Category: Game Design

Progress and updates on the game design process.

Rise of R’lyeh – Apocalyptic Mythos Horror

Playtest copies currently available
Rise of R’lyeh is designed to work with the Year Zero Engine (Step Dice) shared by games like Twilight 2000, Bladerunner, Terminal Shock, The 23rd Letter and Excession.

It can be mixed with other third party supplements like Deadzone, Twilight Tangents, Twilight 2249 or any of the others out there. Mythos elements can be introduced into standard Twilight 2000 games or even into some of the games listed above.

The system is fast, deadly but ultimately designed for apocalyptic play.

This is not a game where the plucky heroes have to fight against crazed cultists intent on bringing about the end of the world. That’s already happened and the plucky heroes likely died as they failed. The stars were eventually right, R’lyeh rose from the depths and the dark gods clambered their way back onto this plane of existence.

The mood is therefore not heroic.

The Genre might be described as dystopian, apocalyptic (not post-apocalyptic as the apocalypse is currently proceeding) horror.

Your characters are survivors. They’ve all experienced something horrible and lived to tell the tale.

Venting Pyrokinetics

Our fourth and fifth in-game sessions of the 23rd Letter saw quite a lot of action! I’ll give a brief summary, and then talk about some of the rules that I think were interesting. I’ll put a * and a number on some rules I’m going to talk about at the end.

Everybody woke up in the morning after not having slept very well, and discovered that they had had similar dreams … after some discussion, they determined that maybe the baby’s mother was being held captive somewhere near the Gateway Arch and a McDonalds. Richard (the precog) had an inkling that something big was going to go down, and made a few preparations[*1]. Meanwhile, Vonbella (the telepath) was able to remotely connect to Poppy, the woman in their dreams and the presumed mother of the baby, and find out that she was going to be moved out of the city later today!

Richard (backed up by Jenny the detective) met up with Royal, the Cell’s command and control contact, and got some info that helped fill in some gaps: Poppy had been a double agent within a government Project, secretly working for the Network to help supply them with Psilence (a necessary drug to help reduce Stress). The group pieced together that she’d been compromised and had tried to escape but had been caught, succeeding only in smuggling out her baby (and hiding a stash of Psilence somewhere also). Just as Richard finished up chatting with Royal, Vonbella got an urgent telepathic message from Poppy – she was being moved now!

Luckily, it turned out that she was halfway between Richard/Jenny in one car and Vonbella/Bryce (the pyrokinetic) in another[*1]. Joy (the nurse) had decided to take the baby back to her apartment … thankfully! Both pairs got into their car and tried to use Poppy’s weak telepathic messages to help triangulate her position. They eventually caught up to the SUV that the agents were transporting her in, but by this stage they were all on the freeway and heading out of the city.

Bryce used his powers[*2] to burn out one of the tyres on the government vehicle, causing it pull over onto the shoulder. He and Vonbella pulled in front, and Jenny/Richard pulled in behind. Everyone put on on their clown masks and got ready to for action (well, Vonbella kinda cowered in her seat, but she was there!) (end of session 4)

Two armed and armoured soldiers got out of the vehicle and drew a bead on each car, while a third agent tried to radio for help. Bryce and Vonbella, despite their antagonism, worked together for the greater good by creating a Gestalt[*3] and using Vonbella’s telepathic powers to see through Poppy’s eyes and allow Bryce to target his pyrokinesis to superheat the soldiers’ weapons and the radio, causing everything to be dropped (although bullets were sprayed wildly). The attempt was successful, but given all the Stress that Bryce and Vonbella had, it caused Bryce to Vent[*4] creating a massive pyrokinetic explosion which destroyed the car they were sitting in and sent fiery debris flying across the freeway. Several cars crashed into each other on the other shoulder, and one went spinning wildly out of control and did several flips, killing everyone inside thankfully nobody was killed.[*1] The explosion was enough to kill one of the soldiers, and set a second one on fire. Jenny quickly finished off that one and the third with some skilled shooting, while Richard hustled up to the SUV and helped the heavily sedated Poppy back to Jenny’s car.

Bryce and Vonbella left their “car” (by this stage it was just the two seats they were sitting in, and a large, blackened crater) and hustled into Jenny’s car. They took off before backup could arrive, and found a safe spot to wait for Joy to come pick them up in her minivan–Richard took Jenny’s car and ditched it in the Missisippi, while Jenny reported it stolen, in an attempt to cover their trail.[*5] They got back to Joy’s apartment, fixed Poppy up with a saline drip to help her recover in bed, and that’s where we wrapped session 5.

OK, let’s look at the rules that helped this story move along.

1. Richard is a precog, which means when he wants to see the future, he makes a roll with his ability and each success gives him one ‘preparation’–a secret thing his character has done ahead of time, but that he as a player doesn’t have to think of until the action is actually happening. Richard’s player rolled 3 successes. Where did everyone get clown masks? That was one of his preparations. How come the bad guys were halfway between Richard/Jenny and Bryce/Vonbella? A second preparation (which in Richard’s case is part of his ‘things just happen the way they are meant to’ view on life). The third preparation went on saving the lives of the folks in the car that flipped: Richard had seen it coming and had called the cops to report *that* car stolen earlier that morning. Those poor folks had been hassled by the cops and never made it onto the freeway, but hey–at least they were still alive!

2. Bryce is a Major Pyrokinetic, with 2d12 in his Psychic Talent. However, he and Vonbella were both Stressed (mostly caused by each other!) – Bryce had 2 Stress and Vonbella had 3, so when he rolled to blow out the tyre, he had to roll 2d12 + 5d6 – 1d6 for each Stress in their shared pool: all psychics share their Stress pool when in close proximity. Luckly, he rolled 1 success and 1 bane, which was enough to blow out the tyre, but it also gave him another Stress (rolling a bane on a Psychic talent roll adds a Stress dice), bringing his total Stress up to 3 (and the shared pool to 6!)

3. Now Bryce and Vonbella are working together, they create a Gestalt – a unified effort to use both their powers in a single, combined psychic action. In this case, using Vonbella’s telepathy to view through Poppy’s eyes so that Bryce could easily see the guns and radio and superheat them. Vonbella is a Minor telepath with only 1d6 in her ability, but because the Stress pool is so high, she gets to roll an additional 6d6 and add those on. Each one has the chance of giving her a success, but of course, each one also has the chance of a bane … Bryce also has to roll 6d6 + his 2d12. After both players had rolled, they had 3 successes. They needed 1 success to heat 1 gun, and an extra 2 successes for the extra two targets, so they just made it! However, Bryce had rolled 3 banes, and rolling 2 banes (snake eyes!) on a Psychic Talent roll means that the Esper Vents!

4. What’s a Vent, you ask? Well, it’s those times when psychic stress builds up too much and explodes out of the Esper in a wild and uncontrolled fashion, wreaking havoc on the people and environment close by (but leaving the Esper intact, and now drained of Stress). Sometimes this is pure mental energy, and people around them might get nosebleeds, aneurysms, heart attacks … in Bryce’s case, it was a massive pyrokinetic explosion. To work out the size of the Vent, he adds on the additional Stress he just rolled (3) to the current Stress pool (6) and adding in his psychic power dice (2d12). So, he uses 2d12 + 9d6 to determine much damage is done – every success on that roll will do 1 damage to everything in close proximity! Bear in mind, 3 damage is usually enough to cause a critical injury, so this was a HUGE explosion! Luckily, because she was part of the Gestalt that resulted in the Vent, Vonbella is also unaffected by the explosion. However, the car was more or less vaporized, and the explosion rolled out in a huge fireball … one dice drops for every zone (10m), so there effects felt up to 100m away!

5. The Network Cell tracks a score called Heat, which is a measure of how much external observation and pressure there is on the group and their activities. The group’s Heat score went up by three over the course of this session, 1 for each crime they committed (the freeway shootings/explosion and then ditching a car in the river), and an extra 1 for the extravagance of the explosion–it was certainly newsworthy! The higher the Heat score, the more likely there will be some kind of external interference, in the form of police, feds or worse …

Anyway, we have one last session to do for our playtest, where we will wrap up the story line of Poppy and Baby Blue, and then have some Downtime–more on that in my next write up.

The 23rd Letter, 3rd Edition playtest doc

It’s out there in the wild. We are inviting you to the Playtest.

Either join our little Discord or, if you already own The 23rd Letter 2nd Edition, check your inbox as you’ll have been sent a link.

The highlights are

  • New character options in a new archetype-based system
  • More focus on The Network
  • Explosive escalation of Psychic Talents with Stress
  • New system compatible with Year Zero Engine (allowing you to take advantage of supplements for Twilight 2000 or even Blade Runner)
  • Foundation of a new story arc for the mid-21st Century

Where you can help?

  • Tell us what you like and what you don’t like.
  • Help us decide the final art style for the game
  • Find us on the Discord and chat about what you want or need in a game.

Power Armour (Living Steel) for YZE-Step

An M.I. lives by his suit the way a K-9 man lives by and with and on his doggie partner. Powered armor is one-half the reason we call ourselves "mobile infantry" instead of just "infantry." (The other half are the spaceships that drop us and the capsules we drop in.) Our suits give us better eyes, better ears, stronger backs (to carry heavier weapons and more ammo), better legs, more intelligence ("intelligence" in the military meaning; a man in a suit can be just as stupid as anybody else only he had better not be), more firepower, greater endurance, less vulnerability.
A suit isn't a space suit—although it can serve as one. It is not primarily armor—although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn't a tank—but a single M.I. private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted if anybody was silly enough to put tanks against M.I. A suit is not a ship but it can fly, a little; on the other hand neither spaceships nor atmosphere craft can fight against a man in a suit except by saturation bombing of the area he is in (like burning down a house to get one flea!). Contrariwise we can do many things that no ship—air, submersible, or space—can do.

The Powered Armour suits used by the Seven Worlds, the Starguild and the Dragoncrests.
There are three types:
Heavy – used for front line combat
Medium – used for activities within Cities
Light – used about starcraft

There is a fourth, Skiffdress, which is specifically used for boarding actions. It is uncommon for Starguild troops trained in one type to be experienced in another type though within the Seven Worlds, the chassis is common and only the armour weight is exchanged.

HCPA – 450 kgs of metal, ceramics and electronics designed for front line combat and limited by the amount of ground pressure.
MCPA – 300 kgs of metal, ceramics and electronics designed for situations where flooring and roofs will not support the heavier armour.
LCPA – 150 kgs of ceramics and electronics for the more fragile environments found aboard spacecraft.

Common to every Power Armour variant are:

Power Unit – this unit is sized for the armour. These run off rechargeable packs which lasts 24 hours – HCPA requires 3 packs, Medium requires 2, Light requires only 1.
BiComp – the brain of the armour, handling the control of the servomotors as well as
targeting systems, medical circuits and comms. This is not an artificial intelligence but a well trained expert system.
Life Support – at the most basic, this is air supply and thermal controls but also includes some basic medical attention (supply of painkillers, tourniquets) and basic refreshment for a deployment of 24 hours. The Life Support medical component will also re-seal the suit if it is punctured, has a homing beacon and can, if necessary, excise a limb to save a life.

People without Power Armour are seriously outmatched.

The Armour increases strength and reactions, it enhances perception with automatic target acquisition and contextual holographic interpretation of visuals The suit has passive sensors (video and audio receivers, vibration detection) as well as active sensors (ultrasonics for navigating through smoke, radar for location of other craft and armour users). The suit also possesses seismic sensors for detecting stresses in ground surfaces.

Apart from Armour, the suit provides ECM countermeasures including radar dampening, and spectrum regulation systems which not only allow a degree of chameleon-like camouflage but also can reduce damage from directed light offensive systems. The sensors used to emulate the chameleon patterns will also detect advanced targeting and laser painting. In a non-combat environment, this chameleon technology is used to designate unit colours, insignia, rank and even emoticons.

The suit struggles with Thermal dampening but can reduce heat output to environmental levels for one hour before systems after affected. Usually the rear of the suit is a large heat source. The Thermal Dampening System is refreshed by one minute of complete shutdown of operations (which may cause a significant heat flare).

Each system/subsystem within the Armour can be damaged if the armour is penetrated. The human within is just one such subsystem

System Stats
Against Human Combatants without Armour, Automatic Success (but roll for additional
successes).
Targeting Computer adds +2 to hit in Melee or Ranged
ECMs mean -2 to hit with electronic targeting.
Camo means -1 to hit with optical targeting.

A precog walks into a bar …

Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell in the Network. If you’ve never player T23L before, the Network is the psychic underground, a loosely connected group of people (some psychic, some not) who help each other to survive, and to keep off the government radar. This game is set in St. Louis, Missouri, chosen because it’s a big city, in the middle of the USA, which none of my players have been to.

  • Richard Moonglow – in his mid-50s, Richard lives out of his old VW camper van and would’ve been a hippie if he hadn’t been born two decades late. He is a powerful Precog, but in his worldview “everything just happens the way it was meant to, man.”
  • Clark (NPC) – Clark is a Cryokinetic, an unusual psychic power which allows him to reduce the temperature of things around him. However, just before the start of our game, Clark went missing.
  • Joy Mary Smith – Joy is a nurse in her late 30s working at a local hospital. She first encountered psychics while treating Clark after he was in a car accident–when he regained consciousness, he froze his saline drip! She’s been helping the Cell ever since.
  • Detective Jenny Blake – Jenny works for St. Louis Metro PD, in their Domestic department. She has a chip on her shoulder about being overlooked for promotion or better roles, and helps the Cell partially out of spite for her job. She and Joy are close friends, having met because they are neighbors in their apartment block.
  • Vonbella Alexander – Young, blonde and classically beautiful, Vonbella is a medium, talking to the spirits of the dead to help her clients. In reality, she’s a minor Telepath, who reads her clients’ minds and makes up stories to fleece them of their hard-earned cash. Hey, everyone’s gotta make a living, right?
  • Bryce – Bryce is Clark’s brother and is traveling to St. Louis to find him. He works as a chef, mostly to help cover up the fact that he is Pyrokinetic.

Each player decided for themselves whether to be a psychic (or Esper, as they’re also known) without really talking to anyone else, so we ended up with an interesting mix of three Espers, and two regular folks (or Nulls, as they are sometimes called). We’ve had three sessions after character creation. Our first two sessions were played without Bryce, because his player was unavailable, and Bryce just arrived in the third session.

Session 1

Richard receives a message from Royal, one of his Network contacts. The group meets up at their favourite Waffle House to discuss the message. Clark’s brother is coming to town, which is when the group realizes that they haven’t seen Clark in over a week. The message also instructs the group to collect a package from a drop location. “Blue Monday, 3C, location Bravo.”

Jenny stops by the motel where Clark has been staying, only to discover he checked out a week ago. Some questioning of the staff led her to the lost and found box, where she discovered his copy of Call of Duty for the Xbox, which had been left behind under the bed. Why wouldn’t he pack that?

The group scopes out location Bravo: it’s a warehouse out in the suburbs, and it’s closed (it’s a Sunday). They decide they’ll come back when it’s open, because the message is a little on the cryptic side. Maybe they can just go in and ask for Blue Monday?

Notes: there wasn’t much in the way of psychic activity in this session, although Richard did attempt (and failed) to see if his precognition was telling him anything about Clark or location Bravo. This is when we realized (as game designers) that even though Richard was a Major precog, he was not any likelier to succeed than a Minor precog on the dice roll, and we decided that Major powers should get to roll two dice for their powers rather than just one. This is now so fundamental to how the game works that it was definitely a good call!

Session 2

Richard received a precognitive vision in his dreams, and decided that the right time to visit location Bravo was actually later that night. (As the Referee, having both a Telepath and Precog in the group gives me a lot of opportunity to help shape the story without being railroading too much. I realised I hadn’t given enough info in my cryptic message to be truly useful, so I added this bit in).

The group arrived at the location only to discover that someone had been there before them. Tire tracks in the ground were the first hint, and then the door to the warehouse being broken open was the dead giveaway! They went inside all the same, and in location 3C in the warehouse, in one of shipping company’s cardboard boxes, was a baby, wrapped in a blanket. A hastily scribbled note in the box read “Blue Monday.” The group decided they should smash up the warehouse a bit, figuring that vandalism would be less likely to draw attention than a break-in where nothing was taken. (The Cell received 1 Heat for this, bringing them to 6, enough for the Referee to roll at the end of the session to see if anyone takes an interest in their activities).

Joy and Jenny took the baby to the hospital to check it over for its health, while Richard and Vonbella went to a 24-hour Walmart to buy some baby supplies. They all met back at Joy’s apartment and deliberated about what to do. Eventually they decided to send a message back to Royal to ask for further instructions. While waiting for an answer, they tried to figure out what had happened to Clark, and eventually worked their way into his email account (passwords aren’t as secure as you think, when you have a Telepath for a friend). They discovered he’d posted a personals ad and had been arranged to meet a woman about a week prior. He’d sent no further emails since that date. Jenny took note of the location they were meant to meet for later reference.

The answer came back from Royal by the end of the session. “Split in half. Keep half and drop the other half at location Echo.”

Notes: Joy’s player spent most of the session holding a make-believe baby and trying to keep it soothed. I think there was maybe one or two dice rolls the whole session, and virtually no NPC interaction (apart from the Walmart staff) – the group just roleplayed everything out among themselves and had a blast. As both Referee and game designer, this was very positive feedback! The players know their characters and how their relationships and are happy just acting them out.

Session 3

Vonbella wakes up from some awful dreams, where she’s being interrogated, somewhere near to the Gateway Arch (the big landmark in downtown St. Louis). She tells the group some of it, but it’s pretty vague and the group decides not to take any action.

Bryce arrived in from Florida, after a long bus ride on a Greyhound. Richard picked him up and brought him back to Joy’s apartment, where a very suspicious Vonbella and Jenny interrogated him. At one point, Jenny pulled her gun on him, trying to provoke a reaction (when she did this with Clark, he accidentally froze his coffee!) Bryce, however, was not as easily triggered as his little brother, so Vonbella tried to read his mind, which led to some Pyschic Friction (this is a new mechanic, and basically the Espers push against each other psychically until one of them backs down … or explodes). Both Bryce and Vonbella came off badly from this incident, nursing some aches and pains and generally disliking each other intensely, but Jenny was happy that they’d proven Bryce was an Esper at least.

To help calm things down, Richard takes Bryce to go help in the local soup kitchen, and on the way they send a message to Royal asking for a face-to-face meeting – surely there must be some mistake, nobody could really be suggesting to split the baby in half?! Jenny spends some time during her working day to look at footage of the park where Clark was meant to meet his date, and discovers that Clark was grabbed by two men who injected him with something and tossed him into the back of a van! She immediately panics, and worried that everyone is at equal risk of being grabbed, sends the bug out signal to everyone (which the group agreed would be a picture of a Quokka). Everybody gets their emergency bags and heads out of town to a log cabin near the commune where Richard used to live. On the way, Richard picks up the reply from Royal, with a location for a meeting the next day.

Out in the cabin, Jenny brings the group up to speed. She may have overreacted, but everybody thinks its better safe than sorry. Bryce talks a bit about he and his brother’s past, how his parents were killed because they wouldn’t let Clark be taken by “some guys in suits”, and how Bryce’s talent literally exploded out of him that night. Vonbella makes some off-colour comments about his history, and pisses Bryce off even more, but Richard plays the peacekeeper. Everyone settles in to try to get a night’s sleep before they go back to the city tomorrow.

Notes: Bryce and Vonbella generated a lot of Stress dice on themselves and each other with their Pyschic Friction, so they are tense and angry. This also spills onto Richard because when Espers are close together, they feel each other’s stress. It’s going to be difficult for the group to get any sleep at all tonight …

Reign of Fire for YZE-Step

Challenged to make a Reign of Fire game with our current 23rd Letter rules gives us a bit of thought.

In Forbidden Lands (YZE), dragons are pretty nasty. Even the small ones.

MIGHT 32 (that is ridiculous but we will come to it)
AGILITY 4 (equivalent to d10)
WITS 4 (equivalent to d10)
EMPATHY 2 (equivalent to d8)

They have Armour 8 (We can halve that to 4 and they’re still badass).

Skills: RECON d8, Lore d6, Persuade d6

And they attack like ALIENS, Roll d6.

  1. Claw Attack 10 base dice with 2 damage which translates as 2d12 with base 2 damage.
  2. Dragon Roar, everyone has to make a stability/CUFcheck
  3. Dragon Wind 6 base dice with 1 damage which translates as d10+d8 and if you take damage you’re knocked to the ground (Prone)
  4. Fire Attack, Range Short, 12 Base Dice, Damage 1 which translates as Range 2, d20+d12 with fire intensity D plus one step for each success against 1 HEX. Not blast damage.
  5. Tail attack 8 base dice with damage of 1. Roll 2d10 instead and if hit, you’re knocked to the ground.
  6. Firestorm 12 base dice and damage 1 which is Range 2, d20+d12 to hit, Fire intensity D against all PCs within 2 hexes increasing by 1 for each success.

The ‘Might 32’ bit is really their Hit Points. And with Armour 4, good luck scoring that one. There is a special rule for a called shot at -2 (due to size) for the eyes or scales. And that reduces armour to 2. YOU CAN DO IT!

You can get the full details in HERE BE DRAGONS.

Why Yeezy?

So, you know we have switched from out ERIS House System to the YZE for the Third Edition and we have been asked why.

The first reason is that it’s a decent system. It’s pretty grounded, pretty lethal and abstracts a lot of the bookkeeping (reducing crunch while maintaining verisimilitude). We are using the Step Dice version which is used in RPGs like Twilight 2000 4th Edition, Blade Runner, Terminal State, Exsanguine, micro2K, De Occulta.

The second is to take advantage of a lot of great content that’s been created for the Twilight 2000 4th Edition RPG. For a slightly more military campaign, the scenarios and equipment would be invaluable.

The third is making the rules available for games which need psychics but maybe don’t include them in the base game. Could Blade Runner do well with psychics? Hell, yeah.

The 23rd Letter 3rd Edition

So, we have been working a lot on this. The rules are probably 90% complete but we keep finding little places where we think a rule or guideline is needed. Like today it was clarifiying how Hideouts function mechanically in relation to Heat from the authorities.

We are starting to look at design and layout and starting to put together an art list. Art? I mean, there was zero art in the first two editions. Yes, there will be art in this edition. Some of the new concepts need some art to illustrate.

Changes we can talk about?

  1. It’s less of a gun game. We have greatly simplified this.
  2. It’s still lethal. It’s easy to be taken out of the fight.
  3. We have changed the system considerably
  4. Psychics are much more powerful, but still vulnerable
  5. Greatly expanded rules for running the Network
  6. Oh, the metaplot. Play it or ignore it. There’s a metaplot

And we are looking for a couple of playtesters. Get in touch.

Game Dev Discord

We have a Game Dev Discord which we are slowly opening up to a few more people.

Inside is space for asking questions about our existing published games as well as participating ideas for our upcoming books. Understand though that none of us do this full time – it’s a hobby where any money made pays for art. So, if this interests you, come on in!

Once you join there will be a little bit while we assign you permissions to the channels, so come in and ask what you want.

YZE Dice Roller – including Step Dice

AJ built this YZE dice roller on the site so we have a super quick way of rolling dice and collecting successes. It’s the only one that works for Step Dice YZE as well as Pool Dice.

Click the image and add to your bookmarks!

Dark Urban Fantasy I hear?

ExSanguine allows for the playing of Vampir Hunters, Familiars (humans enthralled by vampirs), Fiends (young vampires) and Elders. Plenty of supernaturals mentioned in there, eh?

De Occulta allows for playing of Occultists (magicians). But De Occulta presents the rules on how to magically create a “Frankenstein” as well as declaring that Pneuma can be people. So that’s two more factors (flesh golems, ghosts) in the Dark Urban Fantasy hinted at. The Shem also brings in actual golems, The Belt of Peter Stumpp brings in shapechangers if not actual classic wolf-men. The Fay are more than mentioned with the inclusion of Maleperdys and don’t forget the half-fish people in Y’a-nthlea.

Very quickly we start to build a whole pantheon of supernaturals, each with their own abilities.

Ex Sanguine and De Occulta released: Dark Urban Fantasy

This week I released two complete books. Both of them are powered by the popular Year Zero Engine and both of them part of a series to create a “Dark Urban Fantasy” world.

The first, Ex Sanguine (Out of the Blood) is about modern vampires. It has rules for Hunters, Familiars, Fiends and Elders and the powers and Dark Gifts that Vampirism provides.
The second, De Occulta (Of the Hidden) is about modern occultists. It has rules for magic, Pneuma (spirits), Rotes (ancient spells), Relics (ancient artefacts) and describes more of the magical history of the world.

They’re completely compatible with each other as well as working with Twilight 2000 and Bladerunner, which also use the Step Dice version of YZE.

Apocalyptic Fantasy

My contribution to this thread on the pub:

Things I think would be interesting.

  • Messed up geographies. Not necessarily Skyrealms but I based the design of Viride on a diagram of proteins floating in lipid layers (cell membrane).
  • An assumption is a planet – much like Earth. Maybe or maybe not one ecology but what if you break that assumption. Maybe the world isn’t a globe, maybe it’s a fragment of the planet held together with indescribably powerful magic powered by the living souls of mages. Maybe the forces holding the planet together kidnap magic users and insert them into the “integrity web” holding the fragment together. They’re kidnapping and dooming people on a small scale just to keep everyone else on the planet alive.
  • Messed up weather. Storms or quakes, rains of glass or acid, lightning that is super attracted to metal armour and can chain.
  • Messed up flora and fauna. Like “durlig” in Jorune – people have to eat emergency food. There’s also a lot more consumption of things that would have been “vermin”. The killing of a large “dragon” is a celebration not just because it’s a dread beast but because it’s a lot of food.
  • The Integrity Mages are the bad guys. So we give them an evil name. We then discover they’re them only reason everyone is alive.
  • Delving too deep in mines can bring you to open space. That’s very ungood. Limits metal and gem mining. And a mine turns into a vacuum hole until sealed by the magi.

There are other fragments out there and the magi can visit them. They have devices. The laws out there differ depending on which magi faction rules the fragment.
That’s a riff on breaking the geographical assumptions. Shards. Fragments.

Effects-based Magic for YZE-Step

My favourite magic systems are from Ars Magica (and to a degree, MAGE), and the effects based system from For Faery Queen and Country.

The principle of Nothing From Nothing (and presumably, Nothing Into Nothing) I like a lot. Which means you can get shot of Creo and Perdo. It’s really just about seeing, controlling and changing

Sky
Fire
Water
Stone
Metal
Spirit

I think all Arcane spells should be prepared with an effect based system. But they need to be written. The spell is then cast by reading the spell from the paper. Arcanists can have lots of spells prepared/designed.

Sky – the element of air and weather. The satrapy of the kingdoms of night and day and the passage of the Sun and Moons.

Fire – the volatile and violent element. It provides warmth and light but also pain and death. Formed by the the leftovers when the Sun escaped from Darkness. Now it lies underground, hiding from the Sun.

Waters – in small amounts this is vital and harmless. In large amounts unfathomable and murderous. The realm of venomous and lurid creatures.

Stone – the ground beneath us and the Chthonic monsters who cause earthquakes with their movement. Their movement is linked to the lines of power and their eggs to the Wyrd places. The Earth traps and smothers fire.

Metal – where fire (the escapee) turns earth (the solid and ancient power) to water. A usurper force, the magic of metals is in the forging of superior weapons and armour.

Spirit – the great linking force. The thing that binds us all. From humans to animals to demons. Sickness is a result of the Spirit being unbalanced. Injuries can be healed through the spirit. Animals summoned and communicated with. Demons called or cast out.

As for the mechanics.

Effect based system describes the number of successes needed. As a comparison: Think each 5 points in Ars Magica being 1 success. So sometimes you’ll need 6+ successes.

Points Range Space Duration Intensity
0 Touch Hand Instant 0 (paper)
1 Close (10m) Human 1 second 1 (cloth)
2 Medium (50m) Room 1 minute 2 (wood)
3 Extreme (200m) Building 1 hour 3 (metal)
4 Line of Sight Town 1 day 4 (stone)
5 Country City 1 week 5 (diamond)
6 Continent Country 1 month 6 (Hardest Known)
7 World Continent 1 season 7 (Mithril)
8 Dimensional World 1 year 8 (Magical Alloys)
9 Multidimensional Reality Permanent 9 (Unobtainium)

That’s a lot. But that’s the sort of magic that infects a city with pestilence. 1 Success for the 1d6 Pestilence, 5 successes for the area the size of a City. 6 successes, Yikes! Even higher if you want a higher intensity pestilence.

So. How would we do that.

We want to send death to a city through the air. We will be corrupting the air with unnatural vapours. Super.
You can just roll your Path dice. So that’s d6-d12 providing up to 2 successes. We have d8 in Air.

You’ll likely need a bucket of Wyrd dice too. So spend a week in a cave at the intersection of ley lines. One d6 per day. Add in your own life force (say STR d8) and it means you can sacrifice hit points for extra successes. Yay.

Ley Lines, consuming certain lotus infused things etc, sacrifices at ley lines etc etc etc.

Hitting minimum successes sends an intensity d6 disease through the city. Lots of deaths. Extra successes can bump that to d12.

If you have a dice roller here, roll d8 (path of air) and 7d6 (each day in the ritual in a power cave) and see how many extra successes we need to hit 6

Whoops. Only 2 successes. Gotta find more helpers, some consuming of magical plants, maybe some auto successes from certain events and sacrifice some hit points.

Optional rule: 2 **1** results means a 2 bump magical mishap. 1st gives a d6. Second bumps to d8.

Magic becomes unpredictable, expensive in time and resources but also deadly. And dangerous to the caster. Who could have used Spirit rather than HitPoints. But having a weakened spirit might leave them open to possession during a magical mishap

Sympathetic Magic
If the magician has a sympathetic connection to the target (a scrap of bone, a hank of hair), then Range is considered 0, no matter what the actual range is. And this includes crossing dimensional barriers. Magic, as it is made up of the stuff that formed the multiverses, is not concerned with distance.

Foci and Trappings
Magicians can add foci objects and trappings (rituals, practices) to increase the Effects of their magic. Every focus or trapping adds 1 to the effect at a sacrifice of time. Also, if a focus is defined, then it must be present for the magician to cast their magic. A focus is usually a portable item they carry everywhere (wand, pendant, staff).

Trappings are like foci. They are time consuming things the magician must do. As a rule, each level of the trapping is taken from the Duration column and the corresponding points added to the other levels of the effect. For instance, a ritual taking 1 minute would add an Effect of 2.

Universal Nexuses
The magician can use a Universal Nexus to boost their power without recourse to using their own life force. A Nexus is a conjunction of time and space where the links between worlds are stronger and the barriers between dimensions are thinner. A Nexus will commonly be a reputedly haunted or sacred space and the veneration of these spaces contributes to their power. At a physical Nexus, the magician has an extra 2 points of Effect. At a temporal Nexus, the magician has an extra 2 points. These are cumulative. Calling on dimensional energies at Stonehenge on an Equinox will be pretty effective.

Famous nexuses include Stonehenge (or indeed, any of a thousand other stone circles in the British Isles and Western Europe), It includes places of worship, temples and burial places across the world where the emotional and spiritual outpourings of humanity have charged the fabric of reality.

Frontier – thinking while watching The Expanse

I’ve just started a binge of The Expanse TV series and if I enjoy it, I’ll hit the book series.

There are things I really like about The Expanse.

  • They maintain momentum and include it in part of the story
  • There’s no artificial gravity
  • Missiles are long range weapons. Slugthrowers are close combat weapons (and in some cases defensive)

EXCESSION: Session 1

Excession is a new low-to-mid powered superhero game using the Year Zero Engine.

Session 1

Excession is a privately owned non profit organisation that seems to have unlimited money and a private army.

Louis and Jana are two hard chargers for the Excession organisation. Louis is a German-American with a real love of animals and an equal love of his well groomed porn-star moustache. Jana is a matronly experienced soldier with no need to prove herself. They like to get in quick, hit hard and leave the nerds to come in and tidy up. They’re both relaxing in the Ready Room when they feel the whole building, all 19 storeys, shudder. A shadow falls over the building and over the comms there’s the sound of gunfire and panic. Both grab their webbing and weapons and bolt up the stairs as the Evac siren sounds and the office workers begin to spill out of the offices and to the stairwell.

Taking the steps 4 at a time, they arrive at the roof and take cover behind an aircon unit to see a tall (3 metres tall!) silvery armoured figure directing energy weapon fire upon a fire team on the roof. They’re pinned down behind a pipe. The energy weapons fire is coming from a suspended black disc, perhaps 3 metres wide. But above it, in a seeming haze, is the ‘impression’ of a much larger vessel, perhaps cloaked.

Louis bolts for the stairs and leaps over the bannister, plummeting two floors to the upper armoury and grabs a LAW (Light Anti-Tank Weaton) and an AMR (Anti-Material Rifle) and then starts climbing up the stairs again, meanwhile Jana unclips a frag grenade from her webbing and lobs it at the silvery figure. The grenade detonates with seemingly no effect. Arriving back up, Louis hands her the LAW and he cocks the AMR. Both take aim and Louis makes an abdomen hit while the LAW round hits the being in the chest. This seems to stagger the being so they signal for the fire team to depart. One of them isn’t so lucky, Hank gets grabbed by the being and thrown off the roof….

Jana reports this over the comms and luckily there are two Enhanced on their way up. One is codenamed Jade Dragon, a superlative martial artist withthe ability to transmute objects and people to jade. The other is Strobe who has limited control over his personal space time – in effect he can stop time for a few seconds. Strobe hears about the falling Hank and detours to a window, grabbing a firehose as he runs. He shoots out the window and dives out, stopping time as he begins to fall, allowing him to catch up to the plummeting soldier. He grabs him roughly and the hose goes taut, slamming them into the side of the building three floors lower.

Meanwhile Jana and Louis pump more AMR rounds into this thing and lob grenades – which seems to stagger it. It raises a hand and there’s a pause ….and then the black disc rains heat death rays upon the rooftop. Hair singed, they barrel into the stairwell and begin to descent the stairs as quick as they can as the plaster cracks and the glass melts. They’re met by Jade Dragon on his way up who can see that the whole top three floors of the building are going up in smoke. He leaps over the balcony and falls five floors before deftly grabbing a railing and throwing himself to safety.

The vessel, slowly moves off….

Fire marshals and first aiders are checking everyone at their assembly points outside the building and the four, Strobe, Jade Dragon, Jana and Louis are approached by an elderly man, one of the trustees. They know him as Arthur Joyce. He mutters that “They’re back….” and instructs the team to go find Zachery Ackermann. When they ask him how, he says the address is with his secretary…

Switch To:

November 1945. The back of an Army truck. Sergeant Roy James and Corporal Curtis Cox have been seconded to Excession. The third man in the truck is wearing a white suit and they know he’s a Brit by the name of Arthur Joyce who made his name in the SOE during the war. They’re driven to an airfield and put onto a transport plane which flies them to the heart of Kansas. Then two more hours of driving and they find themselves in the middle of a cornfield looking at a furrow caused by a fallen meteor. But this meteor seems to be made out of silvery metal. Joyce orders Corporal Cox to jemmy open the thing and he does while Sergeant James covers with his rifle.

The capsule opens and there’s a rush of strange smelling gases. As the mist clears they see a hairless small baby, white in colour with no nose, looking at them. They tell Joyce it’s just a kid and he suggests they’ll have to deal with it. “After all, it’s an invader”. Corporal Curtis picks it up and as his flesh touches it, the baby shifts colour to his skin colour and develops a human nose and a patch of dark hair on its head. Within seconds it’s indistinguishable from a human child. Joyce again uses his horrible euphemisms about killing and the two soldiers take a stand. They ain’t killing a kid and, heck, even Nazi babies aren’t born evil – they reckon they can raise this kid. Joyce concedes and tells them to get married – if they can find a woman who’d stoop so low. Curtis asks what they’ll call the kid. Joyce interrupts, “Call him Zachery”.

End of session 1.

Games in a Utopia

I guess it depends where you sit.

We live in a post-scarcity civilisation (we have the technology), we just don’t live in a post-scarcity society. Scarcity is manufacturered.

So are we close to a utopia if we fixed distribution and inequality? Well. Kinda. There would still be people with greed. People who think that the accumulation of “more” is the only purpose of life. I found The Culture’s attitude to that to be entertaining. You can really have what you want. But it’s empty because people generally don’t mingle with people driven by needless accumulation. That is a mental illness.

Is there nothing to do?

Well, assuming that there are areas where the utopia hasn’t spread, there are always the frontiers as others have said.

A few years back, I did a mini documentary on “edges” as a source of fecund diversity as you have three ecosystems. – in this context, you would have the ecosystem of the utopia, the ecosystem of the “barbarians” and then the ecosystem of the people who live on the border.

I also like the Cortex setting Hammerheads (it’s Thunderbirds) though I really can’t grok their system. Rescuing people is a good thing. From natural and man-made (or alien-made) disasters.

And the idea that while it is a utopia, the people are not mindless Eloi. They can have jealousies. Even though the replicators can make anything, they can’t manufacture something created by the hands of humans. It will always just be a copy even if molecule-perfect. Even if you can have your simulacrum sexbot, it’s not the same as the person you love. Authenticity remains.

I like the idea of gaming in a utopia. It’s better than the grubbing around for gold that is the mainstay of fantasy and most modern and sci-fi games. I’ve never been money motivated in games or real life.