Alex Greene

Most of you who are still thinking of social combat as being like physical combat, with hit points and damage, are not thinking of the bigger picture. Social combat is about winning a person over, about making them see past the cognitive dissonance of doing something that could be counter to their natures, and getting what you want while ensuring that you give the other guy the bare minimum of what they want. So it is really like a gradual steering of the other guy towards consent, or to a state where they believe that you are telling the truth. So it's not so much "social hit points," maybe, and more "resistance points," which could easily be something like one-tenth your Willpower score. Each net success deducts one Resistance from the opponent. Critical Success, it's two Resistance points and they start to warm up to you. If they win, it's your Resistance that takes a hit; two points, if they score a crit.

Special Effects could include Make Good First Impression, Wrap Them Around Your Little Finger and Compel Surrender (requires brandishing some sort of weapon at close range). These could have further effects, such as making your next social skill roll a grade easier, or making theirs a grade harder, and so on.

Negotiation: You're trying to secure a deal that allows the nomads access through the lands that have just been bought up by your Rival's House. Your Rival does not want to honour a treaty that has allowed them access along that path for more than six thousand years. Ink on a page is worth more than spit in the hand. You have to win them over, by offering things the nomads can give: they already have their own laws and customs of offering gifts of hides and animal dung (it makes fields fertile) to farmers whose lands they must cross, so this House is no different to any other landowner to them. It doesn't matter that it is personal to you.

Securing An Alliance: Your greatest Enemy lies before you, his armies broken and scattered, his resources gone. He awaits the sword stroke that will sever his head from his body, and his soul from all worldly concern. Instead, you offer him back his life. He still doesn't trust you, but he is reminded that the other option is always the sword.

Fast Talk: "Honestly, Investigator, they literally just fell through a hole in my roof from the apartment above. I can show you the hole they fell through, and you can see it's fresh. I have never seen those bodies before in my life. And no, I still can't explain why my daggers are sticking out of their chests ... though ... I did get burgled, and my knives got stolen the other day. Would I lie to you?'

Obtaining Access To A Grimoire: You know that the Chantry won't let you just walk in and read the Grimoire. They know they won't just let some Zorridan-come-Lately just walk in off the street and look at their greatest secrets. But the Chantry's janitor is always popping in and out of that sanctum sanctorum of theirs to polish the brass, and yes, they sold off the gold ten years ago and it's nothing but brass in there, so how about another drink and we can talk about taking off for the day and letting someone else go in wearing that tabard and work uniform? Here's a full day's pay to sweeten the deal. Make that two ..

Seduction: This one, you're going to have to imagine for yourselves, you dirty stopouts.

Internal gyroscopic stabilisation could serve the function of the keel in spacecraft.

Like the combat rules are perfect for solo play, so too would social combat rules serve someone well in a situation where all he had to do was just abstract the process of winning over a crowd, or a stubborn guard and so on.

And no, I literally cannot read minds. I just woke up from a dream, in total unawareness that someone else was putting the idea through its paces in real life.

So I woke up this morning imagining that we were going to get a new ruleset in the next iteration of Mythras Imperative, such that every character gains a Social Combat Style to go with the Combat Styles they learn.

So somebody could learn Domination by Insinuation (Influence, Oratory) and someone else could practice Pillow Talk (Influence, Seduction) while yet another goes for Charismatically Creative (Sing, Dance, Oratory).

Imagine the Special Effects of Social Combat - Compel Surrender, Make Good First Impression, Build Anticipation, Entice, Hypnotise, Terrify, Browbeat.

Mic Drop.

Wow The Crowds.

Wrap Around Your Little Finger.

I haven't dreamed of designing a game in ages.

I am wondering about the kind of career which would make Seduction a Professional skill, though, and while there is a glaringly obvious career, I was also thinking of Companions as in Firefly.

Entertainers could enjoy access to Acrobatics and Seduction. They're the most natural fit.

As for Boating and Seafaring, I'm guessing that you'd have to have some sort of a Wet Navy / Coast Guard career type.

I think that, mechanical differences aside, the planet and city could happily fit into any suitable campaign you would like to run.

Their origins could be covered in each supplement, and include such possibilities as (1) They have always been here, because they have evolved in every single parallel in existence; (2) Their homeworld is unknown to them, and they have only appeared in this section of the Galaxy recently (in the last millennium); (3) They were transported here in ships which came from another galaxy (they were cargo); (4) as 3, but they are parasites who stay behind when their host vessels move on; (5) they came here from another parallel, brought here by Disruptors by accident; (6) they evolved here, and only in a few selected parallels.

So I'm involved in something right now, and it could get pretty intensive over the next few weeks, but I've been wondering what I can do for M-Space, possibly through the Mythras Gateway.

A while back, I released a book, Castrobancla, the City of Aliens, for a certain well-known 2D6 space game. I have no current interest in retooling the whole book for M-Space, but some of the guest species from that book could do with being brought here.

Having seen M-Space, I am wondering whether or not my Pelacur and Kubotaur would not find a better home in the M-Space universe, after all.

5 hours ago, Opiyel said:

Sadly, I'll probably have to do more solo gaming since my laptop died and with it, my notes for this Sunday's M Space game died with it. Hundreds of planets and celestial bodies gone.

Oh, that's awful news. Sorry to hear that your universe died.

Have the Powers That Be considered retooling something like Mythras Imperative into a solo game system? A future project to consider.

Brilliant ongoing work.

Looking forward to tomorrow's releases.

When you update M-Space, will this come through automatically on DriveThru?

3 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Remember you can choose your language to read on the Translator Gadget on the right margin!  

(English and French produce the best translation, though)

Or we could just learn Spanish ...

The thing I love about a roleplaying game is the ability to tell stories in it. Some systems are explicitly built around storytelling: the Chronicles of Darkness and its satellite settings are billed as "The Storytelling System."

I am finding Mythras better suited to general storytelling than an awful lot of contemporary roleplaying systems. I found myself wondering why this is so.

I can think of a few things that stand out.

Character Generation: Your characters are not constrained by class. Some farm boy could grow up to be a sorcerer, sure: or he might find a calling as a physician, alchemist or entertainer, and seek out adventure according to his skills and gifts.

Connections: Your character is not alone. Unlike, say, Traveller, where your Travellers can leave all your Allies and Contacts behind with the next Jump out of the system, your connections are never far away in Mythras, because what is implied is that your Adventurers have to come back to their locus of operations if they are to advance with their people.

Speaking of people ...

Cults and Brotherhoods: Your characters really are not alone. There are Cult and Brotherhood memberships, as well as duties and responsibilities, to take care of. It looks as if half the time, the Adventurers are doing the classic dungeon crawling, and the rest of the time they're learning, reaching, advancing or deposing scheming Rivals, or warring against rival Brotherhoods out for the same goal as the Adventurers' faction.

Those are the three that stand out. How about you? What makes Mythras outstanding for you?

1 minute ago, Doug nordwall said:

I wonder why my font size was inconsistent here. I don't even think there is a font size adjusting option!

Yeah, there is a font size adjusting option. Did you cut and paste the odd text?

I love Roman Antique for headings and captions. Main body text, not so much.

Garamond's a bit small - smaller than Times New Roman characters at the same font size.

I use Gentium, when I'm not using Times New Roman. If I'm writing a document that someone else will be editing, plain Times New Roman all the way, nothing else.

As for displaying numbers, when I'm working on mathematical and numerical displays, would you believe SimSun does the most mathematical-looking number displays? It's for Chinese characters, but it really works for numbers.

Done and bought. Very nice it is, too.

Chances are, I'll find a way of including a few Tasks in future supplements, including:-

- Group Climb (Athletics-based Task);

- Follow The Money (Bureaucracy);

- Who's Foolin' Who? (Deceit);

- Summoning Something (Or Sending It Back) (Invocation).

Use it for pure retro pleasure. Grab the RQ6 Games Masters' Pack from the Design Mechanism site, right where Loz pointed. Print out the tables from that, glue them to the inside of the screen, and enjoy playing a modern game with a retro look.

Any chance to add Passions to the page?

4 minutes ago, clarence said:

All you need is a big ship with big cannons. Check out the rules for weapon upgrades to increase damage for a canon. Very simplified, the more Modules a canon has, the more damage it can do.

There are no rules for construction weaknesses though (like vents, where tiny starfighters can fire one missile to destroy the whole ship). Those are left to the art of storytelling. 

"Okay, Fred, it'd be a Herculean task for everybody else, but the Force is strong in you, so it's Very Easy. Just roll the dice, will ya? Any roll but 00 is a success. 00 is a fumble."

*rolls 00*

"The Force must be taking a holiday today, Fred ... WATCH THAT WA - oh, never mind."

The discussions on here are just as fun as they are on any Traveller board.

Suddenly, I feel right at home here.

You can add Chaotic Features, too, as "random genetic mutations caused by radiation."

Use the Mythras Mysticism rules, specifically the Invoke Trait rules. You'll find that they're easy to implement. If they're genetic mods, add them not as Talents that have some sort of cost, but more like Gifts (again, see Mythras Core Rulebook for Gifts)

Also, see the Creatures section of that Core Rulebook. Where the power is something like "sense magic," replace "magic" with the word "psionics," and you could be on to a winner.

That was nice. A good balance of Adventurer action and investigation. A bit of peril, a rescue, some diplomacy. Some secrecy. And a very human adventure.