the PCs the problem of dealing with the tentacles before they did any real damage.

This was when the crippled night caste decided to act.

Previously, the night caste had been having troubled dreams, which had led to learning the first few charms of the Quicksilver Hand of Dreaming martial arts style.

For those unfamiliar, the first couple of charms of this style include the ability to give people specific visions or dreams, and then another charm lets you pull those dreams out of people’s heads and manifest them in the real world. The night caste had not, up to this point, really explored the possibilities of this combo.

Realising the likelihood of defeat at the hand of the ghosts, which would mean a terrible end for the village and its 5000 occupants, the Night Caste PC gave a stirring speech in which he called for a volunteer willing to give their life in defence of their home and family.

Then, using an ancient artifact (Wings of the Raptor… a magic cloak turns into giant wings), the night caste flew high into the midnight sky, and with their last remaining essence used a combo of Martial Arts charms charms to give the person a waking dream of the rising sun that burns away the undead.

Then, knowing full well what it would mean to touch the surface of the sun, he plucked out that dream, letting the sun shine brightly for a fraction of a second before it incinerated both the character and his volunteer, but also destroying the entire army of ghosts in a blinding flash.

Between the player first proposing the idea and the final execution, we had a bit of discussion about the implications of the action and the ultimate finality of attempting to hold the sun in the palm of your hand. After considering some alternatives, the player decided to commit to it and we played out the final moment which brought a quick end end to the character and the battle. To background this event, we used the soundtrack from Sunshine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_b6C0PHXkQ

The final serendipity of the moment was the fact that the group had only just recently learned of the fate of the character’s first age incarnation, who had similarly died when a solar circle spell he had been casting to slay a horde of demons had been disrupted, and he similarly exploded, taking many of the demons with him, but ultimately killing himself and a circle-mate.

Heroic sacrifices are rare moments in roleplaying games – and need to be rare moments in order to maintain the weight and impact of the decision by the character/player – but when they come up in an appropriate moment it can be a real highlight to a game session, and even a whole campaign.

This moment was a great example of the collaborative storytelling of roleplaying, and one of many examples of why I love this hobby.

The GM & the Tarot: 5 – long-term plots and event timelines

<<<Previously: Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

Arising out of the request that led to Cytherea’s Civil War was the need to create a way to use the cards to create significant plot events that could define a campaign. In order to provide enough complexity and variety, and ensure it was a sustainable system that could be used repeatedly without too much chance of repetition if used repeatedly in the same game.

In devising this particular use of cards, I drew on a couple of assumptions:

  1. These plot events were primarily to involve the Player Characters (PCs), rather than define a timeline of events that would occur no matter what.
  2. That every plot event should have some point of conflict at the core. Conflict is what drives stories and either forces the PCs to react or is the result of the PCs actions.

I maintained the rules for interpreting cards that any Major Arcana meant there was some relation to one of the major NPCs (and if it was an actual NPCs card then it related to that characters) and that the court cards (Page, Knight, King, Queen) meant a significant NPC, even if only in the context of that story arc or event.

I also retained the idea of using inverted cards to indicated that something was hidden or secretive, though in this case I would not be drawing an additional card to ‘mask’ the hidden action or intent.

With those ideas in place, I settled on the following approach:

Draw 3 cards

  • First card – defines the main plot event
  • Second card – modifies the main event
  • Third card – identifies the point of conflict

It is up to you whether you interpret the cards in sequence or together, through my preference in this instance is to take them all together and consider the interactions between cards rather than adhere to any strict sequence of events.

As an example, here’s the first plot event from Cytherea’s Civil War:

First, draw 3 cards:

  1. Princess of Pentacles (inverted); explore and seek new things, but in secret.
  2. 2 of Pentacles; balance, equilibrium
  3. 6 of Pentacles; generosity of spirit

An interesting twist of coincidence (or poor shuffling) that three Pentacles cards came out together. Pentacles, despite the often mystical associations of the 5 pointed star, is most commonly associated with the material world and physical aspects of life. Money, property, business, etc.

That the key event is to revolve around a significant individual provides a sound introduction to a new story, and given the plot ideas already set in play by the draw of NPCs and their relationships to the characters, the element of secrecy is also quite fitting.

As it’s the opening of a campaign involving characters in a foreign land, there are some elements that seem unavoidable. Arriving, establishment, meeting locals. However the nature and style of these events are shaped by the cards.

So here’s how I defined the opening event…

Plot event outline:

The Vermillion legion (PC faction) arrive in An-teng and are welcomed by the matriarch of a village (the Princess card) in the outer regions where they set up camp. The PCs faction have been sent in support of House Ledaal’s legion who are there to help quiet tensions in the area after a minor uprising in one of the outer provinces (restore balance/equilibrium). Their true mission, however, is to seek out the location of a rumoured first age weapon that would give house Tepet a significant advantage, but the leadership of the legion are under orders to keep the true nature of their quest strictly need-to-know (seek new things, but in secret). Therefore, only a few of the legion’s ranking officers know the true objective. A conflict arises early between the two generals when the Ledaal general takes a very forceful approach to engaging with the local populace and the Tepet general intervenes at the behest of the Matriarch (the general’s generosity of spirit provoking conflict).

This approach seemed to work fairly well for its intended purpose, so the next step in finalising the Civil War plotline is to generate a series of events to provide the opening structure of the campaign.

<<<Previously: Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

Coming soon: Cytherea’s Civil War (part 2)

Cytherea’s Civil War (Part 1)

<<<Previously: 4 – A sample session outline

Next: 5 – Long term plots and event timelines>>>

NOTE: This post assumes some knowledge of the setting and characters of Exalted.

One of the main gaming forums I inhabit is Onyx Path Publishing’s Exalted forum, and after I published the first 4 GM & the Tarot articles, I posted links here for some feedback from forum users, and offered to apply the process on behalf of anyone else’s campaign starters to see what emerged.

Forum user Cytherea took up that offer, providing the following idea:

“If you’re still up for it, I’d love to hear what your system can come up with for the game I’m currently planning.

It’s going to be a campaign about the Realm civil war beginning in An-Teng with a conflict between Tepet Ejava’s Vermillion Legion (the PC faction), the satrap and their local Ragara interests, and General Shuri the Scarlet representing House Ledaal. Of course, other factions like the Tengese Princes, the Lintha, and the First and Forsaken Lion will be causing trouble as well. I’m in the middle of trying to come up with a rough timeline of events for this mini civil war, sort of like the guide in Return of the Scarlet Empress. Could this system handle something like that?”

Can it handle something like that? Well, I was certainly willing to find out.

This request has two distinct parts. The first, and the subject of this post, is developing a campaign landscape using the method of drawing and interpreting tarot cards described primarily in post two of this series.

The second part, to come in a future post, was to come up with a method of determining large-scale timeline events to drive a campaign.

Choosing the deck

I have a number of different decks that have different images and themes to depict the common characters, events and ideas of the tarot. For Exalted games, I usually use the Manga Tarot. I like this one for a couple of reasons; primarily it uses images of characters, creatures and objects inspired by Japanese history, culture and mythology that has a strong resonance with the setting and style of Exalted, but it also inverts the typical gender associations of the major arcana and other characters depicted in the deck.

One of the ideas I’ve always found attractive about the setting of Exalted is that because people of all genders exalt (awaken to/be granted demi-god like powers) in roughly equal numbers, there is not an underlying culture of sexism informing most of the societies in the setting. For this reason, I like the greater number of prominent female figures in the manga tarot deck, partly as a reminder to constantly question my own assumptions about issues of gender and identity when creating key NPCs and plot elements for the game.

The Campaign Landscape

The first series of card draws involves drawing only major arcana to inform a series of 8 NPCs, followed by a second draw, again of only major arcana, to inform NPC motivations. The second draw allows inverted cards as an indicator of hidden motives, and which usually prompt subsequent draws to identify the public face of the character’s intentions.

So for this campaign that intends to lead up to a civil war between major houses of the Empire, I drew the following:

NPC Card Motivations
02 – The Priest 16 – The Tower (inverted) + The Hanged Woman (inverted)
08 – Justice 19 – The Sun
11 – Strength 13 – Death
12 – The Hanged Woman 14 – Temperance (inverted) + 20 – Judgement
16 – The Tower 8 – Justice
18 – The Moon 15 – The Devil
19 – The Sun 0 – The Fool (inverted) + 11 – Strength
21 – The World 21 – The World

Devising NPCs

Here’s how I interpreted the NPC cards in light of Cytherea’s overall campaign outline:

Card Meaning/s NPC
02 – The Priest Spirituality. Advice, non-materialistic vision, teaching. “The spirit is a garden to be cultivated with love”. Respected elder of An-Teng, mortal necromancer, ‘keeper of the pact’ who negotiates with the denizens of a local shadowland.
08 – Justice Equity. Do right, objectivity, perspective. “Doing the right thing is the most difficult thing.” Imperial general – Tepet, believes in service to the empire but values immaculate philosophy principles of caring for those beneath one’s station, and so questions orders that seem to serve personal, over broader, goals.
11 – Strength Energy. Self-control, perseverance, resistance. “All know how to be weak, all know how to be strong.” Imperial general – Ledaal, devotee of military strategy, master martial artist, values victory above all.
12 – The Hanged Woman Equilibrium, sacrifice, training. “equilibrium comes from the inside” An-teng political leader who serves as a local advisor to the satrap, is privy to various factional plots that seek the leader’s endorsement and resources.
16 – The Tower Ashes. Ruin, destruction, things going up in smoke. “The storm breaks only what does not bend”. Tengese prince who is the figurehead for an army preparing to reclaim an-teng from the empire.
18 – The Moon Going beyond appearances, dreams, thoughts, ‘Harmony in giving and receiving’. A sidereal of the Silver faction, believes a compromise is necessary between the ruling order of solars and lunars, due to the solars reduced numbers.
19 – The Sun Truth, light, decision, ‘Live in the light’ A sidereal of the Gold faction, seeks to return creation ‘to the light’.
21 – The World Soul, Completeness, understanding, perfection, achievement, ‘Everything in the right place’ Pirate captain, serves their demonic patron (soul) in their mission to return things to the right place. Believes they have established a life of balance and perfection walking between worlds (land and sea, creation and malfeas)

This collection of NPCs primarily served to represent the primary factions already identified as part of the campaign, with only the addition of two sidereal characters, manipulating matters from behind the scenes.

Determining Motivations

Next came their motivations, which offered the chance to develop these NPCs and open up the possibilities of their involvement in the story.

I interpreted the cards this way:

NPC Motivation Cards NPC motivation
The Necromancer 16 – The Tower (inverted) + The Hanged Woman (inverted) The necromancer is secretly providing intelligence to ancestor spirits about the workings of politics and imperial happenings in An-teng. They believe the ghosts will help to free the region of Imperial forces, but are unaware that a Deathlord is direction the actions and inquiries of the ghostly forces who plan instead to wipe out all of creation. Many other factional leaders seeks wisdom form the dead via this NPC, but they are genuinely unsure of who, if any, deserves their help.
General of the Vermillion Legion (PC starting faction) 19 – The Sun The Tepet leader of the Vermillion legion believes that something is amiss about the current state of their orders and, while fulfilling their duty, seeks the truth of their orders, and the actions of the other imperial legion in the area.
General of the Ledaal legion 13 – Death The Ledaal general seeks glory through greater challenges, grows tired of suppressing rebellions and fighting off beastmen on the fringes of civilization and wants to test their mettle against legendary enemies of creation.
The Satrap’s Advisor 14 – Temperance (inverted) + 20 – Judgement The Satrap’s advisor hides beneath a veneer of judicious leadership, balancing the various interests and factions that threaten to upset the peace of the region, however they secretly want to purify and heal their homeland.
Prince of An-Teng 8 – Justice This Tengese prince is the local mirror of the Ledaal general. They believe they are fighting a righteous war and are dedicated to their cause.
Silver Faction Sidereal 15 – The Devil This Sidereal, while pursuing a return to power of the celestial exalted in creation, also wishes to be celebrated for their achievements. They hunger for recognition and reward, and feel frustration at the effects of their arcane fate.
Gold Faction Sidereal 0 – The Fool (inverted) + 11 – Strength This Sidereal presents an image of dedication to the protection of creation, claiming that the celestial exalted are the strongest defence against chaos, however they secretly get a thrill out of upsetting the status quo. After a life dedicated to order and fate, this individual has found perverse pleasure in impulsiveness and unpredictability, and part of their motivation is to cause chaos and see what emerges.
Lintha Pirate Captain 21 – The World The Lintha pirate capatin is pure in their service to the malfean ideal. They want to help bring down the masters of creation so that their demonic parents can rise again. Everything they do has an angle connected to a plot to set people against each other, cause strife, and encourage others to further fray the fabric of creation. In time, this NPC may be a prime candidate for Infernal Exaltation as a reward for their service.

NPC-PC Relations

The final part of determining the overall landscape is randomly determining the overall relationship these major NPCs will have with the PCs. This determines who their allies, enemies, and associates will be over the course of the game.

I shuffled the cards and ended up with this result:

(strongest allies/supporters at the top, down to direct antagonists at the bottom)

  • The Moon – Silver Faction Sidereal
  • The Tower – Tengese Prince
  • Hanged Woman – Local Advisor to Satrap
  • The World – Lintha Pirate
  • The Priest – Mortal necromancer
  • The Sun – Gold faction Sidereal
  • Strength – Ledaal General
  • Justice – Tepet General

Now this was a fascinating outcome! The leader of the PC starting faction was to ultimately become their greatest adversary, with local political figures and revolutionaries as their closest allies.

That the gold faction sidereal was to be in a more antagonistic position made sense, seeing as the Terrestrial Exalts overthrew and murdered the solars all those centuries ago.

Ultimately, it seems the characters will start the game as members of an Imperial legion on a mission from powerful royal luminaries, and eventually find themselves in conflict with their initial allies and in stronger alignment with local interests, perhaps becoming sympathetic to their plight or even joining or helping lead their rebellion.

And that sounds like the beginning of an epic civil war story about loyalty, values and conflict!

Coming soon: Cytherea’s Civil War (part 2) – Countdown to war!

<<<Previously: 4 – A sample session outline

Next: 5 – Long term plots and event timelines>>>

 

Image title/artist unknown. Sourced here.

The GM & the Tarot: 4 – A sample session outline

<<<Previous: 3 – Devising a session

The purpose of this post is to provide a sample of a session outline developed using the processes outlined in Part 3 – Devising a session. This example will be for a Shadowrun game session and will build on the campaign frame and sample NPCs developed in Part 2 – framing a campaign. If you haven’t read the previous posts detailing the use of cards, this post may be a little hard to follow, though the scenario outline at the end should still be of use.

First, in order to kick off the story a begin building plots involving my major NPCs, I’ve opted to incorporate two of the Major Arcana/NPCs into my session draw. After a bit of shuffling, The Chariot was mixed into the 7 card draw, and The Hierophant is a secondary factor in the story.

Session outline draw

The initial 7 card draw comes out as follows:

Story Element Card Suggested meaning
Inciting Incident 9 of Swords Failure, death, delay
Story Goal The Chariot (Major NPC – Smuggler)- also, war, triumph, providence
Primary Obstacle 10 of Cups Contentment, perfection
Assistance 9 of Cups (inverted) Concord, victory, success
Opposition 6 of Swords (inverted) Journey, route, way
Consequences / Stakes Judgement (inverted) Accounting for past actions
Rewards 4 of Pentacles Resisting change

Interpreting the cards

Because The Chariot emerged as the Story Goal, the objective of the story is for the characters to help the Major NPC of the Smuggler achieve a significant goal. As another Major Arcana emerged under Consequences / Stakes, that aspect of the story will be related to the second NPC in this story, the corporate military R&D agent (The Hierophant). Because the Judgement card is inverted, the Hierophant’s involvement in the story will be indirect and possibly not something the player characters are aware of.

Now onto the rest of the cards:

While the common conceit to start a story in Shadowrun games is that the PCs are hired to do a job or ‘run’, and not wanting to over complicate things for the first session in a new campaign I will stick with that arrangement. The reasons for the job, however, can be coloured by the card that is drawn and influence the circumstances of the rest of the session.

So this story begins when the characters are hired to replace another team who have failed to do a job (‘failure’ as represented by the 9 of Swords). This immediately suggests that the job is particularly difficult. The reasons for their failure will be determined after more of the session outline is completed.

The goal of this story is to help the Smuggler deliver a package – they PCs are to meet the Smuggler somewhere just inside the national border and take possession of a package and then get it to its intended destination.

The primary obstacle of this session is defined by ‘contentment, or perfection’ – following on from the influence of the 9 of Swords as the Inciting Element, this card could be interpreted as a further absence of contentment, or even the opportunity for contentment, meaning that the pressure is really on for this task. The job has just become incredibly time-sensitive and so the PCs have far less than their usual time for preparation – effectively none – and will have to improvise more than usual to complete the task in time. To further expand on the idea of an absence of contentment, the primary setting for the story will be on unfamiliar and hostile territory. In the default Shadowrun setting of the Seattle city-state, there are plenty of hostile urban sprawls and slums in which such events can take place. In this case, the PCs have to meet the Smuggler in one of the abandoned regions of the city rendered uninhabitable by an erupting volcano, occupied now by urban predators, gangs and magical nasties that dwell in the dark places of the Shadowrun universe.

Whatever assistance is available to the characters at short notice is not immediately evident and would therefore require some exploration or creative thinking on behalf of the PCs to uncover. In the context of the story so far, and given a primary meaning of the 9 of Cups is ‘concord’, or agreement between groups of people, there will be a small community of homeless people living around the area who can help the PCs navigate through unfamiliar terrain. This help will not be offered freely, nor will their presence be immediately evident.

Opposition, defined by an inverted 6 of Swords, has to do with the route or journey the characters or their goal will take. A clear use for this card is not immediately evident, so I’ll wait to apply the remaining cards before deciding in this one.

The inverted Judgement card relates to the NPC of the Hierophant, or the military R&D agent, who themselves have a hidden motive. This character is behind some aspect of the story but their involvement is indirect, so I interpret that as meaning that the character will be acting through third party agents as well as further ciphers to protect their identity, should the PCs go looking. I also have to remember that this character is meant to be the primary antagonist of the campaign and so it can’t hurt for their relationship to the characters to get off on a bad foot.

Therefore, I choose to interpret this card and it’s position on the draw as referring to the ‘consequences of success’ in the style of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. If the characters succeed in their task they will incur, at least, some ongoing bad favour from their hidden adversary.This means that the hidden NPC doesn’t want the characters to succeed. But why? The NPC has an investment in the characters failing in their task. This NPC wants to claim the item that the characters are helping to smuggle, which, given the secret motivation of the NPC suggests that the smuggled items have some value to the NPCs secret pursuit to ‘transcend humanity’ through cyber-technology.

The last card in the ‘rewards’ position  indicates that ‘resisting change’ will be a primary benefit of success in this story. Given the result of the card/story element above, this is going to mean that succeeding in this task will prevent something significantly worse from happening – it means a significant delay in the NPCs progress towards their goal, which, by extension, means that the NPCs goal is something worth stopping.

With these two final cards in place it helps to interpret the card in the ‘Opposition’ position. The characters will be opposed by others who want to get the smuggled package on a different route or journey than the direction the PCs will take it. The one element I will then add to the story that isn’t immediately suggested by the cards will be the agents that are trying to intercept the package and prevent the PCs from succeeding. Given that the major NPC has an allied NPC (or group) in the form of an elite squad of soldiers assisting in the research, some manifestation of that group will be the opposing agents in this session.

With all of those elements in place, it’s time to draft the final session outline…

Session outline

Backstory: The NPC R&D agent is involved in some less-than-ethical research into pushing the limits of cyberware and the human condition. While doing more mainstream research for their primary employer, a corp-run military outfit, they are also pushing their own agenda and subtly manipulating some experiments in order to test personal hypotheses alongside the corp-approved research goals.

One facility that operates in a location outside of the games setting was the subject of a successful run to capture a lot of research data, and then damage or destroy the facilities and any available data backups.

The perpetrators of this run did not know that the facility and research they were targeting were part of the NPC R&D agents personal agenda.

Upon learning of the heist, the NPC set a couple of members of their available allied soldiers to track down the perpetrators and reclaim the missing data. Because the true nature of the research was secretive and the NPC didn’t want to draw additional attention, they send only a small number of soldiers on this mission (perhaps the corporation that owned the facility considered it an acceptable loss, especially seeing as such espionage is a common part of doing business in the world of Shadowrun).

So the team of runners that were meant to receive the package were intercepted by the soldiers while the smuggler with the data was still in transit, leaving the person who initiated the job to arrange for a new crew to make the pickup with little preparation and deliver it to a third and final agent.

Gameplay outline: The PCs are hired by a generic agent to pick up a job after the previous team have dropped out of contact. They have to meet the smuggler in a remote and hostile part of town, collect a package, and get it to another destination back in the inhabited part of the city. They characters are offered an enticing bonus to their pay to make up for the lack of preparation time and the extra danger implied by the disappearance of the previous crew.

The location of the meeting is a particularly desolate and alien piece of terrain. Long-cold lava flows engulf the bottom stories of buildings, many of which are crumbling and unstable due to the damage to their lower floors – rubble and difficult terrain abounds. The Smuggler will be coming in an aerial vehicle to land on one of the few large, stable buildings in the area that has a still-serviceable landing pad on its roof, where the PCs will meet, collect the package and aim to get back out the way they came.

This will involve a bit of planning and improvising on the part of the GM to characterise the terrain and consider how it may present challenges to the characters. Being inaccessible to most conventional vehicles is a good starting point.

Once the PCs have the package, the soldiers tracking them will make their move and try to reclaim the data being smuggled. Because in the world of Shadowrun, data can be smuggled/transferred via the Matrix, this package will also include a physical element. A prototype device that is also being transported.

The major conflict of the session then will be the PCs trying to either fight or flee from a small group of elite soldiers who will be better equipped and trained to operate in this environment. If they succeed, they will be marked by the NPC as being part of an opposing conspiracy, and if they fail they will either be killed by the soldiers, or at least lose the package entrusted to them by the Smuggler.

This will be played out in roughly three main scenes,

One – the hire. The PCs meet with the hiring agent who will impress upon them the urgency and potential dangers of the job (set the stakes high!)

Two – the meeting. The PCs enter the area of the ground, where the GM develops the alien nature of the surroundings and the challenges it presents. The PCs may have a little bit of time to explore and in which to potentially uncover the possibility of assistance from the local community (which might come in the form of a secret passageway out or helping transport the package so the characters can lead the soldiers away – this would be high risk and possibly result in achieving the story goal while still suffering significant personal consequences or death).

Three – Ambush! The soldiers spring their trap which, depending on the PC’s actions, could results in a deadly stand-up fight or a pursuit through difficult territory to freedom.

And that’s it! There’s an example of using tarot cards to develop a session outline and related story elements.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below.

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Exalted 3 Combat Cheat Sheet – First Draft

After playing a couple of session of Exalted 3rd edition, I’ve started work on a quick combat rules summary that (hopefully) covers the most commonly needed rules for combat situations.

This is a first draft, which will probably end up being 2 pages, or one double sided page, once I add rules for movement, ranged attacks, cover and a couple of other combat situations.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions in the comments below.

Exalted 3e combat cheat-sheet