Underground Railroad: Play Example

I just finished this Underground Railroad play example. (8 pages, pdf.)

This isn't Actual Play; it's Virtual Play, an imaginary scene with imaginary players that gives a feel of what I'm striving for. It's been a very useful exercise, because it's shown me all kinds of weaknesses (and possibly unnecessary complexities) in the rules. The conflict rules are going to have a big revision as a result of it.

I think the most useful thing it gives to someone reading it is a feel for how the cooperative creation of the story happens.

A number of current Story-Games discussions have informed it in one way or another.

Underground Railroad: Earthist Mystics

Earthist mystics, in my Underground Railroad setting, are kind of shamanic. Through various things I've been reading lately I've expanded my idea of how that might go.

My current thoughts are that there are, in these mystics' cosmology, at least three concentric worlds: from inner to outer, the body world, the soul world and the spirit world. Most people can only perceive the body world directly, accessing the other two through it, but the mystics' training gives them the ability to first perceive, then manipulate, and finally enter the soul world, and eventually the spirit world.

The soul world is perceived symbolically and works by relationship and analogy rather than by the rules of the body world. For example, distance in the soul world is not physical distance but relational or emotional distance. Your lover who is a thousand miles away in the body world is right next to you in the soul world. Even relatively inexperienced mystics can perceive these connections between people (though, since the people look nothing like they look in the body, if they don't know both their body and soul appearance they won't be able to connect the two). They can see if you're lying or afraid or angry, as well.

The worlds are closely linked in people, of course - that's more or less a definition of "people" to an Earthist mystic - so healers can see (and advanced healers can manipulate) the health and general state of the body through the soul world. I'm thinking of introducing a famous healer, Soul-Armed <whatever his name ends up being>, who lost part of his left arm in an accident but retained the soul version of it; he can put his missing hand into you and fix your internal organs. (I have in mind a section of famous people to use as both an enrichment of the setting and also, should you wish it, either main characters or supporting characters.)

Perception of the soul world differs between different people, because it's symbolic. However, inexperienced mystics tend to see it rather dimly and in terms of shadows, while experienced mystics see it much more clearly and in terms of light. Who you are looking at also makes a difference: an experienced mystic will seem much sharper and brighter, even to an inexperienced mystic, than an ordinary person.

The small spirits of place, which basically inhabit the spirit world but can descend into the soul world if they want, can meet the mystics there and communicate with them. The relationship with the astronomical gods of the Lunar-Asterists is a matter up for debate. I want to include a mysterious teacher who is synchretizing the two religions and starting to gain a following for what is effectively a new faith. I'm planning to scatter quotes from his philosophy around the book (or maybe it will be someone else's philosophy).

The spirit world is, for humans, uncommunicable and indescribable, since it transcends names and forms; it is a realm of pure being and identity. Mystics believe that by practicing their spiritual disciplines of concentration, renunciation and attention they can come to experience this aspect of reality, though of course they can't say anything about it because words are inapplicable.

When a person's body dies, their soul, no longer anchored in the body world, is drawn towards the spirit world. However, if there is something in the soul world that holds them, they may hang about until it is resolved. If they are very strong or determined, they can cause effects in the body world in pursuit of their resolution. (They're ghosts or unquiet spirits, in other words, and a mystic will generally be called upon to find out what they want so that they can move on.)

Earthist mystics regard elemental magic, which affects primarily the body world, as something of a distraction, and when they study magic it tends to be the soul-oriented kind - communication, domination and the like. However, advanced mystics, who have integrated body, soul and spirit, can often perform soul-body magic like shapeshifting and healing.

Mechanically, I've decided that this kind of thing (magic, psychic powers, superpowers and so forth) all falls under Special Effect: Unusual Powers. I suppose being a lightning calculator, having an eidetic memory or being a contortionist would too. Like any other Special Effect, you buy levels of it, each one more expensive than the last. This is independent of your rating in the related attribute, though. For example, if doing magic was going to be very important to your character's self-definition, but you saw her as a beginning mage, you might buy one level of Special Effect: Unusual Powers but put four or five dice into her Mage attribute. She would be able to reliably light fires or whatever - she'd be very good at it - but she couldn't shoot firebolts.

Underground Railroad: Setting Design Principles

I'm starting to come up with some principles for designing the Underground Railroad setting. As I said in the Story-Games RPG Fantasy Setting Wishlist thread (which I am so mining, oh yes I am):

Setting stuff that isn't just "Montanus exports opals and wool and is
dry and cold" but gives you a reason to be a character from Montanus
and tells you what that means in terms of who you are likely to be in
conflict with, what your abilities are likely to be, what you probably
care about...

So every place will have at least one thing about it that makes it a cool place to be from, and one thing which makes it a cool place to set a story or part of a story. Every institution, every setting element generally, should have at least one thing which makes someone say, "I want that in my game." Otherwise, why is it in the setting material? And always, always looking for the potential conflicts. Always.

And subsequent to that, of course, I figured out why you would want to be from Montanus. Because some people from Montanus ride flying horses. Which also fits in to Daniel Solis's request in that thread, in response to several people saying "Airships!": "More flying in general."

Why am I putting so much flying in a setting called Underground Railroad? Because flying is cool, that's why.

Underground Railroad: Cover Inspiration

It is far, far, far too early for me to be thinking about a cover for Underground Railroad (the first Pentasystem setting). However, inspiration strikes when it strikes. Here's what I envisage.

The cover features a young woman, small and slender, like a jockey. Her skin and eyes are brown; what you can see of her hair is black. She is wearing tight-fitting (but not cheesecakey) white leather boots, pants and shirt, and a vest, open at the back, which is covered with white feathers in neat rows. She has a white flying helmet with goggles pushed up, and streaming from the back of it, attached by its middle, a white scarf. A matching white sash is around her waist, where an ice wand is holstered. (I don't know what an ice wand looks like. The artist has to do some work.) She is leading a large white horse with white wings; the horse is grooming its wings with its teeth, because the woman has stopped to argue with (and it's clear from her expression and body language that they are arguing) a small black cat which is up on its hind legs - not in a Peter-Rabbit kind of way, just like an ordinary cat that really wants something from a human.

I'm reasonably sure that her name is Suan; I am sure that she's the commander of the Montanusi sky-cavalry employed as mercenaries by Anavalus IV of Koskant. The cat is a Jorian talking cat called Skyport Midnight, and they are arguing about whether he can have a ride on her flying horse, The Zephyr. I'm strongly considering making this my conflict example in the rules text.


Technorati Tags: Underground Railroad, cover

Pentasystem - Underground Railroad

Version 0.4 of the Pentasystem is available, this time adjusted in concert with my Underground Railroad setting. (And here's a link which will always be the current Pentasystem version.)

It was an interesting - and fun - process working on the two side-by-side, and I see why designers generally work on a setting and a system in tandem from the start. As soon as I started to imagine more tangible scenarios, it became clear that there were things missing from the system.

What have I added?

First, implied attributes. These became necessary almost as soon as I started thinking about a Mage character. A Mage (in UR) needs to have a robe, a ring, a staff, several magical skills, two elemental affinities, and a spellbook - that's part of the definition of a Mage. All of those function as attributes. But can you make people spend that many attribute slots just so they can fireball something from time to time?

And then I realized it was a general problem. The example I use in the rules text is a policeman, who has various pieces of equipment (truncheon, handcuffs, maybe a gun, radio...), relationships to lawyers and coroners and private detectives and informants, a badge and probably a uniform (emblems), particular skills... So I came up with the concept of implied attributes. If you have an attribute Mage, you have all the other stuff, and unless otherwise stated it's at the same level as your Mage attribute. (You can pay resources to raise it or get them back by lowering it.)

Secondly, groups. How do you represent a plot to overthrow the government, a political struggle between gangs, a battle between armies? Groups is the answer. Originally, though, I thought of groups because I needed a way to deal with cooperation that allowed multiple mages to work on great projects together - so that you could have cool things like flying horses or permanent teleportation gates that the magic rules didn't quite allow individuals to create, but that would make the setting much more interesting. This fed into the Assistance rules.

I got Consequences straightened out, at least enough to be going on with - I'm sure these rules will change further. At some point, something someone posted at Story-Games alerted me to the fact that there were Consequences in FATE, at which my ears pricked up, I went to the FATE SRD, and - SNARF. (Actually I only pinched the first two levels of Consequences, and adjusted even them.)

Information and Secrets - how do you find out how much you find out? There's more work to do on this, but (stimulated by the question, "How do you decide if you recognize the symbolism of another mage's robe, staff and ring and hence know his level, skills and school?") I put in place some basic rules. It's down to how obscure the information is, given your attributes.

I also wrote up the initial bits of the Personal Scenes section. Personal scenes are where you take a bit of a break from the external action and sort things out in your head, heal up, prepare for future action, work on your issue or goal, or (possibly) refresh your pools. They're the bits in the movie where the music slows down and goes more strings and less brass and percussion and you have two-shots of the hero and heroine discussing What It All Means and possibly Their Relationship. (And, if it's Hollywood, probably getting into bed.)

What about Underground Railroad? Well, most of what I did was work on the magic system, back and forth with the Pentasystem. The magic system got simplified a bit; it was just too baroque for no really good reason. I couldn't think of an easy Pentasystem way to do the "Sometimes the supply of mana in an area isn't as high as at other times", for example, so I dropped it.

I'm not entirely happy with the Healing skill. I still haven't completely worked out the injury and healing rules, and everything is likely to simplify. Perhaps Healing will just become a Special Effect.

I completely rearranged the example spell tables, splitting them up so that there's one table for each skill, with levels down the side and elemental affinities across the top. I think this is easier to refer to than the old layout, with skills down the side, levels across the top (making it necessary to go to landscape format), and differences between elemental affinities crammed into the text. Damn, there's some fun stuff there; I'd forgotten about the Icy Weapon and Fiery Weapon spells, for example. Sometimes you want to address theme, and other times you just have to set something on fire. UR caters for both.

A note on the name: It's a double reference, firstly to the dwarvish system of (literal) underground railroads in the setting, but secondly to the network which helped slaves escape before the American Civil War. I'm thinking of a similar network which helps gnomes escape their dwarf oppressors. Need to put that in the text.

(There's no reference intended to the RPG term "railroad", meaning "the GM has made up the plot beforehand and will force you to stick to it." In fact, the Pentasystem, played as written, specifically does not support this. There is even a bolded statement that "the Opposition should not prepare".)

Next steps, I think, will include making some of the play aids that I have blithely referenced in the text, now that the rules are detailed enough that I can figure out what they should look like. This will include the character sheet, the group character sheet, the consequences sheet, the magic item sheet and a few others. I'm concerned that it might seem like a bit too much bookkeeping; on the other hand, the actual system is relatively simple and has few exceptions. The play aids are really to help you apply the same system in a number of different ways.

I'd like to work out a few example templates, too, not just for mages but for Earthist shamans, and Lunar-Asterist priests, and dwarvish merchants, and dwarvish craftspeople, and gnome mecha pilots, and a few others. Also some Special Effects. This is likely to have the effect of making the rules still more concrete.

And then I'd like to do it again, with a non-magical setting that so far I haven't come up with. Pirates, ninjas, pulp, it's all been done, and done well. There's a more-or-less generic space opera game based on FATE coming out, apparently, though I may just say "To hell with it" and do one anyway, or maybe a transhuman or cyberpunk game.

I do have an idea for a setting which is a ringworld, with a sophisticated space-facing civilization on the outer side dealing with the universe at large, while a naive pastoral society lives on the inside, growing their food in exchange for minor tech, and kept deliberately unaware of the greater scheme of things. Apart from what they each know, the economic thing is a bit like the dwarves and the humans in UR, but that may not be too much overlap. I don't have a name for it just yet.