Tagged: rpg

StormHack SRD Lite: Drama and Adventure Games

An update to the SRD mini-document for StormHack. What this includes:

  1. the “Drama game” which is how you play in downtime or flashbacks, for dramatic scenes/origin stories etc.
  2. the “Adventure game” which is basically an OSR game.

What it doesn’t contain are details on the Demon Ladders which just wouldn’t fit, but those will come shortly in the complete SRD. But it should give you sort of an idea on how to play.

Here’s the two sides. Print them on one sheet of paper, and make the little booklet as previously shown; when you open it up you should have the two modes of play in there.

Here’s the thing in PDF, which may be useful if you’ve got a printer that does double-sided printing.

Pregens with Hawkwind

This is my forthcoming Eternal Champion style game for a house con:

The WishTower At The Junction Of Nine Planes

Once in a generation the WishTower intersects all dimensions. The Sorceress who resides within will grant one wish, without reservation, to any Champion who penetrates her inner sanctum. You are that Champion; chosen by your people, groomed from birth with a sword in hand, and send far from home to await the Tower’s reappearance at the very edge of Lawful land, where only rough weeds cling to nightmare cliffs over a roiling lambent sea, and the monuments to past Champions lie shattered and sand-blown, and clouds of ash consume the suns.

  • Other Champions from other nations also wait: will you fight, or work together?
  • Will you embrace your past, or reject it?
  • Will you wish for your family, your nation, or yourself?

Right, so I have a game idea. Now I need pre-gens. What better inspiration than Hawkwind?

Arrival in Utopia (from Choose Your Masques)

Stasis, the World City at the End of Time is technologically brilliant yet artistically stagnant, and spirals towards cosmic insignificance. An avatar, dressed in archaic armour, is sent back in time to seek the source of Chaos and re-ignite the Sun.

We dreamed of golden shining towers // Of lazy days and thrilling hours // Fields of wonder, streets so fair // Of amber ships which sailed, through the air // Dreamed of steel and glass and wire // Of days of wine and nights of fire // Dreamt of dogs that talked like boys // Of girls who flew, of unnamed joys // And now our dreams are true // We don’t know what to do // For we don’t like it here // There’s nothing for us to fear // Bored mindless in Utopia

The Sleep Of A Thousand Tears (from The Chronicle of the Black Sword)

An ancient sword Qanjana, sworn to protect the mortal society that owns it but desperate to be free to return to its own dimension. Its demon manifests as a drooling, whining albino who carries it aloft in battle; the sword has full use of the albino’s senses and voice box.

With your white arms wrapped around me // And locked in embrace so cold // We slept a thousand years or more // To awake in a land of gold // Where, the king of the world was a creature // Both man and woman and beast // Under landscape boiled with a million strange flowers // And the sun set in the east // And we were heroes you and I // By virtue of age and skill // And we rode to the land at the edge of the skies // To an emerald tower on a hill

Infinity (from PXR5)

A young knight in the service of Queen Antipathe, sworn to protect the Vale from alien invaders. She was not always a knight; once she was a twelve-year old child in a world far away who ventured into a forest alone and was trapped in Antipathe’s dream world, where she was aged magically to young adulthood. Despite her longing for home she has come to love the people of the Vale as much as she hates her mistress.

I met her in a forest glade // Where starbeams grew like trees // I did not take her for a witch // She wasn’t what she seemed // She turned the key of endlessness // And locked me in a dream // Infinity

Sonic Attack (first appearing on Space Ritual)

A weary warrior wearing white plate armour ringed with black grommets to dampen vibrations at different frequencies. He is a veteran of the Sonic Wars, where both sides employ sonic weapons and sonic drugs which resonate key areas of the brain to control sleep and emotion. Their world is a wasteland where the years-old remnants of aural detonations still resonate in unexpected patterns, making any journey outside a soundproofed Dome hazardous. In this world the ultimate act of intimacy is to remove one’s ear pods and listen to another human being.

The warrior’s generals want a weapon to end the war. The warrior craves one thing: silence.

These are all signs of imminent sonic destruction // Your only protection is flight // If you are less than ten years old // Remain in your shelter and use your cocoon // But remember Help no-one else

Magnu (from Warrior at the Edge of Time)

They terraformed the Sun! The golden knight rides the solar flares towards the Edge Worlds, bringing the message of the Solar Church to one and all, with a simple message — embrace the New Light, or be incinerated. Now they have travelled further than ever before, with the intention of illuminating the entire universe…

Sunbeams are my shafts to kill // All men who dare imagine ill // Deceit that fears the light of day // Fly from the glory of my ray // Good minds open and take new light // Until we diminish by the reign of night

Fable of a Failed Race (from Quark, Strangeness and Charm)

It is heresy to claim that there was ever a world other than this. Sand-blown and sterile where a fat green sun wreathed in flocks of monstrous crows presides over the half-submerged Pyramid Cities. A heretic priest is the last hope of the failing race; they will journey far away to find the source of life and return life to the surface.

Our legends tell we came from a seed // That traveled at a whirlwind speed // Til it came to rest upon this land // That once was green and is now all sand // That buried us up to our eyes // And made us watchers of the skies // Til the shadow wings came for our sight // And left us to conspire with night.

StormHack SRD Lite

Working on the SRD for StormHack. I’ve changed the system a bit since the playtest at Concrete Cow. The revised version has an “interior game” and an “exterior game”, something I’ve been noodling with the idea for nearly 3 years in Beyond the Wall (character sheets here). Basic idea:

  1. The Adventure game happens outside the “village” (the settlement, city, etc.). Play this like an OSR game (e.g. WhiteHack or Beyond the Wall).
  2. The Drama game happens either in Downtime (i.e. “back in the village”) or as Flashbacks between the adventure scenes. Run these as you would Dramasystem by playing out the character’s relationships (“Bonds”) and possibly with another player roleplaying the other end of the relationship. The outcome generates tokens that can be spent in the Adventure game.
  3. It’s up to the players and GM how much you play flashbacks vs. the adventure portion.
  4. (Yes, similar to Night Witches although note that I had this idea back in August 2014…)

Anyway, I went from writing a monolithic document to trying the SRD on a single page and from there a little 8 page A6 pamphlet (made like this).

Here’s the image file:

The margins are screwed up at the moment. The reverse side will be instructions for the Drama and Adventure games but I haven’t written that yet. The plan is to use this for both an Eternal Champion type game, and Black Mantle.

More to come.

Pale Assassins

This rough game sketch follows some ideas laid down in the latest Fictoplasm podcast about Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.

The General Idea

First, influences, a bit of this and that:

  • Books: Pale Fire (Nabokov), The Land of Laughs (Carroll), Weaveworld (Barker)
  • Film and TV: Twin Peaks, Riverdale, It Follows
  • Comics: Planetary issue 9 (“Planet Fiction”) (Warren Ellis)
  • RPGs: Mage: The Ascension, Over The Edge, Unknown Armies, Changeling: The Lost

In summary, a lot like a contemporary game, a liminal fantasy, magical realism, a setting that looks like the real world but with weirdness.

Second, the pitch.

The characters are exiles from “Ruritania”, a.k.a. The Old Country. This is a place that (mostly) exists outside the game area.

Most of the time the characters have settled in a “Ruritanian colony” in The New Country. This colony isn’t really a real place, but it’s close enough to all the real places in the New Country that most non-Ruritanians, or “normal people” could not tell the difference. It fits right in with their world, they can easily travel to it, etc.

What do the PCs do in this place? Well, any kind of modern drama/investigative type of game. The world looks like our world, and the people inside it behave accordingly, and most of the time you follow the characters around and see how their lives link up.

But at some point, Ruritania intrudes on the real world. Ruritania is the exotic, the weird, the magical. It’s also subjective; Ruritania means different things to different characters. And it’s possible to hold a personal view of Ruritania and experience someone else’s version. Ruritania is a single place but viewed from many different perspectives.

The default setup is that assassins from Ruritania are stalking the characters. The game should play out episodically like a drama, soap opera, police procedural, etc. with a weekly (well, short) story arc. But the Ruritanian arc is long-term. As things get stranger, the assassins get closer to where the PCs are; and when they are close enough, they strike.

System Approach

The goal is to run a game like Twin Peaks with “real” people and their personal interests and drama. Most of the time things are perfectly mundane but at points the strangeness intrudes.

Dramasystem should work very well for setting up the web of relationships. Where Dramasystem fails for procedural bits, consider the procedural approach in Malandros.

Also consider the WaRP system, which works nicely for very light characters. WaRP is very neat looking with the Central Trait, Side Traits and Negative Trait.

Consider the involvement of NPCs in Dramatic and Procedural scenes. A lot of Dramasystem supposedly focuses inward; but a game like this needs external characters to come from outside and connect with the interior characters.

Use a sort of location tagging system. Rate this numerically:

  • 0 for “real world”
  • 1 for “almost real world”; the default state for a Ruritanian colony
  • 2-3 for “intrusion”, that is any strangeness, alternative reality
  • 5 is full-on Ruritania; the magical or weird reality that is stalking the characters.

Locations in the game world can have ratings that go up and down. These ratings represent difficulties for passing into certain areas. See the Boundaries bit, next.

During the game, each character will have a clock which goes up or down. As their rating increases they become more sensitive, more connected with the secret world (criminal underworld, psychic world, dream world, etc.). If this is handled using an Apocalypse World style of “hard moves” then above a certain threshold on the clock certain options are opened to the GM to take hard moves on behalf of the Ruritanian assassins, representing their progress towards the characters.

Additionally when the characters are “in Ruritania” (i.e. in the psychic landscape) they may have restricted actions depending on what permission they have to be there — this fits with e.g. a dream world where certain moves simply aren’t available owing to dream logic.

What is Ruritania?

“Ruritania” represents somewhere far away, magical, normally separate from reality; a higher world, a dream world, an idealised state, a place yearned for. It’s the Black and White Lodges in Twin Peaks, the higher universe of Yesod in the Book of the New Sun, the dream worlds of Dreamscape or Nightmare on Elm St, and so on.

Ruritania in the game is an unattainable state — and it’s normally a place the characters are fleeing from, and from whence they are pursued with lethal intent.

But there are Ruritanian colonies for the exiles; decide whether these are created consciously or happen spontaneously. Maybe they are necessary for survival; the Ruritanians can sustain themselves for a short while in the real world as vampires by feeding off individual dreamers, but for long term health they need to be in a place of stability. Maybe Ruritanian exiles gathering together in one place is a risky strategy since it attracts attention, but they’re forced to get together to survive.

What happens when normal people who are touched by Ruritanian unreality leave? Are they haunted? Are they infected? Is Ruritania a transmissible condition?

Drawing Boundaries

  1. Use a location tagging system to map out the play area
  2. Partition the areas in the map with clear boundaries, and rank these areas according to the previous scale: 0 for real world, 1 for not-quite-there, 2 for magical realism, etc.
  3. Consider that some of these areas can be reached normally, but the magical or secret or mysterious part can only be accessed with certain permissions. Draw these as circles with cross the main boundary.

See the example for Twin Peaks:

Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks as an example:

  • “Ruritania” is the Black Lodge
  • The Assassin is Windom Earle
  • Twin Peaks is a colony for Ruritanian exiles, some of whom are magically attuned e.g. Laura Palmer, Sarah Palmer, the Log Lady, Agent Cooper, Garland Briggs, Hawk
  • The Red Room, Agent Cooper’s dictaphone messages to Diane, Tibet, the Log Lady’s log, the owls in the forest, visions by various characters (e.g. the one Garland Briggs relates to Bobby) and possibly even the FBI represent higher states of consciousness

The Map

Several locations. Rating indicates how far they are removed from reality:

The Game

If you were playing Twin Peaks most characters would be drawn together by Laura Palmer’s murder. Agent Cooper travels in from outside but the other characters are already in the location.

The law enforcement characters and indeed everyone affected by Laura Palmer’s death will be interested in getting answers. This would be the arc plot; over the course of the game the Assassin will draw closer and the Black Lodge exert more of an influence.

But there should be episodic drama too, and that’s what the characters should be doing week on week. Dramasystem offers a nice structure to let players frame scenes so they each get spotlight. Consider the balance of incentives in pursuing individual dramatic poles vs. the arc plot.

Ruritania, Magic and Unreality

Agent Cooper’s actions are restricted in the Red Room, and early on he’s only allowed to be a spectator and only to receive cryptic information. He only accesses the room in dreams. All of these point to the level of permission he has to act freely in the Red Room (and the Black Lodge), and (in game terms) the moves he can make in that environment. Furthermore the advent of his dreams is a result of ramping up of weirdness and the psychic world penetrating the real world when he’s in Twin Peaks.

Cow Report part 1: Playtesting

Here’s what happened when I went to Concrete Cow a couple of weeks ago. I ran StormHack in the morning slot, then played in Matt Sanderson’s Kult 4e game (I believe the KS playtest version, only partially translated into English) followed by Scott Dorward’s Cthulhu Dark session in the evening.

This first part is a sort of designer diary, mostly about things that went wrong. I’ll talk about the other games I played in part 2.

StormHack

I did a playtest for StormHack. To save time I didn’t write a new scenario but instead grabbed the short and classic See Hwamgaarl and Die from the Sorcerers of Pan Tang supplement from Stormbringer 4th Edition.

I think the scenario went OK (it’s railroady as hell, but works for a fixed-time slot), but on the other hand 75% of the session involved hardly any dice rolling at all. Normally I’m fine with that but it’s hardly a stress test of the system.

The Walkover

The session was too easy. That’s partly a matter of system tuning and scaling but it was mainly caused by three design decisions:

  • Players roll to hit against the threat of damage if they fail (Apocalypse-world style). Keep successfully hitting and you don’t take damage.
  • Rolling was under attribute with a d20, Whitehack style (mostly).
  • Skills allow you to roll with advantage, i.e. roll two dice and pick the result you want.

I checked the probabilities of rolling with advantage; it works out that an advantage is the equivalent of a whopping +5 on your attribute. No wonder everyone was winning.

More importantly this asymmetry just didn’t work with the players. It isn’t “trad”, and it certainly isn’t “OSR”. It wasn’t relatable. And that’s the biggest take-away I had: I wanted an OSR game that didn’t deviate too far from the framework, and I’d added these bits that did not do what I set out to do.

Dice Clocks and Carcosa Hit Dice

See here. These worked OK but for two issues. On the GM side they count down the enemy’s hit points nicely but some players found it difficult to imagine the whole mass of dice as representing several antagonists at once. The idea is that the mass of dice represents the whole threat, and once you’ve knocked out the dice all the antagonists are either dead or fleeing.

But some players need to know how many people they’re fighting, which means how many hit dice per person. This made for a weird kind of double accounting: I had the dice clock down on the table but I still had to translate that into actual numbers of people that they could count down in their heads.

I think this is just a small cognitive hump that needs to be overcome. The other issue was much harder: some players didn’t get the idea of rolling their hit dice on the table, Carcosa style. Whenever dice are rolled the instinct is immediately to snatch them up again (I believe Sorcerer has this problem) rather than let them sit. And the players can be bad at keeping their Hit Dice in play separate from all the other little puddles of dice that are just standing by. And last, when they took hits they looked to the character sheet for a hit point track instead of sacrificing the Hit Dice on the table.

I still think having the GM roll a pool of hit dice for the threat in the middle of the table works as something to focus on. There are things you can do with that (different colours for morale dice, using d8 for demon dice, etc.). But this is a tool to present a heterogeneous body of monsters as a single threat to chew on. You don’t need to do that the other way; each PC is an individual and their character sheet will do fine.

Funny Names

I had some new properties like Heartstrings (after J. Gregory Keyes’ The Waterborn) and Quick. Heartstrings were just Hit Dice and calling them a funny name just confused everyone. As for Quick (a sort of combination of luck/fate points, insight and reflexes) it could work but there was just too much of it as a burnable resource. Besides that stuff normally comes from Ability scores and saving throws. Again, I’d deviated from the OSR plan.

The Demons

This was the biggest issue. The idea of what demons are wasn’t communicated adequately, for example one player treated their demon as an autonymous NPC whereas it’s really a thrall. The main problem was not enough focus on the relationship between owner and demon (see here) so not enough hard bargaining. In the back of my mind Demons are supposed to work like the Shadow in Wraith the Oblivion, and can be played by others at the table within very tight guidelines. The scenario didn’t test that at all.

Demons were supposedly powered by Quick, i.e. spend a point of Quick to get the demon’s Service. Fine in theory but in practice Quick never ran out (one of the players suggested bidding Ability Score points instead, which would have a lot more bite).

So in summary a lot that didn’t go the way I planned but the upside is, I think it’s all fixable; mostly by going back to the original premise, i.e. remixing the OSR portion to add the demon relationships without too much much clever clever changes to combat etc. that aren’t really needed.

That’s all for now. Part 2 will cover the games I played.

StormHack: Character Sheet 2

Thanks to insomnia brought on by various things, here’s the revised character sheet for StormHack.

What’s StormHack? Well:

  • It’s an OSR fusion of Stormbringer and WhiteHack (plus Everway and Over the Edge)
  • It’s what I used to call “OSR demons” or “Demonbringer”
  • The PCs don’t really advance. There are no classes for PCs, and no levels. It’s pretty freeform.
  • Demons have levels. Demons get experience. Demons do specific, limited but powerful things. The higher level your demons go, the more power they give you in the form of Services, and the more they take from you in the form of Taxes.
  • Demons give Taint, which affects interactions with others. That’s the stigma of consorting with demons.
  • You can not have a demon and be a perfectly functional character.

Hopefully I’ll be running it at Concrete Cow in March.

PDF version

StormHack: Metaphysics of Magic

This is part of my forthcoming game StormHack which mashes up Stormbringer 1e, Whitehack, Everway and Over the Edge. The character sheet is in revision in preparation for Concrete Cow but there’s an early version here.

This is entirely fluff, written for some ideas. There are no mechanics in this chapter. Magic works the same way irrespective of what the sorcerer calls themselves.

In StormHack DEMONS are the metagame explanation for any supernatural, superhuman or extraordinary talent beyond what is considered the “normal” scope of human ability. This is an objective truth for the players and the GM, filtered to each PC through cultural heuristics and biases, prejudice and superstition.

6.1 Two Worlds

There are two worlds:

  • the natural world of physical being
  • the supernatural world of consciousness or psychic being.

The latter may be called magical, spiritual, the realm of the soul or of the dead, the god consciousness, or otherworld depending on philosophical and cultural leanings. These different perspectives give reasons for why we see and feel what we do in the natural and supernatural realms; why we perceive order, why we exist beyond physical bodies, and so forth. These are subjective, but as far as this game goes the dual nature of reality is an objective truth.

This duality is reflected in the six ability scores; three for the phsyical body (STR/CON/DEX) and three for the spiritual body (INT/WIS/CHA). The human form is a circle which overlaps two worlds; other beings may be more strongly embedded in the physical world or the psychic world. Animals are almost wholly located within the physical world but retain intelligence and intuition within the psychic world. At the other end of the scale demons are psychic beings with mutable and often immature or incomplete presence in the physical world.

The human psychic form is immature: it is rarely aware of itself or its psychic surroundings. Thus comes anxiety and uncertainty at death, promises of an afterlife, and so on.

Conflict

The duality of ability scores is reflected in a duality of conflict:

  • physical conflict happens in the physical realm is intended to inflict wounds on, subdue, restrain or otherwise physically dominate an opponent
  • psychic conflict happens in the social or psychic realm and is an attempt to cause emotional harm, to mentally dominate, to control or restrain thoughts or arguments, to inflict injuries upon the non-physical self.

The psychic body may be harmed, temporarily or permanently, just as a physical body may be harmed. But the immaturity of the human psychic form means that most humans are limited in their ability to initiate psychic combat or the kinds of damage they can do. The exceptions are magicians and their increased psychic awareness makes them both aware of their own spiritual self and also able to combat and dominate demons.

Demons

Demons are the opposite of humans in that their psychic selves are mature but their bodies are immature; not necessarily weak as demon forms tend to be unusually strong, but they are unsubtle and limited in scope or finesse. The heartstrings of Demons are uncommonly difficult to sever and must be cut one at a time; but still, destroying the demon’s physical form does nothing to its psychic form, and humans cannot dominate demons physically other than by totally destroying their physical bodies.

Technically, demons are conjured by dominating them in psychic combat, and forcing them into a particular form. That form may be consciously or sub-consciously defined by the conjurer; indeed, some conjurers do not consciously conjure their own demons but self-actualise them unconsciously, with all kinds of explanations for the demon’s existence — a preternatural talent, prodigious discipline or learning, etc.

Demons are conjured in one of four ways:

  • A Magician ventures into the Otherworld and dominates a demon, forcing it into a form and a service
  • A Priest who has already secured the services of a demon bequeaths it to a disciple
  • The demon is transferred by inheritance, often through a bloodline — thus when the old Master dies, the new one gains the demon
  • The human self-actualises their own demon (q.v.). In this case the demon may not even have a physical form, and the Master may be unaware that they have conjured a demon in the first place.

6.2 The Three Pillars

Magic is an objective truth, but different cultures have their own explanations for magic.

The Shaman

The Otherworld is the realm of spirits, which is separate from and exists in harmony with the physical realm. Most beings are ignorant of the Otherworld even though they make contact with it at all times. When they die a portion of their own spirit lives on in the Otherworld, remaining in that realm until it completes its cycle by travelling to the Far Shores and re-entering the natural realm. Some spirits persist in the Otherworld, and how much they remember depends on how aware they were of their spiritual self in life — this determines how well memory and consciousness survives passing between the two realms.

The Otherworld contains many spirits which may be called ghosts, wraiths, demons, devils, angels, djinni and by other names. A few of these are the souls of mortals hanging onto the spirit and growing fat and wise by devouring other spirits. Many more are the gods of things great and small, some of which have an earthly representation and others which have been long forgotten by earth.

Demons may be “good” or “evil”, which is to say they may care for and be interested in life, or they may be inimical to it. These are terms we may ascribe to them but very few can actually be trusted.

A Shaman is one who walks between worlds and has developed a maturity such that they can visit the Otherworld as a conscious whole, to walk among spirits and learn about the Greater World. Some say our physical world is a crystal floating in a fluid spirit, and those who make the transition consciously can arrive at different worlds.

When the Shaman summons a spirit or demon to do their bidding they face the spirit in the Otherworld and engage in combat, or else tempt the spirit to become their servant with promises. Gifts are advisable. Once the spirit is convinced, coerced, lured or dominated it is drawn through a little way into the body the Shaman has prepared for it. The Shaman names their new spirit and tells it of its new purpose.

The Priest is like us, but they seek to make order of the Otherworld where there is none. Worse, they seek to impose their earthly order on the spirit, which is doomed to fail.

The Magician is self-serving; they are powerful but they don not seek to share or to elevate others save through cruel trials that confirm their own cleverness. If you seek the wicked, look for them.

The Priest

Beyond our world lies the God Realm of many Heavens and Hells. This is the dwelling place of higher beings that form the great chain that runs from God through his Angels to Humans and finally animals, which have no soul to speak of.

Demons are creatures of Hell. Heretics may claim that Demons were once mortal souls gone to Hell for their wicked ways, but and where found are rightly put to death for this notion. For truly there is an emination from Hell just as their is from Heaven that mirrors the great Chain; God suffers the existence of demons as a test for mortals. Nonetheless demons may be made to do God’s work. With righteous preparation, suitable devotions and oaths, a believer may take on a demon and be unharmed, and use its magic for good purpose.

The Priest exists on earth to guide lesser mortals to the truth that is beyond this life, to steer the righteous and the wicked alike onto the correct path. The Priest hears the Divine Whisper repeated from God through His mouthpiece, His archangels and finally His angels who advise the Priest directly.

Demons may be bound to the service of the righteous by the Priest and made to do their bidding. Heretics will say likewise of Angels, and be flayed. Angels advise the Priest out of Love, whereas Demons obey out of Fear. A demon may be bequeathed to a righteous warrior of the temple or as a test for the wayward. Thus the temple sorts wheat from chaff.

The Shaman is wise and powerful and in her own way serves God, but to her all is chaos. The Divine Whisper is a rumour, and she will never find herself in God’s grace.

The Magician denies God and seeks the power to elevate herself to what she things is the Godhead, and it will be her undoing.

The Magician

The Magical Self is a reflection of the mundane, and the Magical World is the diffusion of expanded consciousness of every human dreamer. This place connects all minds, and the properly awakened can walk in this world and gain new knowledge, even find and construct new worlds.

Demons occupy this bewildering plane of existence. Some of them have manifestations in our world, others exist wholly in the Magical World; some are the product of one imagination, others are a composite of many. They are the self-actualisation of the mortals that dreamt them; they can grow and shift over time, morphing into other forms, conquering other demons and even carving out their own realms, calling themselves gods. Then are a mass of self-aware psychic energy that has partially or wholly detatched from a host. Perhaps they were once alive; now dead, they may deteriorate or they may find a way to survive, through force of will, often by eating their peers.

Demons may display the virtues and foibles of humans since they originate from that source. As such they are considered “evil”, but able to aspire to “goodness”. But since demons rarely have vision beyond their own self-interest they are normally considered evil. Demons are not part of a great demonic heirarchy though they may pretend to be so, even forming courts of their own in the Magical World.

The Magician is a human who has learned to enter the Magical World consciously, and can separate and find meaning in that place. They can find, divine and access the truth of many repeating patterns within the Magic World, knit them, extract the code, and turn it to useful purpose.

Magicians summon demons through acts of concentration, devotion and introspection. A demon is formed by a specific order of thoughts in an act of self-actualisation. Some mortals — savants — conjure demons spontaneously and unconscious or ignorant of what they are doing.

The Shaman interprets the dream state allegorically as past lives, dream places, representational images and so on. this is the earliest form of natural magic.

The Priest takes this allegory and makes it dogma, losing much of its original mystery. Many religions have both exoteric and esoteric faces; the exoteric involves an absence of any real power and a genuine fear of what the esoteric knows and can achieve. This is a necessary method of control and essential to the Church’s artificial hierarchy.

6.3 The Four Ages

There are four Magical Ages:

  1. Age of Fear
  2. Magic Ascendent
  3. The Golden Age
  4. Decline and Fall

These form a cyclic system. The names of the ages have no moral component; they do not say whether the Golden Age is good or bad for all, only that it represents an age of integration of Magic into society.

Age of Fear

A time of ignorance, characterised by superstition, denial and reclusive sorcerers. Magic is jealously guarded not because it is a means to power but because it is a curse, and makes enemies of those who remember the previous Decline. Fear comes from the previous Cycle when magic is part of — or responsible for — the decline into wickedness and loss of connection. The sorcerer is reticent to tutor a student for this reason, where the old structures remain intent on purging magic.

The Shaman: persecuted The Priest: in denial The Magician: in hiding

Magic Ascendant

A time of wonder, itinerant magicians, and folk magic. Mortals have overcome some of their fears and coexist with the Otherworld and its denizens, who exist just beyond the wall of civilisation in wild places. Small communities have their Wise Woman and Cunning Man who intercede with the Otherworld on the village’s behalf. Pagan beliefs coexist with and are adopted by burgeoning religions (which are really collections of humans seeking answers).

The Shaman: integrated into village unit The Priest: leading a new flock The Magician: curious

The Golden Age

Magic at its height, where some or all of society is capable of making use of and imagining the benefits of a magical society. But while this is the height of magical understanding and acceptance Magic may be the cornerstone of a despotic regime; it may be regulated, closed off to those of the wrong caste, race or gender, or deliberately masked in confusing symbolism that can only be unlocked by members of a cabal.

The Shaman: no longer relevant, driven out The Priest: organised, powerful The Magician: known, revered, feared

Decline and Fall

Second and third generation sorcerers learn by rote and accept dogma, failing to grasp the full meaning of ceremony. Society advances and is no longer satisfied by the wonders of magic; magic becomes a commodity as people fail to imagine and use it for convenience. Magical singularity, weaponised magic, technocracy, stagnation and decline.

The Shaman: a myth The Priest: in control The Magician: withdrawing

Grand Tableau: Guide to the Fortune Deck

Everway’s original Guide to the Fortune Deck gives upright and reversed meanings as well as correspondences for the 36 cards in the Fortune Deck. The PDF document linked below is inspired by the original guide, using the Petit Lenormand in place of the original deck.

Guide to the Fortune Deck (PDF)

The document is 17 pages long (thus too long for one blog post), and includes photographs of all 36 cards from two Lenormand decks: Pixie’s Astounding Lenormand, and the Under the Roses Lenormand.

Sample readings:

1. The Rider

Other names: the Knight, the Agent, the Visitor, the Harbinger

Meaning: Rebirth

The Rider is an agent of change, bringing news, new perspective, clues or resources. There arrival on the scene signifies the beginning of a new cycle, a rearrangement of social order, a change in roles in the Tableau, and new purpose for the individual.

Reversed reading: Destruction

The Rider is the harbinger of destruction, the spearhead of an invader, the agent of evil intent. The cycle they initiate is one of suffering, evil and darkness.

Correspondence: the Nine of Hearts, Water, Intuition, Personality. Mercury/Hermes. Everway card(s): the Phoenix

19. The Tower

Other names: The Lighthouse, The Bell-Tower, The Clock Tower

Meaning: Authority

The Tower oversees the nation, and represents the principle of law. It brings order and authority, unites the nation through government.

Reversed reading: Tyranny

The baleful eye surveys its domain, ruling absolutely and without mercy.

Correspondence: Six of Spades, Air, Intelligence, Principle, Rules. Everway card(s): The King

Neverway: the Grand Tableau

Neverway: the Grand Tableau is an homage to Jonathan Tweet’s Everway with the aim of updating the system, plugging some gaps and making it easier to obtain play materials (e.g. by basing the fortune deck on the Lenormand). This post is an introduction, and in later posts I’ll write down the functional system including Lenormand cards and how they’re drawn, duelling, etc.

Overview

Here is a summary of features:

  • A 36 card fortune deck (based on the Petit Lenormand card decks)
  • Resolution using Karma, Drama and Fortune
  • Characters have four main attributes (after card suits/elements), and a three-card divination spread (after Everway’s Virtue-Fault-Fate)
  • A point-buy approach to attributes and powers
  • Attributes can go down in the game as a fatigue mechanism (“damage” as an in-game currency is mostly absent in Everway)
  • Powers are tied to specific cards or Suits
  • A duelling system that makes use of Lenormand card suits and values (can be simulated using a reduced deck of playing cards)

Similar to Everway, Grand Tableau’s world is a series of connected worlds or realities — specifically the Grand Tableau of 36 houses. Characters are able to pass between worlds using their own decks (not unlike Amber’s Trumps). Those decks represent the cosmic structure of the world, and will vary in design between realms and cultures.

Just as in Everway the Realms can be defined/brainstormed using a three-card reading (similar to the spread for each character). Individual antagonists and obstacles can be given ratings in one or more of the four Suits to determine the level of challenge they offer.

Similar to Everway, characters in Grand Tableau are “walkers” (with varying prefixes like sphere-, mirror-, deck-, etc.) and the core activity should be traversing the different realms and having adventures. Long-term adversaries come in the form of enemy walkers with their own secret societies (and direct encounters with these antagonists should involve the duelling game).

The Lenormand Deck

(“Under the Roses” Lenormand deck)

The Lenormand deck is a fairly convenient replacement for Everway’s Fortune Deck having 36 cards with no minor arcana (i.e. all the cards have pictures and meanings). There is no Usurper, of course.

Using the Petit Lenormand does require some concessions. First, there are normally no reversed meanings in the Lenormand, so either we abandon inverse meanings or invent them — I’m doing the latter.

Second, Lenormand cards are usually read in groups (pairs up to the 36 card Grand Tableau); to make it function like Everway’s Fortune Deck the cards need also to be read on their own.

Third, it’s not possible to map all of Everway’s cards onto the Lenormand, though some fit quite well (Death = Coffin, Trickery = The Fox, etc.). Still the Fortune Deck is a nice starting point giving a range of responses, so where possible I’ve tried to import upright and reversed meanings from the Fortune Deck, though not always to the same card (for example The Bear takes “Simple Strength” from the Peasant card and “Blind Fury” from the Dragon card).

Some of the Fortune Deck cards are an activity (e.g. Sowing Stones, Striking The Dragon’s Tail, Drowning In Armour) which should be taken as a metaphor for the actual thing the PC is doing. None of these are represented very well in the Lenormand deck. Other cards are metaphors for states of being (the Eagle, the Fish, the Cockatrice etc.) and work better. But in all cases we need to reduce the variety of meanings for Lenormand cards into one clear meaning which the GM and players can interpret into the situation. Most of the time the Fortune Deck isn’t used for divining a situation so much as suggesting an outcome to a current risky situation.

Building the Deck

Ideally your Lenormand cards should have the upright and reversed meanings written on them. You have these choices:

  • get a commercial deck and write on it (probably not popular)
  • create your own deck by drawing or pasting images on a deck of playing cards
  • use a companion sheet for the interpretations of the cards (i.e. the above document)

Suits

One benefit of the Lenormand cards is much clearer alignment to both numbers and suits. While the Fortune Deck’s cards do have alignments (to the zodiac, elements etc.) they’re not as obvious as the four suits of traditional playing cards or Tarot. In Grand Tableau the suits apply not only to the houses but are reflected on the character sheet.

Hearts Water. Emotions, love, relationships, sense of self. For characters this measures a person’s ability to connect with others and network, and also their intuition.

Diamonds Fire. Change, fortune and misfortune, enterprise. For the PC this represents the PC’s drive and ability to effect change, take risks and so forth.

Spades Air. Government, authority, territory, society. In PCs this represents intellectual capacity, understanding of law, and personal authority.

Clubs Earth. Survival, hardship and trouble. For characters this is about ability to endure harm and hardship.

Character Creation

The rough draft character creation process is more or less taken from Everway:

  1. Think of a character concept.
  2. It may help to do the 3-card reading here. Draw or choose 3 cards to represent your Virtue, Fault and Fate.
  3. You get 20 points to spend among your four Suits and any Powers or Magic you want.
  4. For points in Suits an average human level is 3, and each point invested doubles the power in a given suit.
  5. Each Suit has a speciality; when that speciality applies to the situation the value of the Suit is counted as 1 higher.
  6. You get one minor power for free.
  7. Magic costs 1 point per level, and is aligned to a suit. You can’t have a magic level higher than your suit’s rating. Magic schools to be defined.
  8. Powers cost 1 point if they can be used frequently, 1 point if they can be used in many circumstances, and 1 point if their use is major, i.e. disrupts or dominates a scene. Need to define these further.

In Play

Most of the time play is exactly the same freeform process as Everway, using Karma, Drama and Fortune to resolve actions.

The additional bits of the system include a duelling minigame (inspired by both Lace and Steel and, perversely, time combat from [Continuum]]5) and some way to do fatigue which I felt was lacking in the original.

The next post will examine the Lenormand cards in detail.