For myself, engaging with roleplaying games means engaging with a conversation. This conversation typically focuses on a central question to be answered. At a mechanical level this could be something like “can I use this skill in my roll?” or “what is the player willing to sacrifice to succeed?”, and at a narrative level, questions can help drive the narrative forward or support collaboration between the game master and the players such as questions like “what gives rise to the iron smell in this room?”. I think it is safe to say that the more questions that are genuinely answered the greater an understanding of a character, world or a system is achieved. I believe this allows for a better experience and to sooner reach this experience we could begin our sessions with a few brief questions to help everyone ease into the game.
Questions are a versatile tool and can take many forms depending on the different purposes for them. For example, questions can be open or closed depending on what type of response you are hoping to receive (Susan Farrell, Open-Ended vs. Closed-Ended Questions in User Research) or they can be targeted towards a different aspect of play. This could look like asking the player, the character, or the whole group a question to either provide an opportunity for a player to inject something into the story; allow a character to express themselves, drive the narrative forward, or highlight themes that a player would like to explore; or check how interested the group is within the current scene (Hayley Gordon, The Power of Questions). Questions are far more expansive than I have described here and a quick search around the internet will hopefully reveal that for you. In this post, I want to focus on questions to help us start our sessions.
There are many tools or strategies to start a roleplaying game session (Johnn Four, The First 15 Minutes – How to Kickoff Great Game Sessions). I often see groups begin sessions with a recap of the previous session to provide context to what is happening and remind players where they are within the narrative, dungeon, or both. This is done sometimes as exposition by the game master, a single player, or shared between multiple players. At a basic level, the question here could be something like “What happened last time on Dragonball Z?”. At other times, sessions begin with a situation that demands action from the players in which the hope is that players will be thrust into action and playing their characters, making decisions, and answering those overarching, campaign implicit questions like “Are you the kind of hero to sacrifice your fame in order to save someone?” or “How are you going to stop the BBEG?”. I am sure there are a range of other manners to start a session that could even be system-dependent, however at the heart of them all are questions.
We need to ask the right question. The right question is going to depend on what the goal of the group, campaign, and session is. The reason for this is that questions help us direct the flow of the narrative for the reasons described above and they help us shift the spotlight from player to player. At the beginning of a campaign more character grounding questions may be asked to support contextualising that character in the world compared to a session that is halfway through an adventure where the questions will be more tailored towards a recap. Similarly, questions may be used to elicit emotion from players or cue the player to what their characters would likely be feeling at that point of the narrative if that plays a role in your game, or you may just have questions that relate to a strategy that group will use to overcome a perceived challenge. In any case, the questions that are asked should be tailored to supporting the type of answer that is required to help the session progress.
Questions that begin the session should support players and the game master. Players need to achieve the right frame of mind for their characters and reminded of the narrative and what is at stake while indicating to the game master what the players intend to do. To accomplish this, I prepare at least one question per player in regard to what happened previously and what they intend to do now – quite often this is broken into two questions. My first question is about the feelings of a character regarding something that happened in the prior session. I typically ask a player this question and provide them time to contemplate it while I ask the other players their questions. This is a slower start to help them ease into the role of their character. I compensate for this slower start by then asking a second question after I receive an answer to the first. The second question will either introduce a new threat or something that demands action from them. I find that these second questions are often better to be asked to multiple players at a time to help bring the group together now that the players have established themselves as their characters. Overall, the question that is asked should accomplish the goal of starting the session in the manner that the game master desires.
In summary, questions are a versatile tool that are inherently ingrained in any roleplaying game at any point. Questions can be used to elicit emotion, drive the session forward, or support collaboration within the group depending on who was asked and how it was asked. To use questions to start a session, the right question must be asked to support players with recontextualising themselves in the narrative and as their characters while indicating what they intend to do so that the game master can facilitate the rest of the session.
The development of GRIMOIRE has made some significant steps towards my vision for this solo authoring game over the past few weeks. In this post, I will outline the major changes which will allow you to play GRIMOIRE with the upcoming overhaul to the game. You will require the base game as this post modifies rules outlined there. You can download this for free from itch.
Due to some of the changes described the below and the base prompts lacking modification to suit these changes, the following conditions should be acknowledged:
If you are required to respond to a journal prompt for a card in which you have responded to all available journal prompts, that card is immediately discarded. If it is a face card, it will discard the entirety of your spell set too.
If you are required to reduce or extend the number of cards used in a Quest, instead respond to the face card prompt of the spell again for extension or skip the card prompt for reduction.
Ignore consequences that state Gain a Friend/Foe in journal prompts.
The following rules supersede the rules written in the GRIMOIRE Ashcan Edition. These are a draft and will likely be tweaked based on feedback from playtesting and organised in a more user-friendly manner, however it should provide an insight into how the complete version of GRIMOIRE will play.
Starting the Game
The face cards (Jack, Queen, King) are to be separated and stored face down as an independent deck. Draw the top card and play it to the table – this will be the beginning of your first spell when the game starts.
Creating Your Wizard
To create your wizard, you may ignore the drive, flaw, and commune tables in GRIMOIRE, however you may find them helpful for grounding the identity of your wizard. Instead, you will assign values to suits and create friends and foes that will also be assigned suits. Finally, you will determine an overall goal that drives your wizard to undertake magical research.
Values
Your wizard’s values are how they see the world. In the final version of GRIMOIRE, these values will be changed throughout the course of play, however, they are static in this current rule set.
A single, different value is assigned to each suit: hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.
Pick a value for each suit and write the pair down somewhere for you to remember. If you cannot think of any, you can roll on the following d66 table to generate four values.
d66
Values
d66
Values
d66
Values
11
Authenticity
31
Contribution
51
Influence
12
Achievement
32
Creativity
52
Justice
13
Adventure
33
Curiosity
53
Kindness
14
Authority
34
Determination
54
Knowledge
15
Autonomy
35
Duty
55
Leadership
16
Balance
36
Faith
56
Love
21
Beauty
41
Fame
61
Loyalty
22
Boldness
42
Friendships
62
Peace
23
Compassion
43
Growth
63
Pleasure
24
Challenge
44
Happiness
64
Security
25
Community
45
Honesty
65
Wealth
26
Competency
46
Humour
66
Wisdom
Example: You might make the following rolls on the above table: 21, 33, 41, 64 and then prompt assign these values to the following suits:
Hearts – Beauty
Diamonds – Curiosity
Spades – Fame
Clubs – Security
Goal
This is the overall objective your wizard is trying to achieve – it is what drives them to research magic. The completion of this goal marks a positive end to the game. The goal will be tracked as a set of face cards that you may add to by completing spells.
A goal should be achievable through the research of magic and the creation of spells. Each time you add to the goal set, if the added card is the first card or has a matching suit in the set, then your wizard has made progress! You should include a description of how this spell has or will provide progress in the goal within the journal prompts.
Once there are three cards with matching suits in the goal, your wizard has found success. The final prompt should describe how all of this finally helped your wizard find success.
Currently, you are required to develop your own goal, however you can use the sample goal below. The final version of GRIMOIRE will include various goals for each research location and may be tied to suggested values.
Sample Goal: Overthrow the current regime in the City of Athanasia.
Friends and Foes
Your wizard will make enemies and sometimes friends of either individuals or groups. These are relationships that have reoccurring instances in the story of which your wizard has four slots that can track the most important relationships. Each slot is represented by a card suit and has a series of journal prompts that support or debilitate your wizard through their journey.
Whenever you have an available slot and are responding to a journal prompt, if another character is present in the narrative, they will fill an empty slot of your choice, or whichever is available. Friends can be assigned to either Hearts or Diamonds, whereas Foes can be assigned to either Spades or Clubs.
If no slot is available, then you disregard the instruction but be sure to use this in your journal response. Why did they not become a friend/foe?
Your wizard starts the game with two friend and two foes. Decide on a name for each and write a sentence fragment to describe how your relationship began. Use this process when you gain more friend and foes as described above.
Example: Hearts – Brandor Leezix, we were both the only wizards in town worth our ink.
Sample slots with prompts are below. You should use these for now, however the final version of GRIMOIRE will likely have several sets to choose from for your playthrough.
Hearts (friend)
1
You sat for tea with a friend that closely listens. What did you rant about? Remove 1 Wound.
2
Your friend made time for you, but they seemed distracted. Why did you not notice? Remove 1 Wound.
3
The only thing left at your friend’s home was a satchel of tea and a note. What did the note say? Remove 1 Wound and Remove this Friend.
Diamonds (friend)
1
You take a stroll through the park with a friend. How did you convince them to fund your project? Gain 1 Coin.
2
Your friend seems excited for your progress. What did you tell them about your research? Gain 1 Coin.
3
Your friend seems exasperated as your explain your research. Why have they lost interest? Gain 1 Coin and Remove this Friend.
Spade (foe)
1
Your foe snickers as they walk past. What do you feel self-conscious about? Gain 1 Wound.
2
Your foes has a loud audience who fall silent when they notice you. What lie was your foe telling them? Gain 1 Wound.
3
Your foe arrived alone at your tower in the middle of the night. Why will they not bother you in the future? Gain 3 Coin and Remove this Foe.
Clubs (foe)
1
Your foe cornered you in a back alley. How did you escape? Gain 1 Wound.
2
Your foe attacked you in broad daylight. How did you hold them back? Gain 1 Wound.
3
You had a plan ready for when your foe attacked you. What was it? Gain 3 Coin and Remove this Foe.
How to Create a Spell
A spell in GRIMOIRE is represented by a series of cards called a set. Once a set is complete, the spell is considered complete.
To begin a set, a face card must be played to the table (you begin the game with one played). This card will determine how many spell-points the set must equal for the spell to be complete. If a spell would ever exceed the number of spell-points required, discard all cards related to that spell – you have failed to comprehend the humming of the ley lines.
Jack = 11 spell-points
Queen = 12 spell-points
King = 13 spell-points
The first number card (A-10) added to the set determines the words of power. To find the words of power you open your chosen reading book to a random page and look for a number of words in sequence equal to the rank of the card played to the set. These words should be written down so they can be remembered.
Once the value of each number card sums to the required number of spell points (Ace is 1), the spell is complete. The last number card added to the spell determines which value of your wizard is used as a lens to interpret the words of power. Using the value, apply meaning to the sequence of words, rearrange the words, or drop words until you are satisfied with the meaning of the spell.
Write down what this spell does and create a name for the spell. Preface the spell name with something cool like “Invocation of-“.
Once the spell is complete, discard all cards in the set except the face card which is added to the goal set at the top of the table.
How to Create a Glyph
As a set grows so will the glyph. The initial face card of a set determines the base shape of the glyph according to the shape table below.
You should sketch the vertices of this shape using the sigil shape determined by the next card added to the set and the sigil table below.
Finally, the third card added to the set will determine how you connect each sigil to form the base shape using the connection table below.
Any cards added to a set after the third require the player to add something to the glyph of their own creation. This could be an extra base shape copy inside the glyph or extra details on the connections – whatever feels natural. However, the space in the centre of the base shape should be left mostly free to allow the player to draw a diagram in once the function of the spell has been determined.
Finally, the name of the spell is written at the top of the glyph.
Shape Table
J
Triangle (3 vertices)
Q
Diamond (4 vertices)
K
Pentagon (5 vertices)
Sigil Table
A
Heart
2
Diamond
3
Star
4
Triangle
5
Eye
6
Cog
7
Spike
8
Leaf
9
Bell
10
Finger
Connection Table
A
Arrow
2
Straight line
3
Curved Line
4
Waves
5
Criss Cross
6
Spiral
7
Graduated line
8
Twisting Vines/Snakes
9
Square Wave
10
Dotted Line
Actions
Each turn, you can now select one of the following actions instead of just RESEARCH and QUEST.
Discover
You purchase a magical artefact from a merchant or fellow wizard.
Remove 2 Coin.
Draw and play a face card.
Research
You conduct research into the humming of the ley lines with the hopes to translate a new spell.
Draw a card from the deck.
Choose on the following:
Play a card to an existing spell set.
Gain 1 Corruption and discard the card.
Respond to the prompt generated with that card.
Quest
You venture out into the world to support your studies on a particular spell.
Remove 1 Coin
Select a spell set for which you will Quest to find something to add to your spell.
Choose one of the following:
Select a card from the discard pile to add to the spell and remove all other cards in the discard pile from the game.
Draw 3 cards from the deck and select 1 to add to the spell while discarding the remaining 2.
Note: You must discard the chosen card if you do not add it to the spell.
Respond to each quest prompt generated by the cards in that spell from left to write beginning with the face card and including the new card.
You may find it helpful to write down the prompts in your journal as headings to help you weave it into a narrative.
The most recent card will describe where you end up, this should include something that helps you understand the spell you are researching.
Consort
You take to the world outside of your study to hopefully meet with a friend.
Draw a card from the deck.
Use the suit of the card to determine which friend/foe you find. If no friend/foe has been assigned to that slot, then discard the card and terminate this action.
Discard the card.
Respond to the prompt generated with that card and the respective friend/foe prompt table.
Perform
You are desperate for coin, so you take on menial work to gain some.
Draw a card from the deck.
If the suit of the drawn card matches the last card added to a spell, discard both cards, otherwise only discard the drawn card.
Gain 1 Coin.
Heal
You are wounded and require aid, so you purchase healing services or materials.
Remove 1 Coin.
Remove 1 Wound.
Final Thoughts
I highly recommend that you read through the entirety of these rule modifications. Though each rule is simple, each has a place in the game and can lead to some disastrous consequences later in the game. Keep in mind that jokers behave the same so by discarding cards through perform, you are increasing the chances of ending the game before you can accomplish your goal. Though Research is free, you are risking corruption if you do not like the card and though Quest provides more options, it tends to be filled with more dangerous prompts and has an initial cost.
The next steps for GRIMOIRE will be to collect feedback from my play testers and anyone else who is kind enough to provide their thoughts. Using this feedback, I will modify the rules and publish them in the GRIMOIRE format on the itch page for all current owners of the Ashcan Edition.
If you find yourself playing GRIMOIRE, I would love to hear your thoughts on these changes. You can comment on this post, comment on the itch page, or tweet at me.
The last month has been an exciting one for myself as I have heard back from people playing GRIMOIRE. I received plenty of helpful feedback over the course of the development and I wanted to take a brief break in the hopes to receive more. In between some other life commitments, I am spread a little thin, so the development of GRIMOIRE has slowed, however I want to briefly describe my current thoughts on the game and what I am currently in the midst of experimenting with.
The Game Loop
I think GRIMOIRE works well as it is, however, it feels a little uninspired to me at times. A card draw dictates a prompt you respond to – it is simple and to the point. I want to make it somewhat more involved mechanically without slowing the game down too much and provide greater support for players to respond to journal prompts. My current thinking is to modify how the research action functions, incorporate the friends and foes more (or maybe drop them entirely), and finally incorporate a more explicit objective for the generated wizard.
Firstly, I have been tinkering with set collection for playing cards as a means to create spells. Rather than drawing all necessary cards for spell generation, as is the current method, players will instead be provided cards each round when they take the research action to add to their various projects that they are working on. These projects will typically be spells; however, a potential idea is to expand this to quests and the objective I mentioned.
One piece of feedback that I received was providing more support for responding to prompts to ensure that events were able to be tied together more easily. To do this, I considered adding unique types of drives per research location, however recent thoughts have expanded this idea to be an ongoing project that requires a much more difficult set to complete if I move forward with the aforementioned ideas of set collection.
Finally, the friends and foes mechanic does not occur frequently and is somewhat half-baked. I am considering dropping it entirely for now, although one idea that I could use is potentially tie it a round-by-round resource management system such as providing coin or not of which will be spent on research.
Spell Generation
Since the beginning I have been intending to change the way spell generation works in GRIMOIRE. After some research into using playing cards and books together, I came across The Word as Spell by Samaritan Burden which is a simple way of generating spells for use with other systems on the fly. It is a lot of fun and I suggest you check it out. Using ‘The Word as Spell’ as inspiration, I want to somehow utilise the suit patterns on playing cards to provide the pattern in which words are chosen from a page in a book. So far, my experiments with this have highlighted several things I need to consider for the design:
How many words should be chosen as playing cards have ranks from 1 to 10 excluding picture cards which is highly varied and would likely not work at either end of the spectrum.
The time required for looking at a page as players may become frustrated if they have too many options to choose from.
How to determine patterns from the suits – currently I think straight lines either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally dependent on the pattern depicted on the card drawn.
Those considerations aside, to ensure the spell generation relates more to the wizard and to allow the player support when creating a spell. I want to add in values as an aspect of the generated wizard. These values would likely change throughout the course of the game as players respond to journal prompts but are primarily used to interpret the words chosen from the books. They will act as a lens for the player which will inform what the spell does.
Closing Thoughts
These are my current thoughts for GRIMOIRE, and I hope it provides some insight in spite of a lack of explicit detail. It certainly helps me to write this out and log the development in some manner. Though the development has slowed, it will continue. In the meantime, download GRIMOIRE and give it a play – I would love to hear your thoughts either at itch, my twitter, or here in the comments.
Reflecting on past events is an important skill to develop. I have been wanting to replace my old and abandoned blog post series on deep reflections from previously ran systems with a format that is more digestible and likely more manageable for my feeble mind. In Against the Wicked City’s post about GMing retrospective, they presented, what I thought to be, a quick and simple format for reflection.
The format goes like this:
What it was is the section in which I provide context about the system, campaign, or session that I was running.
What worked is the section in which I identify and describe something that worked well.
What did not work is the section in which I identify and describe something that did not work well.
Lessons learned is the section in which I synthesise what I identified prior to assist myself with identifying something that I had learned.
Why is Reflective Practice Important?
I am of the mind that we all reflect on everything we do – it is one way in which we learn. These reflections may be brief thoughts or emotions such as feeling guilt about something you did that felt wrong, or they may be much longer and more intentional reflections such as maintaining a journal about your day-to-day life. In either case, reflecting on past events helps us make sense of what happened from a more objective perspective. An experience is worth only half its value without reflection.
This is such a pervasive practice that multiple formats for reflective writing exist with supporting scientific research. Each form has its own advantages and disadvantages but ultimately it just results in the same thing: learn from what you did.
Just like with any skill, game mastering takes time and practice, and by reflecting on sessions, campaigns, or whatever else will help focus our attention on what to change so as to improve. With that in mind, here are my reflections on the first four systems I ran.
Dread
What it was: This was the first time that I had ever ran a roleplaying game, though I had played in several games that used a different system prior to this. Dread is a horror roleplaying game that utilises a Jenga tower to resolve actions. It is focused on one-shot games with characters that are defined by a brief questionnaire at the start of the game.
What worked: I found that I did not have to do a lot of the work in creating an atmosphere of dread. A brief description of what to expect from the game at the start coupled with the stress generated from playing Jenga and some choice music in a dimly lit room did all of the work for me. All I had to do was support the players moving throughout the phases of the story.
What did not work: This was early days for me, and I had yet to accept that players should have more control over the narrative, these are collaborative storytelling games after all. I tried to mitigate a lot of the advantages that players developed or tried very hard to push them into the direction I wanted them to go into such as forcing players into a cave that was home to a giant amalgamation of flesh and bone.
Lessons learned: Though it took me some time to become comfortable with the idea, Dread taught me how it is important to allow players to have some control in the narrative and to run with what their characters are doing. Instead of taking a blunt approach to forcing my ideas on them, I can use some more finesse to inject my ideas in the narrative without limiting the players. Furthermore, taking time to create an ambience that matches the tone of the game does wonders for immersion.
Dungeons & Dragons 5E
What it was: I ran multiple games in Dungeons & Dragons 5E and with each session I became more and more tired. I felt that it never really synchronised with how I like to play these types of games. DnD 5E is a heroic fantasy lite wargame misrepresented as a roleplaying game with an emphasis on combat.
What worked: This worked wonders for bringing people together. Everyone knew what DnD was and it either turned them away very quickly or piqued their interest, at which point I had them.
What did not work: Myself and many of the other players were still very new roleplaying games so a lot did not work. This system required constant massaging from both parties for it to function. What has stuck with me the most is the sheer amount of work I had to do as a game master before each session or even just the time it took to interpret something simple like a monster stat block.
Lessons learned: I do not regret my time with DnD 5E and it did help me bring people together which allowed us all an opportunity to engage with these types of games. What I learned from my time with this system is that there is no one system to fit all types of stories. The constant massaging I mentioned was due to everyone having their own ideas about how the game plays or how they want to run the game – it would have been easier if we had just played a different system.
Blades in the Dark
What it was: This was the first system I chose to run after I recovered from my time with DnD 5E. It is a PbtA adjacent system set in an industrial ghost-powered city of rivalling crime gangs within a demonic post-apocalyptic world.
What worked: It took some time for my group to grok the system but from the very beginning it worked well for throwing us into action and suffering consequences. Players barely had time to think during those intense moments but afterwards they had time to be more intentional. I think it allowed them to define who their character was as they had to make quick choices. This was the same for me as a game master, however the greatly organised NPCs and factions supported me in running and prepping the sessions.
What did not work: It took me a while to figure out how to weave the different modes of play in the system together in such a way that the game flowed. Concurrently, my players had a tricky time adapting to the lethality of the game and initiating scores.
Lessons learned: Throwing players into actions and having them suffer consequences for what they do not only drives the narrative forward and help with future sessions, but it also helps the players become immersed into their character. Furthermore, NPCs do not have to have complicated stat blocks with mapped inventories but instead focusing on some details about their personality and appearance in the narrative works a lot more for me to improvise.
Mutant: Year Zero
What it was: This is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set in our universe. It incorporates more sandbox play with simple base building and survival mechanics.
What worked: My favourite aspect of M:YZ was how players had to create an NPC or two that related to their character on their sheet and describe how they relate to each of the other players. This immediately provided me with different avenues for engaging the players’ characters into the story each session. The game master advice really helped me with running more sandbox style games such as noting down 1-2 scene ideas per player.
What did not work: I struggled to run combat when using more than 3 different enemies. It was a lot to keep track of when running it as theatre of the mind as I did not fully utilise the range mechanics in the game.
Lessons learned: Sandbox games can be a lot of fun and really open the game up to allow player-driven games. I think this is my preferred way to run roleplaying games and has led to me always prepping some scene ideas for each player plus some for any relevant plot thread the players are following which takes up the brunt of my game prep now. Theatre of the mind can be a tricky thing to do, especially when there is a lot to remember. This is something that will require more practice on my part to better present to my players.
Collaborative and narrative play are more my jam when it comes to roleplaying games. I like to leave breathing room for the players to be creative and inject something into the narrative within the confines of moral dilemmas and hard choices. Back in my Dungeons and Dragons days I made heavy use of skill challenges for action scenes as opposed to always using the combat game structure. This allowed me to confine my players to a particular situation whilst providing the aforementioned breathing room. However, I did find skill challenges had the danger of becoming too ‘control panel’ for my players so to rectify this I wanted to change the way players interacted with the mechanic and adapt to other d20 systems that use the 6 attributes but potentially not skills.
Some lovely dice spilled on a table! I find it nice to just break up text with an image.
What is a Skill Challenge?
A skill challenge was D&D 4E’s approach to providing structure to a scene of action that was not combat to encourage players to make more use of their varied skill lists. This structure was later popularised by Matt Colville in his YouTube series, Running the Game, in which he encouraged Dungeon Masters to incorporate the structure in their D&D 5E games.
The short of it is there are some number of successes that are required for a given scene before some number of failures is reached. These numbers are determined by the Dungeon Master. Players can then utilise each one of their skills once throughout the scene to help the party overcome it. They make their roll and mark whether or not it was a success or failure. All the while this scene is narrated and eventuates in either total failure or success. You can read more about it and find some examples at dungeonsmaster.com.
Some potential issues of Skill Challenges defined by D&D 4e is the risk of boredom from players utilising the same kind of skills, taking too long, and determining who has the greatest chance at using a particular skill, and the preparation for these could become quite a slog if you are hellbent on utilising each skill or even half of them – though of course you could be lazy and wing it like myself and likely many others. My new approach to utilising skill challenges takes the skills out of it and meshes it with elements from the One-Roll Engine (ORE).
A New Approach
This new approach involves the 6 attributes of your traditional d20 systems. The players will contribute varying dice sizes based on these attributes in a given round after which the collective pool of dice is rolled to determine if success was met. Success is determined by adding up the values one each dice, if it meets or exceeds 20, then the party is successful, otherwise the party has another round, but they must each use a different attribute than they already had individually.
Example: if the party consists of three players and they used Strength, Wisdom, and Charisma in the first round. Player 1 can no longer use Strength, player 2 can no longer use Wisdom, and player 3 can no longer use Charisma for any future rounds in this challenge.
Now, this may make it seem like the players cannot fail and that’s because failure is entirely up to them. After a pool of dice has been rolled at the end of the round, the players can choose to give up on the challenge and deal with the consequences. Consequences? Yes, for every duplicate result on the dice in the pool and previous pools of the challenge, a bad thing will happen to those involved. This could be anything that makes narrative sense or could be something as simple as some damage, a lost item, a drop in standing with an NPC, etc.
Procedure
The Game Master outlines the situation, and determines a target number, and agrees on a goal with the players.
The first round begins, and the Game Master asks each player in turn what attribute they would like to use for this round and a number of dice of maximum face values summed up to their attribute value. E.g., A player with 16 strength could use 1d12 or 1d8+1d6+1d2 or 2d8 or any other combination of maximum face values that is equal to or less than 16.
Roll the dice: The collective pool of dice is rolled after everyone has the opportunity to contribute.
Check for success: The dice values are summed and if it exceeds or meets the target number then the party is successful.
If they are not successful, repeat this procedure but the players can now not use their prior attributes and you must keep the individual dice values from this and all prior rounds.
For each duplicate result, a bad thing happens. The Game Master determines this.
Narrate the outcome including the consequences.
In Practice
Okay, so the procedure is there along with a preamble but how do you prepare for this and bring everything together? I have a brief example below alongside some general tips and caveats.
Firstly, the purpose of this is provide a structure for a scene in a game that has some stakes. The main question you are asking is: “How much are the players willing to risk reaching their goal?”. The more they invest into overcoming the scene, the more likely there are to be consequences, especially if it hits multiple rounds as they become more limited by which attributes they can choose.
Secondly, the target number should be chosen based on the system you are playing and what tone you are trying to set. You may find 20 is just too high and the players are having to use too many rounds to overcome the challenge or maybe you are playing some more heroic and 20 is easily met with too little consequences. I think a good rule of thumb is to aim for one round is usually enough alongside a 1-2 consequences per player and maybe a second round every now and then.
Thirdly, it may be prudent to prep the situation (NPCs involved, the general stakes, locations, etc) with some general goals in mind but remain open to what the players want out of this too as they have a say in step 1. Alongside this, the only other thing I would prep is just some general consequences that could happen and some specific consequences for the situation, however you could always just improvise this.
Example
Our cast:
Jimbob Jabowski, the cankerous healer played by Marley
The Game Master: Each of you are lounging around in your makeshift den of mismatched, street furniture hosted in a long abandoned warehouse on the docks. It reeks of sweat and something like dead rats. A subtle smell of bananas lingers in the air – that’s new.
Charli: I am going to walk away from wherever that smell is strongest and eat some of Fihr’s old pastries.
Marley: Where is the smell coming from?
The Game Master: As you all become more aware of the smell, a crazed and gargantuan sentient banana smashes through the door to your sweet digs. It looks to your portable kitchen on wheels Fihr. Large globs of saliva spatter on the stone ground. It is clearly hungry and it is not going to let anything get in its way of your delicious pastries.
Charli:yeep
Marley: Ouch, my ulcers. It smells too great!
Fihr: Yee gads, me pastries!
The Game Master: This is a target number 20 challenge. What is your goal here? Are you going to take it down with brute force, lure it away, or something else?
Party (in unison and maybe song): We’re going to kick its peel off!
The Game Master: Okay, it’s bearing down fixated on the portable kitchen. Marley, what are you contributing to this effort?
Marley: I am using my Dexterity to intercept the banana and trip it up with some fishing wire attached to a support beam. I have 14 in my Dexterity so I am going to contribute 2d4+1d6.
The Game Master: Charli? Same question.
Charli: I am using my Strength to run away with the portable kitchen. Those are my pastries dammit! I want to try to avoid any duplicate results so I am going to contribute just 1d12.
The Game Master: You’re up Fihr!
Fihr: Hmm I don’t really care about those pastries but damn, I loved that door. I am going to try and help Marley trip this thing over by tackling it with my Strength. So I will contribute 2d6.
The Game Master: Okay, *rolls 2d4+3d6+1d12* and the results are {3, 1, 3, 3, 2, 3}. Ouch, that only totals to 15 and you have 3 duplicates! Okay, Marley you stretch the fishing line across and the banana trips up and crashes down onto Fihr and then rolls over and pins you to another support pillar Marley. Both of you take damage. Charli, you took off running but the banana had launched some smashed banana from its split open head as it fell which caused you to slip over, you have the wind knocked out of you. The portable kitchen has rolled out through the backdoor where another banana was waiting! Are you all still invested in this?
Marley: No way! How many bananas are there? I’m out!
Charli: Do you even need to ask? I’m gone.
Fihr: They busted me door! But I suppose I look around and see that I am not backed up, I think I will have to retreat for now.
The Game Master: You cowards flee your warehouse, the sound of sloppy munching can be heard. You all have the sinking feeling that these bananas have just found their new hunting ground.
The past month has been a busy one for me as I have been required to tend to other aspects of my life, but this week I found some time to draft up the next version of GRIMOIRE. The development of GRIMOIRE this week involved some basic layout, a touch of graphic design, and scouring the internet for some pretty pictures. Though I have many more ideas for GRIMOIRE, I believe that I need to step back from it and expose it to a wider audience before I begin implementing more changes – this way the experiences of more people can help shape my ideas and the development of GRIMOIRE.
In the hopes to reach a wider audience, this version of GRIMOIRE will be released as a PWYW. I believe there is a good amount of content already within the game, but I hope to add more study locations in the next edition of the game. I left the list of study locations that I am intending to create in this version so as to give people a better idea of the tone of the game. Maybe I will see people suggest some changes or additions to this list.
Speaking of changes and additions, I already have a few ideas about how to expand GRIMOIRE for the next edition. First, I want to see how others play and enjoy (hopefully) the game before I begin designing, though one system I will be tinkering with on the blog sooner rather than later is the spell generation. From the beginning, I have not been totally pleased with it as I find the tables can be cumbersome and limiting. I enjoy the cards and the referencing aspect of it because it feels a little like mystical research, I think an interesting alternative would be to somehow assign physical books that people own to card suits or numbers or whatever. This is something that I will be exploring in upcoming blog posts and will likely find its way into GRIMOIRE.
On layout and editing: Will I do it again? Yes. Will I enjoy it? Maybe. I do enjoy the design aspect of layout, but it can become very monotonous for me after a while, and it was difficult to come up with a cohesive design because I was only able to work on the development of GRIMOIRE intermittently. I like the final design I went with and I have learned a lot about using Affinity Publisher, particularly the quirks it has with tables *Shakes fist*.
If you are interested in playing GRIMOIRE, you can find it here on my itch.io page. If you have any feedback, criticisms, or ideas then I would love to hear about them. You can either post a comment here on the itch.io page, or on my twitter. Happy Wizarding!
Grimoire is making steady progress. I have just finished creating version 0.3 of Grimoire and I am opening it up for wider public testing. The first round of feedback was very helpful in the development of Grimoire and I am hoping that I can receive even more feedback to ensure that I can develop something that people will enjoy. This post will explore the series of changes that I have made to the game and describe some of the current issues I have or features to be included in future version.
Figure 1. This is the current cover page I am intending to use for the final document.
Changes to Grimoire
I have a leaned further into my inspirations for this project and have now included multiple journal prompts for the Quest entries. To better utilise these entries, I have also introduced a new resource that will have players interact it: friends and foes. These are the two major inclusions of this version along with the beginning of a more in depth wizard creation and some random tables that can be used as inspiration for journal prompts.
In the first round of playtesting, I found that the game could become somewhat repetitive and with minimal player interactivity. To mitigate this, I included multiple journal prompts for each entry that is involved with the Quest procedure. Players will likely be spending most of their time with this action, as such, I wanted to include prompts that explored certain themes or told a small narrative. This current model worked well in Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings and it seems to work well here.
To work alongside the multiple journal prompts, I introduced a new resource that interacts with Quests. Friends and foes activate when certain conditions are met in the drawing of cards for a Quest. They simply work to make things more challenging or easier and provide another twist in the narrative for a player to include in their prompt. I have yet to fully implement it as it requires reviewing many of the journal prompts that already exist which will likely come in the next version. For now, players can simply create a single friend and single foe at the start of the game.
Finally, I wanted to provide players early in the game with a touch more structure to support them in responding to journal prompts. It often takes me a little while to fully immerse myself into a new narrative and by having a player do some initial development, I hope to make this process faster. This includes some simple additions such as creating a name, drive, flaw, and a way to commune with the ley lines. I intend to expand this with some details about the study, however this is a significant feature that will be included in a later version.
Features to be Included
As mentioned, I have several ideas in the works for Grimoire. Firstly, I need to fully implement the friend and foe resource which will require reworking journal prompts. This is something that I was intending to do regardless as they are still quite rough, in particular the prompts for Researching in the City as they mostly lack consequences.
Secondly, I am going to be including multiple options for research locations. Some of these can be seen in the current version, though they are struck out and do not have their respective prompts included. This is a large part of the study aspect of creating as wizard and I am hoping to finish a few of these before I expand on that further.
Finally, I am currently not happy with the manner of spell generation. I think it works well but the aspect that I am least happy with is the Offerings section. I feel like it should be vaguer and more open to interpretation. As it currently stands, it is far too prescriptive for my liking and feels somewhat jarring compared to the rest of the game. I also believe that providing some examples of spell generation within the document itself may support players in tackling that system.
Playtest
If you are interested in trying out the current draft of Grimoire you can find a DropBox download link below. This is quite a rough draft, but I have included a table of contents to help players navigate the document. I am now one step closer to doing some nicer layout work in Affinity Publisher but for now my drafts can remain drafted up in a word processer. I am still implementing features!
Considering this is a rough draft please keep in mind:
There is inconsistent phrasing.
Likely numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes.
No art.
Useable but ugly layout that is inconsistent (tables in word processers hurt me).
If you would like to provide constructive feedback, you can leave a comment here or @BardicInquiry on twitter. I hope, at the very least, you find some joy in playing the game in its current form.
This generator will help you to create a Kaiju that you can use in your roleplaying game adventures. I have since expanded on this generator which I will talk about later.
Kaiju is a fixation of a student of mine. Every time this student is given the opportunity to create something, it is always about a Kaiju and he will talk to me non-stop about them. I love it! A new project was started this week which means more discussion of Kaiju for me, so I thought I would throw together this Kaiju Generator in hopes to pass on the passion of this student to you all.
To put it simply, Kaiju refers to a genre of film that originated in Japan that featured giant monsters, but it can also refer to the giant monsters themselves. The actions of these giant monsters are typically devastating to the planet and pose a global threat. This can range from the intentional destruction of infrastructure or, my student’s favourite, the combat between two giant monsters.
From these discussions with my student and some brief reading on my part, I have discovered that, like most film genres, Kaiju is inherently political (Kaiju Cinema Narratives, Twiggyabsinthe) or representative of society in nature (The Theory and Appeal of Giant Monsters, Red Wedge Magazine). Typically, from the perspective of hubris or the fallout of another people’s actions (King of the Monsters and History of Kaiju Movies, James Hanton). I will not discuss the theories behind the origin of Kaiju as a genre of film as I do not believe I can add much to that discussion, but I will use what I have read to help you create a devastating Kaiju that you can use in your campaigns.
Laying the foundations for an adventure
I am not typically the kind of game master to create a plot and I have yet to fully immerse myself into the idea of a front or similar mechanic as described in Dungeon World. Instead, I like to create situations instead of plots as described by Justin Alexander (Don’t Prep Plots, Justin Alexander). In essence, Justin suggests that a game master lays the foundations for a situation and create the entities involved instead of writing a series of events and contingencies for player actions. The idea behind this is that you set the game up to be reactive to the players, providing them an opportunity to steer the narrative through their character’s actions.
With this in mind, I believe this Kaiju generator will work best if you create the Kaiju and generate an initial plot hook. From this point, the non-player characters and locations that require fleshing out will become clear. The solution for the Kaiju is not for you to know but for your players to create. Most Kaiju films typically begin with scientists observing a strange phenomenon which leads to the witnessing of the Kaiju itself. This works beautifully as a plot hook for your players. The table below suggests six different plot hooks in this theme.
Plot Hook (Roll 1d6)
1. A town or part of the city has sunken beneath the ground after violent tremors.
2. Several lakes and rivers have been seen boiling or evaporating rapidly, and the ground around them is very hot.
3. The ocean has risen, and towns are flooding.
4. A mountain exploded, and large tracks of an unknown beast were sighted nearby
5. People are complaining of a strange voice speaking in an unknown language in their heads
6. An isolated people have begun a strange ritual that seems to impact the weather
A table to spark ideas for an initial plot hook themed to a Kaiju adventure.
Generate a Kaiju
To generate a Kaiju to be used in your campaigns or adventures, roll 1d20 for each of the following four tables (1d10 for the last) or simply choose the results that sound cool. This will create a Kaiju for you in the form of: A gigantic [form] that [has this ability]. It was [something else], now, it is [accomplishing a goal].
A gigantic…
Roll 1d20
1. Lizard
11. Hawk
2. Ape
12. Earthworm
3. Moth
13. Mole
4. Centipede
14. Snake
5. Crab
15. Squid
6. Toad
16. Shark
7. Spider
17. Slug
8. Wasp
18. Tortoise
9. Scorpion
19. Rhinoceros
10. Bat
20. Platypus
Roll 1d20 on this table to determine the form of the Kaiju.
That…
Roll 1d20
1. Spews acid
11. Has hundreds of eyes
2. Has multiple heads
12. Has dozens of limbs
3. Radiates disease
13. Absorbs the life force of everything around it
4. Has a sonic scream
14. Fires lasers
5. That teleports short distances
15. Emits psychic bursts
6. Has metal skin
16. Is made of hard crystal
7. Is made of waste and pollution
17. Oozes slime
8. Creates illusions
18. Can change state (solid, liquid, gas, plasma)
9. Breathes fire
19. Disrupts and creates electrical and magnetic fields
10. Glows
20. Create clones of itself
Roll 1d20 on this table to determine the ability of the Kaiju.
It was…
Roll 1d20
1. From the far reaches of space
11. Frozen in a glacier for many years
2. Created by extra-terrestrial beings
12. An orbiting moon
3. Normal until exposed to radiation
13. Originally the denizens of a city
4. Normal until exposed to pollution
14. Created by the nightmares of those asleep
5. A laboratory experiment
15. Once the lost souls of a battlefield
6. From another dimension
16. Once from the future
7. A god of an ancient civilisation
17. Hatched from an egg
8. From beneath the ocean
18. The result of a summoning gone wrong
9. Created in the core of the planet
19. The manifestation of collective magic
10. Once an island
20. A war machine, now turned sentient
Roll 1d20 on this table to determine the origin of the Kaiju.
Now, it is…
Roll 1d10
1. Seeking revenge on those who disturbed it
6.Acquiring devout worshipers
2. A tool for a secret faction
7.Mistaking an artificial structure for a mate
3. Protecting its territory
8.Hiding from a greater threat
4. Guarding a powerful resource
9.Rampaging across the land
5. Protecting the denizens of this world
10. Controlled by a hidden figure
Roll 1d10 on this table to determine the goal of the Kaiju.
Putting it together
To ensure clarity I am including my use of this generator and thoughts of how I would approach using this information.
For my plot hook I rolled: A mountain exploded, and large tracks of an unknown beast were sighted nearby.
The Kaiju generated was: A giant wasp that creates illusions. It was normal until exposed to pollution and now it is a tool for a secret faction.
Now that I have both the plot hook and kaiju, I already have some ideas floating around in my head. My initial thought was to do with how those tracks were placed as I rolled a wasp. The tracks are going to be slight depressions in an array like that of the six face on a six-sided die to represent each leg of the wasp.
I also want to integrate the ability of this Kaiju in the initial investigation, so the nearby settlements of this mountain were heavily damaged and there is some relief support. Given the disruption, some of these depressions are filled with water and are now being used as an emergency water source. However, shortly after this, the people of these settlements are explaining wild stories of a giant insect erupting from the mountain or only hearing a constant buzzing. Maybe this will make the players think that these people are just hallucinating from drinking the stagnant water.
Because the Kaiju is a tool for a secret faction and was created from pollution, I think it makes sense that a mining corporation is involved. Their day-to-day operations produce a large amount of waste in some form and this has had an adverse effect on a nearby wasp hive. Maybe they discovered some strange, unknown material instead of pollution through their operations too. Whatever it may be, this led to the eventual discovery of the giant wasp of which they trained to support their mining operations. Instead of mining a mountain out, they just had their wasp destroy it and now they are the faction providing relief support by cleaning up the mountain. Why do to the trouble? Maybe it was a licensing issue, maybe it was a rival corporations mountain, maybe it was something else entirely.
From here I know that I must create the destroyed settlements and its people and a mining corporation to set this adventure up. I think it is sounding like the beginning of a wild adventure of corporate espionage. In any case, I hope you found this helpful.
The Wretched is a solo roleplaying game by Chris Bissette that has the player take on the role as the lone survivor of a salvage ship. It is also an intense play experience that inspires dread through its choice of narrative tools and mechanics.
In the game your ship was struck by an asteroid which resulted in engine failure. The crew were all killed by an alien life-form, and now, you must strive to restore the engines and prevent the creature from getting back inside to finish the job. This post is a play report and my reflections of my time spent playing The Wretched.
Figure 1. The Wretched game booklet with artfully positioned Jenga blocks and a deck of playing cards.
How Do You Play The Wretched?
The Wretched utilises a deck of playing cards with the jokers removed, a Jenga tower, a six-sided die, some tokens, and wraps it all up with journal prompts. The game largely operates with the following procedure:
Roll die.
Draw that many cards.
Respond to the prompts.
Pull from the tower if required.
A game of The Wretched lasts around 30 minutes and left me in a delightfully heightened state.
Reflection
Chris suggests that players record their journal prompt responses as audio or video logs after the cards have been responded to. When I played this game, I chose to type up my log and read them out loud as I did so, but I discovered that I may not have given this game the justice it deserved. Each time I read my entry out loud, it felt exciting and helped put me in the role of this lone survivor. It felt more real to say what was happening and act it out with my body than simply just type it on my computer. If you play this game, I highly suggest you record an audio or a video log like Chris suggests because he is right, it is the better experience.
The use of the Jenga tower blends beautifully with the themes of the game and helps to inspire dread. It is used to represent the state of the salvage ship. Most cards will have you pull from the tower and they typically make narrative sense. Each time I bumped my table while playing my heart raced when I saw that tower wobble. To further add to this sense of dread, when all four kings are drawn, the alien life-form will gain access to the ship. Never knowing when each king will arrive is nerve wracking, especially when you already have two or three drawn. And to top it off, you are rolling a six-sided die each day and could be drawing anywhere from one to six cards. I never knew how I would die or when it would happen, but I needed to draw those cards. I needed to survive! The Wretched creates an intense play experience much like that of Dread by imposing a feeling of urgency and suspense.
When I first began playing The Wretched, I felt at odds with the game. I believe this initial feeling was due to Thousand Year Old Vampire (TYOV) as my only prior experience of authoring solo RPGs which is an entirely different game. TYOV is a slow burn while The Wretched is fast and terrifying. Once I realised this, I quickly became hooked.
I am looking forward to the next time I play The Wretched. This time I am going to follow Chris’ advice record an audio log instead of typing it out. If you like sci-fi horror and feeling on edge, I recommend sitting down for thirty minutes and playing a game of The Wretched.
Game Log
Day 1, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. The other members of the crew are dead, and the engines remain non-operational, though ship integrity remains good and life support systems are still active. I successfully jettisoned the intruder from the airlock, but it remains alive and continues to try to access the ship. With a little luck I can repair the distress beacon, and somebody will pick me up. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 2, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I hear it scraping on the outside of the ship, the alarm rings and I try to close it out. I try to remember Lucy. We had the beginnings of something before it came, but I ruined it. Not that it matters anyway. I just wish I had said something, instead of being silent. She was opening to me, trying to be intimate and close and I just did not respond. Now she is dead. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 3, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. The life system keeps making an unhealthy grinding noise, and I do not know what the problem is. I do not know what I will do if it fails, maybe I will try to survive off the reserve air in the portable oxygen tanks. They would not last long. I tried for an escape from the ship using one of the lander modules, but the blasted thing was damaged beyond repair from when the asteroid struck us. I jettisoned it in the hopes the creature would take for it. In disarray I sought some level of control. The internals of the ship were heavily damaged from the encounter with the creature. I fixed all the structural damage, at least the ship creaks less now. This Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 4, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I still remember their screams, though distantly as I hid inside a large salvage bin. I returned to the bin today and found the journal of Lucy. I do not remember taking it there or ever having possession of it. She seemed to be missing her friends back home the most. I wish I did say something back to her. The audio scratched on today, it was the creature, I am sure of it. I cut the comms quickly but not before I heard a distorted chirping and clicking. Mold sprung up in some of the food stores and with the climate control on the fritz, I just sealed it up and hope it holds long enough. Something got into the vents today, I am not sure what it is but to be safe I have padded my feet to prevent myself from making noise when I move around the ship. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 5, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I have taken to calling the creature Chirp because of the noise it made earlier. Maybe I am right and that is how it refers to itself. I heard a faint hissing sound which set me to panic but I quickly saw an oxygen pipe leaking. It must have happened during the collision. It took some time, but it is fixed now. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 6, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. That creature drags itself along the outside of the ship. It is the only way it could make that constant scraping sound. The water purification system barely works, and the water smells faintly of ammonia. It is nauseating. The power shut down and the backup generator did not work. I managed to salvage some parts from the backup for main gen and it is working now, but I do not like my chances of survival anymore. I remember Malak – he jumped in front of the creature to give us all time when it first broke into the ship. It did not buy us much and we could still hear his screams when we ran. Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I say something? Why didn’t I say something?
Day 7, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. Lucy just wanted to talk about a dream, to talk about her fears of us being struck by an asteroid. I did not want to open myself up to that kind of fear. She seemed so stressed and fearful; I did not want to listen… I should have listened. When I was hiding in the salvage bin, the lights changed colour and warped like the particles were entering a magnetic field. That damn creature remembers things. It remembers the door I jettisoned it out of. I could not close the airlock and it comes around at least once a day to try its luck. I never did see the creature properly when it first attacked. It just chirped and occasionally clicked when it moved. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 8, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I had a close call today. The creature tore one of the habitat modules off, but I thankfully heard the tearing of metal in time to allow myself to close off that section of the ship. It could not get in. I followed a long corridor today. The gouges and scratches left by the creature. I think it must be covered in wide, short spikes it uses to drag itself about. I had a little hope restored today when I heard some comms chatter from a distant ship. I do not think they noticed me but maybe tomorrow they will. They were talking about some sport, I think. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 9, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I gathered the bodies of the crew I was closest too. It took most of the day. I did not know what to say to remember them by… All I said was that I was sorry, sorry they are dead and sorry that I hid. Lucy was among them. I could not jettison them. They are still there. I saw some movement amongst the bodies in a sealed off portion of the ship. I do not know what it was, maybe it was the creature feeding? I disabled the proximity alarms; I could not handle them on top of the constant scraping sound. I found a sample of the creature today, some strange looking maroon piece of flesh. Maybe it is an arm? It is covered in rigid spines. This is Emir Bennett, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.
Day 10, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Emir Bennett reporting. I cannot sleep. I keep dreaming of Lucy. The creature. Everyone. That creature haunts my dreams and I hear my friends dying repeatedly. What is that? Something is inside. Ohhh the scraping. It’s… IT’S INSIDE THE SHIP! I HAVE TO HIDE!
Grimoire is steadily making some progress. As with all projects in the early stages of development, I have multiple directions that I could go in. In any case, it will be an authoring solo roleplaying games because I believe that will bolster the artefact created – the grimoire, bolstered by including journal entries from the wizard that created it. Currently, the game is set in a fairly standard fantasy city setting and its surrounding region. I am not sure if I will change this in future, though the inkling is there.
Currently the game works with two modes of play, both of which involve differing amounts of writing journal entries by the player. The reason they are different is simply to keep things feeling fresh and to ensure that spell generation is quick without needing to spend most of the time undertaking creative writing – that is not the sole point of the game. Spell creation is.
Figure 1. Grimoire: A Solo Roleplaying Game
Modes of Play
My initial draft required many journal entries to be written, so much so that I spent two hours playing the game and I had only created 3 spells! Since then, I streamlined the journal prompt generation through the two modes of play: Research and Quest, and I made the game a touch more deadly. The game is much faster now and can be completed within 1-2 hours of play with more spells created and fewer journal entries.
Research is the first mode of play. It involves the player spending Coin to conduct their research in the safety of their office within the city. Currently, this mode works like the spell generation except at the end of it the cards that are used are shuffled and one is drawn to generate a journal prompt. After which, all cards are discarded to reflect the energy given by the wizard to interact with magic.
Quest is the second mode of play. It involves the player spending time away from their study or the city entirely in search of something – often Coin to conduct research with and sometimes other items like magical artefacts that allow cards from the discard pile to be returned to the deck. This is a far more deadly portion of the game as the journal prompts here tend towards the dangerous and instead of one journal prompt, a player will respond to a minimum of three to complete a quest. In this section, each entry for a card has three prompts much like Thousand Year Old Vampire portrays journal prompts. The reason I chose to implement this is to provide a more satisfying story arc across quests and because these cards are not discarded, therefore repeats may occur. It would be boring to have to respond to the same prompt time and time again.
So far, these two game structures work well, and it helps bring more flavour into the world while providing the player an opportunity to explore the wizard character. However, I am not entirely sold on this approach and I am considering changing it to focus even more on the creation of a spell and the drawing a glyph. Possibly extending the time of creating a spell by incorporating more of that into the Quest game structure. I am also undecided on whether or not to keep the original method for generating spells with cards or to adapt it more to Grimoire. It works fine as is, but I wonder if it could be better or, at least, different.
The Setting
I was not sure about a setting and I am still not sure of the setting that I have chosen for Grimoire just yet. The game is set in a fairly typical fantasy world that does not try to be too different so as to not have the wizards and grimoires created feel out of place when transferred to your worlds. It is centred around the City of Athanasia which is a pearlescent city of white created by a mysterious figure: The Great Wizard. None know them and none speak with them but from time to time, people do see them. Several journal prompts refer to The Great Wizard so as to provide a moment for the wizard to reflect on magic and their progress.
The surrounding land is again fairly standard, though quite humanised. Wizards will meet a variety of characters from wizard hunters to dream merchants to simple mercenaries. It is designed to flexible and easily ported to your own world. In saying this, a part of is considering removing the surrounding area and focusing solely on the city or maybe changing the city into a university or library of some kind where wizards conduct research. Another option is to include both. After all, the journal entry prompts for the city are the smallest because they only have 1 prompt each instead of the 3 that exists for Quests.
Overall, the game is developing nicely, and my head is swimming with ideas. Soon I want to start having others playtest it and maybe then I will begin to have some answers to my questions above.
For now, you too should listen to the humming of the ley lines to keep up with news about Grimoire by following this blog below. I would also appreciate hearing your thoughts, questions, or ideas over at twitter.
The Bardic Inquiry 