It’s late and we’re sitting on the sofa. Today I heard from somebody I know on Mastodon that they lost a partner to cancer four years ago. I’m still surprised how these things affect me. I sat in the bathroom with tears running down my face for quite a while. Role-playing games to the rescue!
This is yet another page for Knives. I really want to structure the game into a handful of pages for players, ideally less than ten, plus a lot of how to run a game for referees. I guess I was motivated by my writing in German about how to run Dungeons (2022-12-26 Das Megadungeon Pamphlet). That’s why I posted a bunch of “advice” pages.
2022-12-26 Das Megadungeon Pamphlet
I didn’t want to provide an example for every single paragraph, so I decided I’d add a third section which would be a kind of retelling, but summarised, edited, commented. Inspired by real games but not an transcript of an actual game. People don’t talk like they write and I find reading real transcript weird.
So what follows are two pages with that sort mix: a retelling, but summarised, edited, commented.
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Claudia says, “Alright, Adalric and Brunhilde live in Ulrichen. Anything we need to know about them? Parents? Siblings?”
Alex says, “Adalric is a slightly above average guy. Pretty smart. He’d like to be a mage one day. He has a cloak and that’s more than many kids his age have.”
Berta says, “Brunhilde is not very smart by pretty strong. I’m sure she’ll be a good fighter one day. She has long brown hair in a thick braid.”
Claudia says, “Right. Ulrichen has the tower of Ulrike the Beautiful, a recluse and a wizard. You’ve both been called by lady Trudeberg, a powerful head of a large farm, mother of many and grandmother of countless children. She looks at you and says: ‘Adalric, I need you to go up to the tower and ask lady Ulrike for a book called The Grapes of Eelgau. Brunhilde will look after you.’ She waits. Do you agree?”
Alex says, “Sure, I want to meet the wizard!”
Berta says, “Brunhilde grumbles, why am I being commanded to be his bodyguard?”
Claudia says, “You’re asking Trudeberg, yeah? She says she is sending you because she knows you’re not afraid of anything and if you she’ll have her daughter Gerfled teach you about stick fighting.”
Berta nods. “Let’s go.”
As you can see, Claudia improvised as she was talking. Berta seemed to expect some sort of reward and she hadn’t prepared anything so she looked at the list of names and picked a name for the stick fighting daughter without missing a beat. At the end of the year, the players get to pick one talent to increase. There is no stick-fighting talent so this is an invitation to have Brunhilde learn Brawling-1, if Berta wants to.
Note how neither of the players asked why protection was needed or why the book was required. That’s fine. No exposition is necessary if nobody is asking.
At the beginning we see how neither Alex nor Berta are into describing their characters. A detail like a piece of clothing or a detail about their looks is all it takes. Both looked at #their stats]([\#stats) and improvised a little description. That’s all that’s required.
Claudia says, “As you walk through the village, you see some kids driving pigs along the way. One of them is Urs. He sees you two with your clean clothes and smirks. Then he drives the pigs your way.”
Alex says: “Ugh.”
Berta says, “Are you looking for a fight, Urs? I’ll give you a fight if you want to.”
Claudia says, “It’s a question of self-discipline to face a dozen pigs on a muddy road without making a fool of yourself. How about a roll of Intelligence + Discipline?”
Berta says, “Maybe. But courage in the face of a dozen pigs doesn’t seem like something that depends on brains. How about brawns? Strength gives confidence!”
Claudia says, “Allright, Strength + Discipline it is. If you fail, you have to fall back. There’s no -2 penalty because I don’t think this requires military discipline and experience. This is just a question of courage.”
Berta rolls 2d6 and gets an 8 which is ≤ 10, Brunhilde’s Strength. “Come here, Urs! Come and face me! Brunhilde pushes through the pig herd.”
Alex rolls 2d6 and also gets an 8 which is ≤ 8, Adalric’s Strength. “Yeah, Urs! You can’t hide behind the pigs. I see you!”
Claudia says, “I think he’s going to try and punch Adalric.”
Berta says, “And I’m going to punch him!”
Claudia rolls 2d6 and gets 5 which is ≤ 8 + 1; Berta rolls 2d6 and gets 8 again, which is ≤ 10 - 2 (no Brawling!) – both Urs and Brunhilde hit!
Claudia says, “As you beat Urs with a higher result, you have no problem getting to him. You punch him just as he shoved Adalric into the mud. I don’t think there’s going to be much of fight here, right? They all just part ways?”
Berta says, “Yeah. I tell him: Don’t you ever touch my friend again, you understand?”
Claudia says, “He’s holding his jaw and follows his pigs. This might not have been the last of him.”
Claudia improvised the pigs. All she knew is that Urs was going to show up and establish that he was not friendly, giving Brunhilde a chance to show what kind of bodyguard she was. Apparently she’s loyal and quick to strike. Adalric, on the other hand, appears to be meek and willing to let her do the talking and posturing. We learned something about player and non-player characters!
The part where Berta suggests a different attribute to use for the roll is par for the course. The whole table gets to decide how things are going to be resolved. It’s the referee’s responsibility to figure out how to the world reacts to the player characters, but it is not the case that the referee is the only one to decide what rules to apply.
The fact that when both sides roll a success the one who rolls higher is somehow more successful than the other is something Claudia decided on the spot, based on her experience with another game she played a few years ago.
#RPG #Knives