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Alex Greene

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Alex Greene last won the day on October 3 2020

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About Alex Greene

  • Birthday 06/30/1963

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  • RPG Biography
    Fan of Mythras, Traveller, White Wolf's World of Darkness and Legend. Author of Fioracitta, and articles for Traveller and World of Darkness.
  • Current games
    Mythras, Traveller
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    Wrexham, North Wales, UK
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    Author of: Hunter: the Vigil; Night Stalkers; World of Darkness: Dogs of War; "The Thing In The Pit" in Signs & Portents; Traveller: Cosmopolite; Castrobancla, the City of Aliens; Oddities (Odd Soot); Circles of Steel (M-Space); and Fioracitta: The Heart of Power (Mythras).

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  1. The Book of Schemes is now available on DTRPG, by the way. Guelden is a fun little place to romp around in. I'm sure you're going to adore The Book of Schemes, not least because the first part of it is all about, well, schemes. Mechanisms for scheming, Machiavellian intrigue, and general shenanigans behind the scenes are some of the most fun activities to GM, and to play. And this is true of any Mythras setting - Fioracitta, Guelden, Mythic Rome, Mythic Constantinople. Book of Factions. Luther Arkwright.
  2. Just wishing everybody here a Happy New Year in 2024. I've been looking back at 2023, and the single biggest gaming-related event was the OGL fiasco, and the new ORC License. Let's hope that 2024 will be better for us, with loads more Mythras content coming down the line.
  3. Tonight's blog is about writing adventures, as compared to reviewing existing ones. Tonight, I'll take my cue from the late Ursula K LeGuin for inspiration. I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. - Ursula K LeGuin A tabletop adventure has got to capture the imagination. But it's also got to draw in the players. It's their time and energy, and the GM has got to give them something to challenge them. And by that, I don't mean putting them into a dungeon full of random encounters to fight to the death, and traps for the party's thief *cough* Rogue to locate and disarm, because face it - the Old Game is rubbish like that, because parties are all geared to revolve around the big party tank, doing all the hard work (and by that, I mean making mooks disappear like a video game). Tasks Dungeon crawls and hexcrawls are, more or less, random activities. You're not running a story, just shuffling pieces across a board or virtual desktop. Even if the party accepts a task from someone, a bag of gold for clearing out assorted monsters from an underground complex, it's still just random crawling through corridors and emptying rooms. Make these tasks more interesting. Bring in something personal. The party is not going to some Evil Wizard's Obsidian Tower In The East; they're looking for the Vice President's missing daughters. The VP isn't some rando, either: she's one of the party's Contacts, someone they regularly go to for information and, occasionally, sex. Let them in on an investigation. They can crawl through corridors and enter rooms, but they're not after treasure. They're after information. Maybe evidence. Perhaps a secret. Characters can also develop through an adventure. A specific character learns that they cannot develop further in their arcane studies without guidance from their mentor, but the mentor has gone missing. Rather than go through a random hexcrawl, they can track the mentor and their captors through wilderness, following their trail. It would be ironic if they discovered that the mentor had simply gone away on a pilgrimage to see their own mentor and ask the old Grandmaster for advice in developing their own abilities ... or just to sit with the old dude and be with them in his last days on this earth. Make the tasks mean something. Local Colour The world doesn't sit still between tasks. The characters can be led through a living, thriving world, and the players can be made to feel like they are a part of it. A simple mission to buy bread from town can turn into a frantic foot chase as the Adventurer spots a thief cutting some rich guy's purse; or a trip to the races by a character with a background in nature magic can embroil the characters in some act of shady race fixing, forcing them to rely upon their animal control powers, or healing magic, to save the day - as well as their own necks. Then there is courtly intrigue. Your home town setting doesn't have to have a bunch of stereotypes running the show - a King, a beautiful Princess, a sneaky, treacherous Advisor, a lean, red-headed roughneck of a Provost, a fat Sherriff, a greedy merchant. Shake it up. Your ruler could be dead, and the Vizier could be ruling from the tomb, claiming to have necromantic powers to speak with the dead Lord. Or your city could be the capital of a republic, ruled by a President with a Senate governing the affairs of the surrounding region while a Parliament of elected members runs the affairs of the city itself. You don't need to crib from the Mediaeval England song sheet. Steal from Ancient Rome, no longer an Empire with an Emperor in charge but still run by a faceless, impersonal bureaucracy. The ruling elite may be dust on the wind, but somebody still has to keep track of the revenues and taxes. Maybe the Empire fell, but it was not swamped by a bitter, priggish religious cult which caused the civilised world to burn at the stake and stay in the dark for centuries. A secular world, post-Empire, where - for instance - the Sea People never ravaged the Mediterranean, and the Bronze Age never collapsed, but rather just gently segued into a pastoral, less militaristic Iron Age, less obsessed with warfare and conquest. Make the setting a source of fascination. Let the local times and mores challenge the characters to want to participate in the living, growing world around them; to participate in their society, and make the players want to care about their characters, their connections, and the culture they are helping to shape. One For The Memories As a GM, you can't tell which of your settings is going to be outstanding. You can try to build your setting in detail, scattering interesting NPCs and encounters to be triggered whenever the players send their characters to a specific place - but if they never go there, those encounters will be wasted. Your best bet is to journal your NPCs' activities, and keep them going, and at the same time encourage the players to keep journals of the characters' adventures - the NPCs they encounter, the Connections they make, the little secrets they learn. Make sure to sync their journals with yours. You don't want to forget that you gave the party's Face a sweet little tidbit of scandal about the President's daughter, for use three sessions down the line. At the end of the campaign, or when you finish your stories in that setting and move on to another game, you'll all have a journal to take away, full of mnemonic triggers to bring back highlights of the fun you and your players have had. Those journals can even be a resource for you to write down the setting, and even publish it online some time. Overlook You're working with the players here, not against them. In the old days, the referee's role was to destroy the characters. Those days were a mistake. Your job is to create a world, in collaboration with the players, as a living place in everybody's imagination which they can explore and change, and remember long after the last dice have rolled.
  4. So, this being the last Saturday of the month of October 2023, I felt it was time to go back to Meeros and environs for another adventure. Last time, it was Sariniya's Curse; this time, it's Xamoxis' Cleansing. Behold, a map. For For some of us, this is the first time we've seen where Meeros sits, as well as the lands and seas surrounding the city. What's this adventure about? First of all, Xamoxis' Cleansing is some sort of MacGuffin. A desideratum. A Maltese Falcon. It has magic powers. It's somewhere on this map. Everybody wants it. Nobody knows where it is. Nobody needed it till recently. The Adventurers only hear about it when, out of the blue, one faction offers money for them to go and get it for them. Everybody The following Non-Player Characters all want this artefact. Dianthe Kalos The matriarch of the Kalos noble family. She's the person who will hire the Adventurers. Fire Eyes A Panthotaur tribe leader. He needs the MacGuffin because he thinks it can cure him? White Leg Fire Eyes' son. He wants his Dad to get well. Scylla Centuries ago Xamoxis of Skotados betrayed this naiad and stole most of her magic to create Xamoxis’ Cleansing. Now she wants that mojo back. Only, why wait centuries? What's she been doing all that time? Sa-Aba The charismatic leader of the Katharos, a cult devoted to Sariniya, the Goddess of Vengeance. Yaay for the shout out to Sariniya! Xitos the Hound A shadowy merchant. He's got money. He just wants the doohickey to add to his collection. Doohickey The Doohickey itself is a big silver bowl, found in a Sunken Temple, so at this first glance I guess there's going to be another pedestrian little dungeon delve full of monsters, traps, and razor-edged combat to the death because that's all the writers know. The map infers there'll be a hexcrawl element, as well, with more combat as the default encounter. Powers The bowl is ridiculously overpowered. It is the prison of an untold number of river naiads. These river spirits can be captured and imprisoned within the bowl, which has infinite space for them. Any naiad which touches the bowl gets dragged into it. The bowl uses its own store of Magic Points to unleash several special effects. The naiads can also be commanded to use their powers by the wielder of the bowl. These are its powers. Magically cure any poison or disease Confer on the recipient the ability to breathe water for a year and a day Confer on the recipient the service of an Intensity 2 Water Elemental once per month for a year and a day Confer on the recipient an additional 1d10 years of life The Beginning The Adventurers turn up in Tithys, pronounced "Tie - THESE," not "Tithies," get your minds out of the gutter. The big rivalry is between Diane Callous and Sheetos the Hutt. One of them has made it and the other one is still trying, but they're both dishonest, disloyal, and disrespectful. They both offer the same deal - money, power, connections. Both of them want to be the top dog and control all the trade up the river. One of them is already there, and they just want the bowl as a decoration really. The other one wants it to add to their collection. The Job Whoever they work for, the Adventurers now hexcrawl up the River Amaranth, looking for a Temple of Doom of Tomb of Something. They meet the Sariniya crowd, who want the bowl for themselves. The Sariniya crowd just made short work of a bunch of panthotaurs ... well, call them Thundercats if you like. So Lion-O is dying, his son wants the bowl to cure his Dad, they deliver an ultimatum with menaces, and the Sariniyans are just as snippy. Then the naiad Scylla does the same, and you cut away to one of those Godsawful bloody Poochie cutscenes, and guess what? SHE does the same thing, and if the Adventurers cheese her off she turns the whole river against them. There are some days when you just want them all to wipe each other out, and you go back home and sip ouzo with your feet resting on some living human furniture. The Big Chief So the Adventurers might go and meet with the Panths, and their tribe is called the Mad Keen, okay, and they take him to the Big Chief, who's undergoing a feverish ordeal thanks to some drug. And then you get this, which makes me spit beetroot. Any character that can make a Hard Healing roll recognises the symptoms of Lyssa’s Kiss and knows that Amthara Root is the only plant that can counteract the poison. Why? Why does it always have to be that some poison has only one possible antidote, and guess what? YOU have to go on a quest past horrid monsters to get it? And then there's the text box. Lyssa’s Kiss A cruel poison created from the rendered brains of madmen. It can be cured with Amthara Root or a Cure Malady spell. One. Can it with the madmen's brains. People with mental health problems are not sources of weird, exotic poisons, for crying out loud, we have enough problems without someone spreading groundless detractions about the biochemical state of our brains. Two, the weed is growing everywhere up and down the river, so why the hell haven't the panthotaurs (who worship the river) harvested it for themselves? Three, Cure Malady spell. So the Adventurers have a cleric, right? No? Well, what a damp squib. Roll up some new guys. So anyway ,,, The Adventurers could get it in their heads that there is insufficient motivation in the world to induce them to complete this rancid, threat-filled quest, let alone when they get there and find the ghost of the depraved sorcerer who created the bowl in the first place, and who is quite content to just exist in the Temple, thank you. Oh yes, I did mention that the bowl can cure poisons. That includes the poison which is ravaging Fire Eyes, aka Lion-O. So at least the Adventurers could bargain with the ghost to get a gallon of the waters blessed by the bowl to bring back and cure the Big Cat Boss and treat a few of the furries' wounds. They worship the river, so they might feel inclined to spare the adventurers and oh no, I just swallowed some of that Kool-Aid. Conclusion The big key to this adventure is motivation. About the only being who has motivation is the Sariniya priest Sa-Aba, who is yer basic moustache-twirling baddie who wants to weaponise the MacGuffin and flood the valley. But it contains so many utterly loathesome beings, the Adventurers might as well just seek out some high ground and watch the human priest just flood the Amaranth River Valley and sweep the detritus down to the sea. You might guess that I'm not exactly a friend of railroady adventures. Enjoy playing this, but be aware that there are so many ways outside of the story path outlined in this book. Nor do you, as GM, need half these characters to make the story engaging. Here's one alternate path. Sariniya's Vision This is post-Sariniya's Curse. By now, the Adventurers will have visited the heart of Sariniya's worship, and learned of Her new Ministry devoted to peace and the alleviation of the suffering She and Her priests once afflicted on the world while She was the Goddess of Vengeance. An agent of Sariniya can approach the Adventurers in Meeros, and tell them that there is great suffering up the river. That sends them off to Tithys, and there they meet Dianthe, who may reject their petition to explore the river, initially. Turns out that she can be persuaded, with the promise of possible power to add to her existing power base. They explore, looking for the Temple, and almost miss it because they are expecting something submerged, rather than a huge building three hundred feet above the ground, high and dry. But find if they do, and just in time to save Fire Eyes and unite the entire Panthotaur tribe against Dianthe's thugs and mercenaries, whom she sent up river to rob the Temple and deprive the Adventurers of their earned treasure, and their lives. Big fight. Good guys win. Dianthe gets a thrashing, and loses her power base. Everybody go home. At least, that is how I could run it as a GM.
  5. Just changed my profile photo. I alternate between this one, and a photo of my shadow I took in 2007.

  6. Parts Per Million is a small publisher with a speciality. Solo roleplaying. From their DTRPG page:- Parts Per Million is a specialist creator of Solo Roleplaying tools. I believe that moving between your chosen Oracle and your favorite game should be seamless, the entire experience should feel like one game. The solo supplements you will find here are intended to be an entry point into solo play. Every soloist builds their own set of preferred tools. These supplements will get you started, they are intended to be an easy introduction to solo play. It is in that vein that PPM recently released an all-new resource, Basic Solo Roleplaying, or BSRP. This rules supplement is aimed at any and all BRP Basic Roleplaying games, including Call of Cthulhu and Runequest, and anything else that is independently produced using the SRD. The book contains a d100 oracle, a selection of muses or spark tables, advice on improv gaming and solo playing adventure/mystery games. Solo rules are a great way to turn any rulebook into a quickstart for the GM. Rather than just making characters to get a feel for the system, you can make characters and play scenarios, all before presenting a table to your table. BSRP and Mythras Solo roleplaying supplements set up what are called oracles to guide you through times of no GM to make the decisions for you. You can run the game as a GM without players, more or less automating the PCs' actions, or you can run the game as a PC and let the supplement's oracles decide on the answers to their questions. BSRP has been adapted for Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying, which means that the basic oracular mechanisms tooled for BRP ought to work for Mythras, not to mention all of the titles which use the basic Mythras and Mythras Imperative engines, such as Luther Arkwright, Worlds United, Thennla, Destined and FIoracitta. Parts Per Million's BSRP on DTRPG I also recommend the system-neutral PPM titles Easier Solo Play, Easier Story Craft, and Easier Encounters to add a little extra variety to your solo Mythras game.
  7. And so it's time for another review of a Mythras adventure. This one is the first adventure to be attached to a Mythic title. In this case, it's Mythic Constantinople, a title I aim to review at some point in the future. For right now, let's take a look at this adventure by Mark Shirley. By the way, just in case, if you're planning on running this adventure, best to have a copy of Mythras and Mythic Constantinople handy. The opening paragraph of the blurb lays the story on the shoulders of one Kales Pegonites, proclaiming him as "the man everyone wants" without preamble or background. I guess we're going to be following him around then. Only one problem - at the beginning of this adventure, this most wanted man has become even more wanted, by dint of inconsiderately going missing. So, to Constantinople, and the adventure gives you the tourist brochure blurb of the city: what it looks like, who's in charge, or maybe who thinks they're in charge, and what the local currency looks like. Next is the Overview - instructions to the GM to read this book from cover to cover, because there's a lot of ground to ... cover. And I've just seen a major spoiler. Okay, so there's a list of NPCs, a timeline, and a list of the areas where the Adventurers will be going to make all their discreet enquiries, and stir up hornets' nests everywhere. Kales Pegonites The story begins with the Adventurers being tasked to look for Kales Pegonites. The trail is littered with clues. Hopefully, the GM will let the Adventurers have them all - or sufficient, at least, to allow them to understand what is happening, and where they are supposed to go. I'm going to drop some spoilers here. Kales Pegonites has not had a happy life. Nasty Dad, abhorrent elder brother. Both recently deceased, so good riddance. There's a corrupt banker, and a gangster called The Gorgon, and an illegal deal, and Kales' loving mother, and Kales' utter waste of skin of a so-called friend. As GM, you get to choose which of these people end up hiring your Adventurers. Or there's the option that your guys are just wandering down the road and you hear an agonising scream, and there's these two strangers off in some dark alley, half hidden by the shadows ... The Adventure The first part of the adventure is investigation - heavy. The person who sends the Adventurers off on their little chase can send them off in search of Kales' little friend, whom they may encounter in a pub; or they could be sent off to Kales' home, which is empty, since neither Kales nor Iannis (Kales' timewaster friend) are there at the time. Clues, clues, clues. Lots of clues. The Adventurers find a stash of white powder in the house! It's drugs! No, I'm kidding, it's alum. There's a big alum smuggling racket, and the Adventurers eventually find that it leads to a corrupt banker who, wow, didn't see this coming, owns Kales' family home, where the Adventurers may have already met Kales' mother. This is where things get fun. The banker's pulling strings. He wants that home for himself. So if Kales dies, the mother loses that house and ends up on the street. Meanwhile, the boss is running a nice little alum smuggling racket. There's a gangster who loaned Kales money because he and his timewaster friend blew it all on wine and women. So wait ... Iannis and Kales were straight? The trail leads through some disreputable regions of Constantinople, with the usual temptations - drink and other intoxicants, women, gambling, fighting muggers. One clue leads to Sveta, a Russian sex worker who operates in a brothel. Another clue leads them to a legit merchant in Pera, a region of Constantinople. It might surprise you, but the company they are heading towards is legit. The story takes a radical twist when you realise that Kales had actually been trying to turn his life around. Only problem is ... yeah, looks like that corrupt banker has got his evil tendrils into this company, too. Right, so ... the Adventurers have stumbled into an alum smuggling ring, which also deals in poison seeds, and a gum called mastic. So you're probably expecting this story to be fairly straightforward - your man Kales has got into the middle of a racket, he owes money to a legbreaker, and there's a guy at the tip of the fatberg who wants to keep the crime money coming in, so it's a race between his goons and the Gorgon's goons to get to see who extracts Kales' kidneys first. This is where things get a little weird. There are two massive spoilers. I can't say much more at this point, but I can spoil you this ... by the time your guys find Kales, it isn't looking too good for the guy. So here's the first MAJOR spoiler. Up to this point, it's seemed like a noir detective story, but from here on in another author takes over - Stephen King. So that's the first big spoiler. But it gets weirder. The rest of the adventure comprises some scenes, which are triggered when the GM decides it would be fun to inflict them on the players. They don't have to be triggered by the players' actions. Imagine a player going through this book, and feeling guilty every time weird stuff happens just because the event was triggered by them in the book. The long and the short of the adventure is that Another twist is that It looks as if the characters are led to the above moment, and what happens next is up to them. In any case, the story seems to end, one way or another, leaving the player characters stuck in the middle of things. If they don't screw things up, they will have a powerful ally on their hands, and a powerful enemy or two. Depending on whom they talk to after the events in this story, they could rise in prominence in The City. And that would seem to be it for Life's Long Consequences. In all, a tightly - knit little adventure with some bizarre supernatural twists in the tale. As a GM, you could keep all of that supernatural stuff out of it, and let the story be about a simple investigation, and poisons, and betrayal, rather than ghosts and spirits. But as an introduction to Mythic Constantinople, it's a nice little adventure. It opens the door for the Adventurers to settle into The City and become people of power and influence themselves, depending on whom they befriend, and whom they fall afoul of. See you next month for another Mythras adventure.
  8. Tonight, and for the next couple of months, this blog will be looking into the adventures created for Mythras and satellite games. This includes the Meeros adventures, the Luther Arkwright adventures, and the adventures for Mythic Constantinople and Lyonesse. We're going to start with Sariniya's Curse, the introductory adventure designed to allow the readers to test out the combat system in a dungeon crawl. Behold, the Mark of Sariniya. Actually, the glyph comes out with a big Y in the centre in the copy of the book I have. This is the No Idea Y. Sariniya's Curse introduces the goddess Sariniya to the Meeros setting. In this adventure, four pregen characters - the one and only Anathaym, her sister Kara, Mju the Thief of Meeros (the Sabu analogue), and lastly a Hollywood version of Zamothis, Weapons Master (the illustration has a cleft Kirk Douglas chin, and I was honestly expecting a Topol beard) - travel to this remote island where monsters surround the temple of Sariniya, and inside the temple they have to ... ... well, they're not exactly there to conduct trade talks or host a slumber party. It's a dungeon crawl. There's nothing there but monsters to kill. It's a friggin' dungeon crawl. This is Zamothis. He's got Anathaym's back. And Kirk Douglas' chin. The adventure begins with a somewhat worried Tim Stones - sorry, Trimostones -, who asks Zamothis and the gang for a favour. He's 64 ("Will you still need me; will you still feed me ..."). Nobody in his family has lived to see their 65th. It's a hereditary curse, you see. It started with a mad king, Akretes, and some rebels who'd fought to topple his reign, but lost. They fled to Iaxos, where they built the temple that stands there to this day. Long story short - King Cratchety sent people after them, dragged them back to Meeros, slaughtered them all. But Sariniya took Her revenge on the King and his loyal followers. It's a simple curse. It looks like a blessing. No man descended from Akretes or those loyal to him would ever suffer from old age. They all die, aged 64. So Tim Stones here, at a youngish 64, is feeling the curse slowly settling in, and he wants to stop it before his son Eurastanos gets it. But at least he has a daughter, Hermestone, who will be unaffected, so she's 29 and all smiles. Wonder if I couldn't liven up the fun by having the daughter send along a bunch of mercenaries to fight for Sariniya, because she would rather not have Daddy hand over the reins to her incompetent clown of a brother, and she'd been hoping they would both suffer the curse so she could hold on to her money and power ... So yes, here's where the fun begins. Tim Stones here asks the party to bodyguard him while he takes off on a mission to conduct some trade talks. Actually, he's heading for Iaxos, and he doesn't tell the adventurers what he really wants to do. Or his kids Eurastonos, Hermestones, Gallstones, Kidneystones, Flintstones, Standingstones and Rollingstones. Basically, he's going there to beg for forgiveness from Sariniya and lift the curse from future descendants of his family line, starting with himself and continuing through his son. Oh, and any boys his daughter might give birth to. Maybe Hermestone ought to tell her Dad she's a lesbian when he gets back. Don't shed a single bloody tear for the Stones family. That ship's powered by slave labour. So during the voyage, Tim here suddenly tells the crew what's really going on, and has them set sail for the cursed isle of Iaxos. MUTINY So, anyway, the men who mutiny are stripped, of their weapons, and held below decks, and forbidden to communicate with anybody. So that's good. Next, the ship makes it to Iaxos. Tensions are heightened. Relations with the crew are strained. It'd be a good idea to offer the loyal crew a bonus when, not if, they get home. And tell them never to discuss what they're going to do with their bonuses, because all manner of crappy things happen to people discussing the future three days before retirement. Iaxos is a Mediterranean f*****g Paradise. A glorious crescent beach, some game to hunt, plenty of fish in the sea. Goats roaming the hills. Apparently, all of the characters except Tim Stones here have to make Boating rolls. If they fumble, the skiff capsizes, and they have to make Swim rolls. Good luck with all that armour and weaponry. Okay, ignore the thing about the Boating rolls. Assume they make it there, despite strong currents, and nurse their chapped palms from all the rowing, and the labour they are unaccustomed to, unlike the galley slaves on board the ship they came in on. The going is hard work and tiring. You can ignore the need to make Endurance rolls, and the hazards of being scratched half to death by the undergrowth. You can lead them through the narrative equivalent of a montage, with suitable music to set the mood. In the next scene, while they're settling in the camp, they see that Tim Stones is clearly suffering from the Curse. They must look after him as he sleeps fitfully. But the locals intervene, so the party has something to do other than stare at the stars and philosophise or something. The locals, and damned if I am giving them the term savages because that is so flaming racist, have been following the tourists since they landed. Now they make their appearance. And the adventure paints it as s combat encounter. But it could easily be a First Contact, with the locals trying to ask the party if they are here to fulfil one of their prophecies - namely, a man of advanced years who comes to break Sariniya's curse. If that isn't a clue that Sariniya had left a loophole in her curse, I don't know what is. Anyway, the rest of the encounters are all predicated on hostilities. The locals are painted as "degenerate" and "cannibalistic," way to play to tropes. I assume there must be women, because otherwise how the hell can the original rebels have had descendants? These can't be the original rebels, because Akretes had them all dragged back to Meeros to be executed, and aw hell I've given up on the plot holes now. This one's big enough to pilot Tim's ship through. So. Assume they have a village somewhere, herding goats, having kids, tending to the land, wearing very little clothing, barefoot in the sunshine, and oh gods this place really is a Greek f*****g Paradise. So, there's a scene called "Death Trap," and the party sort of walks right into it, and all sorts of shenanigans ensue, and in my playthrough I completely sideswiped this by turning it into a trap straight out of that Ewok scene in the Star Wars movie. They all end up caught in nets, suspended from trees, and they're taken in chains to meet the leader, who then asks them - in perfect English - what they are doing on the island. Because this isn't f*****g D&D. So, this is where things deviate from the adventure completely. They are allowed to reach the Fist of Gods. Maybe Hermione Stones sends her mercenaries to stop the party, because she wants to hold on to power. Maybe she's conned her stupid brother to join the soldiers, and damn me if he doesn't look like a young Michael Douglas, wonder why? Now they can talk their way out of this, or they can fight their way out of it - and it's a Greek tragedy if either Father or Son die. Or they can do something else, like negotiate, or lay down all the cards on the table - the Curse, the short shelf life of all men of the Stones family - and unify the troops and the locals in what turns out to be a pilgrimage. I had the locals' Queen tell the party that they were not to harm any of their pet guardians as they enter the Temple. Fair warning. The Temple is inside the Fist of The Gods, a big black basalt bag of knuckles, defiantly projecting up from the ground. You can give it some artistic license and have one long protrusion sticking up further into the air like a big middle finger, if you like. I'm not going to draw this image. So. There are prophecies abounding. Their Queen is the Prophet of Sariniya, and she is the one who does all the miracles. There's something about a stubborn old Elephant God shrine ... hang on, that's Ganesha, why is Ganesha in this story, and why did the Sariniya followers build a whole separate shrine inside the Giant Basalt Knuckle of Defiance? Now. The story played through like this. Oora speaks of the lineage of her profession, going back two hundred years. She speaks of Damotinea, who makes a prophecy that an old man would come along to end Sariniya's curse, but who kind of lied on her deathbed to her successor Remonsthea, who'd given Damotinea the hemlock which killed her predecessor. Oora then tells of her own prophecy, which is that she would live to see her goddess' temples restored to Meeros within her lifetime. I made up this bit. The party then realise that this is the perfect time to end the curse, by invoking Sariniya and asking Her to intercede. And why not? There's a crowd. There's the Queen. There's Tim Stones, all ready to do his soliloquy scene. And so Oora animates the statue with a little bit of the living Sariniya. In my playthrough, I read through the Sariniya writeup. Sariniya had exacted her revenge against some Invader Gods (with names such as Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Meta, Google, Exxon, Nike ...) but then when she got home, she became a Goddess of Peace and Non-Materialism and hello, it's a female Buddha, and this is Buddhism we're on about. There's one final reversal in this story. Enter Hermione Stones, to present herself before Sariniya. She is untouched by the curse. She reveals that Damotinea had been a part of the family lineage, her great great grandmother in fact, and that she's been aware of Damotinea's true prophecy all along. She doesn't want the family to be cursed any more because she's pregnant and she fears for her son. But she doesn't want to just hand over power to Urine Stones on her Daddy's say so. The party get to speak to a goddess. They each get a chance to say something noble - to vow that the Scarlet Spears would protect the Sariniyans as long as they maintain their kind-of-Buddhist lifestyle and not proselytise. Or maybe, in Mju's case, not to steal too much of their shit. Tim Stones then does his thing, lying prostate before the Basalt Bitch. She is taken by the sincerity of his grovelling, removes the Curse, and also lifts the burden from his son. Hopefully now, Michael will live as long as his Dad did, unto the age of a hundred something. The characters have encountered the Elephant God. Now, the Elephant God comes to life in his statue, and wanders into the main temple. Sounds like there's a party going on. Are there any snacks? This is the climax of the adventure. Oora and Tim are blessed; Tim wants to stay in Paradise, and asks his son to take over the Empire, and the son turns out not to be such a clown and declines. Hermione thanks her big brother and offers him a lift back home, to that taverna where his boyfriend is waiting, and Daddy stops for a moment and asks how come his daughter, the lesbian, is pregnant, and both his kids shoot back with "Haven't you heard of bisexuals, Dad?" Oh. The description of the caves makes it sound filthy, as if they've never heard of cleaning staff. Forget that. The place is a spotless, er, pit of pleasure. Like I said, this island is a Greek Paradise. There's a ... dwarf Cyclops, which sounds like Andre the Giant wearing an eyepatch. Giant Scorpion, okay, sounds like fun. Giant lizards, okay. Maybe they chase the scorpions. I prefer my ending. The women have more agency than the men; the intercession of the women before a goddess breaks the curse; and the party gets paid money for their endeavours, but also they get to see something new happening back home, with the lifting of the prohibition against Sariniya and the erection of the first tiny shrines to the Goddess of Benevolent Non-Attachment appearing in the city, and on roads leading out of town. And an invitation to Timosthenes' 65th birthday next summer on Iaxos, where he'll be celebrating with his new wife, Oora, in a Greek f*****g Paradise. Next Month Next month, I'll be tearing into another Mythras adventure. Let me know what you'd like me to cast my jaded eye over next, in the comments below.
  9. This month, I will be looking at Mythras Factions, The Design Mechanism's most recent title for Mythras. This will be a short review, as it is a short book. I'm also declaring personal interest, since I both proofed it and supplied material for the book, hence the multiple credits on the inside cover. Mythras Factions Only this week, I received my complimentary author's copy of this book. It's a slim volume, like a magazine with glossy, colourful pages. The illustrations by Andrew SImmons, Dean Spencer, David Comerci, and Jason Moser are stunning, and include both monochrome and full colour art. Structure of The Book Defining Factions The first chapter describes the structures of factions: who their leaders are, their causes, goals, resources, size, scope, and dedication. Basically, how big the group is, how devoted, what they believe in. Faction Skills This one faced changes from the original manuscript. This chapter describes five Skills pertinent to factions, namely Allies, Following, Information, Intrigue, and Subterfuge. The chapter outlines how they are used. Goals & Missions This chapter takes a closer look at the goals of factions - Dependent Goals (in order to achieve Goal B, you need to achieve Goal A), and Deciding Goals (once this is at 100%, the faction will have completed the tasks it had been formed to complete, and everybody can go home); and Missions (individual tasks completed by agents of the faction to bring it closer to a goal). Conflicts This fun section includes combat rules for faction-vs.-faction competition. These are not the same as the Social Conflict rules found in the back of the Mythras Sourcebook; nor are they the Social Conflict rules found in Mythras Companion. These rules cover direct, and indirect, hostilities between the groups overall. The formats of these conflicts resemble Spirit Combat, Social Combat from the Companion, and physical combat - and they come with their own unique actions, Special Effects and so on. Sample Factions Finally, this short book rounds off with lists of factions, both generic (Noble House, etc) and specific to various settings (Fioracitta, Luther Arkwright, Worlds United, Mythic Constantinople). Here's the fun thing. There is all-new information here, all canon, particularly the Fioracitta factions. These factions provide new information about the different settings. You won't find these in the core rulebook, and they open new doors to adventure in the books from which these factions have been taken. There is enough information in Mythras Factions to allow you to develop your own factions; and future books I design will build new factions using these rules, as well as provide statistics for Social Conflicts using the Mythras Companion rules. I have already begun providing social conflict stat blocks for major NPCs. Next Month I'll be opening up one of the Mythras adventure modules. There are many to choose from, before I even go near the training modules such as Breaking The Habit, and other material such as Ships and Shield Walls. Plus of course, somewhere down the line I am bound to crack open my author copy of Fioracitta and present to you what is inside that book. Trust me, you'll want to sit in for that one, the author dissecting their own book.
  10. I'm taking a step back from blogging on most of my social media. It'll be my birthday on June 30th, and in the runup to my birthday I'm planning on doing nothing but reading, maybe ocarina playing, anything but hunching over a laptop, sweating the reluctant words out onto the screen. There will be a sea change to the scheduling of this blog. From July 2023, it now goes out once a month, on the last Saturday of each month. In the case of the next blog, that will be July 29, 2023 at around 22:00 UTC+1. Repeat: this blog will be going monthly from the next episode, on July 29 2023.
  11. This post is going to wrap up what we have covered over the past few months. There are a number of TDM titles I have yet to dig through and review ... I do hope nobody minds if I give Mythic Polynesia a wide berth - and I'll be moving on with the next blog post. I also have news about the blog going forward. Modern Mythras We began with an introduction to the concept. It began here. We moved on to embrace modern Mythras' characters, and the cultures they came from. We then looked at careers available to characters - and these took on a real world twist, since these are careers of the modern world. The next post looked at Skills, which included modern skills unavailable to most fantasy settings (apart from urban fantasies such as After The Vampire Wars and Luther Arkwright). This was followed by Passions, which you could drive entire campaigns by, and Backgrounds. The concept of stakes was brought up. What do your characters stand to lose? Maybe this can be used to draw them into a story. New concepts were introduced to spice up character generation - back stories and lifepaths. The three-act structure was introduced, followed by a long look at magic. Part 1 - It's A Kind of Magic Part 2 - Making Magic Part 3 - Agatha's Grimoire Past magic, of course, we looked at Psionics and followed up with some NPCs:- The Hunger Non-Player Characters Modern Encounters Heroes of The Spiral Room Cops (feat. Hannu Kokko) Uniformed Cops The series then began to wrap up with the section on Modern Mythras Games Mastering - writing adventures I want to play in, GM'ing the modern setting, and finally challenging the players with example plot hooks. And that's it. I'm taking a bit of a break, and when this blog comes back it will be in a new format. It will be going out monthly from now on, generally on the last Saturday of each month. I'll try to stick to a 22:00 launch, but if it goes out at 23:00 or 23:30, or even gets put off till Sunday night, so be it. The next blog post will therefore be coming out on July 29 2023 at around 22:00 UTC +1. Please give feedback on whether or not you want to see my Modern Mythras blog posts collated into some sort of unofficial ebook. And let me know what you have thought of this series. See you at the end of July.
  12. This is the penultimate Modern Mythras post, and I intend to wrap up the subject with one last look at Gamesmastering before I summarise everything in the next post - then take a one week hiatus. In a recent post, I posed four sources of drama and conflict: Person versus Person, Person versus Self, Person Versus Nature, and Person Versus Society. This blog just expands on those four sources of drama, and presents ideas which are intended to draw the players in to the conflict. Make It Personal You have to understand the characters, which means taking time developing their backgrounds, their Passions, and their Connections, in Session Zero. Don't let them skip the little details - they're essential to your players' development. Involve The Background Characters Non-Player Characters aren't there to just be there in the store when you want to buy your ammo and other groceries. They aren't there to serve you. They're the people you, your Connections, your family, your friends interact with. Your brother in law might work in the American DMV and you can use this information to persuade him to alter - sorry, "update" - a driver's license. Your Ally might know somebody who works in a business you are infiltrating, and they can arrange to make introductions. That Contact might just want to talk to you because their job is so boring, and they have a serious crush on you and your exciting life. That Rival might keep turning up just because they want to find out about you, or your strange friends. Use Background Events This is so important. Every character has a background event which influences their decision to enter play and become an Adventurer, Agent, whatever. Work with the Players on these background events: they should turn up at least once during each character's developing story arc, as a reminder of their roots and the direction their lives are taking them - as compared to the direction their lives would have taken, had the background event never happened. What If? Remember the story It's A Wonderful Life? The TV series Person of Interest used this trope in its penultimate episode, where Finch was presented with a series of visions of what would have happened had Harold Finch never created The Machine. Samaritan would still have existed, Root would have joined Greer, John Reese would have been rejected by his woman Rachel and ended up dead, Fusco would have been a drunken washed-out has-been barely holding his own as a private detective, and so on. Present the characters in an alternative world where each of them never existed. Had Pete Tink never become party leader, the group would never have formed and every last one of them would have ended up dead, for instance; or had Amalthea never met Sergeant Biff, she would have descended into an undisciplined life of lechery and drug addiction. Use Passions Those Passions are there for a reason, particularly Passions which involve another person, e.g. "Love (My Wife Monica)" or "Hate (The Man Who Killed My Dog)". They spur the character to act when they have run out of things to do: and conversely, they can also stop the character from doing something rash, acting as a last bit of common sense when the Willpower check fails - "But if you do pull that trigger, will your daughter Anneka be able to look you in the eye ever again?" Person Versus Person Tit For Tat Your next door neighbour can't stand you, and you have no idea why. Perhaps it doesn't matter because the neighbour's just born obnoxious and you're the only person in the neighbourhood who isn't afraid of that little toad. So they have been making your life miserable with one act of passive-aggressive petty sabotage after another; getting you blacklisted with every takeout company and taxi firm by calling out pizza deliveries and taxis to your home whenever you've been away, throwing tyres into your back yard and so on. You wouldn't react, but today you found your cat lying dead next to a piece of poisoned meat in the front garden. What do you do? Affairs Of The Heart Sometimes, the source of drama is not hostilities. You have been having an affair with the boss's wife. It's been going on for about a year, ever since she picked you up at a company retreat last August. She knows your boss doesn't mind - she likes to watch. But the affair is at risk of being exposed, and none of you is happy. So who's got a hold of those sex tapes, and how, and what do they want? Person Versus Self Confronting Old Demons You have long harboured dreadful self-doubt about that horrendous failure which plagued you (the character's background event). And now, it looks as if history is going to repeat itself as one of your closest, dearest friends looks as thought hey are about to do the same thing your loved ones once did - the thing that got them killed. You failed to intervene, last time, and they're all gone. Do you intervene now to save your friend? Can you, physically, intervene? How about morally and ethically? Trolley Problem You've seen this before, countless times in television shows, movies, literature, comic books and so on. You are faced with an impossible choice - save one person from getting killed, or let disaster claim the lives of multiple people - but that one person lives. It leads to a situation where the character, and by "character" I mean "player," wrestles with the burden of making this important decision. What if the single person was a bad person? What if they were good, or a loved one? What if they were a stranger? A famous philanthropist, local hero, mother? Similarly, how many people are in jeopardy if the switch was flipped the other way? Are they all bad people? Are some of them strangers - or even loved ones, mixed up with strangers and bad people? And what if every single person on both tracks was someone you loved, and you had to choose between the one and the many, knowing you were going to lost someone no matter what? Person Versus Nature Ticking Clock You know it's coming. That volcano's been kicking the ground under your feet for days, now, and these last few hours it's been wearing hobnail boots. It's going to erupt. But can you get your car to work before it does? ANd can you get far enough away from it before it sends a wave of pyroclastic ash down on your head? On Deadly Ground "On deadly ground, fight." Never had Sun Tzu's advice from The Art of War been more appropriate. Those weird extraterrestrials have seeded the ground all around you with some virulent weed which is strangling every living plant; and that weed is now encroaching on your land. What have you got which can combat this deadly invader? Person Versus Society You Against Them That cult has taken over the running of the town. You were only just passing through, but they have taken your family away from you, isolated you, made you fear for your life. How can you bring down a whole township of ten thousand people, with just one phone call? Your Name Against The World Someone's spread so many lies about you, you're almost starting to believe them yourself. Who can you turn to, to stop the smears, or to trace the root of the smears at it source and unveil the liar's dark motivations for wanting you out of the picture? And does it have anything to do with that new factory they are building on the edge of town, which you are convinced could have toxic side effects on the local ecology, food supply and community? Conflicts Are Messy Always remember - conflicts in a modern Mythras game are going to be messy. There's never going to be a quick, clean solution where your character just cuts a bad guy's Hit Points down to zero with a sword or a gun. The modern setting is full of repercussions: gunshots bring cops running, a bomb going off will bring cops, Feds and ATF, a bank robbery will bring the FBI, and so on. Your characters won't be able to just buy up land, fortify it and put up barricades and shuttered windows without drawing the attention of every suit from Washington DC to Washington State. In the UK, you might get away with a little bit more than the Yanks do, but if there's even a single unspent round found on the premises, and you'll have the Bizzies* knocking on your door. With one of these. *local slang for bacon, fuzz, pigs. ACAB. You know, cops. The Modern Game The modern Mythras game is not about wizards' towers, or Dark Forces Rising From The East. There are no chosen ones; just people thrust hip deep into weirdness. Most of all, Modern Mythras is about people; and, for the most part, you can't just off people and throw them into a wood chipper if they bother you, any more than you can just go up to them and reduce them to zero Hit Points with your very long pointy two-edged metal stick. Not without people with badges asking you very serious questions. A modern game requires modern solutions. Your characters have to be good thinkers, nimble on their feet, and very creative. It is that creativity, the ability to reach for alternative solutions, which makes Modern Mythras such a compelling setting, and one which desperately needs to be turned into a sourcebook.
  13. There is a massive thunderstorm raging overhead tonight. The power could go off. So I'm going to post tonight's article tomorrow.
  14. Just a short note on the last two Modern Mythras posts. I'm scheduling them to go out on Sunday 18 June and Sunday 25 June. And then I'm taking a short break.
  15. Drama is the key to Games Mastering in any Mythras setting. In most fantasies, the goals are pretty simple: there's some healing herb to cure the King who's fallen to some poison, or it's a McGuffin with the magical power to stop some weird storm, or the characters have to drop by some bloody wizard's Black and Evil Tower In The East and kill a guy. And that's it. It's a Thing, or a Task. Do that, and you get your Experience Rolls. Modern Mythras is a bit different. There are any number of different stories, which may or may not draw from elements of fantasy, science fiction, or horror. What they do have in common if that they are set in the modern world you and I recognise; and that setting presents its own challenges. Here are four sources of conflict:- Person Versus Person This is fairly straightforward. There's a good guy; there's a bad guy; good guy stumbles across bad guy, bad guy tries to stop good guy interfering with bad guy's plan; good guy and bad guy have some sort of fight. Two lovers arguing over disagreements Boxing rivals trash talking before the match A Fed is tasked with tracking down a hacker which deleted some vital financial records for fun, resulting in a hospital being deprived of funding A corporate employee attempting to steal a plum client from their co-worker A hero finally facing off with the villain in a battle to the death, on the rooftop of the bad guy's burning hideout Two parents battling over custody of their child A person getting mugged on their walk home from work Two people struggle to express their true feelings for one another, in an environment which does not approve of their romance A detective trying to find the clues to finally jail the gang boss she has been chasing her entire life Two competitors trying to ruin the other person’s ability to compete Some poor bugger desperately trying to navigate a harsh, unfeeling bureaucracy Two politicians arguing across the floor Person Versus Self This is internal conflict. The protagonist's enemy is some inner conflict with their own morality, vices, sense of self, and goals. Generally, it involves a difficult decision that the character must make, and signals the direction of growth for that character as the story progresses. If the hero of the story struggles to do the right thing out of fear, greed, or some other personal obstacle, that will likely make them a more interesting and relatable character for readers to root for. Here are some more examples to give you an idea of the scope of internal conflict: The “chosen one” struggling to overcome their fears to save the world A hero being tempted by the villain’s bribes or reasoning An addict trying to overcome addiction to turn their life around A high schooler struggling to decide who to ask out to prom A religious person encountering information that disproves their beliefs A sports person struggling to overcome her self-doubts about competing A young character struggling with their identity and self-image A warrior grappling with hurting others for the greater good of the nation An intolerant character making unlikely friends with someone they are prejudiced against and questioning their own biases A character going through old belongings and struggling to get rid of clutter Person Versus Nature This kind of drama pits the characters against the forces of nature, and to some extent, the unknown. Characters must contend with the elements, wildlife, and natural disasters. The ocean overturns the characters' boat, leaving them at the mercy of its violent waves A harsh storm forces isolated campers to forage in the aftermath Survivors on a deserted island struggle to survive in the hot, tropical climate A bear attacks a hiker who goes off the path An earthquake traps characters in the rubble of a large building An endless torrent of rain wreaks havoc on a small town Characters must pack up and flee an oncoming flood, or wall of fire Person Versus Society This kind of drama comes from a conflict between an individual, or small group of individuals, against some form of group of people - from as small as a young person having to defy their oppressive family and come out as gay, all the way through to something like detectives of a small town's police force having to fight a corrupt priest who brings the weight of the whole Catholic Church down on the cops, using the cross to hide behind to protect his perverse crimes being exposed. An unsuspecting town hides a dark secret, and only one character knows the truth Only one person is brave enough to stand up against an oppressive and unjust ruler Unfair cultural practices are challenged by the youth in society Students stand up against a government bill that would cut funding to arts programs in schools Robbers plan to steal a couple of million dollars from a Mob casino A group of characters fight to hold a greedy corporate leader accountable for pollution A young child disobeys their parents and resists unfair rules Prisoners unite to stop prison wardens from treating prisoners savagely An underdog sports person fights against the scorn of the town where he comes from to compete for a prestigious medal A group of protesters rallies support for a political candidate An investigative journalist seeks to expose corrupt business dealings by a local corporation Other Sources of Conflict There are other sources of conflict, such as "Person versus Technology," "Person Versus Fate" and even "Person Versus Weirdness" (formerly "Person Versus Gods" or "Person Versus the Supernatural"). All of these have the same, or similar, structure- an oppressive force impedes or threatens the characters; the characters must develop some sort of coping strategy; the characters' new strategy prevails, or they fail - a tragedy. Conflicts in a modern Mythras game are messy. The characters may need to find solutions which don't involve cutting some guy down in a hail of bullets, or running them through with a sword. They may need to roll for their Passions when their skills fail them, relying on love, or sheer grit, or even spite, to pull through. In the end, these kinds of dramas will test the players as much as the characters; and if the players learn from these conflicts, you can help them to achieve a player victory, which might be more meaningful and more satisfying than their characters' numeric victories over the dice and negative situational modifiers. After all, the core of modern Mythras gaming is about growing as a person - both the characters and, to some extent, the players.
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