Attacking the Sheet & The Prestige

Over the course of my winter break between semesters, I've been going back and putting on a movie while I do work- something which either doesn't require a lot of brainpower or is something I've seen before. In this case, the film was a rewatch of The Prestige. While chock full of readily game-able material, one specific element of the plot jumped out at me for non-conventional usage. As a without-context spoiler, the film features a teleportation device straight out of a philosophical problem: the device creates a perfect duplicate at a different destination while destroying the original. This of course raises questions regarding the continuation of consciousness and other existentialist weights which would be great to throw at players.

The only problem is doing so lacks a certain weight to it. Just describing to a player "your character is dead, you are now playing a perfect copy of your character" is something which'd probably be quickly overlooked; unless accompanied by some doppelganger fight or sanity mechanic, which even then may feel a bit forced. After a bit of stewing though, I defaulted to coming at it with a design principle offered up by Arnold Kemp of Goblin Punch: "attacking every part of the character sheet." While almost always a useful principle, the only issue in application here is that by it's nature this shouldn't affect a character sheet at all. For the weight and feeling of this to land, the character should be completely unchanged aside from their potentially duplicate nature. That's when it hit me to take the principle literally.

I've never had a GM rip up a character sheet in my face- and personally I find the idea in it's usual context often rude- but such an act has weight to it. People grow attached to certain characters of theirs, and to a certain extent they grow attached to the sheets of those characters as well- to the point where they hold on to ratty old sheets without replacing them or they retire a dead character's sheet and hold onto it as a memento. So it'd be fair to say this action, ripping up the actual sheet the character is written on and replacing it with an exact duplicate, has impact while ultimately having no effect on the game beyond the description that comes with it and having a new piece of paper. It does something despite doing nothing.

Well... it may do something. This may be more another neat idea and less a useful tool in practice, as admittedly this idea does come with a lot of caveats and baggage which may make it have a lot less mileage. If your games involve turning over character sheets a lot more often or your players aren't the sentimental type, then it'll probably be neat but not phase them much. Not to mention that the whole sort of "act" probably requires a bit of theatrics and a lot of preparation, including quickly replacing player's character sheets after turning them into confetti. You'd also probably have to have duplicates ready by your own hand, as having players copy them down would save on effort but deflate this down to being a big tax and waste of everybody's time.

Concurrent Campaign 0: Ankisis Setting

If you play in a regular weekly campaign alongside three other campaigns, all of which occur as part of a collegiate club jokingly named after one of the required courses on campus- you are on your honor not to read the below article. That goes for all ~20 of you- especially if your group contains a drunk exotic bird, corpse with magic fingers, a warlock to a redacted deity, a crocodile cleric, and a shy half-orc barbarian.

A few years ago, I founded the Tabletop RPGs Club at my college. Over the course of these few years we've toyed with numerous different tabletop systems, created various small projects, and served as a hub for finding and playing tabletop games. For my last year, as a measure to not only distribute work but to experiment with something otherwise not possible, we have established a new event: a set of four campaigns run and occurring at the same time and within the same setting by four GMs.

This article series mainly will cover my personal campaign prep and content which I have prepared, but I also intend to try and cover some greater observations about running campaigns in this unorthodox matter as well as content prepared by my fellow GMs.

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The setting for this concurrent campaign was established partially as a joke, making fun of a set of required courses on campus which covers the classics as well as a few other select pieces of literature like The Tempest or Inferno. These works do however serve to inspire many elements or themes within the setting. Namely: the world is set in an ancient era akin to The Iliad, where the gods are still an active and real presence among mortal creatures. The setting isn't purely historically accurate or unique to one society however. In fact, most of what has been established has been simply using the aesthetics and themes commonly seen to a culture and constructing very different fantasy societies around that.

The main map covers:
- Herenthiage, inspired by ancient Carthage, the largest empire in the region and center of a politically-charged campaign- which holds implications for every region.
- Mania, an archipelago of city states akin to Greece, in which players engage in exploration and adventure on many varied and unique islands.
- a set of five islands inspired off Mesopotamia, in which players must navigate and deal with ruling factions while discovering deities and ancient technologies
- and my contribution: Ankisis, a kingdom of sands inspired by Egypt, which sees the player's deal with mysteries and horrors- both from long forgotten tombs and their fellow citizens

Although, through the desire of some players and other GMs, other vague cultures were established as existing off the main campaign map:
     - there exists a stretch of islands with Indonesian influences
     - a South American continent exists, supporting cultures with Aztec or Mayan influences
     - Herenthiage is at war with a Roman analogue somewhere along its far border
     - a few of the elements I've included in Ankisis have hinted at Arabic and Hebrew cultures

Essentially: the game world is laid out like some bastard version of a game of classical-era Civilization, which has been populated by misread summaries of myths associated with each culture.

My portion of the map was the kingdom of Ankisis, a kingdom largely consisting of small oasis towns and tombs hidden beneath the desert sands. The few large cities which exist- Caiurn, Sayid, and Qiza- exist along lush river deltas mainly as political targets for other campaigns, and far away from the humble desert outskirts. I have not developed them so that the GMs who use them might do so more freely, initially giving only placeholder names for them as "New York," "Chicago," and "D.C." What with limited prep time and all, I also figured leaving cities boring and drawing attention to the more interesting aspects of dying in desert tombs to be the better choice.

Part of this was done through a few mechanical adjustments. This concurrent campaign is run in Dungeons and Dragons 5E for the sake of inclusion and the wider player base. That said, I don't enjoy D&D 5E all that much, and included a few house rules to ease me into it.
- I don't bother with CR, whatsoever. Sufficient threats are telegraphed though, and I tend to always give a player being clever the benefit of the doubt.

- Players manage food & water while traveling the desert. Basically: depending on conditions and time frames, a call is made. If the players have appropriate consumables, they are consumed and play quickly moves on. If they don't, then they earn a strike. Each strike carries negative effects, and three strikes you die of starvation/dehydration.

- Players have to track carrying weight. Each has a number of inventory slots equal to their Strength scores, and most items take up one or more slots. Simply put, of course.

- No Resurrections, Wishes, etc.

So in plain and simple terms, in exchange for venturing into strange tombs and facing incredible risks compared to usual 5E, the players also stand to gain some of the best rewards. This design also has a narrative element underlying it however, as players may discover the true nature of Ankisis: that of a post-apocalyptic society.

According to conventional sources within the setting, ages ago the more mythical Ankisis was originally a lush green kingdom ruled by five gods (which here are sort of amalgamations of the usual Egyptian deities). It was through the unspeakable actions of one of its gods, that the entire land was cursed and became a desert; along with that god being expunged from their pantheon and becoming an eldritch abomination known as "He Who Slinks Behind Stars." This is only a partial truth however, as in reality it was the demigods of Ankisis warring against other pantheons which started the matter.

These demigods, serving as nobles and heroes in a fashion akin to the Greeks, petitioned HWSBS for a plague to destroy their enemies. It was thanks to the folly of one demigod that this plague was unleashed on Ankisis instead of it's enemies. Anyone contracting the plague slowly had their bodies reduced to sand; retaining their consciousness as their forms were scattered on the winds (an idea borrowed from the wonderful Dr. McNinja). In time all of these numerous corpses would form the deserts of Ankisis, swallowing up every city of what was once a metropolis and sealing them in as tombs. Isolated cities like Caiurn, Sayid, and Qiza which were protected by noble lines burning all outsiders were fine.

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How does any of that matter for play? It really doesn't, as background setting usually doesn't and why it's all only this little blurb. This all serves no purpose beyond setting up the area for desert travel and exploring contained dungeons, and laying out a theme of the strange and macabre; and that's enough. Players will violate the sanctity of the dead in a few ways, potentially unearth a heart-wrenching scene or two frozen in time, and not to mention contend with the plague themselves- as detailed in my next post.

Regarding Papers & Pencil's Magic Words

I first got into tabletop role-playing via the twilight years of 4E D&D, and almost nearly gave up the hobby as a result. While I can enjoy a good tactical game, the rigidity and tedious combat just didn't fill that niche I was looking to fill. Eventually the beta for 5E rolled around, which while more engaging, still had its frustrations for me- leading me toward looking online for solutions, leading me to a lot of wonderful blogs listed on the sidebar there, leading me to try and modify 5E to my own ends, until finally a year or so ago leading me to start developing my own tabletop system. It's still a ramshackle and unpresentable thing- a hobby project strewn about thirty or forty constantly updating separate documents- but it's something which suits my usage.

The inspiration I had for the use of magic was the excellent +Beloch Shrike's original post on Magic Words over at Papers & Pencils. So, in light of Magic Words 2, I thought I'd share some elements of my system which work towards the similar ends of a creative and engaging magic system

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Magic words each occupy one of three different roles: Modifier, Effect, and Target. This mostly breaks along a words usage:
  - most adjectives, adverbs, and so forth are Modifier words, like Fiery, Silent, or Illusory
  - Effect words mostly are verbs, such as Manipulate, Damage, or Create
  - nouns and the like constitute most Target words, like Humanoid, Earth, or Weapon

So one might simply move the earth around them via casting Manipulate-Earth, or they may cast Illusory-Manipulate-Earth to cast an illusion of appearing to move the earth. As casters grow in power they not only obtain more words, they also may use more Modifier words within a single spell (via a sort of spell point system which I won't get into here).

A lot of these words then can modify the power of a spell without being straight +1's. For example: casting Fiery-Damage-Humanoid may be throwing a spark of fire at an enemy, while a Deadly-Mass-Fiery-Damage-Humanoid is closer to a traditional casting of fireball. The upper end of this limit does create long and dangerous spells like Timed-Silent-Invisible-Deadly-Mass-Fiery-Damage-Humanoid, but as a whole this creates the chance for more intricate and unique-to-caster spells depending on lexicon rather then just strictly more powerful choices.


Essentially: each Word is a modular component of the final spell. In addition to this, each Word was originally well defined in operation- however upon further testing and some ideas from Magic Words 2 I'm heavily leaning towards dropping this for two reasons: referencing a big bulky list is what I was trying to get away from, and the edge cases are too awkward and hard to process. After all, how does one "Fiery-Damage-Sadness"? A more free-form description system suits it all better.

Upon gaining the ability to cast spells, either at character creation or during play, the method of obtaining Words is selected of three modes:

  - The character has a large list of related Words (eg all words related to fiery destruction, all words related to animals, etc), which they randomly roll on to permanently gain new spells when they level. They require no additional effort or research, as this method is meant to reflect  the spontaneous and innate use of magic. Inspired by Brendan of Necropraxis and parts of their work Wonders & Wickedness.

  - The player must choose to either forgo all but one Target word of their choice, or all but one Effect word of their choice. They can effectively learn an unlimited number of words through whatever spell research rules you favor otherwise, but one of these categories is only ever limited to one Word. This method creates magic users who are extremely specialized to a field (eg a magic user who can only effect things by putting them to sleep, can only cast spells on or related to snakes, etc). Inspired by trying to sort of emulate Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Arnold Kemp of Goblin Punch's amazing wizards but failing spectacularly.

  - The character has a large list of Words, which they do not permanently know. Instead each day they must prepare and select a set number of words off this list as appropriate for their level. This method is meant to reflect more prepared sorts of magic, such as prayer or alchemical concoctions. Inspired by the usual sort of magic bobbins.

Each set of benefits and limitations, along with an already highly variable approach to spell implementation, hopefully creates unique fun casters.

Genesis is Pointless

Excerpt from The Holy Dialogues of Pazuk, Volume 134, Page 12.

When the sun never set and before man grew old and died, a student once asked the Wise Pazuk about the nature of the universe. Holy Pazuk, in their wisdom, walked with the student through the monastery- taking them to the unassuming and humble kitchen. Many students sat, making the simple bread which sustained them. To this, the student began protesting Pazuk's apparent refusal to answer their question. Why had Pazuk brought them for chores instead of providing cosmic truths?

Blessed Pazuk, rifled through the firewood. The student was silenced as Pazuk withdrew two pieces of lumber, and asked the student to examine them. The student began to study the wood, realizing that this may hold some hidden wisdom for their question. The student performed every analysis they could think of. After the span of a few hours, the student became dejected. They had failed their lesson. Finally, they asked Pazuk what was the meaning of this wood. Slowly and with the greatest mindfulness, Pazuk lifted one of the pieces in their hands- before promptly beating the student to death. As their body lay on the floor, the other students in the kitchen looked on.

With saintly reverence, Divine Pazuk turned to his remaining students and uttered his third holy law: "Do not disrespect your masters by asking stupid questions."