COAT OF ARMS
by Aaron Brown (with ideas stolen from Adam Cerling’s “Ends and Means” and ideas and text stolen from Mark Whithers’s “Anti-Pool Variation”)

The Setting and Situation
There is a legend, a legend of a lowly squire who was good of heart, but not as big or as strong as the other squires of the castle.  One day, a rival squire betrayed their lord to another lord, and this small squire had to watch helpless as his lord’s castle and village burned to the ground.  The only thing left was the Well in the chapel of the Drowned God.  Having nothing else for which to live and cursing himself for his own weakness, the squire grabbed his lord’s shield and jumped into the Well, drowning himself.
Years later, another village on the other side of the kingdom was under attack.  In its time of need, the Well of the Drowned God started bubbling and out came a large man wearing armor of the purest white and a sword sharper than an eagle’s talons, and with him was a shield decorated in a coat of arms not seen before in the land.  This strange knight fought with the power and valor of ten men and easily routed the evil bandits.  Then the young knight shared with the village the squire and how the Drowned God took pity on him and changed him into a powerful knight, but that this memory was a gift and that memory of the previous life would not be granted to others, it was to be a sacrifice that the knights who Baptized themselves made to the Drowned God.
Other legends tell that the Kingdom of Archonia was once a peaceful land united by a good High King and his brave and daring knights.  If that was ever true, it isn’t true anymore.  Now the land is divided between great families and their vassals, each with an equal and valid claim to the crown.  If ever there was a need for knights of legend it is now.

Your Knight
You are playing a knight that has been Baptized in the Well of the Drowned God.  That means that you have no memory,
no back-story, and no idea of current events.  All you have is a set of armor, a sword, and a shield that has been personalized for you.  For character creation, you design that shield, drawing your Coat of Arms (see other sources on how you do that).
**Insert character creation example here**
From your shield, you will generate a list of 3 traits, which gives you more opportunity to describe your character and influence the direction of the story by taking over the narrative during play.
**Insert character creation sample here**
Now write down three quests, goals, hopes, or dreams for your character.  Ideally, these should be broad goals like “protect the weak” or “become the High King”, but narrower goals like “kill ten bandits” are also acceptable.  You don’t want to set your sights too low, though, because if a goal is achieved during play, it (and it’s dice pool, see the conflict section for more) is removed from play.  You can replace goals between sessions.
**Insert character creation sample here**
Finally, take six dice and assign them to your traits and six dice and assign them to your quests.  These are your starting pools.

The Referee
One player will be the referee; he doesn’t get to play one of the games main characters, but his job is a very important one.
He has four roles: controlling scene framing, controlling/creating aspects of the environment, controlling/creating NPCs, and calling for conflicts/assigning dice from the referee’s pool for conflicts.
The referee is NOT the final authority on everything. The gravest sin in roleplaying is the referee taking over the game and favoring his image of the story above everyone else’s. The game is a collaborative effort. Everyone works together.  As the players contribute input, it is their sacred duty to say “yes” to the player or make the player roll dice.  Since the referee has a limited amount of dice in their dice pool, saying “yes” is usually the safer action.
The referee can point out when player’s actions are not in the best interests of other people’s enjoyment, or don’t conform to the themes of the game. Then again, any player can and should point out when this is happening.

Conflict Rolls
The majority of game play consists of acting out what your character says and describing what he does.
However, if everything went your character’s way, the story would quickly stagnate. Therefore, we use a system of dice rolling to add a little random chance to your character’s life. We call these moments of fate conflict rolls and they take place, appropriately enough, when a character wants to initiate or resolve some kind of conflict, action, or drama to forward plot and characterization.
Players have pools of dice that represents their ability to influence events. The more they have, the more chance they have of contributing with their ideas for how the story should progress.

Rolling
When the referee calls for a conflict roll, each player with a character in the scene may declare his or her character’s stake (i.e. intention, what their character wants to walk away with from this conflict).  **Insert more on what stakes really are**
The referee then chooses a number of dice out of his pool to be the conflict dice.  These dice are not rolls, but are counted as automatic success that the players must try to match or beat.  The number of dice can vary and act as a power scale, but a general scale for Coat of Arms is based on Dynasty Warriors 4 and is:
1 Tricking two city guards.  Dancing at a great ball without hurting yourself or your partner.Fighting against five normal men (anything less and just let the player describe how the knight kills the man)
2 Fooling a whole village.  Impressing a count’s daughter with your charm.Fighting against twenty normal men or one normal knight
3 Talking an angry count out of going to war for a personal insult to his daughter.  Charming the count’s wife.Fighting against fifty normal men or one experienced knight
4 Convincing a king that you should inherit a count’s land even though you are the one who killed him.  Impressing a princess with your charm.Fighting against two normal knights or a knight champion
5 Talking an angry king out of going to war for a personal insult to his daughter.  Charming the queen.Fighting against an inexperienced dragon

Each player than chooses one trait that would be appropriate to the conflict and one goal they are trying to further.  Keeping the two pools separate, the player rolls the dice.
Any die rolled that comes up as a 5 or a 6 is counted as a success.  If you get more successes than the referee’s conflict dice, then you get to narrate what happens.  If two or more players beat the referee, then they should collaborate on narration. **Insert text for if the players can’t agree**  If the referee wins, he gets to narrate.
When you narrate; you can describe what your character does, as well as the actions of others, and any additions of color, atmosphere etc… that you desire.
This narrative power comes with responsibility. It is important that you stick to the established tone and theme of the genre and setting, and do not make any irreversible changes to another one of the main characters. (The referee’s characters are fair game!) Keep your narrative reasonably short. Don’t stray too far beyond resolving the conflict at hand. As for your prose, don’t go over the top, your narration is a chance to have fun and entertain the other players, not to bore them!

Spoils of War
After the narration is done, it is time to split up the spoils of war.  Unlike real spoils of war, the winner must give to the loser.  Simple conflicts involving only two people (a player and the referee or two players) are easy, the winner simply gives the loser a number of dice from his pools equal to the number of successes the loser rolled plus one.  The loser then divides these dice equally between the trait and goal pools used.
**Insert example spoilage**
In more complex conflicts, the winners must divide their success among the losers.  ** Work out how more complex successes are divided**

Between Games
If you wish to continue playing with the same knights, it's important that they change and grow. At the end the session, you may add a few more details to your coat of arms, and, if you wish, one additional trait (that starts with two dice).
You may change your goals as well, swapping out new goals for old goals or replacing goals that were achieved in the middle of a session, but you can only have three goals active at a time and any new goals start at 0 (record the pool count of old goals minus one if you wish to swamp them in the future).

Thoughts?

Firstly, that's a cool idea for character setup.

With regard to character development and the coat of arms - if people get to add "a few" elements to the design every session, it is likely to get pretty overfull fast. Is the game intended for just short term play? There's also the fact that a lot of people aren't so good at drawing, have you got a way to deal with that when they need to add more to the coat of arms?

In terms of the rest, it seems like you have a lot of details that you've written down but not yet playtested. Some of these may not even be terribly relevant to the stories of these knights... what part of the cursed/blessed amnesiac knights' story do you want to focus on?

I also think that the knights ought to get some cool powers from the drowning. I mean, it sounds like it's some serious powerful stuff going on there.

I apologize for the abruptness of my first post.  My wife wanted to go shopping so I just put up what I had to get some thoughts on it before I wasted people's time play testing it tomorrow (ok, now today I guess).

MikeSands wrote:
Firstly, that's a cool idea for character setup.

With regard to character development and the coat of arms - if people get to add "a few" elements to the design every session, it is likely to get pretty overfull fast. Is the game intended for just short term play? There's also the fact that a lot of people aren't so good at drawing, have you got a way to deal with that when they need to add more to the coat of arms?

In terms of the rest, it seems like you have a lot of details that you've written down but not yet playtested. Some of these may not even be terribly relevant to the stories of these knights... what part of the cursed/blessed amnesiac knights' story do you want to focus on?

I also think that the knights ought to get some cool powers from the drowning. I mean, it sounds like it's some serious powerful stuff going on there.

Re: Coat of Arms additions

I hadn't thought of all those bits and pieces that get added around the shield, that should give a fair amount of extra room for new things.

In terms of new traits, maybe you could allow adding one type of feature adds a die to a pool and another type adds a new trait. My heraldry is pretty rusty, but you could have embellishments to exisiting items add to a current trait and whole new items add a new trait?

Re: Cool powers

My bad, I should have read the difficulty levels more carefully. I still think some cool powers would be a nice touch - maybe something that reflects choices about honor in character generation?

Re: something else entirely

Thinking about your setting, I came up with this idea, which I'll share in case you like it too. It's inspired by your initial setting/situation text.

When generating characters, everybody comes up with a story about why some knight jumped into the well. This isn't your knight, just some knight. In game, these are the legends about knights who entered the well that are known to the people in the land - influencing their reactions to the PCs. Maybe the characters are these knights, maybe not... that's a whole other question (not to mention whether the stories are true or not!)

Legends of Archonia
Before play begins, each player including the referee should think up and write down a legend of why a squire chose to be Baptized.  This isn’t the story of how your knight was Baptized, just a legend, for Archonia is a land defined as much by its legends as by the squabbles of its current rulers.

Your Knight
You are playing a knight that has been Baptized in the Well of the Drowned God.  That means that you have no memory, no back-story, and no idea of current events.  All you have is a set of armor, a sword, and a shield that has been personalized for you.  For character creation, you design that shield, drawing your Coat of Arms (see other sources on how you do that).
**Insert character creation example here**
From your shield, you will generate a list of 3 traits, which gives you more opportunity to describe your character and influence the direction of the story by taking over the narrative during play.
**Insert character creation sample here**
Legends state that each squire kneels before the court of the Drowned God and swears an oath of knighthood that he cannot break.  Other legends tell of squires swearing oaths as they themselves drown and keeping those oaths past death.  Both legends hold these oaths as unbreakable, but since Baptized knights have played both roles as heroes and villains in other legends, it’s hard to know what is true, but no matter what the truth is, knights can draw strength from their personal code of chivalry.  Write down three tenets of your code of honor.  These tenets will help your character as much as his traits do and they can change and grow as your knight does.  It is these tenets, legends say, that truly give a knight his great stength.
**Insert character creation sample here**
Finally, take six dice and assign them to your traits and six dice and assign them to your tenets.  These are your starting pools.

Thanks, I'm glad you could use them. Personally, I'm looking forward to playing this game.

This sounds like a great germ of an idea, pasoliati (btw, we often use our real names here, and it's weird that I can't just call you 'George' or whatever -- what's your name?).

I like your 'dodge' of not requiring in-depth setting knowledge from the players.  You're right, so much of medieval society is based on a complex tapestry of precedent and history that it's difficult to insert a character into that milleu effectively.  Your Well bypasses that nicely.  On the other hand, it seems that now your set up requires the referee to come up with that entire setting and all its precendent and history on his own, and reveal it to the players in play.  Am I reading that right?  That seems like a lot of work on one guy's shoulders, and you have no systemic way to ensure that the setting will fit the knight -- what's to prevent the referee from thinking it'd be really cool to have the knights show up in a modern-day setting decended from that medieval society, for instance?  That very well may be a neat campaign, but if I created my character with a medieval setting in mind, I might be a little peeved.

This also sounds like it would be very well-suited for solo play, with one knight and one referee.

How many dice does the referee begin with?  Is there any way for him to earn them back?  It also appears that the referee has little ability to really challenge the players -- is that not his role?

Wow, that jumping into the Well ... that's some powerful stuff to be relegated to happening during character creation and never having a direct impact again.  They died.

I think they should be doomed.  They should be doomed to die for exactly the reasons that they originally jumped into the Well.  Of course, they don't know those reasons, but it gives a nice piquancy to any stories you tell revealing the character's back-story.  Discovering their past is dangerous, because it is also discovering their future.  If evidence (by way of loved ones) surfaces that they jumped into the well because they felt they had lost everything they valued then it is a threat:  if it turns out that evidence is true then the knight is doomed to lose everything they value and then die in despair.

Combine that with Mike's excellent notion of people making up stories about "some knights" and why they jumped into the well, and I think it could add some cool pathos.  I don't know whether that pathos is anything you want, but it sounds fun to me!

Joshua wrote:
This sounds like a great germ of an idea, pasoliati (btw, we often use our real names here, and it's weird that I can't just call you 'George' or whatever -- what's your name?).

I like your 'dodge' of not requiring in-depth setting knowledge from the players.  You're right, so much of medieval society is based on a complex tapestry of precedent and history that it's difficult to insert a character into that milleu effectively.  Your Well bypasses that nicely.  On the other hand, it seems that now your set up requires the referee to come up with that entire setting and all its precendent and history on his own, and reveal it to the players in play.  Am I reading that right?  That seems like a lot of work on one guy's shoulders, and you have no systemic way to ensure that the setting will fit the knight -- what's to prevent the referee from thinking it'd be really cool to have the knights show up in a modern-day setting decended from that medieval society, for instance?  That very well may be a neat campaign, but if I created my character with a medieval setting in mind, I might be a little peeved.

This also sounds like it would be very well-suited for solo play, with one knight and one referee.

How many dice does the referee begin with?  Is there any way for him to earn them back?  It also appears that the referee has little ability to really challenge the players -- is that not his role?

TonyLB wrote:
Wow, that jumping into the Well ... that's some powerful stuff to be relegated to happening during character creation and never having a direct impact again.  They died.

I think they should be doomed.  They should be doomed to die for exactly the reasons that they originally jumped into the Well.  Of course, they don't know those reasons, but it gives a nice piquancy to any stories you tell revealing the character's back-story.  Discovering their past is dangerous, because it is also discovering their future.  If evidence (by way of loved ones) surfaces that they jumped into the well because they felt they had lost everything they valued then it is a threat:  if it turns out that evidence is true then the knight is doomed to lose everything they value and then die in despair.

Combine that with Mike's excellent notion of people making up stories about "some knights" and why they jumped into the well, and I think it could add some cool pathos.  I don't know whether that pathos is anything you want, but it sounds fun to me!

Sir Bors lifts up his sword to strike down Sir Alexander.  Sir Alexander spreads his arms wide, welcoming the bite of cold steel.  As his life blood falls on the autumn leafs, Sir Bors cradles his friend's head in his laps and ask "why?".  With his last once of strength, Sir Alexander replies, "because I loved her more than life itself, but I could never strike a friend".

And it has been said that in a far country, there were once two squires, Pierce and Alexander, who were best friends and agreed on everything, even so much that they both feel in love with the same youngest daughter of their lord.  Their lord did love them both and could not decide on whom to betroth the girl to, so he suggested a friendly duel between the two of them for the girl's hand in marriage.  On the day of the duel, Alexander did not show.  Pierce searched high and low for his friend until he came to the Chapel of the Drowned God.  The Well-Keeper there told him that his friend had come to be Baptized, but had left a note.  Tears fell from Pierce's face into the Well as he read the words "I loved her more than life itself, but I could never strike a friend".  And that is the legend of Sir Alexander from the beginning to the end back to the beginning again.

I guess I should have put these three into one message.  I'm sorry, y'all.

This is a non-playtest report.  I couldn't get my players together in the same room, but i did get two of them to look at the rules.  One of them didn't comment much on it.  The other said that it had the fewest rules for a roleplaying that he had ever read, and that he didn't know if it would even work.  Which made me feel better, actually, because compared to Mike's Anti-Pool variant which is where I got the engine from it is much more complex with 6+ pools instead of just on).

I need work on the text, identifying the point of play.  And just thinking about the point of play made me remember one of the things that I want to see if it fits, and that is giving something helpful for players describing their character's action (see above for "legend points" for a very rough draft of that idea).

Thank you for your comments so far, they have all been VERY helpful.

I'm starting to work on the second draft.  Right now to make sure that I hit all of my bases, I'm following the "outline" from http://bankuei.blogspot.com/2005/08/making-round-wheels.html

The wrote:
Coat of Arms

Premise FAQ

1. What is the game about?

Coat of Arms is about knights.  It combines high action scenes of going medieval on your foes and moments of conflicts of honor.

2. What do the characters do?

The characters quest.  The GM assigns the first quest, but after that either the GM or the players can create quests.

3. What do the players do?

The players help to create the world (both before “play” and during) and each player controls a knight.  The two world creation powers are creating quests and creating legends.

Structure of Play

At The Table

Goals

All roleplaying games are about having fun.  Coat of Arms focuses mostly on two aspects of play: conflicts of honor and high action scenes.  Conflicts of honor are mostly internal; each conflict presents an opportunity to say something about your character and his or her code of honor.  High action scenes are mostly external, and sure, the engine rewards failure, but it also rewards style.

Input

CoA strives to give the players many opportunities to allow the players to give input while still maintaining a GM-role.  In game, the players control their characters just like most mainstream roleplaying games.  They describe their actions and reactions to the setting and situations presented by the GM.  When conflict arises (and it will) between a character and either the setting (NPC or environment) or another character, there needs to be negotiation so that everyone at the table can understand the goals of each participant.  After negotiation, if the conflict is still going forward, each player in the conflict is allowed time to describe what his or her character is doing (and possibly get rewarded for that).  The winner to the conflict even gets to have a monologue of victory, describing how the actions play out.

Out of the game, or maybe just more metagame, the players can help design and build up the world through legends.  Legends are the stories that are written from an in game perspective and become part of that world (although they are susceptible to very liberal interpretation).  Players can also help define and create quests.  Quests are character driven plot lines that offer challenges and rewards.

GMs also have a lot of input to give.  Although they do not play one of the main characters in the story, they get to play all of the minor characters and the color and the environment.  The GM also presents challenges to the character in the form of conflicts.  They also maintain the legends and the quests.

Credibility

CoA shares many of the roles that are traditionally the GM’s with the other players.  They get to help shape the world with their legends and their quests, and they get to take on “directorial” powers during conflicts.

But even still the GM has some “buck stop here” powers.  It is everyone’s job at the table to make sure that everyone is having fun, but the GM gets final say with the player input to check it for color and appropriateness.

Stuff that Matters

Ammo

Currency

Conflict & Resolution

Outcomes & Rewards

End Points

What We Imagine

How does the setting work with multiple players?

I mostly assumes that there would be multiple players at the same time.

I got bored at work and ran some simulations of the dice machanics.  If the GM chooses the same number of conflict dice everytime, over time the player will fail 60% of the time and succeed 40%.  That "wiff" factor is too high.

Remember, whiff factor only comes into play when failures deprotagonize the characters.  As long as failures are as interesting as successes, which is often the case in Conflict Resolution, there's no whiff.

In terms of dealing with the dice mechanics you had in mind not matching what you want to happen...

I think that a lot of people design this backwards - picking a nifty system and then tinkering until it fits what they want. You should sit down and think about:

1. How often should rolls succeed and fail?
2. What other mechanical aspects of the game can contribute (and how much do they affect the chances of success/failure)?

This should give you something useful to work from.

The other thing to be careful about with nifty systems is that a lot of them are complex, so working out the actual probabilities can be difficult. There's a lot to be said for a really boring, but completely clear die mechanic.

Joshua wrote:
Remember, whiff factor only comes into play when failures deprotagonize the characters. As long as failures are as interesting as successes, which is often the case in Conflict Resolution, there's no whiff.

MikeSands wrote:
The other thing to be careful about with nifty systems is that a lot of them are complex, so working out the actual probabilities can be difficult. There's a lot to be said for a really boring, but completely clear die mechanic.

pasoliati wrote: True, but these are knights.  I like to think that they succeed.  But I guess they succeed at every conflict that doesn't go to the dice.

There is a legend whispered about the death of that first knight who was Baptized in the Well.  It is whispered becasue many knights take offence at it.  With his great power, the first knight had done many deeds, but still he was restless.  He had given up the sword and taken up the bottle.  One night a man found him drunk and naked, crying in a Church of the Drowned God.  The knight slurred, but every word that he said burned into the memory of his listener.  He said “After I died in the Well, I was taken to the City of Gold found beneath the waves where the Drowned God takes the souls of the weary and gives them rest.  The City was beautiful, mere words cannot describe its glory.  I walked up to the Gates of the City, but they wouldn’t open for me.  I saw the people inside, my friends, my family, and even my lord just murdered.  But for all of my yelling, they would not hear me or come to help me.  After I gave up, I found a man next to me.  For all the glory of the City, He was even more glorious and I knew at once that I was in the presence of the Drowned God Himself.”

Then knight cried again and his listener tried to console him to no avail.  After awhile the knight found the strength to talk again.  “He smiled at me, a sad sort of smile and in that smile I heard words, not in my ears but in my soul, He said to me ‘You have taken your own life and cannot enter into the City.  But in My mercy, I give you one more chance.  I will return you to a foreign country, a foreign time.  You will be alone.  But the glory of the City has filled you, you will from hence forth have the strength of ten men.  Use that strength for good all you days and I will allow you into the City when next you return.  Use that strength for evil, and I shall cast thee out.’  All this he said to me in a smile.  I begged him to let me stay there outside of the Gates so that I could see the City forever, but he would not respond.  I then begged him to let me forget the City and the pain, but he would not.  But he did say that if any followed me, he would be merciful and take from them the memory of their failed lives and the memories of the City.”

At that, according to the legends, the first knight did throw himself back into the Well, never to be heard from again.  The legend is whispered, because may knights take offence at its telling.  But that is the legend of the first knight, from the beginning to the end back to the beginning again.