Hello,

I recently found an old folder full of my RPG design work from the early-to-middle 1990s. The first game I made up and played was in 1987 or so, all in notebooks, and although I still own them they're not immediately accessible. So this folder is the earliest stuff I have on hand. There are some neat things in there.

I was writing at an important flip-point in my thinking about role-playing: after I'd read Over the Edge and Prince Valiant, after I'd been into Magic: the Gathering and a couple of other similar card games for a solid year, and after I'd picked up my Sorcerer project again with an eye toward abandoning a great deal of my original Cyberpunk-centric assumptions. This was actually a second step in that process. I'd already written up and playtested something called "BSL" which I'll write about later, but realized it was well off the beaten path. Perhaps this one was a deliberate my-own-heartbreaker project that sought to stay within the confines of familiar fantasy-RPG territory. Well, some of them anyway. You can definitely see the impact of GURPS.

The influence of Magic: the Gathering is probably the strongest, though. (1) The mechanics are what they are without crazy layering, in sync with my other main general-- influence, The Fantasy Trip. (2) All opposed conflict is handled by the "clash" notion based on juxtaposing combatants' offense/defense simultaneously. The important thing about this is that it overrides order set by personal quickness, as I'll discuss later. (3) My role-playing had been on hiatus for a couple of years as I built speed-metal black-and-red Magic decks, and when I and a few others got back to it, we were wretchedly bad at it. What this really meant was not that Magic had impaired us at role-playing, but after playing CCGs (and I should mention Wyvern, which I liked a lot), we found that our assumptions and habits about role-playing stood naked to our current view - and were definitely found wanting. (4) The color and token thing, although it's White Wolf style fill-in circles in the game rather than tokens, but you can see how they're really tokens. It's hard to believe today that we used to role-play without any such stuff, considering how useful they are.

If you get a chance, find a copy of Epiphany from BTRC, a role-playing game published around this time. I've been hanging out with Greg Porter once a year for almost ten years now, and I never got around to talking with him about it, which is silly - if I'm not mistaken, Epiphany was written from a similar mind-space.

What else before looking at it ... well, there are certain things about it that are more about my rejection of D&D fantasy than about "fixing" it heartbreaker-style. There are no races, for instance; everyone's just a human person. There's no divinity at all. There's a skill list which is quite limited, and all numbers are based on the attributes rather than skill values. I think it's kind of neat that one chooses one's character's professions in any combination and then infers social class and status,rather than the other way around. It also has a specific fantasy look-and-feel which wasn't very 80s AD&D, more of a weird cross between psychedelica and medievalism that has more in common with the Arduin Grimoire.

This bit's kind of interesting in light of today's standards:

The player must provide the Game Master with a Key Event for this character. It should be written as a short story or anecdote, perhaps no more than a paragraph or a single page. A Key Event may have occurred long before the beginning of play, or it may be the most recent thing to have happened to the character. The character must display his or her Traits in the Event, and it must involve at least one other character (whether that is a player-character, one provided by the Game Master, or made up by the player). If the character is a wizard and/or has sworn any oaths, the Key Event should include these issues in some way.

Larry Lade took pity on us all and made a single file out of it. The Adept webpage link again: Role-playing games.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
I also encourage anyone who has extensive old game-design work sitting around, especially from before the Internet Era, to make it available. Paul Czege did that with a high school design which blew my mind, although at the moment I'm failing to find the link. It's enlightening stuff.

Ron wrote:
What does a character in the Gray Magick setting do? What goals do they strive toward? What dangers or opportunities loom at them unexpectedly? What geographic, political, and social concerns are evident in their daily lives and encounters? There is nothing about this in my draft: zilch. I can't say it loud enough, "This sucks."

This makes me wonder, because I did understand that stuff for Glorantha and Stormbringer, without fail, and also in my superhero and cyberpunk games which have always been strongly political. But here, somehow I'd lost touch with it. There's something important here concerning game-driven fantasy, hard to pin down. It's a feature of all the heartbreakers except for those (to their coherent credit) absolutely dedicated to dungeon-looting.

Last week, I wrote an extensive post about playing Gray Magick at the Dice Dojo. The post was detailed, insightful, fascinating, relevant, and inspiring. You'll have to take my word for that,* because due to an ill-advised keystroke, I accidentally consigned it to oblivion. I have been rather grumpy ever since. The value and clarity of what follows will simply have to limp along on whatever motivation I can muster to overcome my bitterness and dismay.

How character creation went
Peter made up Otto, an older, grizzled wizard-knight type, who although he'd fought against Rbaja-backed forces in the past, had sworn a black oath against a fellow Amboriyon-supporting lord who'd killed his family. During the write-up process, Peter asked, "These ultra-good guys, do they put the greater good so high above everything else that they harm the human good sometimes?" "Yes," I replied, "by definition. That's what Amboriyon is all about." Peter smiled. Otto was Tough and Noble, as well as scarred, stoic, and fierce.

Megan made up Aturak, an adult wizard-scholar-merchant who clearly favored a measured black-ish approach to magic. She had not sworn an oath although Megan specified that she was, in fact, quite driven and determined to kill those "holy men" who'd killed her lover. Aturak was (interestingly) Noble and Cunning, a study in ethical tensions; also, pale, fierce, and elegant.

Sam made up Püch, a young priest of Amboriyon without magic abilities, who had sworn a white oath to contribute his blood, when shed in a good cause, to his mentor. Sam also liked the idea of sinister twinges of the white-magic side of things. Püchwas Noble and Romantic, as well as fierce, elegant, long-legged, untailored, and unornamented.

A fierce, noble bunch! Interesting imagery all around, I thought. It strike me now that a slightly more coherent table-concept about what "Noble" means might have been helpful.

How prep went
Clearly, the existing text suffers from an endemic problem with such games: prepping for play starts with character creation rather than specifying some localized, setting-centric situation to any extent at all. I submit in fact that setting only matters insofar as it contributes to such situations, usable in play. We of course had no such thing, and given the character-centric rules text, I found myself doing what I always have to do in such situations, finding some way to retrofit a situation to the existing character features.

(All of the above point is specific to a certain setting-heavy thematic tension, as found in Gray Magick. It does not apply to games which rely primarily on character-centric thematic tension, such as Sorcerer or My Life with Master; the settings in such games are important but exist to be snapped by characters rather than to snap them. FreeMarket affords an interesting case of ambiguity between these approaches, which is why the memory-mashup is so important, as it shifts prep into a functionally character-centric mode.)

OK, what to do with these three characters? Well, as I told them, this was merely a fun session for a single evening and we'd have to get a lot of stuff established that in ordinary play would have been combined in handouts and also established through play itself. I thought for a moment and in retrospect I realize I drew a little bit on Salmonson's novel Thousandshrine Warrior. The idea is that the area had experienced a savage war among fief-holders (the political situation is too wracked to call them "nobles" or "gentry" although they might do so), all within a context of Amboriyon-backed power struggles. So Otto's family had been killed in that context, and so had Aturak's lover. I suggested that the victors, over one area at least, had established such a "Heaven's kingdom on earth," that the local people and ecology were literally wasting and disintegrating away in the blinding holiness emanating from the main castle fortress. We also suggested that the three player-characters had become invested in getting hold of some magic McGuffin together, never mind the details. I decided not to fold in Püch's oath too tightly, in the interest of not being ridiculously contrived.

I then simply mandated an immediate fighty-fight scene, basically "an encounter" which we kind of pretended had in-play back-story and consequent emotional resonance, in which they might be able to get the McGuffin. Imagine a hilly landscape split by a gorge, with one side being higher, and on that higher side, halfway down the gorge's cliff-face, a ledge. On the ledge is the McGuffin magic-thing that the characters want, and they're on the lower side of the gorge. On the high side is a lammasu, all gorgeous and righteous and winged. Behind the characters, and bearing down on them fast, are a couple of lance-wielding warrior-type guys characteristic of the area, looking all spindly and freaky as they're no longer quite of this world, and their horses' hooves are actually running an inch above the ground. I set them at B 5, Q 5, W 5, and C 3, with light armor; and one of them was a wizard. Just to cement things in a little further and to see the oath rules in action, I said the lammasu was Otto's enemy, now transformed.

This worked out OK. Thankfully no one pretended intense emotional commitment in a fake way, the Color was generally fun enough to enjoy for its own sake, and everyone's imaginations seemed engaged enough to commit to the immediation situation, such that characters were not moved into action solely to examine the system. Granted, it was only a straight-up fight scene.

The rounds
First round announcements, in order of Quickness: the lammasu will take to the air to find a drop-on point for its next target, Otto will summon a nightmare, Aterak will magically shatter a horseman's lance, the horsemen will skewer Püch and Aturak, and Puch will attack a horseman with his staff to foil the charge.
First round resolutions: first, the unopposed actions take place, including the lammasu and both spells; so the lammasu flies, the nightmare appears and the staff is shattered. Everyone moves into position as dictated by the announcements. Second, the clashes take place: Püch mixes it up with the horsemen, with both dealing damage, although Püch gets the worst of it.

(Note: for announcement-ordering purposes, Quickness is adjusted by wounds, but not by armor; for dice-resolution purposes, it's adjusted by both)

Second round announcements: the nightmare and lammasu will tear into each other, Otto will attack the horseman mixed up with Püch, the other horseman will cast Dazzle on Aterak, Aturak will cast Reflection, and Püch and the other horseman will continue to fight.
Second round resolutions: it's all clashes this time. In the first, the nightmare gets a vastly superior roll and rips the crap out of the lammasu, who drops into the gorge. In the second, it turns out that the horseman is clashing simultaneously with Püch and Otto, and he gets hit by both and defeated. In the third, despite a chancy moment or two, the wizardly horseman gets hammered by his own Dazzle.

(quick check: does the nightmare rebel? it does not) (quick other check: does the Dazzled horseman get hit with the Quickness penalty? he does)
Third round announcements: the nightmare awaits orders, Otto will banish the nightmare by giving it what he promised, Püch will take out the Dazzled horseman, Aturak will scramble down the gorge's side to the ledge with the McGuffin, and the lammasu will crawl up to that ledge.
Third round resoluions: Otto offers the nightmare the soul of the barely-living defeated horseman and it vanishes, Aturak tumbles ignominiously down the hillside, fetching up at the ledge's edge to come eye-to-eye with the lammasu, and in the only clash, Püch does smite the second horseman grievously.

Fourth round announcements: Otto will get down the hillside to join Aturak. This is pretty much it for the action, as the lammasu is in no shape to fight. So we moved through the resolution of the descent and to the point of Otto casting Blast to kill the lammasu.

At this point, too, Otto gained enough Black points to fill up his matrix, earning a Black tally.

Too easy?
Clearly the PCs did quite well, despite a certain amount of wear and tear. Otto came through it totally unscathed. Now, it's true that I built this game so that the GM could fling truly monstrous, truly powerful opponents at the player-characters, and it's also true I might have stepped up the opposition in this fight by about one more solid notch.

However, looking at the events in detail, it could have gone differently quite easily. The main moment was taking out the lammasu so thoroughly, which was based on the dramatic difference in rolls between the two monsters; in other words, not guaranteed. Another aspect to this was that I dropped the ball concerning demon-summoning, all of which is supposed to rely on a problematic deal, which we forgot. I probably should have had it demand the soul of one of Otto's companions, or something like that. Also, I'm not too worried about the outcome for Otto, who was rolled and built at the top end of the system's capacity for starting bad-assery, and so unless I were to slam him with insane nastiness in ambush, this outcome is reasonable at least some of the time.

Thoughts on sequencing
At the time I wrote the manuscript, I was deathly sick of the Champions and GURPS model of announcing and carrying out actions - basically a pre-set sequence in which, on your turn, you said what the character did and had them try it. It led to a stop-motion, weird fictional effect in which time stopped for everyone except the one in action, and in which information and perception were very hard to parse. As I tried more and more systems, I learned that it wasn't the pre-set sequence, as opposed to re-rolling for "initiative," that was the problem; it was the stop-motion thing in which you waited your turn in limbo, then said-and-did in a heartbeat, then waited again.

One solution was first illustrated by the game Sun & Storm, in which players announced their characters' actions slowest-to-fastest, then resolution was carried out fastest-to-slowest. I found that this actually worked really well in concept but not so well in practice, at least not as well as I might like. For Gray Magick, I was trying to hit a middle ground between this method and the "everyone at once" T&T method in which individual details were effectively blended and blurred. I was intrigued by the implications of early BRP mechanics which were very "clash" oriented but later evolved in a direction that interested me less.

In practice, the Gray Magick sequencing works pretty well! It's procedurally still a little tricky to learn - people have to get used to not having their actions "go off" the second they state them, but as early as the second round, it was flying fast and easy. The learning curve is apparently real but quickly surmounted. I really like the whole clash concept, which basically means that you can't sneak an action past opposition just because you're fast.

Incidentally, this technique was used in earlier Sorcerer, up through the 1998 version, where I called it "mutual carnage." However, upon playing Zero, I found its method to be profoundly well-suited to Sorcerer resolution mechanics and adopted that instead.

How fighting went
I found the physical combat to be very satisfying, both in terms of in-fiction logic and visualization. It was brutal, yet even taking a solid shot didn't prevent a potential turnaround, as seen with Puch's fight with the horseman. If one keeps one's head, allocates offense and defense sensibly, and seeks advantageous circumstances, you've got a fighting chance. I will say, though, that this is not a system for those who like to see their characters waltz through straight-up fighting. Foes can hurt you.

I really, really liked the bonus die for weapons' circumstances. In the first clash between Püch and the horseman, the bonus went to the latter as he was charging on level ground with a lance, against a target on foot. But after that, it was a matter of a rearing, suddenly-halted horse, a rider with a long lance, and a standing opponent with a staff, a weapon notable for being useful from any momentary position. So the bonus die went to Püch after that, in a satisfying blend of current fiction meeting mechanics.

The mutual bonus die for an even match was horrifyingly brutal, too. I was a little bit disappointed to see the lammasu taken out so quickly, but as I mentioned above, it could well have gone another way. As is, this event only whets my appetite to play lots more conflicts, interesting and tense ones with any luck, to see how such clashes pan out over time.

How magic went
All the resources, Color points, effects, and Brawn cost were fun, just as I remember from those long-ago playtests. However, the magic sequencing rules are a problem! I don't recall this being a hassle seventeen years ago, so I think the text must have some legacy problems relative to what I actually did in play back then.

Rather than outline the problems in detail (I'm getting really tired!), I will simply list my new thoughts on the rules for sequencing magic.

1. Magic may be opposed by either countering magic (a set of specific spells) or by a physical attack on the caster (including other sorts of spells); either of these means the magic resolution must be treated as a clash in terms of sequencing.

2. If magic is opposed by an interfering action, the wizard has the following options, prior to the rolls:

i) ignore the interference and get the spell off no matter what (as if it were unopposed), but taking whatever damage or consequences the interfering act imposes, with no defense.
ii) abort the spell and use full defense of whatever sort is appropriate
iii) (magic only) conduct the clash mechanics using Wits, with the results only determining whether both spells, one spell, or neither succeed

Two wizards casting attacking magic upon one another must take option (iii). Note that neither spell technically affects the other.

3. If magic is countered by magic, then the wizards match the Brawn spent and may spend more in a bidding war.

As I mentioned above, the demon issue was too soft-pedaled in this session. It's supposed to be more ethically problematic and in-the-moment.

How Color stuff went
It was fun to see Otto's matrix get blacker and blacker, ultimately to earn a tally. However, I need to make it clearer to players that the results of the tally roll are permanent additions to the sheet. Peter was briefly  confused when I told him, "You can now inflict a disease on a person," interpreting it to be one-time thing that he got to do at that moment. I had to explain that this was actually an ability that Otto now commanded, to be used whenever he wanted from this point forward.

We were using the quickly-conceived oath rules I'd written a couple of weeks ago, which may need further work. For instance, at present, there are no consequences for a character to swear an oath and then ignore it, or even contravene it. Upon learning that, Peter gave me the look. The thing is, though, I don't want a standard system that penalizes characters for failing to accord to anything in behavioral terms; the essence of this entire setting and design is that one must constantly grapple with the interface between black and white. And I really don't want any kind of constant monitoring of characters' behavior with point-based consequences; I want all ethics to be divorced from mechanics for this game. So I have to think about that a little bit.

Another, related point concerns what bonus points from oath pools can be used for. I'd conceived that they'd be used to boost rolls, but the Blast spell didn't require a roll and Peter's concept that the points could be spent to boost the Blast damage seemed reasonable. Clearly I need to consider the parameters for these points' applications.

Development?
I definitely want to pla the game more extensively. Aturak in particular was a well-conceived character who demanded real play, with situations and NPCs and trade-agreements, in order to shine.

I probably need to start thinking about art! Given no particular crowbars stuck into my spokes, I might have a lot of fun working this into a usable strong-setting document, probably making it available for free or perhaps with donations. It's not exactly in line with my design interests today, but as a historical item, it's very interesting, and also as a genuinely playable, Color-strong hunk of fantasy role-playing, it might be just right for any number of people.

Best, Ron

* Note to the credulous: I am kidding. I'd put a lot of time into it, that's all.