Your Gods are Dead: Introduction

[Tobias]

Hello All,

A quick introduction first: Tobias op den Brouw, 28, from Deventer, the Netherlands, co-owner of a consultancy, engineer, single, interests include reading, ninjutsu, climbing, motorcycling, cooking, etc.

And, of course, games. I've played my share of RPGs - (A)D&D, WoD, Shadowrun being the most prominent of them - and a whole boatload of board- and cardgames (Catan and Vampire: The eternal struggle being chief among those).

Now, a bunch of RGPs and boardgames I've tweaked and used for myself or for showing to other groups. I've come up with a global paradigm to tie all my RPGs together, if I am ever in need to do so (A mix of Amber and WoD), and am now starting up a game set within that paradigm/system.

However, it's a bit of a kludge. Bothered by that, I decided to see what'd happen when I threw everything I disliked about RPGs out of the window, and kept just the bare principles the way I like them (something all of you must've done at some point as well, right?).

After about two weeks of mulling things over, I have decided that what's solidifying in my mind is interesting enough to try to make work - and playtest. I've got my own group to try out some things on, and there's a second group I'll not be playing in that's expressed some interest in trying it as well.

Interesting enough, the game's moved far away enough from my original paradigm that I might not bother to keep them connected. I call it (for now, but I'm pretty happy with the title): Your Gods are Dead.

When it's all written up, I plan to turn it into a .pdf and distribute it. If it is good enough to ask a couple of bucks for at that point, I'll set up a paypal thingy, maybe. If it isn't, I won't mind, then it's one of those 'my baby's out there' jobs and I'll have something to use for myself.

But that's in the future: let's live in the now and enjoy the cooking and the dish that's shaping up.

My intention is to give you the layout of the text in chapters, and give you the introduction in this post. You'll note it's textually geared towards the beginning roleplayer - this may be a result of just starting up with my roleplaying group which contains 2 newbies and 1 veteran roleplayer. If that bothers you (or you think it's fine), let me know as well, please.

I've got all the rules fleshed out as much as I care to about now, and chapter 3 (character creation) is also almost done (except for all the details of merit and flaw lists - one of my interests is keeping the game somewhat slim and flexible and not overdoing it with too many flashy, glimmery things). Chapter 3 would be the next thing I'll post (in a few days), then chapter 4 on action resolution mechanics/rules.

Your comments are, of course, greatly appreciated. Be as harsh as needed, the work can only benefit or deservedly end up in the bin (where I'll rescue it from and cuddle it's mashed form to my chest).

Table of contents:

Introduction   
-  What's this game like?   
-  Dead gods and the world thereafter   
-  The world and the Bag   

A world of new beginnings   
-  The Old World   
-  Rain Day   
- The New World   

Your character   
-  What makes up a character?   
-  Stuff that defines your character (Concept)   
 -  Core: Value & Goal -> Karma & Push   
 -  Contact: Forming, Flowing and Dreaming   
 -  Career   

Interacting with the World – the Bag   
-  When to (not) use the Bag?   
-  Acting within your group   
-  Drawing   
-  Change (character and world)   

Keeping the Story   
- [Several topics]

Introduction

What's this game like?

This is a game about telling fantasy stories with a group of friends.

Imagine one of the characters in one of your favorite stories – book, movie, play. Now, imagine yourself, or a character you like, next to your favorite, in that story as well. And instead of just following the author's script, imagine you being able to act as you would like, and the author adapting the story around you.

You play this game by getting a group of your friends together and playing out the stories you like. One of you will be the 'author' you've just read about – known as the Storykeeper in this game. The rest of you get to play characters in your world. The Storykeeper (and this book) will give you surroundings that fire your imagination – and you get to provide your personal touch – and to steer the story with your actions.

Imagine looking up into the sky, a warm evening night. You're feeling good, but somethings – off. Different. You're not educated about the nightsky, but somehow the stars are out of place. Then, as you look up, a chill starts to creep down your spine as you see things falling towards you. You start running to the nearest grove of trees, as you see and feel a flaming streak, a house wide, hit and shatter the earth two fields away... and you feel a presence there.

Rain Day came. The gods died.

Dead gods and the world thereafter

This is a fantasy game – in an early medieval world where the gods have just died. For generations, your parents, their parents, on and on, have lived in relative peace and quiet. Now, the old sureties are gone. Rain Day has come and gone, about a decade past, leaving people changed. The old rituals that kept crops growing and cured sick children do not work any more. People have to find their place, the values they live for, all over again. Society also has to adapt – which is like saying a fever-patient has to recover from a potentially fatal wound.

All the power that might've been left in the fragments that rained down died, soon after they hit the earth. All that power had to go somewhere though – and some of it flowed into people. It did not make them into gods, nor did it give them access to raw power – but somehow, these people are more in touch with reality. You're one of these people.

The world and the Bag

This game assumes that a group needs a few rules to tell a good story. If you can get a group of people together that don't need this – great! You might still use this game for a few ideas about this specific world, but you probably don't need it.

The rules are based on the idea that there's not much of a challenge for the players if everything they want their characters to do succeeds automatically – and to offer a way to decide things if two characters are doing something with opposing goals.

The rules boil down to two sections – how to make a character, and how to decide what happens when those characters act in the world. Both are detailed later on, but a quick preview of the central method of deciding whether stuff succeeds or fails, the Bag, might be helpful.

The Bag is literally that – a bag, filled with tiles. A tile might be anything, really – marbles, poker chips, game pieces from other games, whatever you find comfortable. Whenever a character tries to take an action that might fail, the player draws a number of tiles from the bag. The more skilled the character is, the more are drawn. The bag contains tiles indicating success, a larger amount of blank tiles, and a few special tiles (explained later). You're looking to draw those successes. Get enough, and what you want to do works.

Without going into too much detail, one important feature of YGAD is that the world/surroundings, the outcome of your earlier stories, and the characters actually influence which special tiles are in the bag! More on that later, but the essence is this: your character's presence matters – and so do his actions.

[xiombarg]

Well, I like the sound of the Bag -- sort of like the Legend Chips from Deadlands. I'd be very interested in hearing more about that.

[Tobias]

Thanks for the reply,

yeah, I have a copy of deadlands floating about somewhere in my house (could not for the life of me find it this week, though, hope it's not lost).

As you can see, I've gone ahead and done and posted character creation. I really don't think I can finish chapter 4 this week as well (work, training and social obligations getting in the way this weekend), but hopefully monday will give me new chances.

But, since you wanted to know something about the bag:

The Bag would contain the following tiles:

70 'white'
30 'red'

This is the base. The white tiles are blanks - the red tiles are successes. You'll note that a draw of 1 tile is basically equal to rolling a d10 with a target number of 8+. I thought this would be a lot easier than rolling d10s all the time and reading results - and then, today, I see the post on the new WoD site that's got their d10s colored in such a way to make them easier to read. Good move by them.

The amount of tiles drawn depends on your character as described in the link. Also, a character gets to draw one additional tile if their action description is vivid and uses (their perception of )the surroundings (environment) well.

Fortunately, there's more than just ease of use appeal to the bag. Of course, drawing 7 tiles from the bag isn't exactly the same, probabilistically, as rolling 7 d10s, but I'll ignore that for the moment. The 'cool' part is letting the game world actually become part of probability. In addition to the base tiles, I also have the following in my bag:

1 Good Karma tile - character immediately gains a karma
1 Bad Karma tile - character immediately loses a karma, or fails critically
3 Environment tiles - the characters 'contact' with reality activates, IF they've described their action in an imaginative way that shows their character's connection to the world
1 player tile for each player - if this tile is drawn in resolution of any action, that player gets to narrate the results of that action (still bound by the number of successes the draw indicates). I'm not sure i should add any more effects to the player tile - maybe reward with something if the description's really good.

Further tiles I am thinking of are:

- Bad guy tiles. Similar to character tiles, but for 'key' NPCs.
- Strong magical (or other effect) tiles - drawing these means the effect plays some role in resolution of the action.
- legendary tiles - these are similar to the legendary poker chips in deadlands, I guess. A reward for the players for big story succes. Note that story success will ALSO come in a change of the environment the players are operating in (for instance, the environment of a haunted castle will change if they lay the ghost to rest)

All above would actually be added to the bag - so maybe some adjustment of the red and white tiles will then be needed

- strategic tiles - it would be easy to mark some of the blank tiles to indicate 'success' for several global factions that work in the larger world. nothing the player might see directly, but a way to keep things a bit fresh for the storykeeper. Other than that, it's just a blank tile.

Another thing I like about the bag (and will discuss in the storykeeper section of the text) is the ability to tune it to your group's liking. Think 30/70 is too skewed? Make if 40/60. (also making skills relatively more important than bonuses) Think the 'specialness' of the characters is not happening often enough? Toss in 2 extra environment, or extra player tiles.

Of course, as storykeeper, you don't have an absolute need to reveal the composition of the bag to your players. Shift it around a little during adventures. Toss in a few unexpected tiles. After a series of draws they might start to see the effects of a previously unknown tile on the surroundings - and figure out the way the local environment works (thus, also, partly, the reason for the setting and 'contact' between players and reality).

[Ben Lehman]

Note about the Bag:  The probability is different here than drawing tokens -- drawing from a 70/30 bag is not like roll a ten sided dice for above 6.  In particular you are more likely to have one success and less likely to have a lot.

yrs--
--Ben

[Tobias]

Note about the Bag:  The probability is different here than drawing tokens -- drawing from a 70/30 bag is not like roll a ten sided dice for above 6.  In particular you are more likely to have one success and less likely to have a lot.

yrs--
--Ben

Thanks, Ben, I am aware of that, although I only hint at this in the text, I know. Every tile drawn increases the probability of a next draw getting one of the opposite tiles. The effect isn't earth-shattering, but it does serve to deform the outcome distribution (which I don't mind).