bryant

I don’t own a lot of remnants of the D20 boom any more, just a few select books, for the novelty and quality of the ideas rather than for anything mechanical. Tynes’s D20 Call of Cthulhu, for example. The least remembered of these is a D20 Modern setting called Dark Inheritance, which I bought at GenCon. I absolutely adored this back in the day, for its weird mix of genres and modern occult vibe, plus I always thought D20 Modern looked like an interesting system. So in my constant effort to blog a bit more, I dug around till I found my copy, pulled it out, and am spending some time reading it and blogging my thoughts. This is not a review, because I haven’t played it, although that’d be a kick — it’s just a once over. No promises on how often I write these.

The original book was published in 2003; I believe there’s also a Spycraft version, published a year later. It is not available in PDF. Noble Knight has a copy of the D20 version, and it occasionally shows up on eBay. The publisher is Mythic Dreams Studios, which appears to have been mostly Chad Justice. Chad is no longer working in the industry and Mythic Dreams only had these two releases, despite plans for other books as per an advertisement in the back of this one. Still, one solid 200 page campaign book isn’t bad.

The other writers are a range, career wise. Alphabetically, we have Edward Milton, Jason Olsan. Aaron Rosenberg, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Jeremy Tibbs, Wil Upchurch, and Sam Witt. There’s no indication of who wrote what, but I’d bet that Ryder-Hanrahan wrote at least some of the words that sparked my imagination back then. The cover artists is a dude named Mark Sasso, who sets the tone with a painting of a shadowy figure stepping forward out of what appears to be a fire. Sasso’s gone on to what looks like a decent career in and out of the TTRPG space, with some fantasy-inflected design work for the WWE and metal bands like Dio.

The interior art is B&W, mostly spot illos. The book is good 2000s TTRPG design: clear layout, in-world fiction broken out into sidebars, nothing to complain about. This is definitely the era when people expected big metaplot and lots of fiction in their game books.

OK, let’s dig in.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I’ve been rereading Greg Rucka’s Atticus Kodiak books on the occasion of him republishing the first four in the series, and it’s been a pleasure. A gloomy, morose pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless. As always they seem like they ought to be quite adaptable to tabletop RPGs, so I spent a while thinking about that last night while I was falling asleep.

The super-easy adaptation would use Night’s Black Agents, drop the vampires. It’s easy to dial that flavor of GUMSHOE into gritty dangerous street level action, and the bursts of competence that result from the Military Occupational Specialty rule — automatic successes once per session on your chosen MOS skill — would also fit perfectly. Atticus and his friends spend a lot of time being able to push themselves to unreasonable levels of competence when the situation really calls for it.

You’d have to generate some new Backgrounds, I think, which is easy. Also drop Occult Studies and Vampirology from the abilities list and… yeah, Sense Trouble is the critical ability for keeping focus when you’re on watch for hours at a time. Without play testing this, I think using the Thriller Chase rules for standing watch would work really well; the assassin is testing abilities like Infiltration, Surveillance, and Disguise against abilities like Sense Trouble, Surveillance, and Preparedness. Winner gets points in a combat pool before playing out the actual attempt.

But then I had another idea, which I like more and which would take way more effort to implement. The post title gives it away, I know.

One of the core mechanics of Blades in the Dark is the engagement roll; the goal was to reduce the amount of time a group of players spend planning out every detail of a heist. You just go straight to the start of the action, and rely on flashbacks to fill in plans as necessary. So why couldn’t you just invert that — make an engagement roll to cut right to the start of the attempt on whoever you’re body guarding?

In Blades, you choose the point of attack before making an engagement roll. For this application, I think you’d go a bit metafictional and choose the opposition’s point of attack — this may be a bit too much player control for some but it allows the body guarding PCs to look awesome. Bad engagement rolls mean more variance from the determined point of attack, so that it’s not a guaranteed win for the players.

The time consuming part of this hack would be building a bunch of new playbooks. Not too hard to come up with them, just using the Kodiak series as the point of reference: Bodyguard, Private Detective, Driver, Special Forces, Cop, Medic. There’s six, voila. Writing them up is left as an exercise for someone else.

I don’t see a lot of value in multiple crew types, since this is about a very specific topic. I suppose there’s a game about urban action in here somewhere, in which case Bodyguards is one of several crew types with special rules for engagement rolls, but that’s even more work.

And then time to work out a new list of actions, etc. etc. As I said, there’s real effort necessary here, but I dig the idea.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

It turns out that business trips are poor places to work on posting challenges, especially if you’re horribly jet lagged and you have a lot of evening meetings. I’m gonna try and hit 31 of these anyhow, just not before the end of January.

I found myself thinking about action a lot, so now that I’m back in the US I’m gonna do a quick Outgunned character. Outgunned is designed as a modern action RPG, very much in the spirit of John Wick. Since it’s been pretty successful as measured by Kickstarter success, the designers (Two Little Mice) have added a couple of genre books packed full of potential settings — Wild West, space opera, etc. — and a second corebook aimed at 30s pulp action. This time out I’m doing the “A Kind of Magic” mini-expansion, or Action Flick. I’m going to frame this as modern espionage with magic, which seems like a fun game idea.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Man, there were no dice last time. Also I’m just off a transatlantic flight and I’m tired. Thus, I’m going to let the dice do the thinking for me and go for something highly randomized: the Troika supplement Academies of the Arcane. It was a really fun read; I wound up wanting to run a mini-campaign in it.

We start with stats:

Skill: 6 (nice, that’s max)
Stamina: 18
Luck: 9

All characters start with 2d6 silver pieces, a school uniform, a knife, a rucksack, and a text book on their favored subject. I don’t know what the latter is until I randomly roll a background — like I said, this is highly randomized.

And on a 52, my character’s background is Hellfire Gullet. He signed his soul over to the Devil and ate the contract, as if that would negate it. Instead, he wound up with an eternal case of acid reflux (really, it’s listed under Possessions). He also has singed clothing and a ritual dagger. His magic lives in his stomach and his spells are kind of — well, it says they “spew forth from your throat,” so.

And what spells does he know?

Ember: 8
Glotfire: 8
Firebolt: 8
Flash: 7
Explode: 7

That max Skill plus the base rank in each spell is added together to get the total shown, which is why maxing out my Skill was so good. This is not a hyper-balanced game. Jaym (there’s a name) also has a couple of skills:

Language – Legalese: 7
Gastronomy: 7

So I think Jaym is the kind of officious prick who memorizes regulations. Should be plenty of rules and restrictions at an arcane academy! This particular supplement is big on the annoying students, which means I’m more willing to be abrasive than I normally would be. The one spell which isn’t fairly obvious is Glotfire, which basically allows Jaym to burn away written words leaving paper intact. Obvious applications for forgery there. I’m thinking Jaym didn’t actually get into this academy legitimately.

And that’s character creation. I can’t resist rolling up the academy itself, though, since there are these great tables…

Jaym attends the Kraken’s Hammer Lyceum of the Four Humours. Feels kind of Nordic, maybe; the school’s focus on bodily fluids explains why Jaym wanted to go there. The school’s central feature is a great arch of Sudano-Sahelian stylization, with opal minarets and onion domes; there are also hanging translucent bulbous lecture rooms strung up with golden chains. So not all that Nordic after all. The interior tends towards belted metal and thin, fur rugs, with industrial light fixtures. It’s a deliberate attempt to evoke the feeling of being inside a kraken’s digestive system.

The school is built on top of an oasis in the desert. Rumor has it that those who know the right rituals can sail directly from the oasis into the far away Blood Red Sea.

The school uniform is a cubist-patterned Dalmatia tunic, hose, and a dressing gap. It’s incongruous with the rest of the aesthetic. There was a Magister several hundred years ago who dictated it.

Finally, the Kraken’s Hammer is locked in a long and notable conflict with the College of Friends. Those idiots worship the Cordial Wizard God; the Kraken’s Hammer faculty know that no divine entity should rule over wizards.

Young Jaym is a first year in House Xilat. The House’s mascot is a feathered mastodon, iridescent in hue, which is constantly coughing up gemstones. Their motto is “The Drink is Deep and Plentiful,” which Jaym has learned is a warning about the dangers of the sea rather than anything related to alcohol. House Xilat is deeply indebted to a Gremlin Hunter consortium, and everyone knows it; their deeper secret problem is that they’re also indebted to the Palace of Tigers, and the Palace is disgusted at Xilat’s weakness.

I swear I did not even use all the tables. These are so good!

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

That’s a lot of OSR to start the challenge, so I figured I’d do something less trad for day three. If I’d been thinking ahead, which I may do later in the month, I’d have thrown the playbook history section open to my pals on social media to crowdsource answers, but in the interests of efficiency I just made up my own this time around.

I decided I wanted to play a character who’s a little bit out of sync with the modern world but still effective. Playbook: the Initiate, who belongs to some kind of secret sect that thinks it’s the bulwark against evil. I’m going to call her Jeanne, as a reference to Joan of Arc.

She thus has a thin body and wears unfashionable clothes. This doesn’t lessen her charisma:

Charm +1
Cool -1
Sharp +1
Tough =0
Weird +2

Or her weirdness. She’s no mystic but she is subject to prophecy; I want Fortunes and Sacred Oath for my first two move choices, to sort of emphasize the chains of obsession that bind her. For a third move, in order to make sure she plays well with others, I’ll take Helping Hand. Note that Help Out is a Cool move, which with her -1 Cool means she’ll be exposing herself to trouble a lot. If I’m power gaming, I can use Sacred Oath to offset that a bit.

I see her Sect as somewhat antiquated. It’d be fun to do the contrast of a traditionalist who belongs to a high tech bunch, but nah — let’s make her the product of her upbringing. Their good traditions are Ancient Lore and Fighting Arts; their bad tradition is Tradition-bound. I think they are religious in nature, maybe Montanists? I am just skimming Wikipedia here but a Catholic heresy that believes in prophetic gifts seems right for Jeanne. For a real campaign I’d do some more research; Montanism has the benefit of being a dead sect so not a lot of real people to offend there.

I’ll call the sect the Prisca Society, after one of the original sect leaders. They recruit by family ties, although not exclusively — if someone has the gift of prophecy, they’re a candidate for recruitment. Since Jeanne does know prophecy, I think she was recruited at a young age, which may have been traumatic. I’ll let that develop in play.

OK. Those tradition choices mean Jeanne has three old fashioned weapons and one modern one. She prefers the old school stuff: her sword, her really big sword, and a silver knife that’s handy for certain targets. She also owns a shotgun and maybe has a very limited supply of silver-loaded shells.

For my fellow PCs, I’m postulating Marcia, playing Gregori, a Professional who favors direct action; and Hank, playing Feldspar, a Spooky. Hank loves weird characters and Marcia loves being effective.

Jeanne and Gregori fought together when the tide of monsters seemed unstoppable. How did that go? Gregori says they were shoulder to shoulder when the Gates broke open, and both of them were at peace with whatever happened. She was a bit reckless — took a bite for him while he was reloading — and he appreciates that. They have each other’s back.

Feldspar knew Jeanne when she was under her cover identity as Jane, a bank teller. (I like the way there are little implications about character history in these questions.) Feldspar thought Jane was trying too hard because nobody is that boring. Turns out Feldspar was right! I bet Feldspar isn’t always right about that kind of thing, though… anyhow, these days, Feldspar keeps looking for the next shoe to drop, the next layer of weirdness, although they don’t hold the secret against Jeanne.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Mothership gets to be my second character because a pal of mine wants to playtest a scenario sometime this year. I won’t use this character for the purpose — at the table, I’d rather make PCs with everyone else around — but it’ll familiarize me with the rules a bit.

Stats come first. This is another one where you roll stats in order, using 6d10 this time. I get:

Strength: 21
Speed: 32
Intellect: 41 (31 + 10 from my class)
Combat: 30

So clustering around the mean, sure. Interestingly I just noticed that the character sheet I downloaded says I should roll 2d10+25 for each stat, which must be a change from the initial rules. Well, I’ve got the initial rules so I’m using them and will cope.

I feel like playing a scientist; that’ll be my class. That gives me a +10 to Intellect, keen. My saves are:

Sanity: 40
Fear: 25
Body: 25
Armor: 35 (30 + 5 from gear)

Note that stat checks and saves are just roll under on 1d100. I sense plenty of exciting failure in this dude’s future.

Also my character — let’s call him Sal, he’s a xenobiologist who specializes in developing useful new drugs from alien lifeforms — deals with stress and panic by, um, freaking out people nearby when he fails a Sanity Save. I think he talks too much because he’s used to lab situations where communication is more important.

I get to choose some skills now. As a Scientist, I pick two of several basic skills, then spend 3 points. I’m taking Biology and Hydroponics as my basic Trained skills — that gives me +10% on their skill rolls. So 50% base, not so bad. Expert skills cost 2 points per and Master skills cost 3 points. Xenobiology is a Master skill, that’s a bummer. Let me revise a little: Sal wants to be a xenobiologist, but isn’t there yet. Thus, I spend 2 points on Genetics (a prerequisite for Xenobiology). If my GM will let me hold a point and spend it on the Expert skill Botany when I earn another point, I’m doing that. Otherwise I’m buying Scavenging.

Actually, no, I’m just buying Scavenging. Let’s be simple here. I get 2 skill points when I level up after the first session so I can go to Botany immediately. Xenobiology is a long ways away; that’s OK! Gotta have dreams.

Gear is super-easy, because Mothership is all about getting right down to play. There are four standard loadouts and you pick one. Sal gets Examination: a scalpel, a tranq pistol, pain pills, a diagnostic scanner, stuff like that. I also get a randomly selected trinket and patch: Sal has some kind of token, let’s call it a challenge coin, with “Is Your Morale Improving” written on it and a cool patch depicting a Fun Meter. The Fun Meter’s needle is in the Bad Time zone. I think Sal’s morale is not improving.

Sal has 20 credits, rolled on 5d10. I guess I could gotten a much better roll for starting credits if I selected gear piecemeal but it’s gonna be a long month, let’s not do that. His hazard suit boosts his Armor save by 5%; his tranq pistol does no damage but can knock the target unconscious. I bet it works very well on xenos. The stun baton does some damage along with a chance of unconsciousness but you kinda gotta be next to someone to use a stun baton on them so I know where Sal’s instincts lead.

Finally, secondary stats:

Stress: 2
Resolve: 0
Max Health: 42

In theory I’m supposed to pick a name at this point but I’m too much of a filthy storygamer to wait until now. Good luck, Sal, you’re gonna need it.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Day one is Tunnels & Trolls, in honor of my very first RPG. I’m using the Deluxe rules, no complications. Stats are 3d6 in order and all that jazz. So what do we get?

Strength 12
Constitution 5
Dexterity 8
Speed 11
Luck 11
Intelligence 9
Wizardry 8
Charisma 18+10 = 28

Phew, that’s poor. Except Charisma, which is ridiculous. This particular version of the rules allows you to roll and add when you get triples, so when I rolled an 18 on Charisma, I rolled again and added. If I’d gotten triples on the second roll I would have kept on rolling and adding. It’s ludicrous and it means my yet unnamed character starts at level 2, since level is determined by the highest first digit of any stat.

Charisma, alas, is strictly a social interaction stat so Kevin here is going to be one of those people who gets by on charm. I don’t think he really realizes it, though. He thinks he’s a bold warrior type. Quirkily enough, warriors get +1d6 per level on any melee weapon damage so Kevin will be a bit less hopeless than he would be without his spectacular Charisma.

I am briefly tempted to make him an elf to multiply his Charisma by 1.5. That’d actually also boost his magical stats to something plausible for a wizard… but nah, let’s lean into the flaws, it’s more interesting.

What are his personal adds (which are effectively a combat bonus)? One point for each of Strength, Luck, Speed, and Dexterity that are above average… so no adds at all.

Back to dice. Randomly generating his height and weight, I discover that Kevin is 5’7″ and a skinny 150 pounds. He starts with 110 gold, which should be easy to spend. The weapons lists are not the weird joy they were in Fifth Edition, but they’re still pretty cool. Kevin’s limitation is his Dexterity, which will vastly limit the weapons he can use. For example, he’s too clumsy to handle a medium sword: if he wants a blade, it’s a short sword or nothing.

The mini-max choice would be a medium pick of some kind, which does 5d6 and requires a mere 12 Strength and 8 Dexterity. It just doesn’t seem flashy enough. An axe could be cool but he’s under by 1 point on both Str and Dex. It’s fine: 55 gold goes to a small sabre, which is flashy and does 3d6 of damage (plus 2d6 for his level). Another 50 gold gets him a full suit of light leather armor, which will take 3 hits for him. Puny but that’s life as a new T&T character. His last five gold is exactly the cost of the “basic delver’s package,” which is a cheap backpack, a waterskin, some chalk, and so on.

Since Tunnels & Trolls experience points are spent on improving stats, there’s hope of a substantial improvement in combat damage someday. And the one advantage to low stats is that they’re cheap to improve.

Finally, a bit more choice: I get to pick a talent! Cool. Actually two talents because he’s level 2. These are sort of like skills or areas of knowledge. Kevin’s first talent is Culture Knowledge: bars. He’s good at those; he understands the typical patrons, he knows a lot of bartenders, that kind of thing. His second talent is, let’s see, Outdoorsmanship — it’ll come in handy now and again and reminds me that Kevin isn’t useless. Just… oddly shaped. I suspect he learned it camping with his father before he grew up and glowed up.

I’m not sure who told Kevin he had a future as an adventurer. Maybe people just hate to disappoint him and tell him it’s a bad idea. Regardless, there he is: bold, stupid, and absolutely the life of any party. He’s going to wind up as one of those characters whose success depends on how well I can sweet talk the GM.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I got a wild hair this year, plus I need something to keep me busy in the evenings while I’m traveling, so I’m going to take a shot at the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. Basically: one TTRPG character per day. Details here.

Then I missed the first day because I got very distracted by Trenque Lauquen. No regrets. That’s okay, I can play a bit of catchup! Completed entries are tagged as character-creation-2025.

Sorry about the relatively frequent posts in your RSS feed. It’s OK, it’s likely there won’t be more than ten of these.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Pitchfork dug deep for this review of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 1-3. Cool for the music but also cool for the esoterica. Anyone who claimed to be Crowley’s kid and had a passion for folk music is worth investigating in my book.

Alejandro Galindo seems like a really interesting director. A fair amount of his movies are available on the commercial-based streaming services. I wonder if these weren’t an influence on Roma?

Speaking of directors, Soderbergh’s 2022 yearly media consumption list is up. Someone on Letterboxd made a more convenient list of just the movies, which is handy, but I also like reading through the full stream. (Hm, four views of The Killer? I bet that’s the upcoming Fincher movie rather than John Woo.)

The always insightful J. D. Corley made me want to buy Call of Cthulhu 7th edition with this blog post. It’s just some tips for running the game, but what is this Bout of Madness mechanic? Is that really how it’s written or is that Corley being smart and extending the rulebook in useful ways? Suppose I gotta find out.

Have a 60-odd page PDF about management techniques from Javier Grillo-Marxuach, show runner and writer. OK, it’s really about show running, but it’s interesting how much of this translates directly into smart management techniques. Particularly for director-level managers.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I launched a new online campaign this week and with the consent of the players, I recorded the session for later reference. (One of them wrote a great summary, but it’s still nice to have the recording.) My original plan was to use Whisper to get a transcription but it turns out the built in Google Meet captioning system is plenty good enough. I did give Whisper a shot anyhow, and Whisper’s quality was higher, but the thing about Google Meet is that it adds speaker information to the transcriptions which is a huge difference.

Google One will cost you ten bucks a month, which gets you Google Meet sessions longer than an hour and transcripts, among other benefits. Worth it to me since I can afford it and I don’t like using my work Zoom for personal stuff, but YMMV.

Example Meet Transcription

So what you get out of the box is a VTT subtitle file that looks like this:

00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:28.000
(Bryant)
And you are there with Representative Ledger who speaks for 

00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:32.000
(Bryant)
the hogs. He is, in fact, the voice of the hogs TM 

00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:36.000
(Bryant)
registered trademark, etc, etc. Um he is like 

00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:40.000
(Bryant)
a super skinny guy with like elaborate 

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.000
(Bryant)
wire thing on his head and like some antenna sticking out of it. 

00:48:44.000 --> 00:48:48.000
(Bryant)
Um and like every now and then there's like little sparks coming off of it. 

00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:52.000
(Bryant)
Like you have to keep them from setting things on fire because he's 

00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:56.000
(M.)
You say have to. 
-
 
(Bryant)
too important to do that himself. Um and 

00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:00.000
(Bryant)
um you know it depends on whether or not you want things near you to be on 

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.000
(Bryant)
fire, I'm not forcing you to you know, maybe there's some 

00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:08.000
(Bryant)
things that would be better off if they were on fire.

Which is cool, but not as readable as I want it to be, so I wrote a python script to turn that into this:

Bryant: And you are there with Representative Ledger who
    speaks for the hogs. He is, in fact, the voice of the hogs TM 
    registered trademark, etc, etc. Um he is like a super skinny 
    guy with like elaborate wire thing on his head and like some 
    antenna sticking out of it. Um and like every now and then 
    there's like little sparks coming off of it. Like you have to 
    keep them from setting things on fire because he's --

M.: You say have to.

Bryant: -- too important to do that himself. Um and um you
    know it depends on whether or not you want things near you to be
    on fire, I'm not forcing you to you know, maybe there's some
    things that would be better off if they were on fire.

Mostly formatting but also I did some processing to add dashes in appropriate places. I could probably screen out the ums and uhhs but that starts to get fancy and this is all good enough to read.

You can grab the script here if you like. No warranty available.

Make It Whisper

For comparison, the Whisper transcript looks like this:

00:48:24.600 --> 00:48:27.520
And you are there with Representative Ledger

00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:29.240
who speaks for the hogs.

00:48:29.240 --> 00:48:31.520
He is in fact the voice of the hogs,

00:48:31.520 --> 00:48:34.360
TM, registered trademark, et cetera, et cetera.

00:48:34.360 --> 00:48:40.280
He is like a super skinny guy with like a elaborate

00:48:40.280 --> 00:48:43.320
wire thing on his head and like some antenna sticking out

00:48:43.320 --> 00:48:49.120
it. And like every now and then there's like little sparks coming off of it. Like you

00:48:49.120 --> 00:48:53.160
have to keep them from setting things on fire because he's too important to do that

00:48:53.160 --> 00:48:54.160
himself.

00:48:54.160 --> 00:49:02.160
You have to. You know, it depends on whether or not you want things near you to be on fire.

00:49:02.160 --> 00:49:05.400
I'm not forcing you to. You know, maybe there's some things that will be better off if they

00:49:05.400 --> 00:49:11.520
were on fire.

That’s actually a noticeably better transcript but it does not have the voices identified, and in fact it doesn’t even notice that me and M. have different voices. The script will not work on this file. I guess if I was feeling really spicy I could try and use the timestamps to interpolate the better text from that file into the original Google Meet transcript but this is starting to sound like work.

There’s a pull request to add word-level timestamps to Whisper output, so if that goes through I think I could merge the two transcripts effectively. Work for another day, then.

How To

If you’ve come this far, the least I can give you is a walkthrough. Google Meet drops transcripts and recordings into a Google Drive folder called Meet Recordings. Go in there, find your recording, and select it. Then click on the little three dot menu and select Manage caption tracks.

You’ll get a new window; find your caption track to the right (probably English – 1 unless you recorded it in another language), three dot menu, Download. Easy as pie.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I’ve been meaning to write this down in one place instead of scattering it in comments throughout the Internet. Note that the following blithely ignores the question of copyrighting mechanics; I agree that mechanics can’t be copyrighted but am assuming there’s concrete value to having a license for them anyhow. I also am assuming that the ORC will have a viral component; if not, it’s almost certainly going to be strictly inferior to Creative Commons Attribution.

WotC releasing the D&D 5.1 SRD under a Creative Commons Attribution license is not just one of the better outcomes for fans, it’s a shot across Paizo’s bows and probably the only one that would have mattered. Paizo’s still going to release the ORC and Pathfinder will go under that license, but it won’t have the same effect it might have otherwise.

We’re already seeing this with the Kobold Press announcement that they’re focused on maintaining compatibility with 5e. Their material may also be released under ORC, but that’s far less important than convincing Kobold to focus on Pathfinder 2e as their primary focus.

Why does WotC’s decision matter? Because permissive licenses which do not require licensing derivative material are more attractive to corporations than viral licenses, all else being equal. In 2014, the GNU viral licenses were the most popular licenses in one study, with 45% of the market. In 2021, viral licenses only had 22% of the market. These studies probably didn’t use exactly the same methodology, but the second study has seen a several year trend of GPL popularity declining and the old Black Duck surveys also saw GPL popularity declining.

It also makes sense. If you’re not an idealist, would you rather use a license that gives you more control over your product or less? More is better from a purely capitalist standpoint. Do you want to build your third party fantasy dungeon supplement on a license that restricts what you can do in any way, or on a license that gives you complete freedom without having to worry about getting product identity declarations right? Bonus points for the fact that D&D owns the majority of the market, so you reduce some barriers to entry by basing your supplement on 5e.

There’s also an advantage to being the mechanics originator in an OGL-style licensing model, because ultimately you’re the only one who can restrict usage of new mechanics. Consider a supplement with a new class in it. If you’re WotC (for D&D) or Paizo (for Pathfinder under the likely ORC), you can publish that supplement without releasing the class as open content. Under a viral license, nobody else has that freedom.

WotC has demonstrated that they’re happy to do this. Paizo hasn’t had the opportunity to make that choice until now, since they’re using the OGL and thus have to release their mechanics. From the point of view of a licensor, it’s better to choose a license that doesn’t give a competitor more advantages, even if they aren’t using them right now.

I don’t know if anyone at WotC went through a similar thought process; it’s possible that they lucked into the smart move. Either way, it was the right move.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Edge-of-Town is a nautical, isolated little borough. Plenty of room for things to get weird. Also I really like lighthouses.

Subway style map of the Borough Edge-of-Town.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

This is the first week’s borough from my Bastion23 project. Harshbiscuit turned out to be a fairly wealthy borough — I imagine Gilded Age mansions.

Map

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

My rough plan for Dungeon23 is to write one borough of Bastion per week, as follows:

Monday: Basic map of transit lines
Tuesday: Points of Interest named and described
Wednesday: Complications written
Thursday: ~~Three to five~~ One to three factions outlined
Friday: ~~Three to five~~ One to three NPCs outlined
Saturday: Encounter table
Sunday: A Treasure

Update: three to five NPCs and factions was optimistic. One to three is better.

I will capture the day’s work on Mastodon, hash tagged #Dungeon23 and #Bastion23. The completed borough makes a Sunday blog post, which are also tagged as #Bastion23.

I’m not at all sure how far I’ll get but it’ll be fun trying.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I’ve been thinking about Delta Green in relation to copaganda for a long time. That is a different blog post, because it’s a long topic, but recently I started wondering about collective action in the Delta Green world. As a practical matter, I believe that mutual aid is a better environment for mental health than any police force. What would that mean in relationship to the Cthulhu Mythos?

Let’s start with the existing rules for using Bonds.

A Delta Green Agent can reduce Sanity loss by projecting trauma onto a Bond. This weakens the Bond, because it’s meant to represent the tension between the horror of the Mythos and the people or groups an Agent uses to maintain connection to their normal life. That makes sense in context but doesn’t allow for the concept of a group which is explicitly there to support members against those horrors.

An Agent can repress temporary insanity the same way, with the same consequences.

During downtime, there’s a rule for Agents who focus on ordinary obligations and relationships: they can Fulfill Responsibilities by working to support a Bond. This rule works as is to represent mutual aid.

There’s also a rule for generating new Bonds, which weakens one other Bond. That contains an assumption which I think doesn’t necessarily hold for mutual aid groups, because they’re groups that exist in order to strengthen community-wide connections.

Finally, Delta Green is a special kind of Bond: “Powerful Bonds form between people who have to look out for each other to survive.” Oh, hey, there’s what we’re looking for. The special rule here is that Agents who suffer trauma develop and deepen their Bond with Delta Green, again at the cost of weakening other Bonds.

Put all that together and I think we have the makings of a community-oriented house rule.

A Special Bond: Mutual Aid Groups

Powerful Bonds form between people who have to look out for each other to survive, but even more powerful Bonds form between people who choose to help others survive. Collective action with full knowledge of the Mythos in mind creates a powerful structure for cushioning the impact of the horrors your Agent faces.

Your Agent may take a Bond with a mutual aid group that is aware of the Mythos as a special Bond. This may be at character creation, particularly if the entire group wants to be part of a mutual aid group, or during play as per the usual rules for gaining Bonds. Bonds with unaware mutual aid groups are treated as normal Bonds, with the exception that they may convert to a special Bond at any point if the group discovers the Mythos or a portion thereof, and elects to take on fighting the Mythos as a core cause for the group.

Every time someone in your Agent’s mutual aid group undergoes a catastrophic trauma, there’s a chance your Agent develops or deepens Bonds with their teammates. Such traumas include those listed on page 37 of the Delta Green Agent’s Handbook. The rules for this are the same as the rules for the Delta Green bond, except that your Agent does not lose points from other Bonds. Also, reducing Sanity loss or repressing temporary insanity with the help of this Bond does not weaken other Bonds. An Agent cannot reduce Sanity loss by more than the value of the special Bond, even if they roll higher on 1d4.

All other rules for this Bond are as per the rules for the Delta Green Bond.

Your Agent may not have a Bond with Delta Green and a Bond with a mutual aid group. However, other Delta Green agents may have Bonds with your Agent as part of their Delta Green Bond.

Ramifications

This new type of Bond is clearly superior to other Bonds, including the special Delta Green Bond. This is intentional. I don’t think it means Agents can defeat the Mythos: you still have to spend Willpower Points to reduce Sanity loss, and those aren’t an infinite resource.

It would be possible but awkward for a Delta Green agent to also join a mutual aid group. This is intentional and true to life.

The obvious campaign frame here (which I may write up at some point) is a mutual aid group which discovers the Mythos and decides they need to fight what is obviously a fascist tendency. There are plenty of non-pacifist mutual aid groups.

References

Mutual Aid, by Peter Kropotkin

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

New text AI! Let’s try it on some tabletop RPG work. Bold is my prompts; I’ve snipped the polite banter out of most of the AI’s answers.

Spoiler: this is way better than the last one I tried. If I repeat the same prompt it gets a little repetitive, but still not bad.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I got access to Lex, one of those AI writing assistants, so I tried to do the inevitable. Bold text is mine. I’m not sure this is entirely useful.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I made a thing! I have been on a minor roll with python recently and this seemed like a fun project so I started working on it. Towards the end I reached out to the awesome person who inspired me, since she didn’t seem to have been keeping her tracker up to date, and she said I should go ahead and launch mine. So here we are.

I used this as an excuse to try out new technology and libraries. Click and Cloup made the list; the first because I wanted to try out new argument parsers and the second because I needed option groups. This forced me to learn to use setuptools better, which was a win. I am gonna keep using this tech going forward.

I also wound up sticking Rich in there for better CLI output and it’s kinda great, so that’ll stay in my toolbox too.

Dataset turned out to be too limited, because it’s really just for columnar data in a single table and it turns out itch.io jams have one little thing which break that paradigm; namely, multiple owners per jam. So now I’m using sqlite with JSON support and honestly it’s a bit grungy. Maybe next time I’ll learn SQLAlchemy for real.

My python has gotten significantly better over the last year with this kind of small but enjoyable work, and I am gonna keep doing it.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

Or: ”A Lyric Scenario for The Yellow King RPG”

Gather no more than three people.
Watch Last Year in Marienbad together in silence.
Select characters from those depicted in the movie.
Discuss your motivations, remaining in character. It is unnecessary to agree on the facts of the fiction.
If there is disagreement on motivations, play Nim to resolve them.

“It’s a stupid game.”
“There’s a trick.”
“Just take an odd number.”
“There must be rules.”

Credit is due to Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

I’m playing Magic: the Gathering Arena right now. I went through a few approaches while figuring out how to make it fun for me. I wanted to satisfy my competitive urge, spend as little money as possible, and not get overwhelmed with the complexity of deck-building. Here’s what I came up with.

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[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]

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Entries tagged with gaming

Dark Inheritance: Context & Introduction

Bodyguards in the Dark

CC 05: Outgunned

CC 04: Academies of the Arcane

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WotC and the Creative Commons

Bastion23: Edge-of-Town

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Dungeon23 in Bastion

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A Special Bond: Mutual Aid Groups

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AI as Oracle

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