[Paladin] Shatterer - A Mythic Hindu-Inspired Campaign

[W. Don]

Hi, all.

Haven't been around here that much recently. Nevertheless, I'm back and checking in here with a report.

My gaming group and I finally picked up Paladin recently. Our last experience with coherently written Nar was InSpectres. It was also our first experience with Nar games as a group (and it kicked our teeth in, stole our lunch money, and tore the house down!).

Maybe because we wanted as big a change as we could manage from the incredibly fun mundanity of our InSpectres run, we decided to go for broke and see if we could work out a setting that was big and mythic. (Okay, I never imagined I'd say that -- "incredibly fun mundanity" -- but InSpectres does strange things to you.)

Anyways, maybe it was too much tandoori chicken, but we came up with an eastern-flavored (and anime-ish), hindu-inspired setting. I've been calling the beast Shatterer in reference to that quote in the Bhagavad-Gita that goes, "I am become Shiva, Death, The Shatterer of Worlds." -- supposedly the only words Lord Shiva, The Destroyer, ever spoke. Yikes.

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To get on with it: The players are to take on the roles of  avataars, or agents, faces, manifestations, whatever, of Shiva in a huge and mythic east-asia landscape. Each of the characters have already died at least once. However, just before their souls rejoined The Great Wheel of Karma, these were snatched away by Lord Shiva who then set upon them the dharma (or path) of the Destroyer -- to aid the gods  in their struggle against the asuura, the demons of  hindu myth.

The characters serve The Divine Cycle of birth, life, and death. In this, however, they are clearly instruments of the third of the three. To tie it all into the whole hindu myth backdrop, we took the three "faces" of the trimurti, the hindu trinity, for a bit of guidance and some flavor: Brahma - The Creator, He Who Brings Forth, Vishnu - The Preverver, The Protector, and of course, Shiva - The Destroyer.

Here's how we've written down the code:

The Kaarya

1. I am Brahma, The Creator (minor laws):
     (a) Teach the value of life under the Way of Heaven.
     (b) Give hope to the suffering and the weary, for
           hope lights the Way of Heaven.
     (c) Never sow the seeds of envy, malice, or lust for
          these will never lead to the Way of Heaven.

2. I am Vishnu, The Preserver (major laws):
     (a) Protect the innocent and give aid to those who
          tread the Way of Heaven.
     (c) Preserve the truth and the sanctity of vows
          and bargains, for these are the bedrock of the
          Way of Heaven.

3. I am Shiva, The Destroyer (unbreakable law):
     (-) Annihilate the defilers of creation, and purge the
         world of the consumed and those beyond hope.

For animus effects, we've been concentrating on big-ass, scene-stealing mythic magic -- the kind you see in all those anime shows. The players aren't required to choose a specific weapon. However 2 out of the 3 starting special abilities have to be clearly offensive and death-dealing without a shadow of doubt. (The players should also maintain that ratio of deadly vs. non-deadly powers should they wish to add to their abilities later on.)

Two examples from character generation:

Maal is (1) basically a suit of armor who can make himself grow bigger and stronger; (2) he posseses formidable fighting ability (ie: Arms); and (3) he can create an all-consuming void around him that destroys whatever's in his path.

Reja can (1) use shadows for sneaking up on her enemies and short-range teleporting; (2) she can command the shadows to tear apart her enemies; and (3) she weilds a length of chain that can extend and grow metal barbs with which she can strangle her enemies.

All supernatural effects  follow the rules in Paladin except that I'm also applying the "big weapons"  rule (ie: add a dice or two, but require more successes) for notably sweeping or mega-sized supernatural  effects.

Now for the baddies:

The asuura, the demons, are out to spread evil and suffering in the world. They are essentially without form or shape. In their natural state, they cannot be detected by any of the five senses. They have no bodies, no faces, no hands nor feet. What the demons do have is the power to possess, and then twist and deform the various elements of life – both physical and spiritual.

They can deform any living thing (eg: a tree, a person, an animal) into whatever shape that suits their purpose. If I imagine this sort of power taken to it's higher levels, I'm seeing the sort of vile semi-fluid, spiked and tentacled critters that tend to populate  Japanese anime. (Yamite! Hentai!)

The asuura are also capable of twisting the hearts of the living by encouraging their darker emotions. More than the power to distort living matter, the ability to sneak into the minds of the living and grow within the seeds of greed, malice, and lust is a demon's greatest and most formidable weapon. It is this ability that leads a host to be consumed by his own evil, turning that host into a new asuura in the process. No one, save the noblest of gods and wisest of sages is immune to this.

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And that's how it all stands right now with Shatterer. We're still tweaking things a bit but we managed a few quick play-test scenarios last weekend.

Some observations, first from during the campaign-brewing period:

1. It was very satisfying for me to observe the players' Narrativist tendencies come strongly to the fore when the code was written. There was actually very little encouragement on my part, I simply explained that this was their chance to "rig" the conflicts that were to play out in the game. They dove right into it and were consciously suggesting laws that had strong potential for conflicting with each other. We drew up the final code from those suggestions.

I think this was a direct result of our InSpectres experience that hammered into them the basic idea that they owned the game. They owned the game. They owned the game. Now they actually snatch the game away from me when they get the chance. Hissing at me all the while. Which, of course, puts a big smile on my face.

2. One of the suggestions during code-formulation was "Observe the Heirarchy of Heaven"  with some players envisioning their characters arranged along a chain of command of sorts and "rank versus rank" scenes were to play out. We eventually decided that this was maybe asking for too much blood opera and chucked it. I personally felt it had too much potential to deprotagonise  the folks who might end up with a lower rank.

3. Someone kept on asking, "What happens if I loose my weapon?" to which I replied that I had no answer and that we'll have to wait and see. I took this as a very Gamist question. This particular player had other questions along the Gamist line like "What's the advantage of the Dark Side?" and the like. However, it's interesting to note that when it came to actual play (See "Reja" below) she let loose and became quite the Narrativist.

3. I think it was very helpful (especially for the new guys who joined us and who haven't yet seen a Nar system) when I pointed out that the Attribute descriptors (ie: Flesh/Light/Dark, etc.) where there really for the player's own benefit. So that they can describe to themselves their own characters and get a good grasp on what makes him or her tick. Before they realised that, they didn't quite understand what the fuss was all about.  

After that realisation though, they quickly figured out for themselves how they could use their descriptors in a Nar way. One of them was envisioning some sort of great fall whereby his "imagination"  will finally give way to his "frustration". The character was a caligrapher.

4. The whole idea of the demons being essentially unseen but with the power to posses people was the players' idea. They were thinking it would be really neat if we could leave lots of room for interpretation about whether someone is demon-possesed or not. I thought this was a very potent idea for the campaign and was more than happy to follow through with it.

Here's some actual play from the test runs we did:

Scene 1: Our five Shatterers have cornered a villainous local warlord. They've fought through several ranks of his troops and so on, and now they finally have him at their mercy. At the crucial moment, just before the killing blow is struck, they hear a tiny but enraged scream. It's the bad guy's 10 year-old son.

The child attacks them, tooth and nail. The lead character at  the scene is practically mauled by the little tyke and takes a knife to the jugular in the service of all that's good and holy. Nonetheless he survives the blow and finally  gets a good grip on the kid, holding him at arm's length.

The rest of the characters close in. The child's rage, they find out, is fueled only by his love for his father -- who is, unfortunately a very evil man; practically all demon by now.  So, the big question turns out to be: what do they do with the child? They have to kill the evil warlord, that's for sure. But what the heck do they do with his kid, who really only wants to protect the father whom he loves as deeply as a good son would.

To make a long story short, using their various supernatural powers, our heroes "open the  child's eyes" to the unspeakable horrors commited by his father -- battelfields littered with the dead and dying, countless villages raped and plundered, women and children put to the torch, all in the name of greed and bloodlust, etcetera and so on and so forth.

And then one the characters tenderly takes the ten-year old's own dagger, places it in the child's small trembling hands and bids him firmly but softly, "Do what you must." The child must kill his father.

( When Abraham's character did that, my jaw dropped, I swear.
Somewhere to my right, Madeleine was going, "Oh crap. That's
sick! Sick!" To my left, one of the new guys was muttering something about what a "helluva very paladin-like thing" this was to do. Man, it was complicated! Whoowee! )

Reja: (This was the player with all the Gamist questions, Madeleine, who was getting all sick from the sheer horror of the scene.)

She decides that her character's had enough. So she snaps her chain and breaks the evil warlord's neck. Declaring that "No child should be made to go through this!" She even took the effort to hide the killing under a veil of shadow (part of the character's supernatural abilities) to censor the scene from the child.

It was really amazing that despite her dang-blasted Gamist questions, the Reja player turned all the way around to make a distinctly Nar stand for her character. We talked about it all after the game and she was surprised herself to see how much of a big "story" highlight she made.  She explained to me that that was really what she, the player, felt at that point, that it was getting sick and she had to stop it.

Here's another scene:

Scene 2: Maal. The demon who has just landed the fatal blow is staring him in the eye saying, "I can give you life, great warrior! If only you take my hand and allow me inside you... (Mwahahahahaha!)"

(I was trying for a complete rip-off of Clinton's Paladin run. The one where you've got the baddie making the same offer to some poor joe hanging at the edge of a cliff. The character in Clinton's game commited suicide.)

Maal then spits in the demon's face and says, "GO TO HELL!" He then says the equivalent of "I'm a prideful bastard and I am not going to defeated by you!" (Character looking to his descriptors to guide him).

We then see Maal, fueled by his own pride, create a "Circle of Doom" around him and his assailant, killing the nearby innocent bystanders, thus gaining enough raw power (and raw evil) in the process to take out the demon in the ensuing blast.

Now that scene was just really incredible. It was "active attribute versus active attribute" -- which we've learned can be incredibly deadly in the game. Getting to that point just before the killing blow, I remember the Animus was just piling up and piling up.

What was very very satisfying for me was that the whole scene neatly summed up the game's premise. "What is evil?" (At least that's what I think the Paladin premise is.) The player answered that big time, saying "THIS is evil! And I'm GOING TO DO IT!" It was all rather powerful for all of us at the gaming table.

Finally, one nice touch for this scene was that another player realised he that he should be implicated in the wholesale annihilation of innocent bystanders. His earlier actions were to give the Maal character just enough Animus to gain a few short breaths; enough to initiate the "Circle of Doom" thing. The player decides to fling himself into the deadly blast at the very last moment, to, in his words "join the innocents whom he has slaughtered".

Since the player who decided that he was an "accessory to the murder"  was to leave the game for a few months, we decided that his character would - uhm - do some yoga meditation thing inside the spiritual plane in the body of Maal (who's really just a suit of armor) for the time being (to atone and remove his Marks). We'll have him spring out of there when he arrives from his vacation.

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And that's it for now, folks.

Thanks, Clinton. It's really been just incredible playing Paladin and coming up with our Shatterer campaign. It's great to see all of the work here at The Forge find it's way onto our gaming table in full color. Our experience so far with the whole thing has been via some hastily run test sessions so I can't wait for our first formal game this weekend.

Pass the chutney!

- W.

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Don.

Whoa.

I'm a big fan of Paladin and all I can do is gape in wonderment and curse the fact that Manilla is so very far away. Thanks for the inspiring post![/url]

[W. Don]

Hey, Michael:

Thanks for the thumbs-up!

I hope to post more in the coming weeks -- especially  problems that may come up since I'm seeing a number of those at this point. Hmm. In fact, maybe I should a post one of my "foreseeable problems" right now. If anyone can help, some input about the stuff below would be appreciated.

One of the two new guys we've got (whose Nar experience is next to nil), is, I believe playing from a very Gamist standpoint. While the Reja player I wrote about up there (with all those dang-blasted Gamist questions)  seems to have gone completely Nar and is starting to dig the mode, this one is still hovering on the threshold.

For example, just the other day he mentioned to me: "Aha! I've got my min-max strategy all figured out!... can I change my stats?" to which I replied said, "Sure. Go ahead, man. Blow your brains out," since things like stats and powers won't be fixed or final until this weekend.

All this time, at every chance I get, I've been emphasizing to these two new folks that I'd like more than anything for them to get the most out of the game. However, since it isn't your "normal" game, they'd have to get the most out of it in a very different way from what they might be used to doing. I've been giving examples about how they might  take a good look at their descriptors, and how they can use these things to role-play, and how they might use them to put some zing into the story. Things like that.

At any rate, to focus on the guy who want to change his stats. Here's what he wants:

Code Select Expand


          Flesh         Light             Dark
          ---------------------------------------------
 Active:  Strength  5   Determination 4   Brashness 3
Reactive:  Toughness 3   Tolerance     1   Anger     0
 Social:  Demeanor  1   Honesty       1   Rudeness  0
          ---------------------------------------------


In fact, when he proposed the above, he didn't say a word about his descriptors. Rather he assumed the old descriptors he listed down last week (rather casually too, I might add) and then tweaked the numbers. He has explicitly said that his tactic will be to go Active vs. Active during combat.

Now, short of kicking him out, I'm not exactly sure what to do. I'm thinking of having a talk with him before the game this Sunday about his descriptors and try to see if we can both get a good grasp of how he sees these traits play during the game. (I don't want to appear as too serious, though.)

I'm also a bit leery about the actual numbers. Should I be? Does anyone have some suggestions on maybe a scene or two I could spin out to sidestep the Gamist thrust of this player's stats?

Thanks!

- W.

[Tony Irwin]

Hey there - I notice that his Dark attributes don't tie into the laws at all.  I'd suggest insisting that he try and match his Dark attributes to the laws that you and the group came up on. Explain that dark attributes should be sins in the game world. Brahma never says "Don't be rude" but he does say "Don't sow seeds of envy malice and lust". The Code in your first post suggests the following Dark attributes to me:

(a) Teach the value of life under the Way of Heaven. Secrecy
(b) Give hope to the suffering and the weary, for
hope lights the Way of Heaven. Stingy
(c) Never sow the seeds of envy, malice, or lust for
these will never lead to the Way of Heaven. Envy, Malice, Lust

(a) Protect the innocent and give aid to those who tread the Way of Heaven. Selfish
(c) Preserve the truth and the sanctity of vows and bargains, for these are the bedrock of the Way of Heaven. Liar, Deception

(-) Annihilate the defilers of creation, and purge the world of the consumed and those beyond hope. Leniancy, Defiler

I'd ask him to come up with some new Dark attributes that actually put his character at some risk of breaking the code. For example Gloria (page 7) has cunning, which jars with "You shall not tell an untruth", and also rage, which potentially jars with "You shall not kill an innocent".

During play I would give him what he wants - lots of cool combats. Fighting in trees, on roof tops, NPCs challenging him to blind folded contests or whatever.  Before the game plan out lots of options for bringing moral conundrums into the midst of the combats. (Like getting attacked by the little kid in your first adventure - that was really astouning, my examples are pretty lame).

(a) Teach the value of life under the Way of Heaven. Have a hero-worshiping bunch of little kids following them around watching every combat

(b) Give hope to the suffering and the weary, for hope lights the Way of Heaven. An army of paupers, beggars and disfigured victims of disease is on the march, burning villages and killing innocents

(c) Never sow the seeds of envy, malice, or lust for these will never lead to the Way of Heaven. Again, have an NPC audience (some lustful and envious groupies) for all the combats. Or a lynch mob that follows around "helping out" the heroes in ways they weren't asked to.

(a) Protect the innocent and give aid to those who tread the Way of Heaven. Make the innocents very violent (like that cool kid you had)

(c) Preserve the truth and the sanctity of vows and bargains, for these are the bedrock of the Way of Heaven. Make sure that the people the paladins have promised not to fight, are the ones desperate to fight them

(-) Annihilate the defilers of creation, and purge the world of the consumed and those beyond hope. Ensure that the defilers, are also "the suffering and weary" and as innocent as you can make them

With Paladin I think the trick is to create situations where the laws are in conflict with each other - and it's especially great when those situations are explosively violent. Anyway it means you can give him plenty of combat for a couple of sessions until the two of you can decide if this is the game he wants to play in, but still provide lots of meaty moral conflicts around the combats. That's how I'd handle it - if he doesn't get it, then he doesn't get it. (Or doesn't want it - and there's nothing wrong with that.)

[W. Don]

Hey, Tony.

Wow. Thanks for the input!

Hey there - I notice that his Dark attributes don't tie into the laws at all.  I'd suggest insisting that he try and match his Dark attributes to the laws that you and the group came up on. Explain that dark attributes should be sins in the game world. Brahma never says "Don't be rude" but he does say "Don't sow seeds of envy malice and lust".

I  needed this insight. That's such a simple and straightforward way to look at it that I can't beleive it didn't occur to me right away. (My skull must be thicker than I thought!) I'll be pointing this out to all the players.

I'd ask him to come up with some new Dark attributes that actually put his character at some risk of breaking the code. For example Gloria (page 7) has cunning, which jars with "You shall not tell an untruth"...

Ditto this one.

Have a hero-worshiping bunch of little kids following them around watching every combat

have an NPC audience (some lustful and envious groupies) for all the combats. Or a lynch mob that follows around "helping out" the heroes in ways they weren't asked to.

Your suggestions were all great and very concrete, Tony. I really needed them, I think, to get out of this paralysis I seem to be in regarding the Gamists in the group.

And I think the  two suggestions above are exceptionally cool!  In fact, it all ties in neatly to what 1 or 2 of the players were suggesting: That it'd rock when our group of heroes finally gets to the more urbanised areas! They seem to be expecting some sort of "minimise casualties" scenario to unfold. But the suggestions about "fans" above will no doubt bring things up to another level.

I'm seeing a great game tomorrow!

if he doesn't get it, then he doesn't get it. (Or doesn't want it - and there's nothing wrong with that.)

I agree completely. It's still too early to tell what's going to happen to this guy, though. We'll see in the coming play sessions.

Again, thanks for input, Tony.

- W.