Jump to content

Alex Greene

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    261

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Alex Greene

  1. Alex Greene

    Happy New Year, Everybody!

    By Alex Greene,


    writing
    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.
  2. Alex Greene
    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.
  3. Alex Greene
    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.
     
  4. Alex Greene
    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.
  5. Alex Greene
    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.
  6. Alex Greene

    Mythras Factions

    By Alex Greene,


    writing
    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.
  7. Alex Greene

    Long Break

    By Alex Greene,


    holidays
    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.
  8. Alex Greene
    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.
  9. Alex Greene
    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.
  12. Alex Greene
    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.
  13. Alex Greene
    Adventure is adventure, so - according to custom - every adventure should be the same, right? There’s a dungeon, and an evil wizard’s tower, and an army rising up from the East, and only this bunch of idiots stands in their way, and …
    So how come adventures like these utterly fail to whip my cream?
    Because they’re not really adventures.
    They’re computer programs.
    Your characters are the code; the mooks, monsters and the final BBEG are just input; and treasures are just output. Put return 0; at the end, and you’re done.
    Far too many adventures are written as if they were, well, video games. They borrow their structure from video games; the objectives are the same as for video games (mindless slaughter as the only form of engagement, must clear the room of every single target before the next level opens up); and we have the terminology of video games (mooks, BBEG, buffs, debuffs).
    People crunch the numbers (“If Faloney’s Shout of Cringe has a 65% chance of activating, and we can throw in Shagnall’s Gaze of Wither at a 69% activation, together they can increase the percentage probability of survival to, er, 55.55 recurring” and adventure encounters are treated as exercises in arithmetic.
    I love numbers, but come on, man, I find more pleasure checking out an accountant’s Excel spreadsheet than running games like this.
    Adventure
    “Adventure” is often defined as “unusual, exciting, daring experience” and “daring and risky activity.” The noun derives from a Latin word, adventurus / a, meaning “a thing about to happen.” In the 1200s, it meant “something happening by chance, or by luck.”
    As a verb, “adventure” can also mean "to expose to danger or loss," "to venture upon," "to undertake," "to proceed despite risk," or "to take risks."
    Adventures should be just that - activities which entail some sort of risk, with a suitable reward to provide an incentive to push yourself.
    Not soulless number crunching.
    Risks, Rewards, and Stakes
    Adventure must entail risk. There must be something to lose, if the character fails. The danger is what prompts the adventurers to focus on pushing themselves, to exceed their capabilities and pull off the awesome deeds which yield the rewards awaiting them at the end of the adventure.
    In order for there to be a risk, the adventurers must have something to lose, something whose existence and/or wellbeing and/or evolution and improvement are tied to the success of the mission, and dependent on that success.
    Life
    Life and death stakes. The highest stakes of all. Somebody lives, if the adventure succeeds. If the adventurers fail … somebody dies. And it isn’t the adventurers.
    To make the risks work, the person or persons being jeopardised must be people the adventurers care about. Which means writing them in to character generation at the “Allies, Contacts and Connections” stage of character generation.
    This part of character generation is often overlooked. Players just want to generate characters which can dispense the maximum damage, expressed as numbers, while taking only minimum damage from the enemies and monsters, again expressed as numbers.
    Dependents, relatives, and backstories, are somehow considered to be irrelevant to so-called “power gamers” who just generate characters who are efficient at killing or destruction.
    Actually giving such characters people to care about is often considered to be a weakness; and players want characters who are all strong, or who at least don’t have weaknesses which impact on the story.
    Advantages
    If you look at the rule sets for tabletop roleplaying games, you’ll find that the rules as applied are designed to make the characters numerically the most dangerous beings on the board, while nerfing the monsters and bosses' ability to seriously harm the characters.
    Traveller, for instance, has Imperial characters who operate at the highest technological level - Technological Level 15 - while at the same time putting most of the alien races’ maximum Tech Level as between 12 and 14, giving the technological advantage to Imperials in combat by granting them access to weapons at that TL which do not exist at lower levels.
    Players are accustomed to fighting under circumstances where they have the upper hand. Put them in a situation where they are at a disadvantage, or actually allow the enemies to operate with strategy and tactics, and the players cry foul.
    Characters should enter adventures where they are at a disadvantage. It might not lead to character development, but the prize for victory comes from the players getting the upper hand despite the odds.
    Politics
    Something has got to bring the characters into the adventure, and to motivate them to fight through the scenario, to see it through to the end.
    How about a machination?
    The characters could become involved in somebody else’s mad scheme in some way. Perhaps a rival faction is spreading scurrilous rumours about the adventurers, or an enemy has discovered one of their critical weaknesses and is threatening to leverage that weakness, such as exposing a deadly secret which the characters are motivated to keep quiet.
    The stakes at hand could be reputational: the adventurers’ reputation could be damaged, if they fail to give their all to the resolution of the conflict.
    Material
    A recent TV show had law enforcement characters running around a major American city, looking for some sort of buried pirate treasure. There is a famous series, National Treasure, which has a similar premise: a set of elaborate clues which lead to a buried treasure of immense importance.
    The McGuffin Hunt plot goes back centuries. Treasure Island and the real life hunt for El Dorado; Captain Kidd’s buried pirate treasure; all the way back to the hunt for the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend.
    Player characters need to be motivated to be sent haring after lost treasures. If you present the players with a lost treasure, and their development does not depend on their succeeding in finding it, how else can you push them into joining the hunt? A rival chasing after it - good luck to them. An old friend tries to rope them in - well, let us know how it works out. Wait … dead already? Damn, let’s not go where they went.
    Crime
    Sometimes, the thrill of the hunt comes in the chase, never in the capture. Heist adventures are a prime example.
    Sometimes, the aim of a heist adventure is not to steal the money, or to boost the flash drive. Sometimes, the aim is to destroy an undesirable who’s taking over a block, or to flush out a mole in your Agency by hinting that the flash drive might contain incriminating data which could expose them.
    The prime motivator in running a heist is to plunge the characters into the thrill of being the bad guys, breaking their own codes of good conduct and showing how much smarter they are than the average gun-toting hood. Any thug can wander into a bank, wave their guns around and walk away with the contents of the teller’s drawers. It takes a mastermind to break into a vault and make off with half a billion in uncut, unengraved, untraceable diamonds, knowing that the bad guy whose vault it is can hardly go to the cops, since they are all conflict diamonds.
    Revenge
    The sweet scent of vengeance, the dish that is best served cold. The Count of Monte Cristo and The Stars, My Destination are two perfect examples of a vengeance story. The protagonist, having been sorely wronged, seeks to avenge their injury upon the perpetrator. Inigo Montoya’s quest to end the life of The Six-Fingered Man in The Princess Bride is another example.
    The adventurers must have something to lose - and the bad guys (i.e. your characters) have just taken it away. The damage has been done, and the characters are hurtin’. As well as locked up somewhere.
    Part 1 is getting out. Part 2 is getting even. As the Games Master, you really need to make it hurt, to get your players thinking so hard about getting back at the bad guy that they could potentially destroy their new-found lives and new connections, in their efforts to settle the old score.
    Hooks and Pushes
    It’s your job, as Games Master, to open the door to let the characters walk through it, to find themselves caught up in divers hijinks, running around looking for that vital clue, or chasing after an elusive bad guy.
    There must be a hook, to draw them in, to engage the players’ attention. There must be a push, something to avoid (which can only be really averted by joining the adventure). And as well as the stakes, what they may stand to lose if they fail, the rewards must be worthy of the chase, even if the rewards are intangible such as having the Cardinal owe them a favour, or a new ally to stand by their side on a battlefield, or to provide much-needed muscle at the last minute.
    Most of all, the one thing that I really want to see in an adventure is the thrill. Your character is about to plunge into a situation which will have them doing virtually impossible things, certainly foolhardy things, and the high stakes and high risk should keep the players on the edge of their seat, not only looking at the outcome of the dice roll, but also on the consequence of their decisions on the spot.
    What happens to the adventurers must feel like it’s affecting the players. That is what excites me, draws me into tabletop gaming. Immersion. Not number crunching.
  14. Alex Greene
    This blog will be wrapping up the whole Modern Mythras thing with a look at Games Mastery.
    The GM's Role
    You, as the Games Master, have an enviable task ahead of you. Your job is to come up with a world for the characters to inhabit, enemies to oppose, and a story to keep the players engaged. You are also, as the responsible host for the game, tasked with keeping the players occupied and working together to maximise the shared sense of enjoyment and engagement around the table.
    Tough row to hoe.
    Mythras Core Rulebook
    The Games Mastery chapter of Mythras, pages 278 - 293, provides a pretty comprehensive guide for Games Masters. But the next few weeks will focus on the unique challenges facing Games Mastery in a modern setting.
    We will be looking at:-
    - Players
    - GMing the Modern Setting
    - Modern Challenges
    - Settings and Final Thoughts on Modern Mythras
  15. Alex Greene
    The end of this series of Modern Mythras is upon us. I can feel it.
    It's just today, May 27th, and the four Saturdays in June. I'm taking a one week hiatus on July 1, the day after my birthday. Incidentally, I'll be taking a one week break from all of my blogs from that day, including The Spiral Room on Wordpress.
    Just asking for some feedback from you tonight. What would you like to see included in, among other things, the Mythras Encounter Generator? More cops - uniformed, Detective, Specials, SWAT? Feds and DHS? Medics - specialists, consultants? Civilian Detectives (private investigators, bounty hunters, amateur sleuths)? Spies (private, government, contractor)? Or more ordinary people - artists, sports stars, journalists, criminals?
    Next week, we launch into Gamesmastering modern Mythras games.
     
  17. Alex Greene
    Tonight's post is another modern NPC encounter, this time from guest contributor Hannu Kokko himself, designer and developer of the Mythras Encounter Generator!
    Say hello to the Typical Modern Period Goon, your basic thug that you can drop in on your characters in any modern game: Luther Arkwright, After The Vampire Wars, Destined and even Worlds United.
    Thanks, hkokko!

    https://mythras.skoll.xyz/enemy_template/11341/
  18. Alex Greene
    I maintain a fiction blog called The Spiral Room on Wordpress. Two of my blog's modern setting stories are Den & Lauren and The Chaotician. Here are the main protagonists of these stories, statted up for Modern Mythras.
    Den & Lauren
    A long-running story of a weird, doomed, but passionate romance between Dennis Thompson, a former student, and Lauren Tanaka, a slightly more mature woman who is married to a Japanese businessman, Isao Tanaka.
    Theirs is a passionate, open relationship, with complications - not the least being that Dennis is one of the most hypnotic individuals on the planet.
    Den Thompson, Master Hypnotist
    STR    11
    CON    15
    SIZ    13
    DEX    16
    INT    18
    POW    17
    CHA    16
    Attributes
    Action Points:      3
    Damage Modifier:    +1d2
    Initiative Bonus:    17
    Experience Modifier:    +3
    Healing Rate:    3
    Luck Points    3
    Hit Points
    Head:    6
    Chest:    8
    Abdomen:    7
    Each Arm:    5
    Each Leg:    6
    Social Attributes
    Social Action Points    3
    Social Initiative    17
    Confidence    2
    Composure    6
    Integrity    6
    Resolve    6
    Tenacity    17
    Skills
    Athletics 37%, Computers 76%, Customs 86%, Dance 42%, Deceit 54%, Drive 33%, Endurance 40%, Evade 42%, Influence 102%, Insight 65%, Native Tongue 74%, Perception 45%, Streetwise 33%, Unarmed 27%, Willpower 44%, Acting 32%, Bureaucracy 36%, Commerce 34%, Comms 36%, Courtesy 34%, Craft 34%, Culture (Japan) 36%, Gambling 65%, Hypnosis 104%, Oratory 53%, Research 36%, Seduction 64%, Sleight 32%, Teach 34%.
    Passions
    Love The Women In My Life 95%
    Trance The World 84%
    Look After My Found Family 76%
    Lauren Tanaka
    STR    12
    CON    15
    SIZ    14
    DEX    15
    INT    18
    POW    17
    CHA    18
    Attributes
    Action Points:      3
    Damage Modifier:    +1d4
    Initiative Bonus:    17
    Experience Modifier:    +3
    Healing Rate:    3
    Luck Points    3
    Hit Points
    Head:    6
    Chest:    8
    Abdomen:    7
    Each Arm:    5
    Each Leg:    6
    Social Attributes
    Social Action Points    3
    Social Initiative    18
    Confidence    3
    Composure    6
    Integrity    6
    Resolve    6
    Tenacity    17
    Skills
    Computers 76%, Customs 96%, Dance 43%, Deceit 71%, Endurance 40%, Evade 40%, Influence 91%, Insight 65%, Native Tongue 76%, Perception 55%, Streetwise 55%, Unarmed 37%, Willpower 44%, Acting 46%, Bureaucracy 66%, Commerce 66%, Courtesy 86%, Gambling 85%, Hypnosis 56%, Oratory 95%, Politics 66%, Seduction 76%.
    Passions
    Love Den 77%
    Love Isao 99%
    Look After Family 98%
    Look After My Business Fam 76%
    The Chaotician
    A story of Caleb Howell, a practitioer of chaos magick, and his Apprentice Jannah Tang.
    Caleb Howell, The Chaotician
    Call him "Howl." He's steeped in chaos magic. He lives for it. He teaches his Apprentice, Jannah Tang, and is delighted at her aptitude, which may potentially surpass his. Only when she realises that the true measure of magic is experience will she understand how to move past Howl. It is experience, and immersion in the art of living, which is the true measure of magical prowess, not whatever titles society may bestow upon the magician. There is no "Sorcerer Supreme" - every magician is their own Sorcerer Supreme.
    STR    12
    CON    18
    SIZ    12
    DEX    18
    INT    18
    POW    18
    CHA    18
    Attributes
    Action Points:      3
    Damage Modifier:    +1d2
    Initiative Bonus:    18
    Experience Modifier:    +3
    Healing Rate:    3
    Luck Points    3
        
    Locational Hit Points
    Head:    6
    Chest:    8
    Abdomen:    7
    Each Arm:    5
    Each Leg:    6
        
    Social Attributes
    Social Action Points    3
    Social Initiative    18
    Confidence    2
    Composure    6
    Integrity    6
    Resolve    6
    Tenacity    18
    Skills
    Athletics 60%, Computers 76%, Conceal 56%, Customs 86%, Dance 61%, Deceit 61%, Endurance 66%, Evade 66%, First Aid 46%, Influence 76%, Insight 76%, Perception 76%, Sing 46%, Stealth 56%, Unarmed 30%, Willpower 86%, Art 56%, Courtesy 56%, Craft 66%, Culture 66%, Knowledge 86%, Gambling 56%, Hypnosis 66%, Knowledge 66%, Locale 56%, Magic 96%, Medicine 46%, Musicianship 36%, Oratory 76%, Politics 56%, Psionics 76%, Research 76%, Seduction 36%, Sleight 66%, Survival 36%, Teach 76%, Track 46%.
    Passions
    Practice Chaos Magic 95%
    Teach Jannah Chaos Magic 88%
    Look After Jannah 75%
    Jannah Tang
    Jannah bumped into Caleb Howell on the day she was struck by lightning, and became enamoured of this strange magician and his chaos magic. She has not looked back.
    STR    10
    CON    14
    SIZ    10
    DEX    16
    INT    18
    POW    18
    CHA    18
    Attributes
    Action Points:      3
    Damage Modifier:    +0
    Initiative Bonus:    17
    Experience Modifier:    +3
    Healing Rate:    3
    Luck Points    3
        
    Locational Hit Points
    Head:    5
    Chest:    7
    Abdomen:    6
    Each Arm:    4
    Each Leg:    5
        
    Social Attributes
    Social Action Points    3
    Social Initiative    18
    Confidence    5
    Composure    6
    Integrity    6
    Resolve    6
    Tenacity    18
    Skills
    Athletics 26%, Computers 46%, Customs 76%, Drive 34%, Endurance 28%, Evade 32%, Influence 56%, Insight 56%, Perception 56%, Sing 36%, Stealth 44%, Streetwise 46%, Unarmed 46%, Willpower 76%, Bureaucracy 46%, Craft 34%, Lockpicking 42%, Magic 56%, Politics 36%, Psionics 56%, Research 76%, Science 56%, Sleight 44%, Survival 52%.
    Passions
    Learn Chaos Magic 62%
    Look After Family 75%
    Look After Howl 70%
  19. Alex Greene
    Very brief blog post here. I've started creating templates for average people encounters in Modern Mythras.
    The tool I'm using is the Mythras Encounter Generator. This can be used to generate a bunch of average people all at once.
    This is the first template - New Recruit.
    https://mythras.skoll.xyz/enemy_template/11321/
    The above is for a new recruit / average commuter / bystander. Your everyday business people rushing around peering at their mobile phone in one hand, a latte in the other, or sitting on the bus with their earbuds in. Drop them into libraries, offices, on the street, in hospitals. They're your newlywed neighbours who just moved in, the guy who cut in front of you in traffic, the goofballs hanging around the barbecue in next door's garden party.
    Watch for further templates in future blogs.
  20. Alex Greene
    Following on from last week's post, here are three interesting non-player characters to throw into your Modern Mythras game. They can be supporting characters, antagonists, or significant others to the Adventurers.
    Skilled Mercenary
    Your basic gun for hire, this thug can be brought in to make things blow up, or to make people meet their maker.
    STR 14
    CON 11
    SIZ 11
    DEX 15
    INT 17
    POW 14
    CHA 18
    Action Points 3
    Damage Modifier +0
    Movement 6
    Initiative Bonus 11
    Healing Rate 2
    Tenacity 14
    Confidence 5
    Composure 5
    Integrity 6
    Resolve 6
    Social Initiative Bonus 18
    Standard Skills: Athletics 54%, Brawn 60%, Deceit 57%, Endurance 52%, Evade 60%, First Aid 38%, Influence 60%, Insight 43%, Own Language (Greek) 70%, Perception 53%, Stealth 48%, Unarmed 59%, Willpower 84%
    Professional Skills: Demolitions 60%, Knowledge (Tactics & Strategy) 53%, Language (English) 49%, Locale 56%, Survival 54%, Streetwise 81%
    Combat Styles: Mercenary 74%
    Weapon : Size : Reach : Damage : AP/HP : Effects
    Dagger : S : S : 1d4+1 : 6/8 : Bleed, Impale
    Firearm : Damage : Range : ROF : Ammo Load : Traits : ENC
    9mm Pistol : 1d6+1 : 50/100/200 : 1 : 6-9 : 3 : - : 1
    Assault Rifle : 2d6+1 : 600/1k/3k : 1/3/20 : 30 : 3 : - : 3
    Sniper Rifle : 2d8+4 : 900/1.5k/5k : 1/-/- 20 : 3 : - : 4
    Mad Scientist
    Drop in this expert when you need either a friendly scientist to figure out how dangerous that virus is, or to come up with a vaccine to save lives. You can also drop them into the antagonist role.
    STR 14
    CON 11
    SIZ 11
    DEX 15
    INT 13
    POW 10
    CHA 13
    Action Points 3
    Damage Modifier +0
    Movement 6
    Initiative Modifier 11
    Healing Rate 2
    Tenacity 10
    Confidence 5
    Composure 4
    Integrity 5
    Resolve 5
    Social Initiative Bonus 14
    Standard Skills: Computers 65%, Customs 92%, Deceit 45%, Endurance 54%, Evade 65%, Influence 58%, Insight 73%, Perception 88%, Unarmed 42%, Willpower 92%
    Professional Skills: Bureaucracy 85%, Commerce 82%, Courtesy 85%, Disguise 65%, Medicine 85%, Oratory 59%, Research 63%
    Cultures: Academia 72%, Rich People 65%, Medical Profession 55%
    Science: Biology 87%
    Languages: Native Tongue 75%, Russian 64%
    Science: Biology 90%, Biochemistry 95%, Pharmacology 92%, Pathology 75%
    Combat Styles: Basic Firearms Training 48%
    Firearm : Damage : Range : ROF : Ammo : Load : Traits : ENC
    9mm Pistol : 1d6+1 : 50/100/200 : 1 : 6-9 : 3 : - : 1
    Femme Fatale
    A beautiful and seductive woman who uses her charm and sexuality to manipulate and control others. She has her own agenda and motivations. A complex and enigmatic character, hiding her true intentions behind a facade of charm and innocence. She embodies the seductive danger and allure of the noir genre.
    STR    10
    CON    14
    SIZ    13
    DEX    11
    INT    18
    POW    8
    CHA    14
    Action Points      3
    Damage Modifier    +0
    Movement           6
    Initiative Bonus    14
    Healing Rate       3
    Tenacity              8
     
    Confidence    4
    Composure    3
    Integrity    5
    Resolve    6
    Social Initiative Bonus    16
    1D20    Location    AP/HP
    01-03    Right leg    0/6
    04-06    Left leg    0/6
    07-09    Abdomen    0/7
    10-12    Chest       0/8
    13-15    Right arm    0/5
    16-18    Left arm    0/5
    19-20    Head        0/6
    Standard Skills: Deceit 62%, Endurance 73%, Evade 42%, Influence 68%, Insight 56%, Perception 56%, Sing 62%, Stealth 39%, Unarmed 61%, Willpower 61%
    Professional Skills: Commerce 67%, Courtesy 52%, Disguise 32%, Seduction 83%, Streetwise 42%
    Knowledge:    Horse Breeds 54%, General 70%
    Languages:    Native Tongue 68%
    Combat Styles: Basic Combat (Knife, Gun) 61%
    Weapon : Size : Reach : Damage : AP/HP : Effects
    Dagger : S : S : 1d4+1 : 6/8 : Bleed, Impale
    Firearm : Damage : Range : ROF : Ammo : Load : Traits : ENC
    9mm Pistol : 1d6+1 : 50/100/200 : 1 : 6-9 : 3 : - : 1
    Holdout : 1d6 : 50/100/200 : 1 : 2 : 3 : - : 1
  21. Alex Greene
    Today, I'm going to give you an antagonist to throw into your Modern Mythras game. Inspired by a creation of Robert Bloch, it is an ancient hunger that never dies.
    The Hunger
    It has gone by many names, each more infamous than the last. It has fed for centuries. Possibly millennia.
    There are stories about it in the Bible: beings possessed of terrifying violence, carving their way through the increasingly-civilised world. It has bathed in the blood of Minoans, taught haruspicy to the Etruscans for its amusement, brought human sacrifice to South America, waded knee deep in Roman blood in the wake of the Battle of Philippi, and drawn sustenance from the battlefields of Crecy, Agincourt, Bosworth Fields. It came to Kabul, Kandahar and Jellalabad long before any US forces.
    Kitombo, Sao Salvador, Cassinga, Miserere, it showed itself there. In the back streets of London, Liverpool, Paris, Moscow, New Orleans, Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Mexico City, it sought out its prey - the alone, the vulnerable, the unaware - and each time it struck, it wore a different face.
    Charismatic, brilliant, seductive, ruthless, it has bathed in vats of virgin blood, howled at the Moon's red face during lunar eclipses, and claimed the streets of a thousand cities as its hunting ground.
    It is The Hunger. And it can never die.
    Entity: The Hunger
    Autonomy, Covert, Discorporate, Dominate (Humans), Eternal, Feeding, Miasma (always active whenever The Hunger is between hosts), Passion (Amnesia, Fear, Hate, VIolence), Puppeteer
    This being could be described as a spirit, in the way that a hurricane can be described as a bit of a high wind. The Hunger goes by many names, often the names of the hosts it inhabits when it needs to torment and kill.
    When The Hunger takes a host over, it urges that host to seek out suitable targets. Once it has found its prey, it induces a suitable Passion - Violence and hate in the host, Fear in the victim - and then it feeds off the ensuing bloodshed, pain, and suffering with its Feeding power. Then, once satiated, it leaves the host in a state of amnesia, unable to remember what they did, unable to reconcile their heinous deeds.
    The Hunger has a type of host. They look unassuming, ordinary, kind of average. But they have killed before. Sometimes, they have killed often, and The Hunger enjoys riding along inside such depraved hosts, drawing strength from the bloodshed without having to do any of the hard work, until it is time to vacate that host and leave them where the authorities can find them.
    The Trail of The Hunger
    The Adventurers can encounter The Hunger after its latest hunts, which take place in the Adventurers' home town or area of backwoods where they live. The Hunger manifests in the area, and begins leaving behind a lot more bodies than the neighbours are used to. Perhaps it chooses to feed on citizens, prompting the locals to feel outrage and even, perhaps, causing them to feel suspicious of the Adventurers - after all, they are people accustomed to the arts of violence.
    Complication: Behaving Like One Of The Good Guys
    The Hunger might come to the Adventurers' attention by leaving behind bodies of people they themselves considered Rivals, or even Enemies. Like a cat, The Hunger's host might throw a little spite at the Adventurers by leaving behind the body of a prominent Enemy on their doorstep, as if training them - "Pay attention, little humans: this is how you hunt."
    The Hunger stalks and pounces. It likes to leap into a prepared host, strike, then jump out almost immediately afterwards. The Hunger somehow never jumps into an Adventurer, preferring random non-player characters. It can draw its strength from the fear the Adventurers feel when they believe their loved ones to be in jeopardy.
    The Hunger never captures its prey. It prefers the rush of sudden terror to the slow grind of dread.
    The Thrill Is In The Chase ...
    A rash of killings piques the interest of the Adventurers. Perhaps the modus operandi of the killer is a little too close to home, since it resembles their own violent activities. Perhaps they are drawn into the case by the local authorities who have lined up the Adventurers in their sights as possible suspects, since the methods are too much like theirs, and they all have motivation to kill the victims who happen to be people who pissed them off at some point.
    When the jackass who cut in front of them in traffic, and then stopped to berate them in the road, turns up in a locked room, alone and dead with his throat slit, you can guarantee the police will want to ask the Adventurers questions. Meanwhile, the killings continue in the background.
    ... Never In The Capture
    The Hunger leaves a trail of breadcrumbs, tormenting the Adventurers as it gouges and slices its way through the populace. A cunning strategist, The Hunger is never reckless enough to directly attack the Adventurers, and not even their loved ones. But it does still like to strike home - an Ally who gets too close is found dead; a friend of a friend disappears, only to turn up in the woods lying in a pool of blood.
    The Hunger uses a knife, because guns kill too quickly. It feeds off fear and terror. It can fuel anger and hate, but only enough to motivate its host to kill. Its greatest joy comes from the destruction of innocence. It feeds off the innocent only rarely, but the essence of that target's fear is divine. As The Hunger's needs gnaw at it, it will begin to seek out an innocent to slaughter, its piece de resistance, the highlight of its banquet. That innocent is someone very dear to the Adventurers.
    The Hunger will continue to evade the Adventurers by jumping into hosts, then leaving before they can reach it. Between hosts, it is a disembodied form, manifesting as a foul-smelling wind, a stinking draught from a slaughterhouse which can be smelled even by people with no sense of smell. It is only in its last handful of killings that The Hunger will settle into a single host to do all of its killings. The MO of this host does not change. It is through its final pattern that The Hunger's final host can be identified, and its last move anticipated.
    Weaknesses
    A Certain Charm - A familiar apotropaic, called a nazar, has existed for centuries. It is a stylised blue eye design, and it is effective in warding off The Hunger. It is sometimes called malocchio, The Evil Eye; but it is, in fact, a ward against it.

    The Adventurers can learn that The Hunger avoids people who wear this symbol. It cannot feed on people who wear this design, and in fact it cannot even possess them. The Adventurers can protect their loved ones by giving them nazars, and even getting a nazar design tattooed onto their skin.
    If a person is possessed by The Hunger, and a nazar placed on them, they cannot escape that host. If they jump into the host, and are somehow captured and a nazar tattoo inked onto them, The Hunger will be trapped inside that host forever. The nazar tattoo can be concealed beneath something, and revealed once The Hunger is trapped: it must see the nazar to be repelled by it.
    Alternately, The Hunger can be caught with a temporary sticker of a nazar, or have someone touch a nazar jewel to the host and hold it in place long enough for anaesthetic to be applied to knock out the host.
    Unconscious Hosts and Prey - The Hunger cannot possess someone who is asleep or unconscious. The host or prey must be aware of The Hunger's presence. If the host can be identified and subdued quickly enough, it will be trapped within the knocked-out host. Similarly, if the host is kept sedated but awake, it is trapped within the host and cannot do anything more violent than take up knitting.
    Out Of Body - On those rare occasions when The Hunger is caught between bodies, its presence can be smelled, more than anything. Under certain conditions, The Hunger manifests as a visible miasma, swirling in the air. Games Masters can decide what those conditions are. Perhaps it can be lured into a ring of nazars forming a protective circle, or trapped within a circle of salt. The Hunger cannot regain Magic Points while it is outside a body, and begins losing its Power Points rapidly - at a rate of one Power Point per hour. It disperses once its Power Points reach zero, only to reform somewhere else 1d6 x 1d10 weeks later.
    That Is Not A Moon ... - The Hunger cannot be hurt by normal bullets or weapons. It can be hurt by weapons which have been prepared with a special symbol.

    An innocent crescent ... until the Adventurer informs the host that it is not a letter C, or a crescent moon.
    It's a smile.
    Even a blank round does full damage to The Hunger, but minimal damage to the host. A sharp smack with a stick on which the smile is cut or drawn will only do the minimum damage to the host, but maximum damage to The Hunger. The Hunger can be instantly dispersed, and it will remain stuck in the spirit world for 2d6 x d10 years.
    Knowing Its Name - There had to be a first time The Hunger killed. Various ancient texts speak of a First Killer, often depicted as killing his own brother - the first time violence was used by a person to kill another person for some abstract reason such as gain, defence, or - in this case - envy. Could The Hunger answer to the name "Cain?" Or is its true name even older, buried in some copper scroll thousands of years old, begging to be unearthed and read?
    A Formidable Research check may bring The Hunger's True Name to light. It might be found in an obscure grimoire written by Agrippa, or Paracelsus, or Doctor John Dee. Someone might translate it from a written inscription around the edge of a silver mirror found in an Etruscan tomb - a mirror which reveals The Hunger's true appearance superimposed on a host when it is presented to the host.
    The person who learns The Hunger's True Name can not be possessed by it, and furthermore they can actively harm it if the name is written on some object such as a weapon. As with the smile motif above, the host must successfully be struck with a Combat Style check or Unarmed check to touch the True Name to the host. The effect of this is the same as striking it with the charm. Tattooing the name on a person protects that person from The Hunger forever - they cannot feed from, or possess, the protected host, even if the host does not know the significance of the word.
    The Name can even be turned into a sigil, which has the effect of both a nazar and a crescent smile on it. If it can be lured into a bottle bearing a partly-completed sigil, and the sigil immediately completed, The Hunger will be trapped within the container until the seal is breached. Breaching that sigil is a story for another day.
    Encountering The Hunger
    The Hunger uses the characteristics (INT, POW, CHA) and Atrributes (Spectral Combat, Willpower) of Wraiths (Mythras, page 153) and the powers listed in this article above. It can be encountered at a relatively low Intensity, e.g. 2, or it can be swollen to a vast, reeking cloud of evil, measuring Intensity 5. Once identified, The Hunger can be caught, contained, trapped and damaged, though not destroyed.
    The secret of The Hunger ... is that it comes from us.
    The Hunger is an external personification of humanity's collective Shadow. The part of us which is cruel, wicked, sadistic. The part which flourishes in an environment of pain, suffering, and fear. The collective consciousness of us at our most hostile.
    It is the worst of us.
    And so The Hunger can only truly die when there are no more humans alive to keep it fed.
  22. Alex Greene

    Many Roads

    By Alex Greene,


    writing
    This is the 100th post for this blog, and we are at a crossroads.
    Many paths are open ahead of us now. I can list some roads down which to travel, and I can think of others. But these are the ones off the top of my head.
    1. I can wrap up my take on Modern Mythras with a look at how to integrate psionics, a look at GM'ing, and some scenarios and vignettes. Between all of these, I can get us to my birthday at the end of June.
    2. I can review selected titles which have already been published to date.
    3. There will be some new titles coming out soonish - once they're out, I would like a good long look at those. There are two titles which I will be very happy to review.
    4. I can continue to present my takes on Modern Mythras, and throw in some Mythras Core fantasy scenarios and vignettes, too.
    5. Something else (tell me about them in the comments).
    So, at this point, I'm going to head on over to that crossroads at midnight, bring along some bread, some cooked chicken, and a bottle of the good rum, and sacrifice them all to Hecate. Then I'll sit a spell at the crossroads and wait.
    Inspiration will come, soon enough.
  23. Alex Greene
    This week, I thought I'd bring in psychics and psionics to a modern Mythras game.
    Psionics in modern games tend to be more or less cloned from Traveller. Your character must find a psychic (or "Psionics Institute"), get tested, roll their PSI rating, then get trained, and randomly pick from a small range of Talents - Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, Awareness (basically Mysticism from the Mythras Core Rulebook) and Teleportation. And that's it.
    M-Space has its Psionics section. Worlds United has its Gifted. After The Vampire Wars has its Seers. Luther Arkwright has, well, that setting is all kinds of gloriously messed up.
    Reflecting The Real World
    Real world psychics don't tend to specialise in one Talent, but rather learn to do a bunch of things - psychometry, remote viewing, mind reading, dowsing, spoon bending. It's always low-grade stuff, and stage magicians take delight in going around debunking the more public sensitives who make their name in the public eye.

    Skill: Psionics (POW + CHA)
    The psychic skill, Psionics is checked whenever the psychic character declares that they are using an active psionic Talent. The list of things a psychic is capable of is outlined below. A psychic can only use one Talent at a time, but they are not restricted by "Power Points," "Prana Points," or any such mechanic.

    Passive Triggering
    Psionics skill can be passively triggered by a nearby psychic discharge or strong emotional field. The psychic experiences a strong sensation, which could range from a momentary descent of darkness around them, or vertigo, or a sense of "somebody walking on my grave." The sensations can also be positive - a sense of "somebody watching over someone," or a deep sense of the rightness of something, as if it were blessed somehow.
    The Games Master should control where and when these sensations occur. Depending on the nature of the psychic phenomenon which is being read, it can range from dread to elation, from attraction to revulsion, from fear to anger.
    Games Master: you are encouraged to use a tool such as an Alphabet of Desire to select the emotional input being sensed by the psychic.


    This is an automatic thing, and it allows the psychic character to prepare a more active scan, typically requiring a Psionics check.
    Familiarity
    Psychic powers are not confined to ranges. A psychic might pick up on a weak signal miles away, yet be virtually oblivious to something at their feet. It is not the physical range which matters to the psychic, but the familiarity the psychic feels for the target.

    The Price You Pay
    Psychic abilities come with a heavy price. It's a social one. Your psychic characters may come off a little ... eccentric at times. You are plagued with psychic impressions on people, objects, animals, and places.
    A person might carry a heavy stink of death as they approach you, and you may feel that they are either not long for the world or that they have helped people to the next world ahead of their time. A place might carry a darkness about it, or a sense of sacred ground, or an aura of intense pain where something horrible had happened in the area over a prolonged period of time.
    Either way, these sensations might colour your reactions in the vicinity of the psychic emanations. Whenever your Psionics skill is active, all social interactions with non-psychics are one grade harder. If you are dealing with skeptical, judgmental, or obnoxious people, the penalty for social interactions with them is two grades harder.
    Resting
    After a scene where a psychic has used their Talents (actively used Psionics skill), they may want to rest. A good night's sleep may help (unless the psychic is plagued by Nightmares - see below). A minimum recommended period of rest is typically 1d4 hours, minimum. SYmptoms of an unrested psychic could include headaches, possible accumulation of fatigue, and all skill checks involving POW or CHA being one grade harder.
    The Talents
    Talents have certain Traits - an Action Point cost or a time to activate, or Meditation (minimum of 10 minutes), or Concentration (as the Sorcery Concentration Trait in Mythras Core), or Resist (as the Trait in Mithras Core).
    Psionic Intensity
    Psionic Intensity is important for some psychic Talents. It is equal to 1/10 of the psychic's Psionics skill.
    Read Mind
    1 AP, Resist (Willpower)
    The psychic can read a random surface thought or strong emotion from a nearby unshielded mind (Games Master: the psychic may ask one question per point of Psionic Intensity regarding person being scanned).
    Telepathy
    1 AP, Resist (Willpower)
    The psychic can send and receive telepathic communications with a nearby mind. With another telepath, the range of the telepathic communication is effectively unlimited. If the psychic is attempting to communicate with a non-psychic who is nowhere near the vicinity (e.g. next door, another town, another country, another dimension) they must spend 3 AP to prepare this Talent.
    Suggestion
    1 AP, Resist (Willpower)
    The psychic induces an emotion in the target, or causes the target to perform some sort of task which they would otherwise not be inclined to do. This is not the same as hypnotising the target - that requires a skill such as Influence (which takes the form of hypnosis). If the task is a tiny nudge, rather than something overt (such as making a guard feel hungry, rather than just suggesting "Go and get a burger"), the skill check is one grade easier. If the action is dangerous, the Psionics skill check is one grade harder.
    Psychometry
    1 AP
    The psychic can read the aura of a being and determine their state of physical and mental health (Games Master: the psychic may ask one question per point of Psionic Intensity regarding the object, person, or place being scanned. On a critical success, the psychic may ask two questions per point of Psionic Intensity. Questions must focus on the physical or mental health of the target. If the being is possessed or a spirit present, the psychic sees two auras - this knowledge is to be given to the psychic for free). Subject to passive triggering.
    Remote Viewing
    2 AP, Meditation
    The psychic enters a trance, and projects their senses to a remote location. Typically, the psychic needs this Talent to pinpoint the remote target and discern their location, present activities, and state of health. Clues come in the form of visual, auditory, olfactory and haptic sensations - a glimpse of a landmark nearby, a sound, a smell, or even a texture. The Games Master can give the psychic one sensory impression per point of Psionic Intensity, relating to the whereabouts and condition of the target. On a critical success, they may offer the psychic two sensory impressions per point of Psionic Intensity.
    See Spirits
    1 AP, Meditation
    The psychic can perceive spirits in the vicinity. They appear as distortions, auras without bodies attached. The psychic can communicate with them by spending an extra 1 AP to turn a passive Talent into an active one. If used to read the spirit landscape, the psychic can ask the Games Master one question per point of Psionic Intensity, relating to what they are sensing. These questions include identifying the nature of the spirit, its general strength, and so on.
    Dowsing
    1 minute, Concentration
    The osychic requires a focus to dowse - a pendulum over a map, a forked hazel wand, and so on. The player must specify what the character is dowsing for - typically an underground water source, a missing object, buried artefacts, and so on. The Games Master may give the dowser hints - "You feel a pull to the right," "Your pendulum is indicating a strong source dead ahead," "You're standing right on top of it," and so on.
    Sortilege
    10 minutes
    The psychic uses a divination tool for a focus - Tarot cards, runes, yarrow sticks and copy of the I Ching, and so on. They may ask the Games Master one question regarding the Querent (the person who is asking the psychic for guidance) per point of Psionic Intensity.
    Exorcism
    10 minutes, Meditation, Resist
    The psychic attempts to drive a possessing spirit out of a person where it does not belong, or quiet a ghost or similar being. The psychic pits their Psionics skill against the Spirit Combat skill of the possessing spirit. Use the Spirit Combat rules from Mythras Core, but using Tenacity (from Mythras Core or Mythras Companion) rather than "Magic Points."
    Movement
    1 minute, Meditation, Concentration
    The psychic may attempt to move an object using the power of their mind alone. The target must be visible. The mass of the target is irrelevant: the strength of the psychomotive impulse is not measured like a STR characteristic, but rather more like a Brawn skill check where the skill being checked is the Psionics skill.

    Disrupt
    1 AP, Resist (Endurance), Touch
    The psychic can attempt to disrupt the target's aura. The attack requires an Unarmed attack to touch the target's body.
    This check always has a base difficulty grade of Difficult, rather than Standard. If the attack is successful, the target feels the effect in the form of intense pain. Their Healing Rate is halved, and all skill checks are two grades harder for the rest of the scene.
    The price paid by the psychic is deeply spiritual: the attempt leaves the psychic prone to Nightmares for a number of nights equal to their Psionic Intensity. This can be reduced to a single night with a few hours of meditation. This Talent can be used to kill small animals, up to the size of a goat; if it is used to kill, the Nightmares cannot be alleviated or their pain relieved through any means. Even alcohol or drugs cannot prevent the Nightmares.
    Drain
    1 AP, Resist (Willpower)
    The psychic can attempt to drain the life energy of a target. This is deeply unethical, and runs the risk of the psychic being overwhelmed by the physical and emotional sensory impressions picked up from the target.
    The Psionics skill check is, at base, Difficult rather than Standard. This attack requires an Unarmed attack to get close enough to the target to physically grapple with them. The target either takes Hit Points damage to the Chest area as their very breath is sucked out of their lungs, or they accumulate levels of fatigue as if through blood loss (see "Blood Loss" in Mythras Core) equal to the Psionic Intensity of this Talent.
    This Talent always requires a check for Nightmares, which take effect immediately if the psychic loses this test. See below.
    Walk Through Walls
    1 AP
    This sovereign power requires intense self-belief, and an unshakeable personal sense of one's own reality. The Psionics skill check for this Talent is Formidable. The psychic can phase through solid walls at a dead run, or translocate (teleport) to a location with which they are familiar, such as any location they have visited at least twice. Greater mastery of Psionics skill makes this check easier: the check is Difficult for Adepts, Standard for Masters, and Easy for Grandmasters.
    Nightmares
    Nightmares may plague psychics who use their Talents for evil (inflicting harm, acting unethically). If a Talent is used unethically, there is a risk of suffering Nightmares.
    The psychic's own Psionics skill is pitted against their own Willpower score in a simple opposed check. If the psychic's Willpower prevails, they get through the ordeal feeling shaken, but otherwise suffer no further mechanical penalties.
    If the psychic loses this conflict, they suffer Nightmares for a number of nights equal to the Psionic Intensity of the Talent which they used unethically. The Intensity is based on the skill check at the time, so if the skill had been reduced due to a Formidable check, its Intensity will have been reduced accordingly.
    The Nightmares can be reduced to a single night with several hours of meditation. However, if the psychic had managed to kill someone, those Nightmares cannot be alleviated or relieved by any means at all.
    Developing Psychic Ability
    Any psionic Talent can be used by any psychic, at any time. But for each successful use of a specific Talent, e.g. Psychometry, keep track of how many times the check succeeded. Once the number of successful checks for that Talent exceed their Psionic Intensity, they may choose to specialise in that Talent, and the base Psionics skill check is made one grade easier.
    Example: Amanda has a Psionics skill of 45, and a Psionic Intensity of 5. She has attempted Telepathy seven times in play, with only two failures. Her player Julie has kept a check, and realises that she has used Telepathy successfully five times. Amanda attempts Telepathy a sixth time to contact her friend Rose. She succeeds. The Games Master William tells her that next time she uses Telepathy, the Psionics skill checks will be one grade easier.

  25. Alex Greene
    Last week, we opened with a look into how magic can be called up in a modern Mythras setting. Now, it's time to look at the kinds of workings magicians can call up, either to bamboozle the players or something the players can do themselves.
    So this week, we will be looking into the grimoire of a young witch called Agatha, who's reading Philosophy and Economics at St Charisma's Finishing School, in a fiction setting called Night Chess.

    Here are two of Agatha's friends. Meet Bob and Shadow.

    Lastly, introducing the Three Mean Girls of the setting - Lisbeth, Janey, and Muriel.

    Here are two of the teachers, Miss Bremner and Miss Challis.

    The theme of this setting is Dark Academia. The tone is sultry and mysterious; the premise, grasp the nettle to win the day.
    Appropriate atmospheric music can be found here - Jarre - Red Sun on Youtube
    Recap
    Before we look into the grimoire, let's remind ourselves of the Invocations and Manifestations - the things we want to do, and the way we do them.
    Invocations
    Sensory / Information Gathering
    Perceiving    - sensing surface data
    Knowing    - in-depth information; telepathy; divination
    Revealing    - revelation of knowledge hidden from the caster
    Understanding    - wisdom; illumination
     Manipulation
    Nudging    - giving a push to something that is already happening
    Warding    - applying the caster's will to protect the target
    Swaying    - overt control over the subject; being able to halt something entirely
    Concentrating / Attenuating    - making something more or less intense by increasing or decreasing its characteristics, Attributes, Intensity etc; a more powerful form of Nudging
    Transforming    -    temporary and permanent changes, affecting the target's base nature; shapeshifting, Sculpting, Transmogrify, enchanting items
    Creating / Destroying    -    Creation and destruction
    Manifestations
    Chant    -    repetitive chanting, gestures, dance (Acting, Dance, Musicianship, Sing, Seduction)
    Sigil    - drawing, inscribing, carving a symbol onto a thing: includes enchantment and disenchantment (Art, Craft)
    Circle    -    classic magic circles drawn on the ground, more elaborate rituals surrounding it than mere sigil crafting (Art, Craft)
    Brew    -    something which must be consumed to release its effects (Craft (Brewery, Cookery, Cosmetics))
    Poppet    -    an effigy of the target, like a voodoo doll (Art, Craft)
    Tag    -    using a part of the target, such as nail clippings, a piece of masonry from a building and so on (Craft)
    When creating an effect, the character declares their intent to use magic, sets a time frame, such as one minute, a few hours and so on, and states the Invocation and Manifestation - such as a Perceiving Chant, a Transforming Sigil, a Warding Circle and so on.
    The Games Master determines the difficulty of the task, the player makes a Magic skill check against that difficulty grade, and the spell takes effect. Note how this process skips Magic Points, Range, Duration, or Targets. This isn't about the numbers. Can the caster do the thing they want to do or not?
    Opposed Magic Checks - A Shortcut
    Match the Intensity of your working against the critical range of the opponent's resistance skill, which is either Endurance, Evade, Willpower, another Magic skill, or a Passion. The Intensity of both the magician's working and the target's resistance is based on the difficulty check at the time. If the Intensity of the working is greater than that of the target's resistance, it succeeds; if it is equal or lower than the resistance, the working fails.
    Example: Agatha's Magic skill is 62%, giving her workings a maximum Intensity of 7 on a Standard check. She is casting a Revealing Sigil to sense what Janey is doing in the college library this late at night. Her Standard check has an Intensity of 7, against the inexperienced Janey's Willpower of 45 (Intensity 5), also a Standard check. Agatha learns that Janey is looking for a specific tome about the Tarot.
    Example: Lisbeth wants to break up Bob and Shadow, so she attempts to drop a Perfidy Curse (a Swaying Chant) on Shadow to make her imagine that Bob is cheating on her with Agatha. Lisbeth's Magic skill is 65, so her Intensity is 7. However, Shadow is wearing an Eye of Horus amulet, and its Magic skill of 68% was cast with an Easy check, so it is effectively at 88%, an Intensity of 9. Lisbeth's working hasn't got a chance against Shadow's amulet, and bounces clean off.
    Agatha's Grimoire
    Agatha's Grimoire is a loose bound folder with a leather cover. She calls her Grimoire Sebastian. The pages of her Grimoire are bound in polypockets in this folder, which only seems to open to Agatha's hand.
    Inside this Grimoire are the words of her Invocations, and instructions on how to construct the Manifestations which carry the power and make it appear in the world.
    Drag To Hell
    Swaying Circle, Resist (Willpower)
    This illusion was cast by Agatha, with Bob and Shadow assisting, in the circle they found in the Secret Quadrangle between the gym and the History Faculty in Chapter Six. This ritual, in Chapter Thirteen, created an illusion in Lisbeth's dreams, of demons dragging her down to Hell.

    Dowsing
    Revealing Sigil
    A forked hazel rod was used by Miss Challis in Chapter Four to discern the course of the underground river which ran beneath the well in the Cedar Grove. The Elder Futhark rune Laguz had been carved into the bark of the forked stick.
    Perfidy Curse
    Swaying Chant
    Chapter Seven saw Lisbeth's infamous attempt to break up the relationship between Shadow and Bob by imposing a state of paranoia and jealousy in Shadow's mind. The chant read The serpent's green eyes long to see / His love was never real for thee. The attempt failed.

    Runes of Bonding
    Transforming Sigil, Resist (Willpower)
    Lisbeth's worst bitch move in Chapter Eleven came when she drew up a charm on a sheet of parchment and slipped it into Agatha's book on Kant during class. Agatha had no idea what hit her for the duration of the Chapter; it took the combined efforts of Shadow, Bob, Miss Challis, Miss Bremner, and even Muriel to bring her out of her period of enslavement to Lisbeth.
    Chainbreaker
    Transforming Circle, Resist (Willpower)
    This spell was used successfully at the end of Chapter Eleven to bring Agatha out of her binding before she could throw herself off the roof. Note: a Tag was also included in the Circle. The presence of the additional focus increased Miss Challis' already formidable 87% Magic skill to 107%, and the presence of the other participants in the Circle boosted the Intensity a further +2 ro 13, which steamrolled over Lisbeth's Intensity 7.
    Winning Smile
    Nudging Brew
    Muriel's little glamour spell in Chapter Five, this was a little charm she laid into her lip balm before sneaking off campus to visit her boyfriend Tom. The effect was to increase the chances of Tom becoming enamoured of her, without having to boost her natural CHA of 16.
    Power Walk
    Concentrating Chant, Concentration
    This was Muriel's more powerful chant to increase her CHA by up to her Magic skill's Intensity, as used in the Chapter Ten club scene. As long as she walked, the crowds parted before her like the Red Sea.
    Vicious Sleep
    Swaying Brew, Resist (Endurance)
    A draught of valerian and other herbs, this concoction was used in the sequel, Shadow Backgammon, by Janey on Miss Bremner, to send Miss Bremner into a deep sleep plagued by a nightmare of her weaknesses and flaws brought to confront her in an Inquisitorial trial in her mind.
    The Dire Poppet
    Swaying Poppet, Concentration, Resist (Willpower)
    Miss Bremner's revenge in Shadow Backgammon involved a poppet of Janey, fashioned by Miss Bremner, into which she jabbed a silver hatpin several times, in different areas, to cause Janey intense pain for a week.
    Hecate's Strength
    Concentrating Brew
    Miss Challis used this rite on herself in Shadow Backgammon, piercing the skin of her thumb with a hawthorn thorn and letting her blood infuse a concoction of herbs in a pot, which she drank. For the remainder of the scene (which lasted until the following sunrise), her POW and CHA were boosted by the Intensity of this spell.

    Draft of The Wise
    Understanding Brew
    A sacrament of St Charisma's inner circle of witches, this arcane brew bestows upon the drinker the blessings of an audience with Hecate Herself. For the remainder of the week, the drinker feels Hecate's blessings upon them, making their Influence, Magic, Oratory, and Seduction skill checks one grade easier. Frequently consumed by Miss Challis and Miss Bremner, the recipe is first listed in Shadow Backgammon.

×
×
  • Create New...