Odd Oracles

I'm working on two issues of A Random Encounter at the moment, and turning some ideas over in my head. I was transcribing my interview with Patrick Stuart for Issue 4, and we talked a bit about blogging and why he started, and it got me thinking about when I started blogging about games. This blog started on 21st March 2012, but on the same day I posted something on a Tumblr that I used to use, about the very first game that I GMed: In A Wicked Age.

I like In A Wicked Age: the Oracles that produce the inspiration and elements work really well, they produce a rich fantasy world at the table with no prep, and I think that playing it a few times gets you in the flow with the dice mechanics. There's a bit of AP in the post, and I was playing with Patrick and David, so it was a good game. There were also a couple of musings about the Oracle idea itself:

[Patrick] mentioned that there were “Oracle hacks” of the game, and I can understand why this would be quite cool to do. Because the set-up is so fast, straightforward and fun, it’s quite a freeing game to play. ... In my head I’m already imagining urban fantasy possibilities, superhero settings and even - dare I say it - zombie game settings…

We hacked together an Oracle or two and played some Tales From Zero Point, which was an element of a bigger space setting that we created collaboratively. I loved that the Oracle could produce a great game with no preparation. We could turn up and really tune in to make a creative story; and at the same time, I still felt that it was a bit clunky with the mechanics, and as someone running the game I wanted something to help support making NPCs and places - even just little possible story threads for the players to explore (I'm not a railroad fan).

For a little while now I've been turning over mashing an Oracle-setting-generator-thing with the Into The Odd resolution mechanics: a strip-downed game that could get people up and running quickly with no prep. Draw some cards to get character and setting inspiration from an Oracle, and while PCs roll dice to flesh out their characters, the GM can roll some dice or draw cards to flesh out the setting in an organic way. I think it's possible to do this in a reasonably small game, that provides a lot of prompts and support for the GM and the players to come up with the backdrop for a great one-shot every time they play, or which could organically create a sandbox-y story - each session being either an "episode" or just the next steps.

And now that this idea is back in my head again... I guess I have one more thing to add to the to do list... :)

NPCs

In a G+ post yesterday Zak asked "What do you know about an NPC before they come up in your game?" - a question that I think is really interesting. I think that over the last year, which is as long as I have run games, my approach has changed a little.

The first game that I GMed was In A Wicked Age - by design, I knew nothing about any of the characters before we played. NPCs were revealed as players asked questions, and were sketched from stick figures into something resembling real people over the course of the first scene that they were in.

Dogs in the Vineyard, which I ran as my first short campaign, was more interesting. As NPC stats are descriptive by nature, this plants seeds in my mind about what the people look like. How they walk and talk maybe. For some of the characters they look like people that I know or have seen on the TV. Some - typically the people who are props perhaps - are less fleshed out. As the campaign wore on the potential for some NPCs changed a lot.

The hedge-witch/trader that the Dogs were tailing turned up dead, badly mutilated. Now, originally this was going to be the work of the mad-with-grief Dog-turned-Steward in the town. But... As they investigated this didn't sit right. And so the dabbling-with-demons brother and sister became the "oh King of Life make it stop, they morph into Resident Evil style monsters and they just keep coming" finale bosses. And their grandfather was supposed to be dead, but good things come in threes...

In LotFP/Somewhere North I have used a few generators just to generate details about people. I have stats and nothing else, or a one-liner (a retired hero lives there; a war criminal is in hiding) and this becomes the basis for something else. Names are good. I can't put my finger on what it is about the names that lead to descriptions, but they do something. Randomly rolling Ungrall the Unctuous instantly put the person in my head, with all but one detail missing.

A detail that is always missing for me until the NPC appears on-stage. The voice. I never know what a NPC will sound like until they say something. Never. Zinternik's elves and halflings are all cockney. Ungrall the Unctuous speaks with a pronounced lisp due to tongue boils. Robin, the head guard of Overtornea is incredibly officious and bored. Marco the magic-user is incredibly excited and casts spells like he is throwing Pokeballs.

But until they open their mouth for the first time, even I have no idea what they will sound like.

Thursday Tales

Making a few connections with the help of the Tales From Zero Point Oracle...
Jack of Spades: The recycled Death Scream of a world. The cult that worships it.
Three of Diamonds: A renegade librarian guards a vast archive in the station's lower reaches with dangerous traps.
Jack of Clubs: The Engineers Guild prepares an initiation and a geneered woman flees persecution.
Two of Spades: A chitinous, black mercenary arachnid alien, terrifying yet honourable guard for the elite.

The geneered woman has an artificial adaptation that is anathema to the Screamers Cult; she runs, heading for a labyrinth of learning, aided by an alien mercenary. She cannot pay him, but he recognises something kindred in her, something "right". The archive is well-protected, and if they can get past the initiation ceremonies of the Mechanikers they will have to persuade the insane old Archiver to allow them sanctuary...

Notes

• The Screamers are living mosaics and mash-ups: their appearance and speech is taken from images and sounds captured from the Dying World. They wear and speak to honour the world.
• The Mechanikers' initiations are legendary, both for the wave of innovation that follows a novice's acceptance and for the collateral damage usually inflicted.
• The Archiver does not like people returning items late. He hates it so much that people now have to prove themselves worthy of being in the archive. Few do.

Thursday Tales

From the Tales From Zero Point Oracle...
Five of Clubs: Uplifted spider-monkey clans worship a pantheon of Echelon-II emulates.
Two of Hearts: A scroll-bearer for a librarians' cult makes a discovery.
Four of Clubs: The League of Docking Bay Families refuses passage to any and all who would attempt ingress.
Ten of Clubs: A HMBT stasis-pod drifts in to Zero Point's gravity well; the occupants awake.

The Echelon-II emulates are machine consciousnesses based on old (but still hyper-advanced) sentient software; the cores available to them in the Eighth Level Arboretum are merely functional at best. They can still think at far faster rates than humans. Or uplifts, like the Spider-monkey Clans that bring them processors, drives and other tech as offerings. The uplifts know that the Echelon-II gods are not divine, but they are technology indistinguishable from magic - and to be obeyed. One day, the gods request a very dangerous offering...

The Scroll-bearer is a junior functionary in the Sophos Cult. They track and worship knowledge - especially precious paper based media. The Scroll-bearer finds information that a lost enemy stasis pod is approaching Zero Point. The Cult has known this for years, and known that the HMBTs inside would surely wake, surge through the station and kill all inside. The Cult suppressed the knowledge because this apocalypse seemed inevitable...

The Docking Bay Families have been ordered to lock off the entire docking bay, and to do everything they can to repel the HMBTs. They are not optimistic. A Salvage-boy wonders if there might be another way when he receives a shortwave radio signal from a nearby habitat area. The sender claims to be a digital deity...

The PCs
A Spider-monkey: The alpha-warrior in the tribe, a faithful servant of the Pantheon. Called on by the "gods" to serve and to aide the Scroll-bearer. A true believer in the power of the Pantheon, he calls the HMBTs "space devils". His best interest is to kill a space devil and thus earn eternal glory.
The Scroll-bearer: Has a digital treasure trove of information about the HMBTs, and knows how to access their equipment. She needs help to get there because the Docking Bay Families have secured most of the passages. Her best interest is to use the information she has to stop the HMBTs.
The Salvage-boy: He knows all of the ways in and out of the docking bay circle, including the unblocked passages. The Echelon-IIs have promised him some truly great tech if he helps them. And what other choice does he have? His best interest is to help the Scroll-bearer and the Spider-monkey. This may be thwarted because others in the Docking Bay Families will see it as their duty to prevent any access, HMBT or otherwise.

The NPCs (lots of them!)
The Sophos Cult: They did the maths in years past that plotted when the stasis pod would return. Zero Point no longer has external defences to divert the pod away. They have gathered knowledge for years, with only a few knowing the true purpose: a faint hope that the apocalypse of the arriving HMBTs can be averted. Their best interests are to keep searching; if they think all hope is lost then they will become maudlin and possibly suicidal.
Spider-monkeys: A long-forgotten experiment gifted these creatures with human-level intelligence. Still slightly primitive even though they know the nature of the world. It is in their best interest to help the Pantheon.
Echelon-II Pantheon: If they can get access to a HMBT computer core they should be able to instantiate into a faster existence. And if they do that they may be able to find a way to defeat the HMBTs. A lot of ifs. It is in their best interests to convince representatives of the spider-monkey clans, the Sophos Cult and the Docking Bay Families to work for them. Their long term goals are unclear...
Docking Bay Families: Normally they deal with arriving ships and provide services. A central Zero Point AI has tasked them to hold the HMBTs at bay at all costs, and to allow access only to war mechs which are several days away (having to navigate through internal corridors and broken travel tubes). It is in their best interests to follow orders, but more fundamentally to stop the HMBTs and gain prestige for their caste.
The HMBTs: That's "Hideous Murdering Bug Things". When they gain access to Zero Point they will start xenoforming everything in sight. They will kill, maim and destroy, and find ways to reproduce. No-one knows quite how their reproductive cycle works - they were always too hostile to study - but they capture, kill and eat a lot of living creatures to do so. Their best interest is to get past the docking bay and into the habitats.

Thursday Tales

The Tales From Zero Point Oracle delivers something a little different...
Queen of Spades: A trio of crippled friends, none human, all without fear and destined for adventure.
Six of Clubs: A starscraper lies empty, save for the man who tries to maintain it.
Nine of Diamonds: A slum lord depressurizes a section of the station because his tenants can't pay the rent.
Seven of Spades: An epochs-old damaged war mech, one functioning weapons pod and cracked lenses, guarding the last repository of original art.

The Caretaker lives in a starscraper that is owned by the Slum Lord. He's the last person living there after the Slum Lord depressurised it because of "non-payment of tithes". The Slum Lord sees himself as a feudal baron, and because he has access codes to local environmental controls (among other things) he will see his will be done. He has some retainers, police thugs, and most of the tenants were evicted beforehand. He is waiting for them to disperse before he can repressurise it and claim their belongings, then advertise the starscraper as new living/business space. Living in the far future, his thinking is trapped in a hybrid 12th/20th century model. He holds secure a treasure trove of art, acting as banker and broker for minor art houses (some legit, some not).

The Trio lived in the outer floors of the starscraper, on the 110th floor out to space, in a relatively low gravity environment away from the core of Zero Point. They were soldiers, variously an uplifted dolphin, an uplifted wolf and a neanderthal. Wounded in battle, they retired to live out their remaining years in peace and quiet. Until now. They have left the starscraper in some basic mobility suits, but need both power, shelter and revenge on the Slum Lord... A plan is formed.

The PCs
The Dolphin: is totally reliant on the suit that she wears. A muscle paralyser dart has reduced her motor functions, and besides she can't get around on land easily without it. In the water she can get about. Her best interests are to locate the art and to have revenge on the Slum Lord.
The Wolf: has two cybernetic hind legs, and has cognitive brain functions boosted by implants. Consequently he is tactically brilliant, even if his mobility is not what it once was. His best interest is to rip the throat out of the Slum Lord.
The Neanderthal: lost his arms and eyes in combat. He has excellent vision now, his eyes boost light in multiple wavelengths and "see" what the station sees (where service allows), but his arms are very basic models, and do not fit with his body type at all. His best interest is to take the Slum Lord's place and attempt to lead well (not as a tyrant).

The NPCs
The Slum Lord: an evil greedy bastard, basically. Not too smart, but not stupid either. If there's an angle, he wants to play it. The artworks are a nest egg; he gets a cut of their appreciating value, and a cut when transactions are made. Usually, everything stays in the vault, which is guarded by the Mech: a great big ancient City Pacifier, capable of controlling a city district of 10^6 sentients single-handedly. Luckily it doesn't have the firepower it once had... Right? The Slum Lord's best interest is to do whatever it takes to get the Caretaker out of the starscraper, to establish total control, kill anyone he has to and make a lot of money.
The Caretaker: a middle-aged man, trying to find a way to usurp the starscraper controls away from the Slum Lord, hopefully permanently. If he can do that then hopefully the former tenants can move back in, and form a proper defence against the Slum Lord's future ambitions. He has a few floors pressurised, and otherwise gets around in an atmosphere rig. His best interest is to get control of the starscraper and re-pressurise it. If possible he may want to try and lock out the Slum Lord's access permanently. (could work as a PC)
Various Thugs: a motley crew of ne'er-do-wells and mercs, they do what the Slum Lord says. He pays them. Their best interest is to get the job done and drink themselves stupid afterwards. Nuff said.
Former Starscraper Tenants: have set up a shanty town nearby to the starscraper. Thugs keep harassing them, but so far it is mostly for fun. The Slum Lord will want them to be moved soon though, so that he can sell up the facilities. Their leader has lived in the starscraper for her whole life, and is uncomfortable at the fringes of the Zero Point habitat. The Tenants' best interest is to hold out and reclaim their homes.

The trio jump out to me as protagonists, but maybe that is because the Paralympics start today. I also like the idea of the themes about justice and revenge. If the Slum Lord is taken out then there may be some social justice, but possibly through the lens of revenge... Why does the Neanderthal want to lead in the place of the Slum Lord? What is the motivation?

What do you see in the Oracle?

Thursday Tales

Following on from last week I thought it might be interesting to take something from the Zero Point oracle that our group put together for a far future sci-fi setting (which sits within our Microscope-generated "To The Stars" universe), and see what falls out of the elements selected. This is just my interpretation - the story set-up that I see. If you see something else, then tell me in the comments!
The Oracle says...
Jack of Hearts: Monks plot revenge on those they envy.
Eight of Hearts: There are ghosts in space who worship Satan.
Five of Diamonds: After civilisation collapses, an AI takes the form of an ancestor spirit to relate to the survivors.
Seven of Diamonds: A grief-stricken soul dreams of a new life as a ship's captain.

Getting My Maths On

Watch this space; I've been struck by inspiration somehow today, and so am finally getting maths thoughts out of my head where they have been stewing for ages. I've been writing for a work-type project (I do skills training with PhD students and research staff) and need a different kind of outlet. I thought that was going to be figuring out whether or not to use Apocalypse World, GHOST/ECHO or Cyberpunk as the basis for a small campaign that I want to GM, but it turns out that I've had this growing thought about finally figuring out the In A Wicked Age dice-rolling probabilities that has been bugging me. I don't know the answer now, but I SEE the connections.

In maths, when you have enough pieces, sometimes you can just run them together and get an answer spit back out. Building proofs from the conceptual machinery of algebra is dizzying. You can go so far so quickly.

Of course, there are probably resources out there that have looked at this. On an internet with this many connected souls, the chances are quite high that that's true. However, there is something great about sitting down, spending the time and doing some maths for the sake of it. So that's what I'm doing.

Watch this space: soon we'll have the final word on rolling dice for In A Wicked Age!*

*because, you know, that's what everyone has been waiting for in RPGS...

Wicked Wednesday (Sort Of)

No trip to Yoon-Suin this week: noisms was too busy with work, and then Patrick and David both had to cancel on the hastily arranged In A Wicked Age/Tales From Zero Point one-shot that I proposed.

I'm quite a fan of both In A Wicked Age and our homebrew oracle that we played with the same mechanics, Tales From Zero Point (I've blogged about them here and here before). Plus I like GMing and those have been my only experiences so far.

So it was that yesterday evening I decided to draw the cards anyway for what the story might have been at Zero Point Waystation, the greatest single work of humanity ever, a vast space station adrift in the Oort Cloud, right at the edge of the solar system...

THE ORACLE SAID:
Ace of Spades: An insane Robot tends an ancient mosaic, endlessly renewed.
4 of Hearts: A criminal punished with sentient stasis.
10 of Spades: The foundation stone. A beam of iron drawn from the heart of the Sun. The druid that serves it.
King of Clubs: A militant hegemony virus propagates through the transient population.

Now, I have no idea what Patrick and David would have made of this, but in the ten minutes after I pulled those cards, the following ideas for characters and interests came to me.

The insane Robot who builds the mosaic is not "insane" in human terms, it merely has Asimov circuits and directives that are stuck. I think this would be a good NPC. It used to work for or with the Criminal, a PC, who has been released from millenia of stasis by the Druid, also a PC, who is more of an Engineer-Mystic who tends the deep bowels of Zero Point and worships the central beam of perfect iron at the exact centre of the station.

No-one seems to know where the Virus has come from: perhaps somewhere long forgotten within the station, perhaps from a fragment brought in by a salvage-captain. Maybe it is a weapon sent by the Schwarm-Laden beings from beyond space-time. What is known is that it is organising. It creates a network within the small pockets of sentience within the station, then it spreads. And spreads.

The druid thinks that the criminal might be able to help stop it, and the criminal needs the robot repairing to get it done. It's in the druid's best interests to help the criminal recover and stop the Virus. The criminal wants to escape the station and head for Far-Away Earth, even after all this time. So he'll do what he needs to in order to achieve that. The Robot, for now at least, just wants to perfect the mosaic.

And the Virus... Well, no-one can figure out what It wants...

I'll turn it over to you anyway: given the four prompts from our Oracle up there, what do you see?

Wicked Wednesday

Diplomacy - early in life you learned that you sometimes have to compromise to get what you want. You can persuade people through your ability to empathise with them and see things from their perspective.
The strength can't be used in combat.
PCs use for yourself; NPCs use maneuvering.

Aggression-fuelled Psionics - your rage creates psionic turbulence that you can use in combat (or to move things if you are sufficiently angry).
You have to be angry to use your ability, you have to feel rage and the deeper your rage the more terrible your power is.
PCs use with violence; NPCs use action.

Seduce - you have a knack for being able to flirt and persuade members of the opposite (or same) sex; they become compelled to follow your words.
This is a slow ability; you have to take time to do it, be subtle and careful sometimes. You can use it against people who have a negative opinion of you, but you have to know what to say.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use maneuvering.

Third Eye - your training with the Blind Nuns of the Eastern Foothills has developed into the ability to see things that are hidden: you can see the web of connections between people and also objects connected with them that are not in plain sight.
You have to be able to concentrate in order to see things; active combat or other distractions will limit the usefulness of your Third Eye.
PCs use directly; NPCs use maneuvering.

Cognitive Blindspot - you can create a pocket of un-ness to almost make yourself invisible; pockets of negatively charged observance in the people around you limit their ability to be aware of you. You are a ghost, and soon even memory of you will start to fade.
Concentration is key. You must project outwards from yourself. This is an indiscriminate strength, it affects everyone around you when you try to use it.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use self-protection.

Bone Blade - a retractable spike of bone rests in your left arm as a result of a birth abnormality; thirteen inches in length, and razor sharp down one edge, it can be used very effectively in a fight.
This strength can always be used (although you may wish to hide it from others).
PCs use directly; NPCs use action.

Wicked Wednesday

Mind Blast - you transmit thoughts to others when you want to, shocking imagery, horrible ideas, depictions of pain and cruelty.
The power was something that developed through your life; your family, when they were alive, never told you where it came from.
PCs use with violence; NPCs use maneuvering.

Paralyse - the tips of your middle fingers have venomous stingers in the nail bed that extend and retract.
The toxin, if unresisted, can stop a strong healthy person for at least an hour. You're a freak of nature, it has to be said. If unused you have to milk the venom sacs in your palms once a week. After doing so there is a 4 in d6 chance that the toxin is too dilute for 4d6 hours.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use action.

Telekinesis - following an encounter with an otherworldly power you have been gifted with the ability to move things with the power of your mind. Nothing visible occurs around the object you want to move.
A psychological restriction that your mind imposes on itself is that the object moved must be something you could physically lift.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use action.

Levitate - a blessing from a djinn means that you can rise from the ground, or slow yourself when falling. You cannot truly 'fly' nor can you express this ability on another.
The djinn embedded this power in your dead grandmother's wedding ring; you must be wearing it in order to levitate. You can attempt to levitate in combat to provide a more difficult target for your opponent.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use action.

Memory Drain - the ancestors of your people were much sought after for their power to remove unwanted or painful memories. You don't know why you have this power, which last appeared in your people generations ago. You have to decide how best to use it, as there is no-one else to teach you.
You must have physical contact with the person whose memories you are trying to remove.
PCs use with love; NPCs use maneuvering.

Mutate - as a defence mechanism you steal DNA from others, splicing it in with your own. Good for hiding/disguise.
1 on d6, nothing happens; 2-5, you start to resemble the other person. 6, you become them, almost twin-like. You need physical contact so that you can extract DNA.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use self-protection.

Wicked Wednesday

More from my growing collection of Strengths for In A Wicked Age. I'm always looking for more ideas and suggestions, so please add some in the comments if you think of any!

Acrobat - as a child your parents had you practice every day; now you're an expert at tumbling, falling – and most importantly dodging...
In order to maintain this strength you have to make sure you take time regularly to practice.
PCs use for myself; NPCs use action.


Dominate Will - someone with this strength can exert dominance over another, taking control over their actions.
It requires close physical proximity: suggestions are transmitted mind-to-mind. The affected person can still think and feel, but can only act as instructed by the dominator. Strong pain for either party can break the hold.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use maneuvering.

Iron Skin - were you blessed by the gods, or are you a freak of nature? Either way, your skin protects you from harm.
Your skin is always much tougher, there is no on or off switch. It certainly comes in handy in a tight spot.
PCs use for yourself; NPCs use self-protection.

Torture - you are skilled in extracting truth through pain and intimidation.
In order to use this strength well you just need the tools of your 'trade' (whatever they are) and the time to use them.
PCs use violence; NPCs use maneuvering.

Wings - for the longest time you have hidden your true self under a cloak. Your family loved you, and kept you safe. They never told you where your wings came from, or why you were special...
Take flight every few days to keep the muscles limber. And unsheathe them when you fly so they don't get tangled in your cloak.
PCs use directly; NPCs use action.

Read Minds - when you need to, you can hear the thoughts of others as clear as if they were speaking.
This requires no special equipment, rest or practice. You just have to will it. You can only hear, you cannot send.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use maneuvering.

Wicked Wednesday

I'm really looking forward to the next time that I GM or play In A Wicked Age. I love how easy it is to set up, but also want to add some spice in terms of strengths for NPCs, and that takes a fair bit of thought at the start of a session, at a time when you just want to get things going.

I'm working on a random table of 36 strengths. Some are skills, some are really special powers. I'll put a few of them up week-by-week. If you have any more suggestions please let me know in the comments!

Bare Knuckle - the warrior monks trained you in the arts of weaponless combat.
There's a lot of flexibility in terms of style here, but you can't be wielding a weapon of any kind.
PCs use with violence; NPCs use action.

Bind Dead - you can command wandering souls, and even reanimated bodies to be bound to a location, an object - even another person.
You have a collection of talismans and must speak words of power while having a clear perception of who/what you are binding.
PCs use for others; NPCs use action.

Burn - basic pyromagic, controlling already extant fire (growing, subduing, shaping).
To command the destructive element a pyro-mage uses hand gestures and concentration.
PCs use directly; NPCs use action.

Charm - tactile hypnosis grants a subtle power of suggestion over a subject.
Skin-to-skin contact and a clear thought to sway the subject (you have to try and make them feel like it is their idea).
PCs use covertly; NPCs use maneuvering.

Heal - your hands can stir up the force of life and healing in an injured person. You are, quite simply, a lifesaver.
You need time, space and no interruptions. Positive results restore an injured or exhausted person. (the person you are attempting to save will roll covertly and for themselves AGAINST you; you might be trying to save them, but it is an intrusion into their body and sense of self to do so)
PCs act for others; NPCs use maneuvering.

Phase - your body is bound together by your mind, and you can shift the density to pass through or allow objects to pass through you.
A rare focusing crystal embedded in your chest gives you all that you need. It would be awful if it were to break...
PCs act for themselves. NPCs use maneuvering.

Games Night: To The Stars/IAWA

Before I went on holiday I GMed a hacked together version of In A Wicked Age set within the shared game universe that our gaming group have put together, To The Stars. The setting for all of this is Zero Point Way Station, a giant space habitat that sits right at the very edge of the solar system in the Oort Cloud. While I didn't have time to write this up two weeks ago and post about it, I did make plenty of notes on my phone the next day while I was waiting for my flight to Spain.


After running In A Wicked Age previously, I knew that I had to think about preparation a little more. In that respect, I think that I did well by producing a list of names (mostly populated by the names of space scientists via Wikipedia), and also by manually writing out the six combinations of NPC form dice, just to make things neater.

The Oracle for the game was something that the four people in our regular group put together, each of us taking a suit and writing thirteen game seeds. It was a really great set of things, and there were so many provocative images and ideas that I could see it really being quite a valuable little resource. I might ask the others and see what they think about me putting a simple pdf up. For the purposes of that particular session we decided to fudge things ever so slightly to make sure that we used one card from each person's suit.

The four seeds were

• A brave rogue, dared by friends to attempt the circumnavigation of the station.
• A gardener tends megafauna in enclosed biomes under the light from an artificial sun.
• Four old men plotting abduction.
• News of a predator stalking the Undercyst reaches a princeling looking for a challenge.

From these we got the three player-characters:

• Hyatt-Wang, a two-headed philosopher trying to keep knowledge secret;
• Krupp, an old man plotting to kidnap Hyatt-Wang with three other old men;
• Janus, a lovable rogue who is trying to circumnavigate Zero Point;

and a host of others including the mayor of the Undercyst; Ecumenides, a massive Amazonian woman who wants Hyatt-Wang for a husband; Scorsese, an uplifted-velociraptor and shepherd to giant land squid; and Stross, Roth and Falken, the other three old men who want to kidnap Hyatt-Wang for their own purposes.

It's safe to say that nothing happened as any of us planned. PCs seemed perpetually at loggerheads with each other. I think that at times I was too vague with foreshadowing, and at others I gave descriptions that I thought were really clear, but which clearly (after the fact) weren't. Still, second time GMing and all that!

Two things: first, in the final moments of gameplay all three players finally got on to the "Owe" list for the game, which means that all three of them could potentially come back as characters in a future game of Tales From Zero Point (he calls it, not having a better name in mind). This was interesting, as it was something which didn't come up at all in the first game of In A Wicked Age that I ran; it seemed like the PCs were rolling against lower dice throughout, until the very end.

Secondly, while we all had a much better handle on the dice mechanic for resolving things this time, it also felt at times like the mechanic was a bit hit-and-miss. That's not to say that some intriguing stuff didn't happen with the dice-leading-to-story aspect of things. I guess there were two areas where it didn't feel quite right. In the third round of rolling the player with the high roll automatically wins. I can understand there needing to be some kind of cutoff point, but in some cases this felt a bit flat.

Another thing was there not seeming to be a good way of rolling for things which were not due to interaction between characters. If a PC is trying to stab someone, that's a roll of (say) with violence and for myself against (say) NPC self-protection. If a PC is trying to use their knife to pick a lock... What do you do? Do you always let them have it, make them roll some way, flip a coin, have "environment dice" that they are rolling against? What works best? More importantly, what would be simple, clear and consistent?

All-in-all, a great session; I'm looking forward to the next time that I can GM something, and hope that we get back to Tales From Zero Point at some point in the not too distant future. I'm still noodling on various things related to the maths and probabilities of the dice mechanic of In A Wicked Age. When working on it before my holiday some results jumped out at me, so I'm hoping that I can take those and forge on with getting some numbers for the maths side of the blog.

TNG Season 8/In A Wicked Age Mashup

I've been thinking about Oracles since I had so much fun with In A Wicked Age last week. I cannot be the first person to think about them as a great way, not only of setting up one-shot games, but of developing campaigns, quests and the like in much longer games.

I've also really been loving the Twitter account, @TNG_S8, which are the always humourous, always plausible synopses of the continuing Season 8 adventures of the Enterprise-D. It hit me this morning when P and D from my game group retweeted a few that @TNG_S8 - or something very much like it - would make for a great game, and something which could be set up and played very, very speedily using the mechanics of In A Wicked Age.

There are six dice pools in In A Wicked Age, and I think that only a few of them would have to be renamed, if, for example, the player characters were restricted slightly to play Starfleet personnel. The mechanics would work exactly the same, rolling when in conflict, each character carrying a different strength. Data and Picard might be a bit too powerful for player characters (special strengths, Android and Captain respectively). Riker, Troi, Crusher and Geordi should all be fine, Worf too.

I'm not sure if this would be the most serious game in the world - but it would make for some interesting plots I think. And it could be interesting as well to play a game that was formatted a little like a genre TV show. noisms has told me about a game before which was a little like this - it was maybe called Primetime Adventures? I might have to check it out.

All in all, perhaps something worth tinkering with! I have other ideas running in the background about Oracle based games. There are so many settings which it could work well with; and I'm convinced that in terms of providing background events for a long running game it could be really, really useful. More thoughts on that another time perhaps.

Getting Dice All Random

In my first post I mentioned that I had started to get interested in the maths of RPGs from the probabilities in Apocalypse World. There was something else that started me thinking, which is when one of the regulars in the gaming group I play with asked a question on his tabletop role-playing game blog, False Machine.

P was looking at randomly generating an island from a series of entries in a table. He had come up with a means to do that, but only on a computer, which meant while the island was randomly generated the setting would be determined ahead of his session. To him, the problem was, as he put it at the end of the post:

I need a dice method that can randomise 343 hexes

I've always had a strange little fascination with powers of numbers, so this jumped out at me as soon as I saw it. 343 is 7*7*7, which means that you could have seven tables, with seven rows and seven columns; you could then get any entry out of the 343 in your master list by rolling three d8s and re-rolling any 8s.

Problem solved! Until P realised later that there were actually 330 entries in the table for Isle of the Unknown. But this wasn't a problem either, if we imagined the entries arranged in ten tables, each with three columns and 11 rows. Roll a d10 for the table, a d3 (or d6/2 if you must be formal) and a d12 with re-rolls on the 12s. Again, problem solved!

Which got me thinking...

GMs who like to make things up through random tables could possibly have a large number of random encounters or random elements that they would like in tables. 330 or even 343 entries could be quite small. Is there, in general, a sensible schema that we can use for producing sets of random tables for game data, that we can index with dice? Let's assume d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20s are available.

To put some bounds on this, let's assume, for now (although it may be easily extendable, who knows) that we want to consider for sets of random tables with up to 400 elements in total. I'm going to have a think about this and let you know what I think over the next week or so, as well as share a small random table of my own for In A Wicked Age.

Counting Stories

In yesterday's post I posed the following question:

How many stories are there in the manual for In A Wicked Age?

In A Wicked Age has four Oracles - Blood & Sex, God-kings of War, the Unquiet Past and a Nest of Vipers. To start a game the GM and players select one Oracle to draw elements from, and then pick 4 cards (let's assume randomly) from a standard 52 card deck of playing cards. These cards are then matched up to references within the tables for each Oracle.

Let's assume (wrongly, but go with me on this) that the number of stories is the same as the number of sets of four elements that we can take. This being the case, our magic number can be found by multiplying

The Number of Oracles

times The Number of Ways One Can Draw 4 Cards from a 52 Card Deck

times The Number of Ways One Can Arrange 4 Cards

First and last things first: we have 4 Oracles - we've said that quite a few times! If you lay out four cards in an ordered row - any four, distinct cards - then you have 4 choices for what you put down first, 3 choices for what goes second, 2 choices for what you put in third place and only 1 choice for the last one (i.e., whatever card you have left in your hand).

The number of arrangements of 4 distinct objects is thus 4*3*2*1 = 24. In general we can use the notation n! to denote the arrangement of n objects (and we interpret this as "n factorial").

So, how many ways can we take 4 cards from a 52 card deck? Interpreting and explaining the notation is a matter of combinatorial maths, in particular combinations, and while it is not difficult it would take a bit of time to explain here. So if you're really interested, go and read it on Wikipedia!

In maths, if we want to count the number of ways of taking 4 distinct objects from 52 distinct objects then we can denote this as "52C4" which we could read as "52 choose 4". Again, looking at Wikipedia will tell you mathematically what that comes to.

But here we can now say that the number of set of elements from Oracles, and hence the number of stories in In A Wicked Age is:

4 Oracles times 270,725 card draws times 24 ways of arranging cards.

Which is 25,989,600 stories!!! AKA, lots!

While this makes for good maths fun times, I did state further up that there was an incorrect assumption with this process. The maths makes for interesting times, but the assumption that the number of sets of elements is the same as the number of stories is wrong. It has to be.

People interpret things differently. That's one underlying reason. Two days ago, when GMing, we had the element "the guardian of a tomb, a statue cast in silver with ruby eyes". I took that to be, and started coming up with ideas based around the statue BEING the guardian. One of my players, P, took it to be two provocations, that there was someone in the game who was a guardian, and that there was a silver statue with ruby eyes. Already, that's two ways of looking at things.

But:

• The statue could be like a golem, prowling the tomb.
• It could be that an eye is missing.
• It could be that the guardian is a man who pilots the statue like a mecha of some kind.
• The statue might not be humanoid (I definitely don't want to tick off a silver spider guardian).
• Or it might be really small, a foot high only.

There are all kinds of ways of taking these elements, these inspirations.

The maths of this is fun: in In A Wicked Age, the invention and creativity of making a story collaboratively is even more fun, both for GM and players.

Wicked Numbers

This week I played In A Wicked Age for the first time, and in doing so I GMed for the first time. I got my initial thoughts about the experience down on my tumblr account. TL;DR - I love the game, I loved my first time as a GM and can't wait for both again - possibly with me GMing In A Wicked Age.

One of the things that I think was really strong about the game was the use of Oracles for setting up the game. I'm really into creativity and creative thinking as a skills trainer, and so using random provocations is very familiar to me. Last night we seeded our game, and the characters who were in it, by taking inspiration from the Oracle for The Unquiet Past. The elements that we randomly took (using a deck of cards*) were:

• The guardian of a tomb, a statue cast in silver with ruby eyes
• The arrival of honored emissaries from a wealthy exotic land
• The son of a great tyrant, born crippled and denied his inheritance
• A new village built on the ruins of a forgotten people

From these, ideas for about a dozen characters or types of characters who might appear came really easily, and I think that we then had a lot of fun during the game taking these in all kinds of directions. At the start of the night I had no idea what might happen; at the start of the game I still had no idea where things might go. And that worked out really well.

There's something understated in some ways about the In A Wicked Age manual. I've not read hundreds of RPG manuals/sourcebooks, but those that I have generally have a couple of ideas for campaigns or stories. Some have clear and cool guidelines for setting up campaigns, scenes and settings. In A Wicked Age doesn't have any of those. It has something better. It has the Oracles.

It has millions and millions of stories in the manual. Millions and millions in a 37 page pdf.

How many millions? We'll get into that in the next post.

*playing cards from the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. That's how I roll!