Index Card Tactics

I was talking about this with Ryan Macklin last night and I had a moment of "huh, I should write this down" so here it is.

At Pax East, I ran a game of what can probably best be described as tabletop Final Fantasy Tactics.  Early in the con I had run a game of Cortex+ D&D that had gone well, but I'd been struck by a desire to hack it further, and the end result is something that you can still see the Cortex+ roots in, but is kind of its own beast.

One of the essential rules of this design was that everything could be done on index cards (or post-its), and the character "sheet" ended up being a set of cards, one for stats, one (eventually 2) for class, one for distinctions and one for equipment.

The stats were really the core of this, and they worked out very well, both accidentally and intentionally, and they were the result of trying to add in a few more mechanical and tactical hooks. I went with 4 stats and chose my preferred four that describe _how_ you do something rather than what you do. For the unfamiliar, they are Force (Strength, directness), Grace (Speed & dexterity), Wits (Thoughtfulness and intellect) and Resolve (Willpower and endurance).  In a narrative sense, you choose the stat that matches how you're acting, so an attack might be forceful (Hammer the guy), Graceful (Dodge around), Witty (Study the opponent, then strike) or Resolute (Wait for an opening). It's a nice, colorful set, but I wanted to jazz them up a little, which produced this:

The actual dice values are, I hope, fairly self explanatory.  When taking forceful action, this guy rolls a d6. Pretty simple.

Now, before I get into the details of this, let me provide a little data on how play worked for context.  Initiative was based on the Marvel model that Fred came up with, and on your go, you took an action and chose which stat you would use as part of the roll.   Once that happened, that was the mode you operated in until your next action, which was relevant for defense rolls, and which had tactical implications that I'll explain in a minute.  The important thing is that you got locked into that mode.

Now, the other details: The black arrows represented advantage, so Force had an advantage over Grace, which had an advantage over Resolve and so on.  The mechanical upshot of this was simple - in a conflict, the stat with the advantage would step up one[1].  Thus, if this guy used Force against someone else using Grace, his D6 would be bumped up to a d8. This is not a huge bonus, but it offers an additional incentive to stat choice beyond "The best one".

The other bit is that each stat has a specific mechanical effect, taken down in shorthand on the sheet, and they break down as follows:

Force: Any stress (damage) you inflict is stepped up by one
Wits: Any conditions (non-damage) you create are stepped up by one
Resolve: Step down a stress or condition die on you.
Grace: You may interrupt initiative to take action or refuse to accept to take your turn (unless the other part is also using grace and has a bigger die).[2]


So, that makes the choices pretty straightforward. But what about the GM? You definitely don't want to keep track of all that. And so you don't - these are PC rules. For enemies, life's much simpler.

Since this was Final Fantasy Tactics inspired, most of the opposition was in the form of monsters, which were statted up pretty simply, like:

Just a few notes for a die pool, a special attack (If he used the earthshaker dice, he didn't do damage, but imposed the wobbly condition) and a note that he was a force creature, which suggested what he was strong or weak against.[3] Simpler monsters didn't have a stat at all, and boss monsters might have two that they can switch between.  Easy on the GM, but creates a broader landscape of choices (especially when there's a range of enemy stats - do you want to use wits on the ogre knowing that there's a RESOLVE Troll on the board?).

Anyway, there was more stuff with classes and gear, but I figured I'd start with the basics.


1 - "Step up" is shorthand for "Increase die size by one" so stepping up a d6 turns it into a d8. "Step down" is just the reverse


2 - This worked startlingly well.


3 - In the future I might consider making this hidden information for the video-gamey reason of offering an avenue (SCAN) to finding this out. But that might also be too much work.  

Heroic Adventuring

I ran a game last night on relatively little prep. I was using Dave Chalker's Marvel Heroic RPG-D&D 4e hack, and I threw together some notes to create the adventure as quickly as I could and threw them up on google plus, just because they're a nice showcase of how I think (NARCISSIST). However, fate conspired - the children would not go to sleep, and we went to bed much later than planned, which meant I needed to abbreviate things. At which point I then discovered that while we were waiting, one of my players had read the notes anyway. So much for that.

So, I used two guys with swords. Strapped to the altar of something best unnamed, brought there by the gods' demand, wheedling and pushes, and the assassins have found them. As ever, it worked like a charm, and I'm being asked to run more of it tonight, so that' nice.

It was also very informative to me as I ran the hack, both for Cortex+ hacks in general and the 4e hack in specific. For reference, we had a human ranger, human rogue and half-orc cleric. A lot of the system went really well, but there were definitely some bumps. Breaking it down:

• First off, in general, the heart of the MHRPG system is basically bucket based. You get a set of buckets (affiliation, powers etc) and you get to build your pool by taking a die from each bucket (assuming it applies). On some level, creating a hack is as simple as coming up with your own set of 3-5 buckets and filling them in. Buckets may have their own rules (the distinction bucket works differently than the powers bucket), so when you add a pool, it's also the place to hang more or fewer rules.
  
  
• Physically, I represented each bucket with an index card, so players picked a card for race, a card for class, and so on. This worked well for chargen, but also had a neat effect in play - the players started using them to physically build their pools, putting the die on the card as they used it. If there was no die on a card, it was a cue to check that card for a contribution to the pool. Once there was a die on every card, they could pick them up and roll them. Ended up working with assets too, since they just grabbed them physically and put the die on them.
  
  
• The cards worked so well, that I may design a game based solely on that hook sometime.
  
  
• I added an extra bucket for Gear. It had weapons, armor and focus items. The base die value for weapons and armor was based off the weapon and durability ratings of the character. Thus, the rogue (weapons d8, no durability) had Daggers d8 and Leather Armor d6. The Cleric (Weapons d8, Durability d8, divinity d8) had Spear d8, Chainmail d8 and Holy Symbol d8. I was prepared to make things magical by effectively adding powers or extra dice (fiery d6, etc) to them but I ended up skimming over that in play. Curiously, I'd really put this in to help the fighter classes have an area to stand out (fighter gets a step up in weapon or armor, and Paladin's get an armor bump) but ended up with fewer of them on the table.
  
  
• I did not bring enough d8s. I need to buy a TON more.
  
  
• Part of the reason I needed so many is that the pools really gravitated that way. The game was colorful and novel enough that I don't think it really got in the way, but there was a lot of sameness to the final dice pools.
  
  
• I changed up the area attack rules to curtail them a little bit. Basically, to make an area attack (assuming you can - powers, PP and stuff play in), you remove a die from your attack pool, and ad a number of targets based on the step-size of the die (so d6 gets you +2, d8 +3 and so on). Any hit that you don't have a damage die for is a d6. Classes with area attack abilities got a bonus die that they could spend without reducing their pool (so, the ranger could add a d4 to his pool for multi attack purposes, meaning he could attack 2 targets all the time). It worked ok, but the interaction with d4 is a little weird, so I'd probably change it so it starts at d6 (d6 for +1, d8 for +2 and so on) and not allow d4s to be spent in this fashion.
  
  
• I also ended up taking a more conservative approach to Plot Points that made them much more tightly tied to opportunities. This was a genre shift, and while I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it, it had some very nice properties in play that I think I need to explore a bit further. Distinctions still paid out as normal, but the trick was in the rolls. Basically, Opportunities were the central point of everything - an opportunity was a chance to spend a PP *or* to earn one. If you did not use an opportunity (that is, spend a PP or use an ability) then it earned you a PP. Net result was fewer PPs, but when PP's were spent, they were more concretely tied to the action. One mixed result is that the results of the dice ended up standing a lot more often than the do in Marvel - not sure that's good or bad, just different.
  
  
• One thing I'd tweak with this is probably end up going a little bit closer to Leverage and it's use of d4s for a variety of effects. More opportunities is probably desirable, and may be a better way to address the fact that limits end up working a lot less well outside of the super-hero context.
  
  
• But that said, making opportunities a little more front and center provided a really nice area to hook in mechanics. The Rogue, for example, got tweaked, so it could use an opportunity for a damage step up (no PP Cost). Didn't come up all the time, but the one time an assassin handed the rogue two opportunities and turned that d8 hit into a d12 hit went very badly indeed.
  
  
• Initiative system is still solid gold.
  
  
• Doom Pool ends up being an interesting balancing mechanism. If you find you've slightly over-powered the opposition (as I did) you can offset it by not spending from the pool. Handy.
  
  
• [EDIT] Just remembered. We had two fights - I did nto make much use of scene elements int he first one, but did in the second, and the players (not experienced Cortex players) absolutely gravitated towards them with no real urging on my part. One more argument to maybe dip a little more into the Leverage bag.

Still some room for fiddling, but I feel like I've got a lot of good data to work with here. There will be more heroic swordplay in the future.

Don't Take The Affiliation, Even Though It's Awesome

Affiliations are one of the neat ideas in the Marvel Heroic RPG. They touch upon what I had to say about normal the other day because they are (arguably) the central part of any roll you make in Marvel. That is to say, you could conceivably make a roll where none of your powers, distinctions and such apply, but you simply could not make a roll without using affiliation.

For the unfamiliar, affiliation is basically a measure of the character's interaction with others, measure in three values. One is for actin on your own, one for working with a partner, and one for working with a group. When you take an action, you use the value appropriate to the situation.

Now, this is a great mechanic for a bunch of different reasons.

First, it's a nice shorthand for more sophisticated social mechanics (as one might find in, say, Smallville). It has a social component, and it tells you something important about the character (for example, Wolverine is really good at going solo, while Captain America is a stronger team player) without really bogging things down.

Second, it's concrete enough to have a little bit of a tactical feel to it. Which die you use depends heavily on the fiction, and you can usually choose your actions to play to your strength, but not always. The GM can push things towards a tension point, or certain fiction effects (like, say, a speedball special) might depend on making the less-optimal choice. But, for all that, it's reasonably painless - less-optimal is still not _bad_ (which is an important trick t remember for lightweight tactical engagement).

Third, it really _feels_ appropriate to a comic book. It speaks to solo titles and super-teams and heroic team ups, which are really the meat and drink of super heroic comics.

So here's the catch. like all Cortex+ games, Marvel is crazily hackable, and the first thing people end up bumping their nose against in a Marvel hack is how to bring Affiliation into their game. After all, it's very clearly an awesome mechanic, so converting it is an important step, right?

Well...no. not so much. See, all the reasons that Affiliation works so well in Marvel are reasons you don't want it in your game. It represents something specific to comics which is probably not present in your game. That is to say, most fiction has a certain central dynamic, which is sticks to for the duration. Comics are distinctive in how often that dynamic changes, and how the roles of heroes change. If you can't say the same of your game, then you don't want it.

Instead, you wan to take it out and put it on the shelf, then thoughtfully regard the hole that it left behind. It's an important hole. As I said before, it's the foundational element of building a roll, the thing that comes up EVERY TIME you roll the dice. But at the same time, it's not necessarily the obvious thing - consider that for Marvel, that would probably be powers. From the perspective of supers, that seems far more foundational. The rub is that powers are varied and complex - your foundational die needs to speak to the game more than the action of the game.

Now, there's an easy solution. Just throw in some stats - Mind, Body, Spirit maybe - and you've got a completely functional replacement. But if you do that, you're actively passing up a chance to say something about your game, so don't fall back on that unless you absolutely have to.

Anyway, just something to think about.

Normal (d6)

I cheat a bit when I run Leverage and its variants. According to the rules, when the GM spends a PP to create something, it's created at d6. I'm less kind, and when I create things, they're d8s, and for all intents and purposes, I have an infinite budget of d6s that I can use for anything, anytime.

At first blush, that make seem unbalanced and abusive, and I'll concede it's a little mean, but the reality is that it reflects a specific piece of perspective I have about Cortex+, that is to say, what I consider normal to be.

To my mind, in the language of Cortex+, d6 is effectively the die that means "normal". It's the die I pick up to fill gaps when nothing else really applies. If there's a security guard who matters solely because the players eyes have fallen upon him, he's a Security Guard d6. If he matters enough for me to spend some points on, then he should be exceptional (or terrible) and interesting, which merits different dice.

It's also no coincidence that this is the midpoint between the two die values for a distinction. D6 is what D4 is worse than and D8 is better than. Obvious on the face of it, but it underscores why I take D6 as the baseline. If nothing else interesting is going on, just grab a d6.

(Mechanically this also comes in handy when the GM needs to build a small pool. Even if that security guard is a d8, if he's making a roll tangential to any other resource I have in play, it's easier to just add in a d6 to fill out your hand, so to speak)

There's an interesting shift that comes from this, because you stop seeing the world as being built up from zero and more in terms of how it deviates from the norm. It spares you of the obligation to fill in details prematurely. If an NPC is introduced and you don't know anything about him, just use two or three d6s when appropriate until you hit upon the ways in which the character is noteworthy.

This is in some ways a nod back to Over The Edge, where the baseline for any action was 2d6, and you could always fall back to that, but your specific strengths and weaknesses could change that. Having that baseline allowed for much simpler character sheets because it removed the need to note everything, only demanding that which deviated from the norm (and which was, one hoped, therefor interesting). You can see it in other systems too, though it is sometimes more muddled.

This idea bounces around various Cortex+ implementations, but it's precise meaning and role depends on the system. I've noted how it impacts my Leverge play, but it's perhaps even more interesting in Marvel, where the d6 is the placeholder die. Mechanical effects that need a die that's ok use it (like area attacks) dip into it, but for anything interesting, it gets passed by. Ever wondered why there's not a d6 option for specialties? Easy answer: BECAUSE YOU'RE COOLER THAN THAT. I admit, I do dip into d6s for Marvel, but when I do, it's almost always a sign of something mundane - as with Leverage, it's suitable for something that doesn't grab, but which needs mechanical representation.

There's an obvious question here: if d6's are that dull, why bother rolling them? Never make a boring roll, right?

Well, that's the interesting and subtle trick of the d6. It's true, it's not too potent, but every now and again you get boxcars and a surprise. It's important to remember this because normal does not need to mean boring. Rather, it's the baseline by which players can judge themselves. A too-easy success (as many mook rules provide) provide surface awesome but can ultimately feel hollow because anyone can overcome it. D6s have just the right amount of challenge to make your bigger dice feel rewarding and just enough threat to make you wonder if it's _really_ worth trading that d8 for a d4.

Some Random Cortex Hacks

I've been randomly hacking things in my head for Cortex plus and it's produced a few usable widgets that I figured I'd share.


Cracking Dice - This is a pretty simple concept, but it struck me as something that might streamline any dice distribution system, especially in the case of something open ended, like super powers. The idea is simple: any die may be "cracked" into two dice of on step lower, so a D12 might become 2d10, which in turn might become 1d10 and 2d8, or 1d10, 1d8 and 2d6. It's a good way to get width out of height.

Now, applying this mechanically has a few possibilities. I wouldn't suggest applying it to actual rolls, though I suppose you could do it. What I was specifically thinking was that you could just hand someone a d12 and let them use that "budget" to buy powers. If they just want Invulnerability d12" then that's fine, or they could crack it and get "Superstrength d10, Invulnerability d10" and so on (Obviously, this implies an entire powers system but that's another discussion.) It could even support the spontaneous purchase of new powers if deemed necessary, by cracking dice in play.

Five Step - So, the simple fact is that Cortex plus maps very tidily to a 5 step system (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12 and 1,2,3,4 and 5 respectively). This is noteworthy because there area lot of five step systems out there, most notably the various World of Darkness games. Certainly there would need to be a little tweaking on the powers (# of successes could be calculated by the number of winning sets you can built, frex) but I'd be really curious to see about running something like Mage as a straight up conversion (well, maybe not Mage. Dave Chalker already has a fantastic Mage hack for leverage. But you get the idea).

Best Friends - Carl Rigney had the most brilliant idea which I am taking and runningn with. Basically, you can take the Best Friends character creation system and apply it to Cortex+.

For the unfamiliar, best Friends has a wonderful chargen mechanic based around a core set of stats like strong, tough, smart and so on. The list isn't important, and I change it to suit. What's important is that in chargen you go through the list of stats and say who you hate because they'r better than you. That is, you have a list like "I hate Lisa because she's stronger than me. I hate Tina because she's richer than me" and so on. Everyone's stat is the number of people who hate them.

As noted previously, it's easy to turn small number numerical steps into dice, so that Cortex+ conversion is easy. But what intrigues me most is that _other_ thing I like to hybridize with Best Friends: Amber. It calls for a slight change in stats (Including "Because dad likes him better") but that's easy. But better yet, If you do this for the core stats and something else for the roles, then stats can be done _secretly_ and kept obscured. That is to say, Players write down their hates in secret, and the GM uses that to hand out stats. No one knows who is really the best, and Cortex+ very naturally supports "faking down" your high stats if you want to - just use a smaller die. Simple as that.



Anyway, this is what rattles in my head when I don't have a good audiobook. Figured I'd share.

Active Stats and Leverage

One other interesting thing that came out of the Leverage game at PAX-east was a discussion of stats. For those unfamiliar with the game, it's worth noting that Leverage has some very normal stats (Strength, Agility and whatnot) but no "social" stat. This may seem a bit odd in the context of a game with such a strong social component, but it's something the book tackles head on. See, it's not that there's no charisma equivalent, it's that EVERYTHING is a charisma equivalent.

To illustrate that, let me point to the very specific case in the game that Logan Bonner's magnificent Grifter made more than a few rolls of "Strength + Grifter". At first blush, that seems like a nonsensical combination, but that's only the case if you think very literally. Instead, in this case, Strength also represented a kind of approach. The Grifter was coming across forcefully, relying on strength of personality (natch) to carry things through, so strength was the appropriate stat. If he'd been talking fast, it might have been Agility.

Using stats this way - to reflect HOW you do things, rather than what you do - is an idea I've grown more and more fond of with time, and I recently heard Cam Banks use the term "Active Stats" to describe them in conversation, and it's stuck with me. It puts a lot more of play in the player's hands, and that's always a good thing.

Now, this is not always easy. Leverage's stats are intentionally backwards compatible with previous Cortex products, if only to make things more familiar to old fans. This means the mapping of stats in this way is not always intuitive, and it's a big reason why I tend to re-tune the stat list when I do a new hack. Interpreting active stats from an existing list is always going to be harder than starting from scratch.

This is why I was delighted to get a mail from Logan Bonner proposing the (awesomely named) FAQ hack for Leverage. While he didn't call it such, he basically proposed a trio of active stats: Forceful, Analytical and Quick. He explicitly excluded an endurance-equivalent as out of genre (and he was right to do so) but in doing so he did a couple of things. First, he proposed a very workable hack - one I could totally get behind - but second he provided some independent confirmation of a suspicion of mine regarding the 4 core active building blocks.

See, my default active 4 are Force, Grace, Insight and Resolve, and the map directly to Force, Quickness, Analytical and the unused fourth. That pleased me because Logan's a pretty sharp guy, and if we both hit on this same pattern, it suggests it may have some backbone.

Anyway, I mention this now for all you folks looking to hack Leverage and thinking about stats. I would absolutely encourage you to pursue an active stat model since I think you'll find it a lot more rewarding in play, and I'd be very curious to hear if other people have active stat models of their own that differ from this 4 pointed structure.

A Tip for Masterminds

I only managed to run one game of Leverage at PAX, and despite my degraded health, I think it went decently well. I've found I like paying a lot of attention to what the group takes as their secondary role, since it often tells you a lot about what the group is really like. In this case, we had a lot of Hitter, with the non-violent Thief in the leadership role. The mastermind was the political guy, a former lawyer, and he did a great job with it, and at the same time underscored something that I've been doing to help out Masterminds.

See, a generic Mastermind is a little bit rough to really engage in play. It's so open ended that unless you have a player who likes to scheme purely for the sake of scheming, the Mastermind can be left at something of a loose end. He can do things, certainly, but they're not necessarily things that will distinguish him from the rest of the crew. Worse, the fact that he could do almost anything introduces a degree of option-induced paralysis.

To this end, I've started treating the Mastermind as something of a specialist - the Mastermind picks some arena of expertise, and within that, I just treat his knowledge as absolute. Nate Ford, for example, knows insurance in and out, which extends to things being insured. Other Masterminds might know taxes, high finance, the law or some other professional pursuits. Specialties might also be more abstract, like "being the guy who knows everyone" or the like - so long as the idea is very clear, then its probably workable.

This ends up making very little mechanical difference. Leverage characters are already awesome, and putting a a bit of spin on the awesome doesn't actually shake up the table much. But what it does do is give the table a much stronger sense of what the Mastermind's role is and how he contributes to the team. For the Mastermind's player, it imposes fruitful limitations. Because the Mastermind has a clear strength, when in doubt, he knows he can play to it. It gives a lens to look at problems through, and that can be utterly invaluable. For the GM, it also makes it a lot clearer when Mastermind is the right thing to be rolled. Lastly, it has the thematic effect of giving the Mastermind a stronger connection to "the real world", and given the source material, I think that's pretty cool.

It's a small thing, and like most good Leverage tricks it's a bit of a con, but I put it out there for others who might find themselves in a similar situation.

The Sacred Cow Job

I pulled together a gone on pretty short notice today, with no real sense of what I was going to do with it. I ended up pulling up something together pretty much whole cloth, and it ended up weird but pretty cool.

Premise was a city of gods, where one god (the Lamplighter) had forcibly assumed prominence and taxing the prayers of other gods (prayers and offerings take a physical form), so the players are champions of various bound gods, hijacking prayers and doing dramatic things in the names of their patrons.

System-wise, I started from a Leverage template (predictably). For stats, I used the amber set of _how_ you do things (Force, Wits, Grace or Resolve) and for roles, I followed the model I used for Supernatural and focus on what you use to do it (Sword, Tool, Knowledge, Tongue or Self). Rounded it out with three distinctions. The weirdness came with the patron deity who gave each character the "Gift Of..." - some power reflective of a domain. The examples below will make it clearer. Players also had the option of adding extra gifts by acquiring additional obligations to other gods. Mechanically, that took the form of an additional distinction chosen by the GM. If I'd had a little more time I might have made it more involved (such as calling for specific behaviors) but this worked out well enough.

One change I ended up making was something I'd misremembered as a Leverage rule, but which ended up working out really well in practice. After dice are rolled, if the players need a reroll, they can get it, but only if they find some way to change their die pool, such as introducing a new asset or using another distinction. This has the interesting effect of rewarding keeping a few dice in reserve, and can also end up forcing a player to hurt himself with a distinction out of necessity..

This ended up with some seriously messed up characters. I'm going to transcribe their sheets here because I actually think the gifts are kind of mechanically interesting, and might be useful fodder for anyone looking to supernatural up their Leverage variant.

Warren, Agent of Visha
Force: d10
Wits: d8
Grace: d6
Resolve: d4
Sword: d10
Word: d8
Tool: d8
Knowledge: d6
Self: d4

Distinctions:
To Owe is to Understand
It Is Only Temporary
Everyone Pays Their Debts
Everything Must Burn (Master Charr)
Always Give A Sucker An Even Break (Alerian Empress)

Gift of Fleeting Wealth
* When gaining benefits from Distinctions, roll d10 rather than d8
* When you roll a 1, generate 2 complications
* When creating an asset, it starts at d8, but there's almost certainly a catch to it.

Gift of Fire (From Master Charr)
* Immune to Fire
* Spend a plot point to self immolate. For the duration of the scene, if an enemy wins a physical conflict where they've engaged hand-to-hand, they take d4 fire damage. Plus, looks awesome.

Gift of Redemption (From the Alerian Empress)
* Take on an injury from another player.
* Spend a plot point to turn any of your dice into d4s. Each die so transformed increases damage done by one step.

Mary, Agent of Efficiency
Force: d12
Wits: d6
Grace: d4
Resolve: d6

Sword: D12
Word: d6
Tool: d8
Knowledge: d4
Self: d6

Distinctions:
Promises First
How Hard Can It Be
99% Inspiration
Unnecessary Casualties (From the Executioner)

Gift of Improvisation
* Spend a plot point to duplicate another player's ability. May require another plot point expenditure if the power in question requires it.

Gift of Delivery (From the Executioner)
* Perfect timing: Show up in any scene when you feel like it.
* Non shall halt the messenger: Spend a PP to dramatically open any door

Orvik, Agent of Fenris the Flayed
Force: d6
Wits: d4
Grace: d8
Resolve: d10

Sword: d8
Word: d4
Tool: d10
Knowledge: d6
Self: d8

Distinctions:
It Doesn't Hurt Yet
The God Guides My Lash
Repulsive (The Patchwork Man)
Hungy (Gulb, God of Gluttony)

Gift of Pain
* When you inflict Hurt, also inflict d4 Upset
* Your hurt threshold is d12
* Spend a PP to add your Hurt value to all rolls for the scene.

Gift of Beggars (From The Patchwork Man)
* Pathetic: When enemies have multiple opponents and have no pressing need to go after you, you're always targeted last.
* Melt into a Crowd: Spend a PP to vanish into any crowd

Gift of Meat (From Gulb, God of Gluttony)
* Smell of Blood. Always aware of living beings around you, even if you can't see them
* Rending Teeth: Spend a PP to make an attack using Self rather than Sword. On a hit, +1 step of damage, and you recover one step of hurt.

Beryl, Agent of the Down One
Force: d10
Wits: d4
Grace: d4
Resolve: d10

Sword: d10
Word: d6
Tool: d8
Knowledge: d4
Self: d8

Distinctions:
Huge
Inevitability
Giant Hammer
Drunk (Gift of Tipsel)

Gift of Gravity
* Fall Safely from any height
* Spend a plot point to drastically reduce or increase your weight. If it's relevant to the action at hand, you may keep an extra die.

Gift of Drink (Gift of Tipsel)
* You are always confused d4 but you never take further confused damage unless it's self inflicted by drinking.
* You can Add your confused level to any roll, thus reducing it by one step (minimum d4). If you spend a PP, that extra die is kept.

Konur Tagg, Agent of Mardaug The Thunderer
Force: d10
Wits: d4
Grace: d6
Resolve: d8

Sword: d10
Word: d6
Tool: d6
Knowledge: d4
Self: d10

Distinctions:
If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Loudly
I Must Not Have Hit It Hard Enough
I Can't Talk Around Women
Can't Ignore Tears (Gift of Kaela, Mardaug's consort)

Gift of Thunder
* You can be heard anywhere and have no problem hearing in the noisiest of environments
* Spend 1PP when making an attack. Minimum damage is d8, and inflicts d4 confused while making a lot of noise.

Gift of The Tender Heart
* You have armor d4 vs Upset
* Inflict -1 step damage less Upset damage
* Spend 1pp to remove Upset damage from an ally, and roll and keep that die.

A Magic Trick

I mentioned earlier in the supernatural/Leverage hack a couple types of dice that allow you to simulate more dangerous monsters in a fair fight, specifically kept dice (which are used in addition to the usual two) and hard dice (which always roll their max value). In comments, I also mentioned Hurt dice, which aren't rolled, but are treated as part of the pool when you calculate damage. Between these dice and a little bit of manipulation of damage thresholds (that is, how quickly things get taken out), you have the basic tools for modeling most monsters and other nasty beasties, particularity because the bulk of them are purely physical threats.

The bulk, but not all. There are weird powers and other craziness to deal with, but rather than reinvent the wheel, I would just drag Smallville into the mix. Smallville has an incredibly robust system for modeling powers that works in terms of how they work in fiction (rather than in physics) and it would take very little reskinning to translate heat vision over into flaming breath.

For supernatural, the real trick is handling the _weaknesses_ of the various supernatural menaces. A lot of the things that show up are simply too dangerous to fight, even unfairly, unless you have some particular trick up your sleeve.

Now, I mentioned knowledge-based weaknesses before, but it bears repeating. When the weakness is to an action (like vampire's vulnerability to decapitation or zombie's to getting shot in the head) then so long as the characters know this, it is assumed that all their actions are in pursuit of this end. As such, there's no real mechanical concern with making "called shots" - you just fight and do what you can.

Other weaknesses, such as to salt or iron, may benefit from a mechanical representation, but that is thankfully very easy.

A mild weakness pretty much guarantees that you will always have an unfair fight. Going after a werewolf might suck, but if you're armed with silver, it levels the playing field. A mild weakness is generally something that the critter is vulnerable to (so it can't heal or ignore) but which is not necessarily much more dangerous to it. If you need to kill something by stabbing it through the heart with a particular weapon, that's a mild weakness, since you have the means to kill them, but you don't make them any less dangerous.

A medium weakness is like a mild weakness, except the substance actively hurts the creature. Any damage you inflict is considered one die step higher.

A serious weakness will drop the creature with a hit of any quality. Don't bother with damage - if you hit, it's done. Now, "done" may have various meanings - it might mean incapacitating (like holy water to demons) or temporarily dispersed (like hitting a ghost with salt) but it usually means something short of destruction. Serious weaknesses are usually very important to keeping hunters alive, but are rarely a long-term solution to whatever problem is on hand. Serious weaknesses may include things like demon traps. One important note: many serious weaknesses are not also mild weaknesses. That is, they don't necessarily make it an unfair fight.

An absolute weakness is like a serious weakness, but it's final. This happens, and the fat lady has sung. Simple as that.

Now, here's an important thing - serious and absolute weaknesses are very common on the show, but very uncommon in RPGs. The idea of being able to kill a big bad in one shot is at odds with our training that such an action needs to be accompanied by an extensive fight scene. Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a fight scene - landing that critical blow can be a big deal - but there's not always going to be one. That might be anti-climactic, but consider the earlier post about structure: if the "hard part" of the adventure has been finding out what's going on, or getting your hand on the weakness, it's ok for the final fight to be short. But if you get right to the fight, making it a cakewalk is satisfying for nobody - the only time you're going to want to do that is if the big bad was a fake-out, and you have something else up your sleeve to fill the time.

Anyway, between the simple dice tricks, Smallville powers, and a basic weakness model, you should be all set for ghouls, ghosts and every other bit of nastiness you wan to throw at your players.

Adding the Monster

One of my absolute favorite tricks in Leverage is that there is no obligation to stat the opposition from the getgo. Structurally, there are certain questions you need to answer about the mark and such, but the mark isn't really the opposition. I'm thinking more about characters like Sterling, the ones who can really give the players a run for their money and who make for interesting challenges. While the GM _can_ write them up, the system doesn't require it, and in fact offers a much more elegant solution.

The trick to this revolves around the primary use for complications (situations where a player rolls a 1). Complications give the GM currency which can be most easily thought of as narrator plot points. The GM can use them to introduce twists and complications in the form of slapping new descriptors down on the table. So, for example, let's say the players are casing a joint and they produce some complications. The GM might use those to say "Ok, there's an Insurance Investigator checking the place out too, that might be a problem". And if that GM is me, then he picks up a sharpie and writes "Insurance Investigator d8"[1] on a post-it note and puts it down on the table. That's now in play, and the GM will pick up that d8 any time the Insurance Investigator comes up to mess with the players (and a clever player who finds a way to leverage the investigator might be able to pick it up too).

That's a good start, but where it gets fun is that the GM can add to it as he gets more complications. Let's say that this investigator is in a really good scene, and based on how it went (and the complications I have to spend) I add "Sees more than he let's on d10" to his post-it. Later on he ends up in a scrap on the player's side and one of the _players_ spends some plot points to add "Old Army Buddy d8" to the note.[2]

The net result is that if an NPC is interesting enough, he will develop stats over time that emerge organically from play. This is pretty cool, and to come around to the point of this post, it can be turned around as a fantastic way to handle monsters in an investigative game.

See, the thing about Supernatural's monsters is that a lot fo them are throwaways. There are certain recurring types (demons and vampires, for example) but a lot of them are just some familiar-sounding name out of the mythology of your choice. Now, it's totally possible to build a monster in advance based on an idea, but that's not the only way to do it. It's entirely possible to build a monster from it's _effects_.

To illustrate what I mean, imagine the monster's stats as a blank sheet. As you start the adventure, you describe the gruesomely mangled bodies of the victims. With this point, you have revealed something about the monster - whatever it is, it's capable of making injuries like this. So you note down "Monstrous Claws d8" or "Heavy Cleaver d10" or whatever caused the wounds. If you want to leave it uncertain, then "Monstrous Claws? d8", with the question mark indicating that you might refine the descriptor later.

Later on as they talk to the Sheriff about what he saw, the Sheriff talks about unloading his revolver into the thing's back and it not even flinching. Slap down "Bulletproof? d8" on the sheet, leaving your options open, Maybe it's a ghost, maybe it's heavily armored, maybe it just shrugs off gunfire. When you get a better idea, you can scratch out Bulletproof and write down something more precise.

Sometimes information might be wrong (bad witnesses or the like) so feel free to note that with extra question marks ("Can fly??? d8") so that you know which information you can ditch if it ends up contradictory.

Continuing this over time you'll find yourself creating a complete picture of the monster while your players are doing the same thing. In effect, their investigation is your monster creation process. At some point it will all fall into place (for you or them) and all you'll need to do is slap on a name (and for that I really recommend having a list of monster names on hand in advance).

Not every game will suit this approach, and it definitely is a better tool for the GM who likes to discover things while describing them, but if you need to pull a session out of the air, this lets you do so with only the barest outline of a plan, and build it as you go.


[↩]1 - In my house rules, complications are a tad more potent than they are in base Leverage rules, starting at d8 rather than d6, on the reasoning that since d6 is the default die (that is, the die you roll when there's no relevant descriptor) the GM has an infinite budget of those.

[↩]2 - Note that the player has just done two useful things there - created a connection to the character AND given him something useful in a fight that the player can add to his pool in the fight.

Setting Up The Menace

Like many modern shows, Supernatural episodes tend to fall into one of two categories: arc episodes and standalone episodes. Arc episode tie into the larger plot and may have an unsatisfying conclusion since their ultimate resolutions further down the line (they may also not make as much sense without seeing previous episodes). Standalone episodes are pretty self contained. Even if they make a nod to the the bigger plot, it will just be in passing. Rather, the episode will follow the general shape of, "Hear about threat, investigate threat, discover threat, threat escalates, resolve threat" where the threat is usually the monster of the week. There are exceptions to this model, often to fantastic results, but that's the underlying shape of it.

With that in mind, when I talk about adventure structure, I'm talking with the standalone episodes in mind. This is not because they're the better ones (in fact, they usually aren't - Supernatural's arcs are what make the show for me) but because they make a solid foundation to build on. Once you can do a solid monster-of-the-week game, you can build from there to other ends.

The thing to consider when talking about the structure of games is that, like Leverage, the most important element is information management, but unlike Leverage, Hunters start out much more in the dark about what's going on. At the outset of the game, they discover something bad is happening somewhere and go to investigate.

HOW DO THEY FIND OUT
1. News Report of Strange Event
2. Many news reports of seemingly unrelated events
3. Rumor among truckers and travelers
4. Mystically Portentious Sign
5. Contacted by friendly Hunter
6. Contacted by another Hunter
7. Contacted by former hunter
8. Stumble across it
9. Become Victims
10. Contacted by mysterious forces

WHAT SORT OF BAD THINGS
1. Local disappearances
2. Traveller disappearances
3. Pattern of Deaths
4. Exotic Deaths
5. People seeing strange things
6. Odd Behavior
(This could probably get fleshed out to 10, but I'm not sure how many ways I can restate "Weird deaths or disappearances")

Once they find the problem, there is usually a period of time spent looking at what has happened and trying to figure out what could have caused it. This period might be very short or very long, and it will shape the episode. Basically, the "hard" part of the episode is going to be one of the following:

1. Finding out what the creature is (and by extension, its weakness)
2. Get their hands on whatever they need to exploit the weakness (get the arcane widget, find the body, find the lair)
3. Applying the fix (Actually shooting/burning/stabbing/whatevering the thing, performing the ritual or the like).

In RPGs, there's often a temptation to make all three of these the hard part, and the result is adventures that turn into long slogs. By making only one of them the real problem, pacing stays pretty sharp, and the formula becomes MUCH more usable. If the problem was ALWAYS that the monster was unknown then every show/game would be about research, which would get dull fast. Ditto the other hard points. Shifting emphasis between these three consistent points (Research, Investigate, Apply) gives you the benefits of consistency while still providing versatility.

So that gives us a basic frame. Next thing we need to do is plug in some monsters.

Hunter Combat

It struck me last night that there should probably be one more Hunter Weapon, Cunning. this represents low animal cunning and trickery, and all the areas where books won't save you. Mechanically, it's the fallback weapon, when nothing else quite applies, which is important, because I as thought about it, charm was going to end up getting rolled a LOT if there wasn't something to roll over to.

Also, since Superage and Levernatural are both terrible words, I'm just going to call this "Hunters" and leave it at that.

So with that said, let's get on to kicking things in the head.

Since Combat is a bit more common in the context of Hunters than Leverage, we'll uses a slightly more fiddly damage system revolving around "statuses". Those statuses are Hurt, Tired, Confused and Scared. During a roll where there is a possibility for damage, the loser gains these statuses as die traits, at a level equal to the highest opposing die not used in the roll. If that value is lower than the character's current status value, then just increase their status by one (if there's no unused die, treat it as a d4).

Frex: Frank is started by a ghost who wins a roll and scares him. The ghost rolled 3d6, keeping a 4 and 5, not using the 2. Since the highest unused die is a d6. Frank is now Scared d6

If the exact same roll were to happen again, Frank's Scared d6 would bump up to a scared d8.

Status Effects
When a character is carrying a status, it is initially just an inconvenience. So long as the status is less than the appropriate stat (Sharp for confused, Tough for Hurt or Tired and Stubborn for scared) then the character rolls an extra d4 along with rolls where the status might apply. So long as stress is at this level, it's easy to get rid of - it just needs the character to spend a scene doing something dedicated to removing it, such as putting on bandages, taking a nap and so on.[1]

Once the status equals the stat in question, it's become a serious matter. In addition to the d4, they now put their status die into play, allowing opposition to roll it against them. At this point, getting rid of the status will take some serious downtime, possibly in a sickbed.

When the status exceeds the stat, the character is taken out of play in a manner of the GM's choosing (though this may be a great time to spend plot points to soften the blow). Alternately, the player can spend a plot point to stay on his feet for one scene. He can keep doing this, paying plot points every scene to stay on his feet, as long as he has the budget for it, but once he stops, he's down.

Critters
Like most of the rest of the world, critters are defined more simply than players, as traits. Most critters have a core trait that reflects what they are like Vampire d6 or Wumpus d8. They might have more traits, but that core trait ends up being very important for much of what the critter does.

Killing Critters
When critter's take a status (usually hurt), they also roll the d4. Unlike Hunters, critters usually go down as soon a status equal's their core trait. A lot of critters can be killed in perfectly normal ways using this system. Some monster may be a little tougher or more fragile (being taken out as if their die level was higher or lower) but none of that's very complicated. (and yes, when players take something out, they describe how it happened, that can matter a lot).

Where it gets problematic is when you start dealing with things that can't be killed in a normal way. These tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. Dispersible - You can beat these things, possibly very easy, but that only gets rid of them for a scene. Ghosts are a great example of this (though they're a bit more complicated).
2. Fast healers - These things shrug off damage done. They take statuses normally, but they only remain in effect for the next roll, then they're gone. Vampires and Demons work this way.
3. Invulnerable - You just can't hurt these guys. Think Angels.

In each of these cases, there is usually some way around this resistance, and it's a function of knowing what that is and getting your hands on the right tool for the job. Finding out and acquiring the thing you need makes a good adventure seed for oddball monsters, but a lot of them are standard enough (silver, iron, salt, holy water) that hunters are usually equipped. In such a case, all that's required is that the hunters have the tools and describe using them.

This applies equally well to knowledge of weaknesses. Decapitating a vampire is not a function of making an awesome roll, rather, it's a function of taking one out and being able to describe it in a way that includes decapitation. Smart players will make sure the scene includes enough large blade to make sure that's reasonable.

One interesting point about these weaknesses is that they're often two-layererd. There's a reasonably simple trick for fending the critter off (iron and salt for ghosts, holy water for daemons) but actually getting rid of it requires something more substantial (like salting and burning the bones, or an exorcism). This two-tiered structure tends to work itself well into plot design.

Nasty Critters
This merits more discussion later, but in short, a lot of monsters aren't going to make it easy for you to kill them. Even if you have a gun full of silver bullets, a werewolf is strong and fast, enough so that you may never get a shot off.

There are a lot of different potential critter tricks, but here's the key one. Depending on the scariness of the critter, their core die might be treated as a kept die, or a hard die (or in some cases, a hard kept die, which is nasty).

A kept die means that it's always added to the total, effectively letting the critter keep three dice (one of which is always that core die).

A hard die is never rolled, it's just set down as it's maximum value.

A hard kept die means it is always added to the roll at it's maximum value. This is, mechanically, pretty terrifying.

Fair and Unfair Fights
So, given that die advantage, what's to keep a hunter from just getting torn apart? Something as fast and strong as a vampire should, by all rights, have no more trouble with a highly trained hunter than you might with an exceptionally fierce rabbit. Thankfully, hunters know this, and they cheat.

All of those rules about hard and kept dice apply in a fair fight. A fair fight is generally one where both sides know it's coming (or at least the other side does) and has time to put their game face on. A good hunter knows to avoid any fight like that.

Unfair fights are ones that start with your opponent off balance, and keep up the pace so he stays that way. Most unfair fights begin after a successful skill roll of a non-combat kind. Maybe to sneak up on something, maybe to confuse it, maybe to just piss it off. If a hunter uses a success like that to launch an attack, then it's an unfair fight, and there are not hard or kept dice.

However, if the hunter can't win the fight quickly, and the critter has the opportunity to catch its breath and get its feet back under it, then it goes back to being a fair fight. And that's just no good.

All right, enough for today, I think.


[↩]1 - This may seem like a kindness, but the reality is it's an invitation to the GM for something bad to happen. If you think about any horror movie you can, the worst things happen when the characters stop to recover their wits, get some sleep, take a shower or the like. As such, don't just hand wave these scenes - make sure the players describe exactly what they're doing and how it lets their guard down. This is not to say that you ALWAYS attack them in these scenes, just often enough to maintain tension (and consider whether you want to attack on the same status they're recovering from or not)

Superage (or maybe Levernatural)

So, I had reason to sit down and do character creation for Supernatural last week. Still a solid game, but character creation frustrates me, and underscored some of the decisions made for Leverage. So, naturally, I started doing the conversion in my head. So with that in mind, I present "Hunters", a Leverage hack for dealing with supernatural threats.

I. Character Creation
Step 1: Attributes
I shortened up the attribute list on principle, though I recognize and such list is pretty arbitrary. It mostly let me err on the side of choosing stat names that people might actually use in conversation. They are:
Characters have 6 attributes
Smart
Sharp
Quick
Tough
Strong
Stubborn
(Sharp is probably the only one that really requires explanation, and it covers awareness and perception. Stubborn is what more fancy-pants people call willpower.)

Take 1d10, 2 d8's and 3d6's and distribute it among those. At your option, you may drop one of the d6s to a d4, and either increase a d6 to a d8, or a d8 to a d10.

Step 2: Weapons
I went round and round on this for a while, trying to map roles to hunters, but I realized there's an essential difference between hunter's and the thieve's of leverage. While the thieves may have a unified purpose, they do different things. Hunters all do the same thing (kill monsters), just in different ways. So rather than roles, hunters have WEAPONS. These are skills and abilities they apply to the hunt.

Every Hunter is armed with five weapons that help keep them alive in tough situations. These weapons are more important than any knife or shotgun, they're the essential strengths of the hunter, and they break down as follows.
Fists - Whether it's back street brawling or seven different black belts, this is the ability to throw a punch or kick.
Books - Research is not the most exciting part of a hunter's life, but it can be the most important. weapon in their arsenal. When it come time to find the right arcane antique or incant the correct exorcism ritual, this is the weapon to bring to bear.
Guns - Shooting things. It's kind of amazing how well this can work as a strategy.
Tools - The toolbox or lab may not be as dramatic as the arsenal, but there are times when bullets aren't going to do the job. Building or repairing things may not seem too dramatic until you realize that things include bombs and cars. (Oh yeah - this covers driving.)
Charm - Sometimes you can talk your way out of things you can't shoot your way out of.

Take 1d10, 1d8, 2 d6's and 1d4 and distribute it among these weapons.


Step 3: Distinctions
Each player picks three distinctions. Distinctions are descriptors like "Army Brat" or "Friends in Low Places" and they work the same way they do in Leverage (that is, if it would help, add a d8 to the roll, if it would create a problem, add a d4 to the roll and gain a plot point). It's worth noting that specific gear (like, say, a car) probably deserves to be a distinction.

Step 4: OPTIONAL Mark
The player may pick a fourth distinction which has some magical significance. It might be a curse or a bloodline or a destiny, or most anything else. The TV show provides no shortage of examples of this. Mechanically, this works just like any other distinction, but for the GM this is basically a big cosmic "kick me" sign. By marking your character, you're guaranteeing that the mark will come up a lot over the course of play, specifically, bringing in supernatural interest.

Players may remove marks if they are resolved (assuming that's possible) or may add a new mark during a season break. A character may only have one mark at a time.


Ok, so that's the opener, tomorrow we'll get into combat and monsters, and meanwhile I'm chewing on some scenario tables.

Stress Example

Note: This week, I'm going to really drill down into one topic - stress tracks in Leverage and how I applied them - with two goals in mind. First, I want to talk through the application of the mechanic, and second because i want to showcase the thought process behind how I made certain decisions at the table in a way that will hopefully be informative.

I've been talking a lot about ways you can mechanically exploit an idea, in this case adding stress tracks to the Leverage system. Since I've been doing this all with an eye on the Leverage/Amber game I ran last week, that seems like the best thing to use to actually demonstrate how to apply some of these ideas.

I want to keep the core idea of a bloodline (heritage) and a gift (a power). The powers will dip a little too strongly into other mechanics, but I like the idea of tying the bloodlines into the stress tracks, so I'll use one of them to showcase the thought process.

We'll use House Karm as an example There's no real source material to base it on: the name is a throwaway from the novels with hardly a sliver of background. The Road to Amber MUSH has a more fleshed out background for them which I know pretty well, and which I tapped a little bit for the idea, though I also tempered it with knowledge of how the characters on the game have been played. The net result is a house whose bloodline is tied to gate magic, who are a bit confrontational and proud, and who are (perhaps contradictorily) defenders by nature. So how to reflect that?

The basic model I'm going for is that the heritage offers three "tricks". These can take a number of forms, and in this case at least one will probably reflect gate magic (and, like most such things, will probably cost a plot point). The confrontational, proud and defender element are more interesting. Given all this, I'm going to shoot for something like this:

• None Shall Bar My Passage: Spend a plot point to forcefully open any door.
• Aggravating: When you inflict UPSET stress, increase the stress die by one step.
• Hold the Line: When fighting a defensive action, you can set aside a die from your pool rather than rolling it. If you lose, but the stress you take is equal to or less than the die you set aside, reduce the stress die by one step.

Breaking these down, None Shall Bar... is pretty straightforward - a plot point for a specific effect. The other two are much more clear as examples of ways to leverage stress tracks. Aggravating is a simple example of extra hurt, and a decent way to capture the ability to get under someone's skin. I could potentially have represented that with an exploitation (treating UPSET dice as one step bigger), but I thought of doing it the other way first. That is, perhaps, not the most analytical of reasons, but you'd be amazed how often it ends up being the reason anyway.

Hold the Line is a little fiddly, but that was kind of the point. The ideal envisioned is the guy standing in the doorway, holding off the tide. I ran through some options, but most of them ended up fairly generic. To try to capture the specifics of this, I tried something more complicated. It's a combination of the called shot idea with a limits sort of armor. It would be easy to design this one to be more potent (such as making the set-aside dice into resistance), but that would probably demand the expenditure of a plot point. That said, since conflicts only hurt the loser, there's a bit of leeway in the creation of defensive powers, since they don't allow turtling. That is, because the defensive power only kicks in on a loss anyway, there's no way to hide behind a defense while whittling down an opponent. This is not an excuse to use them freely though: they tend to slow things down, which can be a pain.

So, there it is: The idea from end to end. It's a bit more thought out and refined than the ad hoc version I pulled out at the table, but I hope it was informative.

As an aside, let me know how you liked this "deep dive" approach. If it's something people dig, I may try it again in the future, but if it was just hopelessly self-indulgent, better to know it now.

Stress Gimmicks, Part 2

Note: This week, I'm going to really drill down into one topic - stress tracks in Leverage and how I applied them - with two goals in mind. First, I want to talk through the application of the mechanic, and second because i want to showcase the thought process behind how I made certain decisions at the table in a way that will hopefully be informative.

Picking up from yesterday, here are some more mechanical gimmicks you can hook into using the stress tracks with the Leverage system.

EXPLOITATION: Rather than inflict more stress, it's possible for a character to be better at taking advantage of the stress of others, which is to say that if they get to roll a stress die of a particular type against someone, they make it bigger. As such, if someone with a barbed tongue is talking and you're already UPSET d6, they might get to roll a d8 rather than the usual d6.

RESILIENCE: The flip side of exploitation, some people can shoulder their burdens more effectively, and when one of their stress dice is use against them, it's reduced by a step. So someone with a high pain threshold might get injured as easily as anyone else, but it slows him down less. If he's HURT d6, the other guy only gets to roll a d4.

SACRIFICE: The ability to inflict stress on yourself for an effect is an incredibly rich opportunity. At its simplest, you might allow someone to "draw on their reserves" for an effect. The simplest example of this might be a character who can add a die to any given physical roll, but after the roll takes TIRED stress equal to the bonus die rolled. There are any number of combinations for this based on what effect is generated, what stress it "costs" and things like certainty. For example, if you want to make things a bit more of a gamble, use the "draw on reserves" ability, but have it inflict stress only if the player rolls a 1.

RECOVERY: Recovery from stress is a potentially fiddly area, especially because different kinds of stress recover in different ways. A good nights sleep might fix most stress, but high HURT stress might take longer. Now, one could easily get very detailed in this, and assign each level of stress a recovery time under optimal and non-optimal circumstances (So, for example, a D6 hurt takes two days to recover on its own, but only a few hours under medical care). There may be some desire to make such tables "realistic", but the truth is that injury and recovery are a messy, imprecise business, so any set of numbers is probably as good as any other.

If, on the other hand, you want to just key it off scenes, you could have stress get reduced by "recovery scenes" by one step per scene. What constitutes a recovery scene may depend on the type and severity of the stress, and the scene need not be *only* about recovery. I mean, if the character is HURT d10 then, yes, the scene will probably be one in a hospital room (though, heck, it might be dramatically bandaging himself and stitching his own wound shut, in fine action-movie tradition), but if he's merely UPSET d8, then going out drinking to relax (and also have conversations, mingle and so on) might be enough to drop it to a d6.

For more cinematic healing, you might allow players to turn stress into injuries, represented by d4s. Thus, If I end a scene HURT d8, the GM might say "OK, now that the adrenaline has worn off, what's the lingering effect?" and I coudl decide I have a Sprained Ankle d4. This could be automatic, or it could be a roll (stress vs. appropriate stat) or stat based (Only becomes an injury if stress is greater than the appropriate stat) - there are lots of options, and the big question is what people getting hurt looks like in your game.

Whatever the default recovery model, it's entirely possible that there might be alternatives. Magical healing is one possibility of course, but even personality traits might be appropriate to increase Stress recovery on some tracks. A character with a "Second Wind" ability might recover two steps of TIRED stress with each recovery scene (or time increment). Another one with some kind of Zen stuff might treat every scene as a recovery scene for UPSET (or he might recover twice as fast).


I haven't hit on every possible permutation to put on these rules, but hopefully this spread is enough to make it clear that there's a lot that can be done with this relatively simple mechanic.

Stress Gimmicks, Part 1

Note: This week, I'm going to really drill down into one topic - stress tracks in Leverage and how I applied them - with two goals in mind. First, I want to talk through the application of the mechanic, and second because i want to showcase the thought process behind how I made certain decisions at the table in a way that will hopefully be informative.

While the multiple stress pools offer on axis to expand the system on, there are also fiddly bits which go in the other direction, offering specific mechanical hooks for generating certain effects. While these may not be explicit rules to this system, they're ideas that mechanically dovetail with it, which is handy for house rules or custom talents.

CALLED SHOTS: Want to guarantee a certain level of damage? Easy - set aside one of your dice before the roll. If you win the roll, that's the die that sets the inflicted stress, not the third highest as usual. Simple enough as is, but if you want to enhance those rules, you can add talents like, say, Sniper, which lets you increase the size of your called-shot die by one step so long as you're taking a long shot with proper aim.

ARMOR: It's pretty easy to handle armor under a system like this: reduce the size of any damage die by one step. Done. It mitigates things a little, but doesn't really make for a true barrier. This can be a great thing for non-HURT stress tracks, as it's a good way to express someone being unflappable or the like.

More powerful armor might reduce things more than one step, and I would generally rule that reduction past zero dice should negate the stress entirely. Be careful though, this is very potent, and if you opt for it, make sure to include some sort of mitigation.

RESISTANCE: For those situations where you really and truly want to stop stress, resistance provides a different approach: it has a die value (like anything else in Cortex) and any stress equal to or less than the die value is ignored. So even if you're HURT d6, and you take a d8 hit, if you have resistance to harm at d8, you shrug it off. This is pretty potent, so it's good to mix with some mitigating factors (like you lose a step of it every time its used). Practically, I would usually tie this to some other value, so that the Dragon d8 implicitly has resistance to fire at d8.

EXTRA HURT: The flipside of armor is the ability to increase the damage die by a step (or more, though again, that can be quite potent). This is a pretty simple thing to imagine for weapons, but it can be even better for other stress tracks. A particularly sharp tongue might make someone more UPSET, while a talent for sales goes a long way towards helping people be UNCERTAIN.

BROKEN AND BLOODY: As written, stress is a single progression, which is to say you're only rolling the highest value. Bu tif you want a bit more of a brutal feel, you could treat each step as a box, checking them off as they get filled in, and using all dice. THat is to say, if I'm HURT d8, and I get HURT again for d6, rather than bumping up to HURT d10, I fill in my HURT d6 box, and I'm now HURT d6, d8. If I get hit for another d6, that will 'roll up' to the next available slot, and I'll end up HURT d6, d8, d10. This approach makes the death spiral a bit more pronounced (since you can end up granting a fistful of extra dice) but it also opens the door to things like more 'boxes' at each level if you want a more varied wound track. Since it also makes each wound distinct, it can have an interesting impact on recovery (see below).

Not done yet. More gimmicks to come tomorrow.

Other Stress Tracks

Note: This week, I'm going to really drill down into one topic - stress tracks in Leverage and how I applied them - with two goals in mind. First, I want to talk through the application of the mechanic, and second because i want to showcase the thought process behind how I made certain decisions at the table in a way that will hopefully be informative.

Once you have the basic idea of a stress track, there's a lot of potential for interesting mechanics.

The first item of note is that there is room for other tracks beyond HURT. Exactly what they should be depends a lot on the tone and nature of the game. For example, a TIRED track might be a useful way to handle fatigue, while an UPSET track might be a useful way to handle social "damage". For purposes of my Leverage-esque play, I use the following pools: HURT, TIRED, UPSET and UNCERTAIN[1].

HURT and TIRED are both, hopefully, fairly self explanatory. UPSET may take a little more explanation, but I think it's pretty basic - at its heart, it's the result of all the emotional things that muddy our judgement - anger, hurt, fear, embarrassment and so on. UNCERTAIN, in many games, would probably be folded into UPSET, but for Leverage play (or other intrigue based games) it's a bit more important. It's a result of everything that takes a person's feet out form under them, from a clever deceit to a bit too much liquor.

Other games may use different stress tracks: Smallville, for example, AFRAID, ANGRY, EXHAUSTED, INSECURE and INJURED. Mouseguard's conditions, which are similar, include HUNGRY/THIRSTY, ANGRY, TIRED, INJURED and SICK. Even knowing nothing else about those two games, the comparison of those lists can tell you worlds about the differences between them.

For many game, the simple addition of, effectively, social and mental (and other) "hit points" makes the solution to a great many issues apparent. By offering a path to an outcome (which is what any damage system really is) you are offering support of that particular path.

That said, one clever element of handling stress this way is that in building up from zero, the track doesn't need to exist until you use it. Contrast this to, say, hit points: your hit point value is always on your sheet, a subtle signal that play is going down that particular path. Since stress tracks start from zero, they could just as easily not be on your sheet at all. That means that if you want to experiment with them, it's easy to add or subtract them as needed. Perhaps you have a table that's only comfortable with tracking injury - if you opt to experiment with adding fatigue, it's a non-disruptive addition. Similarly, if you have something you want to track for a single adventure arc, you can add a temporary stress track, like "Enemy Alertness"[2] or "Insanity" to pick two strongly themed options.

Now, themes are all well and good, but the real question any system must face is how useful this mechanic is as a component for constructing rules, systems and other elements of play. Stress tracks are, I think, pretty robust, and we'll delve into some of the things you can do tomorrow.

1 - I had previously called this CONFUSED, but UNCERTAIN seems to get the point across much more clearly.

2 - That would be a great one for the whole group to contribute to over the course of a very precise break in.

Stress Tracks in Leverage

Note: This week, I'm going to really drill down into one topic - stress tracks in Leverage and how I applied them - with two goals in mind. First, I want to talk through the application of the mechanic, and second because i want to showcase the thought process behind how I made certain decisions at the table in a way that will hopefully be informative.

Leverage uses a fairly quick, escalation driven conflict resolution system. It works and works pretty well, but I found myself looking at how Smallville does that same, and being impressed. While i might not want to go all the way as to duplicate Smallville's model, I'm definitely happy to steal a few ideas from it. I did so for last weeks Leverage-Amber and it worked out well enough that I'll definitely do it again, and I figured it merited a writeup.

The first idea (and the big lift from Smallville - and by extension Mouseguard and some other games) is that of stress tracks. Stress tracks represent a number of different conditions. The most obvious, and the first most people think of, is the HURT track, which is a gauge of how hurt the character is. There are other stress tracks, but we'll worry about them later - for now we'll use HURT to illustrate.

This idea is pretty intuitive to most people who've gamed: the more hurt you get, the higher the stress track goes. In this model, the HURT is represented by a die value (d4, d6 and so on). The size of the die represents the severity of the injury, with d4 representing barely a scratch and a d12 representing something that would drop a horse.

The value of your HURT track ends up working against you any time you take an action where being hurt would cause problems (which is to say, most physical actions). In this situations, the GM (or your opponent) picks up a die equal to your HURT value to add to the roll.[1] If the value of your HURT die is ever higher than your highest die, you get taken out (in a manner determined by your adversary).

Stress is inflicted as follows: Before a roll, the GM lets the player know that stress is a possible outcome - since we're talking about HURT, we probably mean a fight or something else physically threatening (and, implicitly, the threat probably exists for the opponent as well, as appropriate). Both sides roll as normal, and once the roll is complete, the victor looks at his third highest die showing, choosing one in the case of a tie. The level of HURT inflicted is equal to the size of that die.

For example, if the winner of a roll has the dice come up 6(d8), 6(d6), 7(d10), 8(d8) and 4(d4), he's rolled a 15 (7+8). The next highest roll is a 6, which showed up on two dice (a d6 and a d8) so the player gets to choose which to use, and will probably pick the d8. As a result, his opponent's HURT stress track is now at d8.

If the target is already hurt, then there are two possibilities. First, if the new HURT value is higher than the old one, replace the current value with the new one. If the current value is equal to or higher than the new result, then increase it by one step. This last rule also governs what happens if there are no dice left in the pool - it's effectively a zero sided die, which means it will just increase the current stress level by 1 step.

Continuing the previous example: If the target had already been HURT d4, then at the end of the roll the d8 would replace the d4, and the opponent would now be HURT d8.
If the target had already been HURT d8, then the tie means it gets bumped up a step, and ends at HURT d10.

If the target was already at HURT d12, then the lesser value means it bumps up a step, which probably means immediately going down.

Ok, so that's the basic mechanic. Tomorrow we'll see about fleshing it out in other ways.



1 - This does create a small "death spiral", but it's quite mild, especially since exchanges of rolls are not common.

Amber in Chains

So, based on a convergence of guests and available free time, I ran a game last night. I had done very little prep to begin with, but I ended up improvising madly as the number of expected players jumped from 3 to 6. With 3 players I had been considering just trying some 2 Guys with Swords, modified for 3, but for 6 that wasn't practical, but I also didn't want to run straight Leverage - I had gotten a request for some supers elements, and what's more I'm not entirely sure how it shakes out with 6 players. So, looking at the potential spread of players, their overlapping familiarities and my needs, I very hastily threw together a Leverage hack, bolting on many pieces from Smallville, to run an Amber game. Sort of.

The premise of this particular Amber filed the serial numbers off, both in and out of game. At a high level, one of the princes had won, and ruled Amber as the Sun King with an army of elementals at his beck and call. More problematically, he had also wiped the names and much knowledge of his siblings from the universe with his destruction of the pattern and assertion of the new order. Players represented the underground, those with enough knowledge to know there's been a usurpation, looking to find and restore the nameless. One of them was said to be held by one of the lords of Amber, and the players took advantage of the wedding being arranged in the manor to try to find it.

I won't delve too much into what happened, but it went spectacularly, with one player taking advantage of a recent widow to get an invite (all the while being urged by her husband's ghost to kill her) , and with complications that spiraled out of control, including one dramatic romantic proposal accompanied by peacocks resulting in roast peacock getting added to the menu. Things culminated with the discovery that the whole manor rested on the shoulder of the Titan, his release and the subsequent destruction of, well, the whole building. I got at least one request to return to the setting at some point, and with a bit of polishing to the system, I think I'm inclined to do so.

System wise, I stole the four stats from Road to Amber (Force, Wits, Grace and Resolve) and a new set of roles: Soldier, Scholar, Tinker, Priest (which should have been Courtier), Ruffian and Hunter. Straightforward enough, but Priest ended up doing more heavy-lifting for rolls than anything else, perhaps a bit too much. Something I need to keep an eye on.

I let the characters take five distinctions. In retrospect it was too many. I think that many distinctions works with no stats, but in conjunction with the stats they just made for a little bit too much, especially for freshly created characters. It wasn't a huge problem, but it's something I'm going to note.

I also tapped into Smallville, loosely, and had each character pick a bloodline (effectively a heritage) and a gift (effectively a superpower). The two could be related, but did not need to be. These were pretty much entirely created on the spot, and they were structured after powers: three special things you could do with a plot point. As such we had:

• A scion of the house of the moon, who could turn into a shadow
• A Scion of the Titan, who was a badly trained mage
• A Scion of Mandrake with an entourage
• A Scion of Karm who could read thoughts
• A Scion of The Hanged Man who had Major Arcana related tricks
• A Scion of Feldane who mastered ghosts

Mechanically (and time-wise) this was the hardest part because I pulled these out of the air. For some of the poweres I just riffed off Smallville, but for the bloodlines, i was totally making things up. Worse, because I was working fast, I forgot to include any abilities based on exploiting opportunities (what you can do when the GM rolls a 1). If I take the time to go back and retune this system, most of the effort is going to go into making the bloodlines and gifts cleaner and easier to use.

Lastly, I hybridized Smallville conflict resolution by adding stress pools for Hurt, Tired, Confused and Upset. They worked like Smallville (opponents can roll them against you, the value gets too high, you're taken out) but I skipped Smallville's 'damage' roll and used this rule: Look at the third highest die you rolled - you inflict stress equal to that die size or increase the stress pool by one step, whichever is higher.

With that out of the way, I'll say this - All the good things about running Leverage very easily transitioned over to this. Chargen was a bit rougher than Leverage, taking most of an hour, but that was a function of the new system and the necessity of me making stuff up. Play was full of subplots and complications, but was still all wrapped up in about 2.5 hours of actual play. With 6 players and the amount that got done, I was pretty darn pleased. What's more, it was very low stress for me as a GM. I went in with a few ideas, but by and large I just let the complications do the work for me (which they did, with extreme prejudice).

I did use the "Complications start at d8" rule, allowing myself a free budget of d6s, and I think that worked out very well for one specific reason: When players wanted to use distinctions that seemed a little dodgy, I asked them to justify it, and often used those justifications to add some assets or descriptors to the table.

I also used a slightly different method of creating assets, where I let players create "permanent" assets - ones that last the whole game - for one plot point, but only if they went on the table, rather than remaining under the player's control. That let the players use these assets, but also let me turn them around to use later to complicate things (which I, of course) did. as a technique, I really liked this as a very organic way to handle players stretching their distinctions.

The bottom line of this for me is that I need to work a bit on my Leverage hacks to help make sure I have more of a toolkit on hand to draw from rather than need to totally make stuff up, but with that done, man, Leverage remains a super-potent go-to for a fast, engaging game.

The one tip that I'll add is this: While the system can support open-ended play, you're only going to get the speed benefits by having a clear goal in play. In leverage, that's baked in. For this, I needed to make sure it was inserted (recover the nameless). In the absence of that, we could probably have played all night, and that would have been fun, but it wouldn't have had anything like this kind of finish. The goal drives play, but it also gives you a stopping point - that's incredibly potent and important.

Two Guys With Swords

My friend Clark was contemplating a one shot, but was hesitant to use Leverage because he knows it well (Clark wrote a big chunk of it). That got me thinking about how to do speedy starts for other Leverage-derived games, which in turn lead to some thoughts on the "Two Guys With Swords" game, which is intensely derivative in a way that is goofy and fun. Guys, in this case, is intended as gender neutral, as it encompasses both men and women, but certainly not gentlemen or ladies.

Chargen for a 2 player game

• Both Guys get Hitter d10
• Hacker is now Tinkerer. It covers gadgets, alchemy and locks.
• Each player picks one more d10 role for himself
• Each player picks on d4 role for the other guy
• Each player then assigns a d6 and a d8 to the remaining roles
• No stats.
• Characters get 6 distinctions, at least 3 of which must be chosen now, others can be chosen in play.
• Swords are d6 assets, unless they have names, in which case they are d8s. A named sword does not always need to be the same sword. All that matters is the name.
• Pick 2 talents for your guy, one talent for the other guy.

Next, Get Into Trouble
Where you Are Now

1. A caravan camp at an oasis
2. At a crossroads far from civilization
3. Atop an icy mountain peak
4. Strapped to the altar of something best unnamed
5. Wretched hive of scum and villainy (small)
6. Wretched hive of scum and villainy (large)
7. At sea, in a lifeboat
8. Miles underground
9. Falling from an unreasonable height
10. Surrounded by fire on three sides

What Brought You to This

1. The alternative was getting married
2. Treasure turns out to have been fake
3. The guild's assassin's are in pursuit
4. Angry husbands are entirely unreasonable
5. A terrible curse haunts you
6. The gods demanded, wheedled and pushed
7. Swore an oath while drunk
8. Temple apparently objected to you doing that with their matriarch
9. Still hungover, the rest is a blur
10. Snakes

How It Is About To Get Worse

1. Woke something that should stay slumbering
2. Reasonably sure those men with curved swords have taken offense
3. Wizard who, for no apparent reason, lives in that tower
4. Gods are miffed
5. Assassins have found you
6. Currently naked
7. These people aren't speaking any kind of recognizable language. And may not be people.
8. You're bait
9. Someone has just been scorned.
10. Tremendous success attracts unwanted attention.

Ok, yes, this is kind of minimalistic, but I admit, I have a strong temptation to take it for a spin.