Polytheism, Belief, and Ritual in Fantasy RPGs

Consider the following scenario in a fantasy RPG. While traveling, the PCs arrive at a small village. The villagers tell them that for many generations, the people in the village have left offerings for local spirits. The spirits in turn protect the village. If the village ever fails to make the annual sacrifice, the spirits will be angry. Oral histories attest to this, but there's no other evidence. The offerings make up a significant chunk of the small village’s agricultural output and could otherwise be used to improve their practical welfare.

What will the PCs make of this? If your players are like most players I have met while gaming – basically modern material realists whose spiritual beliefs are centered on personal morality rather than community ritual – they will probably be skeptical of the villagers’ choices. Their first thought will be that this is a waste, or at best, something that preserves community cohesion at significant expense. Because players subconsciously have their ear out for an adventure hook, they may also suspect that some malevolent local creature is manipulating the villagers.

So that’s what the players probably think. But what do their characters think, in a purely in-world sense? They would have to take this situation pretty seriously! There would be room for doubt, but they couldn’t scoff at it out of hand.

Why? When thinking about fantasy worldbuilding, it is helpful to remember how ancient people interpreted gods, spirits, magic, and the unknown. They were not ignorant or backward or “superstitious” in an abstract sense. They were making sense of the world in a way that was pragmatic and sensible within the context of what they knew.

I was thinking about this question in part because of a series of posts on the excellent A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog on how ritual works in a polytheistic world. The author, Bret Devereaux, makes an important point that more games should factor into their worldbuilding:

"The most important thing to understand about most polytheistic belief systems is that they are fundamentally practical. They are not about moral belief, but about practical knowledge."

Why does this matter for RPGs? Well, he begins the first post on ancient polytheistic beliefs with a few screenshots from the Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder video games. He points out how the fantasy RPG adoption of religion – for ethical or philosophical reasons – differs greatly from the real-world adoption of religion.

East God by Ching Yeh. The gods are not your friends! They do offer power tho...

Clerics, paladins, and other believers in modern D&D basically act like monotheistic thinkers in a polytheistic world. They choose one system, and the stronger their belief, the greater the power granted by that god. 

"Because many gods can produce practical results for you – both good and bad! – you cannot pick and choose, but must venerate many of the relevant gods."

A cleric or paladin in a polytheistic world shouldn’t be a one-true-god diehard. Instead, they should have multiple, flexible arrangements with various gods, balancing the power they offer with their contrasting goals and powers. The fact that fantasy gods are proven to exist and not an article of faith actually makes this more true in a fantasy world than it already is in the real world. A cleric’s advancement should be a careful accumulation of bonds and credits with various relevant gods, uncovering the mysteries of their desires and actions, rather than a linear escalation in the ranks of a single institution of the true faithful.

It is interesting that the original cleric of D&D in 1974 was closer to this ideal than later iterations. They were defined more by their alignment than commitments to particular gods. In contrast, modern D&D presupposes that a single god grants all of a cleric’s spells. Some editions played around with spheres, allowing clerics to tailor their focus, but modern D&D mostly gives some bonuses for the spells closest to the deity’s heart, and then calls it a day. 

In the second post in the series, Devereaux notes that the “core of religious practice is thus a sort of bargain, where the human offers or promises something and (hopefully) the god responds in kind, in order to effect a specific outcome on the world.”  

Imagine being a cleric in a world that works like this. What if you want to cast Spiritual Weapon? If you are lucky, perhaps you have a choice to pray to Athena or Ares. Perhaps praying to one will make it harder to seek the aid of the other in the future. Perhaps only Hades can grant the spell Raise Dead, and that’s a big commitment. In such a system, the variety of spells available is constrained not so much by spheres and lists as it is constrained by how many deals the cleric can balance without fatally angering any particular god.

In this way I am a fan of how relics in Knave 2 are so clearly framed as exchanges with particular gods. Compared to modern D&D, this magic is very distinct from arcane spells. It's a form of extrinsic advancement. And it really delivers on the idea of a world with living, active gods, rather than remote, abstract philosophical concepts.

Modern Play Means Freedom From Restraint

Last week: The Big Difference Between OSR and Modern/5E Playstyles

To summarize last week's post, PCs in 5E and other modern games are free from social and political norms, institutions, and rules. And that freedom is more essential to the appeal of modern play than any particular combat loop or class power.

Examples are easy to find. Take Critical Role, one of the most prominent examples of modern-style play in the 5E age. Both the first and second seasons of Critical Role feature parties who violated laws, disregarded customs, and generally acted like real shitbirds. The characters were, to varying degrees, misfits and scoundrels. But they never faced the consequences that misfits and scoundrels would face in an OSR game. If they died, their deaths were dramatic and tragic, not mundane and tragicomic. And when they succeeded, their success was epic. Success wasn’t just a haul of gold to spend carousing in town. Both of those campaigns ended with world-spanning quests to save the world. OSR PCs who flaunted social and factional constraints the way Critical Role PCs would not save the world; they would die, quickly and unceremoniously.

Running 5E with an OSR mindset, I was constantly reminded of how many “get out of jail free” cards 5E characters had. That could be literal jail; at all but the lowest levels, most 5E PCs have a range of skills that trivialize mundane incarceration. But it also applies figuratively. Factions simply cannot hope to constrain PC action in a modern game in the same way they would in an OSR game.

Dragon by Millennium Hand

And this distinction is not unique to modern vs. OSR play. A huge part of PBtA-style games, and other story games, is tools baked into the core of the game that explicitly create leverage and seed consequences for disregarding social rules and laws, or for recklessly standing in opposition to powerful factions. Faction play is still useful in 5E; if nothing else, factions have numbers and time on their side, so they can act against PCs even in modern-style play, because those PCs simply cannot be everywhere all the time. But it takes a lot more work to make it happen.

Listening to 3d6 DtL’s Arden Vul podcast, I was repeatedly struck by how the idea that “the world reacts to your actions” created situations that the players could at best hope to endure, not overcome. When a dragon shows up and makes demands of the party, it is not a dramatic cutscene. It is not a preview of a boss battle a dozen sessions down the road, in which the PCs will almost certainly prevail. The dragon is orders of magnitude more powerful than the PCs, and if they don’t understand and appreciate that, they will die, suddenly, ignominiously, and deservedly.

To turn the question around, I have also found that modern-style players can adapt quite quickly to OSR play. When I run Knave for players who have no background or investment in the OSR, they very quickly grok the danger their characters are in, and intuit the risks of acting in defiance of the world they find themselves in. They start asking more questions, thinking further ahead, and generally taking the world and its factions seriously. Give a player a character with 2 HP and a rusty knife, and they don’t need you to explain styles of play to them; they figure it out very quickly all on their own.

Deckbuilding in the Stygian Library: The First Layer

Last week: Exploring the Stygian Library as a Deckbuilding Game

Before we get into our first location, we have one important unanswered question. What are Felix and company looking for, exactly? Let’s stick with Knave 2 (“K2”) and roll on the Books table on page 40. We get 47: hunting. They’re after an ancient tome that details ways to hunt terrible, long-extinct monsters from deep under the sea. At least, everyone thought they were extinct. Lately they have revealed themselves to be dangerously non-extinct, so the value of this previously obsolete book has gone through the proverbial roof. Under The Stygian Library’s (“TSL”) distinctions of how hard a book is to find, we’ll put this at 30: “Obscure information, the sort of thing known only to a few scholars and jealously guarded.” Of course, Felix is happy to grab anything else that looks valuable; but this book is the specific reason his patron sent him into the library.

The Display Case

To begin, we’ll generate rooms strictly by the TSL rules. We certainly could create cards for every option on the primary roll tables, to populate rooms through a deck. And we may decide we need DM-facing deckbuilding components in the future. But in the interest of keeping it simple and iterating quickly, I’m going to limit the deckbuilding to immediate adjudication, and keep it away from elements that might be handled during prep in a non-procedural dungeon crawl.

Felix, Clotilde, and Guinevere crawl through the utility panel and tumble into the library’s first room:

• Location: The Display Case. Interesting Shoes.
• Details: Candle Sticks.
• Random Events: Something turns up - it’s unfriendly.
• An Ink Elemental and d4 Inkblots.

No easing our adventurers into this one. We immediately enter a potentially dangerous scenario, with “unfriendly” monsters present in the space. A few questions immediately present themselves:

• The random encounter is “unfriendly” -- how unfriendly?
• How far away? 
• Who sees who first?

Of course, these are the same questions handled by the traditional D&D rules of reaction and distance. Let’s try handling those with cards. For purposes of testing, I’m using dry erase playing cards, which are readily available online. They can smudge with shuffling, but are easy to erase and reuse. Index cards also work fine as a cheaper option, for those less particular about shuffling hand-feel.

We already know from the TSL result that the ink elemental and its blots are “unfriendly,” so we’ll limit reaction results to the negative end of the spectrum. Using the K2 reaction rules, that includes 2-7, everything from (gulp) “kill the PCs” to “Ignore the PCs.” We label the cards, shuffle them, and draw, for…

Gif by Shivur

“Ignore”! The best possible result. Phew. A TPK in the first room would have been underwhelming.

What do we do with this card, as well as the other reactions that we didn’t draw? Let’s set that question aside for now. Deckbuilders can incorporate the results of a scenario into the fiction in a number of ways. We could shuffle the “ignore” card into our player’s deck, and perhaps interpret its re-emergence later as the return of the original monster. Or we could preserve only the remaining reaction cards, suggesting that future encounters will face a dwindling pool of options. We’ll see if the answer reveals itself as go forward.

How far away are the creatures when the party encounters them? Traditionally 2d6x10 would give us a distance in feet for a dungeon encounter, but I don’t think we need to label 11 cards to resolve this. In many cases, cards are going to want to condense options to relatively fewer, broader choices, relative to dice.

For now, let’s just label three cards as close, medium, and far. We flip a card and get “medium”; the inklings are neither close nor far; they’re across the room, within a stone’s throw, but not right on top of our party.

Finally, is either side surprised? K2 treats surprise a little differently, with an opposed wisdom check (interestingly, this is a lot closer to modern/5E D&D than typical old-school rules). Felix has a +2. The Ink Elemental requires some conversion. We’ll halve it and round down, giving it a +2 on this check. There’s some more nuance suggested by K2 that we may or may not want to use later. For now, let’s just keep it simple and make four cards; monster surprised, party surprised, both surprised, neither surprised.

We draw and get… "monster surprised." The cards are really favoring the party so far. The adventurers spot the ink elemental and its satellite ink blots before the monsters know the party is there. Felix holds a finger to his lips and trio lays low. Since the monster’s default is to ignore them anyway, we don’t need to get into any kind of stealth adjudication. Our party also doesn’t need to spend much time in this space, as Felix quickly surveys the collection of unusual shoes and determines they aren’t worth stealing (per TSL, the value is 100 silver times the layer; since this is layer zero, these shoes are interesting, but worthless). The party uses the candlesticks here to light a torch, which Clotilde will carry. 

With no desire to linger here, the party delves deeper into the library. We’ll roll d20+1 (the layer they’re going to) for a location result of 5 (Chained Lectern) and a details result of 8 (Lamp-Post). We’ll pick up their adventure next time.

OK, So Where Is the Deckbuilding?

So far, all we have really done is replace die rolls with drawn cards. This is an intentionally slow start, because we want to gradually discern mechanics from gameplay, not dictate mechanics to the game and assume they'll just work out well. We'll build in more deckbuilding in future installments of this series.

Exploring the Stygian Library as a Deckbuilding Game

I’m a fan of deckbuilders, whether as video games (Slay the Spire, Inscryption, and others) or physical games (Dominion, Star Realms, and many more). I’ve always wanted to see deckbuilding in TTRPGs, but if that game exists, I haven’t found it yet. The closest I know of is Meromorph’s Atma card-based RPG. That game does a nice job of using cards to inspire unexpected scenarios in a TTRPG format; but it’s not a deckbuilder.

I’ve mocked up several different TTRPG deckbuilding systems, but finding time to test games with other people has been a challenge. My players would be happy to test something if I asked them. But any such ask comes at the expense of the other TTRPGs and board games we could be playing when we get together. That's a high bar to clear.

While I still plan to look for opportunities to test multiplayer deckbuilder TTRPGs, I’ve also decided to test a solo deck builder concept. When I see an interesting question like this generate zero replies, it suggests to me that there is untapped space that game designers should explore.

We’re going to keep this as simple as possible by only introducing deckbuilding mechanics when we really need them. The theory is that it’s easier to start with a very simple system and confirm it works ats a basic resolution system before adding really creative tweaks and neat subsystems. In short, we want to create a game that works like other solo TTRPGs, but uses the randomness of card draw instead of dice for moment-to-moment action resolution, as well as the concepts of deckbuilding for both the progression and consequences of dungeon adventure.

As I learned when my Dungeon23 project lapsed, trying to do a big project with a single output is a recipe for disappointment. A project is more robust if it can serve multiple purposes, so I made a list.

• Test if the deckbuilder model can work in a TTRPG
• Get some use out of adventures and other products I have purchased, but rarely or never run
• Experiment with solo RPGs
• Produce some blog posts

That feels pretty good, right? Let’s go!

Library of Babel gifs by Isaac Karth

The Stygian Library

The Stygian Library (“TSL” for short hereon) by Emmy “Cavegirl” Allen is a great example of a “depth crawl,” along with their similarly structured adventure, the Gardens of Ynn. Players explore a place that is generated in part procedurally; there is no fixed dungeon map.

I have used TSL before as a prep tool for my D&D games, where quite a few sessions revolved around a Borges/Prachett-style arcane library occupying a liminal extradimensional space, which could be accessed from different places. But I have never used its procedural generation tools in-session, as they’re primarily designed to work. Time to change that.

“Put enough books in one place, and they distort the world. Space bends in on itself, forming a sort of wormhole, linking the library to other libraries likewise afflicted. The space between is a sort of pocket realm, budded off from reality, maintained by the sheer power of books.”

Emmy Allen, The Stygian Library

TSL is particularly well-suited to this project because the procedural generation of the dungeon makes it easier to run as a solo exercise. The dungeon is not a pre-defined space, so in using TSL for solo play, the player has to do less work to disentangle their player knowledge from their DM knowledge. 

Delve One

We begin in The City’s largest bookshop. Someone was murdered here last night. That’s unfortunate for Someone, but it is very fortunate for us, because we want to access the Stygian Library, and an entrance will only appear in a location that contains both (1. many books and (2. a recent death. Did the patron who hired us for this job simply take advantage of an accident that happened here? Or did they create the opportunity, by orchestrating a murrr-derrr? Best not to dwell on such questions.

Investigating the far corners of the bookstore, we find nothing on the first, second, third, or 13th search of the space. On the cusp of giving up, we find a barely visible door – not much more than a utility panel – hidden behind the heaviest shelves in the place. The key to the front door of the bookstore unlocks this lock as well, which makes no sense; a warning of what’s to come. We enter the Stygian Library.

Library of Babel gifs by Isaac Karth

Our Brave/Foolish Explorers

“Tell you what, if it's a high card, I'll tell you who I am. But if it's a low card, I'll tell you who you are. Is that a deal?”

Deadfall (1993)

I am using Knave 2 (“K2” henceforth) for character generation and ideas, due to its simplicity; general interoperability with other games; and its use of slots, which are a good analogue for cards. I have run quite a lot of the original Knave, but this will be my first genuine experiment with K2. Here is my PC, with no rerolls.

Felix Digham

• A CON of 1 and a WIS of 2 (yes, I happened to roll the same results as the example in the K2 rules)
• Level 1, 0 XP
• 11 item slots
• Bag of spice
• Lamp oil
• Knife
• 2 rations
• 50’ rope
• 2 torches
• Mail shirt
• Helmet
• War scythe (two-handed, d8 damage) (slot 1)
• War scythe (slot 2)
• Poison
• 2 HP
• Careers: Merchant, Thug
• AP 2
• AC 13
• Personality: Truthful
• Appearance: Rugged
• Goal: Serve a deity
• Assets: Smuggles goods
• Liabilities: Known con artist
• Possessions not carried
• Strongbox (hidden in the bookstore and holding the below items)
• Scales
• 10 coins

I was a little confused at first by the merchant/thug and truthful/con artist dichotomies, but the assets and liabilities cleared that tension up. This is a person who has lived in the gray area between legitimate commerce and outright crime. No surprise that they are now employed in such dangerous and shady work.

Felix has spent 100 of his starting 110 coins to retain two hirelings for five days each. Should he survive one or more delves, he hopes to gather enough money to hit level 2 and retain some more sturdy companions to accompany him on future delves.

Clotilde Delamorn, hireling

• AC 11
• HP 3
• Level 1
• Attack punch d2
• MOV 40’
• MRL 4 
• 10 item slots

Guinevere Westerfield, hireling

• AC 11
• HP 3
• Level 1
• Attack punch d2
• MOV 40’
• MRL 4 
• 10 item slots

They carry some cheap sacks for loot, and nothing else. We’ll sketch out more about Clotilde and Guinevere (and Felix, for that matter) if they survive long enough to warrant our interest.

Next week: Deckbuilding in the Stygian Library: The First Layer 

Library of Babel gifs by Isaac Karth

Four Examples of Extrinsic Leveling

Last Week: Gear-Based Leveling and the Allure of Extrinsic Rewards

Scrolls, Staves, Wands, and Objects of Power

Want to be a magic-user? You need scrolls, grimoires, wands, or similar instruments. There is no Vancian retention of magic within the mind. The wizard’s power is purely a measure of their ability to coax magic out of such eldritch tools.

With its slot-based system, Knave already assumes that spells come from physical objects. The only addition is to take Kill It With Fire’s concept and add leveling. This is already implicit with the caster’s level scaling the effect of many Knave 1E spells (Knave 2E – in non-final form, as of time of writing – moves this to INT and expands it to more spells).

Weapons and Armor

Want to be a fighter? Level those weapons up. Use the same weapon often enough, and your character not only does more damage, but also can execute maneuvers and advanced techniques. The typical D&D fighter is a generalist, equally skilled with each weapon in the player’s handbook. A fighter in this system is much more defined by the weapon or weapons they actually wield.

But there is also tension in specializing versus broadening their skillset. If a fighter spends a handful of sessions building their skills with an ordinary sword, and then finds a magical axe, they face an interesting decision point. Stick with the sword, and hope to find a magical one in the future? Or switch to the axe, begin building up those skills, and reap the benefits of its magic right away? If this system feels too restrictive, weapons could be organized into families that partially or fully share the benefits of progress (e.g., all swords).

Holy Relics

Want to be a cleric? Your connection to the divine is only as strong as the symbols, texts, reliquaries, and sacred bones you carry on your person.

It’s worth thinking about how relics should feel different from the tomes and scrolls of the wizard. Especially in a classless system, we need to be deliberate about how such things work, so it can’t be boiled down to interchangeable numbers and mechanics. 

The Knave 2E rules again provide a helpful way of thinking about this. Patrons, through shrines and relics, give characters missions. PCs completing them can gain blessings. The blessings can grow or wane as the PCs earn or lose favor with the patron.

So leveling up item-based divine powers depends on balancing the patron’s interests against the PC’s other goals and incentives in their adventuring life. And the patron could issue ever-more-demanding and important missions and become increasingly particular about the PC’s adherence to their domain. Finally, in contrast to PCs in many other fantasy RPGs, nothing prevents PCs from bearing relics for multiple patrons (potentially even opposed patrons). PCs can have as many relics as they wish, though the number of blessings active at any time is capped by their Charisma.

Tools and Tricks

Want to be a thief? You need tools.

Rogues and other “expert” classes suffer in high-magic fantasy games. Because of the insufficiently low level of abstraction in certain fantasy TTRPGs, there’s only so much room to plausibly scale mundane power. But in a low-magic game, it’s much easier to build expertise with tools with out exceeding the reasonable bounds of what characters can do in the world.

Some of these extrinsic advances are obvious; leveling up with the lockpick improves the ability to pick locks. There’s ample class-based progression in D&D and other games to model this. 

Leveling up a torch or lantern gives the user finer control over how the light is projected, who perceives it, and how it spreads fire. Leveling up a hacksaw allows one to cut through increasingly difficult materials, or to dismantle and destroy things with greater stealth and effectiveness. Leveling a smoke bomb allows one to use it with progressively less chance of blinding themselves, or even their allies. 

But what does it mean to become more experienced with a chisel? Or glue? Or a birdcage? Or a mule?

OK, I don’t have an answer for every tool in the Knave 2E book. Some of the more abstract, less obvious options would require a dialogue with the player to understand what they want to do and how they are mentally modeling their character’s use of the tool in question. But we can test out some examples. 

Multiclassing and Multitasking

I’ve used the four classic class archetypes of D&D as a guide for thinking through leveling options. But in a classless game like Knave, there’s no need to steer into just one course. A character could level up some mix of gear that meets the actual challenges they face and the particular concept that emerges from play.

Gear-Based Leveling and the Allure of Extrinsic Rewards

A thought-provoking post on the Kill It With Fire! blog presents a method for leveling up spells through frequent use. I like this idea across several dimensions. I enjoy that it combines similar spells from the same “family” of effects into one idea. This approach cuts through the built-up layers of spells in modern D&D and similar games, where too many similar effects work in slightly different ways rather than hewing to a coherent, simple framework.

But more importantly, leveling up things that the PCs can acquire focuses the game on extrinsic gains rather than intrinsic ones. Many RPGs (especially fantasy games) have some sense of gear progression. Getting better armor or a magic weapon is a standard feature of the genre. But modern D&D focuses on intrinsic gains (principally class progression) over extrinsic ones (better gear or other “things” acquired in the game world).

The advantages of extrinsic gains are clear.

Creating Verisimilitude. It’s a common complaint in RPGs. “Why did the thief’s Pick Pockets skill improve when they didn’t use that ability a single time in between character creation and reaching level 2?” That’s not necessarily a problem that needs to be solved. It’s OK for mechanics to imply off-screen events, and working too hard to “fix” those “problems” fetishizes realism over verisimilitude. But upgrading gear neatly avoids this issue, by tying advancement to the character’s actual choices and actions in session. You only get better with the tools you actually use.

Justifying Adventure. If leveling up is about unlocking intrinsic abilities, many players will seek the path of least resistance. They’ll stay in town as much as possible. At dungeons or adventuring sites, they’ll avoid risky gambles and pick conservative approaches. Who cares if they don’t find all of the treasure? As long as they are leveling up, they know they’ll get stronger. Equipment-focused extrinsic advancement avoids this problem. The PCs must go to dangerous places to get the really good stuff.

Going Places. Kill It With Fire uses dungeons visited as the metric for advancement. I think that’s right for a sandbox campaign. In a megadungeon campaign, it could be rooms explored, or dungeon levels visited. A more crunchy, tactical game could count combat encounters. A game about outdoor survival, exploration, and travel could use cities visited. The important thing is that advancement is tied to things or events out there in the world, not something within the characters.

In my next post, I'll go through this approach using Knave as a baseline. I think a classless game like Knave is particularly well-suited to this form of leveling, because the equipment a PC carries basically defines their “class,” with the option to “respec” whenever needed. But it could be applied to a class system as well, as long as it was sufficiently rules-light to accommodate the additional mechanical layer.

Next week: Four Examples of Extrinsic Leveling

Detectable Magic Is No Magic At All

I have a long, long list of complaints with D&D 5E’s spell list. Perhaps I will someday finish the entire alphabet, but it is more likely that my mind will crumble into dust before that particular project is ever completed. So let’s jump ahead and deal with one particularly troublesome spell: Detect Magic.

In 5E, Detect Magic is a 1st-level spell that can be cast as a ritual (which essentially means that it is free, as long as time isn’t of the essence). At higher levels, even the non-ritual version is pretty easy to deploy liberally, as full caster classes have an abundance of lower-level spell slots, which they rarely exhaust.

Put simply, Detect Magic is a spell that makes magic less magical. The unknown can trivially be flagged, categorized, and quantified. The status of a haunting hallway, mysterious monster, or nefarious NPC can often be quickly and easily diagnosed. Magic is decidedly mundane, ordinary, and known. (The spell Identify is also a problem for the same reasons, but at least has the dignity to restrict itself to one object per casting.)

I'll concede there is some logic to 5E's approach here. If every spell and magical item in the game follows the same taxonomic logic, players can understand how to interact with those effects. It supports the idea that the game’s schools of magic pervade everything magical within the world, and in running 5E, I have occasionally found that underlying taxonomy useful in interpreting my players’ proposed solutions to their problems.

But the spell incentivizes players to approach situations with a standard operating procedure. Much like Guidance – another problem spell, which is almost always correct to cast in any situation calling for an ability check, as long as action economy isn’t a factor – Detect Magic becomes the always-correct first step to evaluate an unknown situation. And that can be an easy way out of avoiding the more challenging process of manually engaging with the fiction.

I didn’t know how much this bothered me until players in my Knave game found magic items. The Knave rules also include a Detect Magic spell, but the game’s levelless approach to spells puts the opportunity cost of the spell on par with every other spell; and, of course, since magic in Knave is limited to spellbooks, players must physically obtain the spell, rather than selecting it during character creation or while leveling up. So a DM has the choice to simply not offer Detect Magic in a game where it would be disruptive.

The first truly magical object my players found in our Knave game was a glove that could invert hot and cold temperatures. If they could have cast Detect Magic and Identify on it, it would have been easy to tease out its exact mechanical function and limitations. But magic is magical in Knave because it is not easy to unpack logically. Its mechanics and functions are not obvious. So the PCs could only learn how it worked through trial and error.

That trial and error process, and the accompanying sense that PCs are tampering with the unknown, pushed the game closer to the Appendix N fiction that predated and influenced D&D and its descendants. And it’s a much more magical place to be.

More Knave-ified 5E Spells

I posted last year about going through the spells from the 2014 5E Player’s Handbook and reimagining them as one-sentence, level-less Knave spells. Readers enjoyed that post, so let’s pick up where we left off, halfway through the letter A, and go through the end of the letter B. 

Bolded text is my revised version of the spell; where not specifically stated otherwise, characteristics like duration and range are left to DM discretion, common sense, or an appropriate roll of the dice. These spells use advantage and disadvantage, assuming both PCs and NPCs/monsters roll for themselves; but could easily be adjusted for a game using player rolls only. L stands for level, but could be replaced by INT under Knave 2E's draft rules, which aren't yet finalized. Non-bolded text represents some thoughts on the design philosophy that underpins 5E spells, and how Knave and other rules-light systems differ from it.

Arcane Eye. You can see through an invisible floating eye that you control for L rounds; it can pass through small openings but not solid barriers.

Arcane Gate. You create linked misty portals connecting two points you can see for L turns.

D&D 5E has a suite of spells and abilities – Misty Step, Dimension Door, Arcane Gate, and others – doing similar things with varying power and duration. Beyond the scope of this exercise, it might make sense to either condense them into one spell with variable power (scaling with L), or sharpen the distinctions between them.

Arcane Lock. A closed door, aperture, or container is magically locked for anyone besides you and your allies, and can only be temporarily unlocked by the Knock spell.

Armor of Agathys. A freezing aura grants you armor as chain for L turns; creatures that touch you take L damage.

I complained about temporary hit points before, and here they show up again, in a spell that eponymously implies AC improvement. This is another recurring 5E problem, where the flavor of a spell or ability gestures at something different from the mechanical effect (Chill Touch neither dealing cold damage nor serving as a touch-range spell is the most famous example). I’ve attempted to push this spell closer to its flavor... but are two different “L effects” too finicky for Knave?

Arms of Hadar. Creatures within reach must make a Strength saving throw or be pushed far enough away from you that they can no longer reach you.

Astral Projection. You and your allies enter a state of suspended animation while traveling to another plane of existence; you arrive unerringly at your intended destination, but your bodies are vulnerable while you travel.

Astral Projection is a holdover from the early days of D&D, when a lot of ‘70s esotericism, science fiction, and pseudoscience was baked directly into the game. This spell has little practical applicability in 5E, where characters will use Plane Shift as a simpler option available at a lower level. I’ll solve this by making Astral Projection a reliable way to travel the planes, and (if I ever reach the letter “P”) make Plane Shift more like Teleport (which is to say, unreliable).

Augury. You ask an otherworldly entity about a course of action you may undertake, and it advises if the outcome will be weal, woe, mixed, or uncertain/unclear.

Except for some needlessly crunchy mechanical details, this one is fiction-forward and mostly fine as-is in 5E. The cumulative chance of false readings is nominally interesting, but I think most players would simply never cast the spell more than once in a day, so I’m just cutting that detail and leaving any penalty for overuse to DM adjudication.

Aura of Life. You and your allies gain advantage on saves related to the undead for L turns.

Aura of Purity. You and your allies gain advantage on saves related to poison, disease, or similar afflictions for L turns.

Various 5E spells interact with damage types and status conditions at a level of detail beyond what we’re really interested in here. We’ll just condense these down to their underlying ideas and leave the specifics to DM adjudication.

Aura of Vitality. L nearby creatures in danger heal L damage.

Healing spells are boring. While running Knave, I’ve enjoyed how seriously players view damage; they can’t just shrug it off the way 5E characters usually can. We’ll see how many 5E healing spells we can get through before we run out of creative ways to steer them away from the game's damage-sponge arms race.

Bane. Your enemies have disadvantage on attack rolls as long as you loudly chant and point at them.

Last time we did this exercise, I trashed Aid because it just changes numbers without changing the fiction in an interesting way. Bane is even worse, because it’s useful enough in the math of combat to be a correct tactical choice, but only gradually affects the battle in a way that feels very numbers-oriented. Our “fixed” version makes it stronger, but with a risk, putting a target on the caster’s head for as long as they persist.

Banishing Smite. The next time you hit a creature with half HP or less with an attack, banish it to its native plane, or a random location L miles away if it is already on its native plane.

Banishment. Banish a creature to its native plane, or a random location L miles away if it is already on its native plane.

A player once told me they felt bad about using Banishment as a get-out-of-jail-free card, ending a potential combat before it really began by sending an enemy off to another plane of existence. While I have issues with some of 5E’s save-or-suck spells, because they invite players to optimize the fun out of the game, I told the player I actually rather like how Banishment just kicks the can down the road. A banished enemy may show up later with a score to settle – and they’ll be better prepared for the PCs’ tricks the second time around.

Barkskin. You gain armor as brigandine for L turns, and can easily conceal yourself among trees while motionless.

I couldn’t resist adding a little flavor with the second clause; it feels like an idea one of my players would propose, and I would gladly allow.

Beacon of Hope. Name something dangerous you have seen recently; you and your allies gain advantage on saving throws while confronting it.

I recognize that I may be leaning too heavily on advantage and disadvantage to generalize out from 5E’s highly crunchy 5E spell descriptions. Advantage is a great tool, but it yields diminishing results when too many effects grant it. Any serious adaptation of the 5E spellbook to Knave would require condensing the total list of spells, or at least carefully controlling how many spells acquired by the party rely on it for their effect. An alternative approach for Beacon of Hope would be to apply it to henchman and hireling morale.

Beast Sense. After touching a beast, you can sense what it senses for L hours.

Bestow Curse. Choose one of the five senses; as long as you point at a creature while muttering curses, that creature has disadvantage on any saving throws related to that sense.

Bestow Curse in 5E is flavorful, but the actual effects are kinda crunchy and, like Bane, feel like more of an ongoing nuisance for enemies rather than something that immediately changes the situation in an interesting way. 

Bigby’s Hand. For L rounds, you control a giant glowing hand that can punch, shove, and grab with the strength of a dozen people.

Blade Barrier. You conjure a wall of spinning blades, either as a ring around you or a long wall; creatures attempting to pass through the barrier must make a Dexterity saving throw or take Ld6 damage.

Blade Ward. Weapon attacks against you have disadvantage for L rounds.

Bless. Your allies have advantage on attack rolls as long as you are in as much or more danger than them.

As with Bane, we need to attach some kind of condition, although I fear these are getting a little too vague. I do like the idea of the spellcaster leading from the front and hoisting a metaphorical battle standard to inspire the group, which is easier in a classless game like Knave.

Blight. Drain all moisture from non-magical plants roughly equal to L people in size, reducing them to dust; a plantlike creature takes Ld10 damage instead.

Blinding Smite. The next creature you strike is blinded until the next time it takes damage.

Blindness/Deafness. All nearby creatures are blinded or deafened (your choice).

Blink. You become shadowy and immaterial on the round you cast the spell – and every other round afterward – unable to be harmed by solid things, but also unable to harm them in return.

Blur. Attacks against you have disadvantage.

Branding Smite. The next creature you strike glows with tell-tale light that they cannot extinguish for L turns. 

Burning Hands. A cone of fire either deals Ld6 damage to one creature, or ignites all flammable objects in the vicinity.

Closing Thoughts

The "D&D Next" process that led to 2014's D&D 5E seems to suggest that there was some appetite for removing needless complexity from the game, and... I think that included a desire to condense the byzantine spell list. They removed many of the “greater” and “mass” variations on spells. The option to upcast spells provided a model for varying the streamlining effects like simple damage and healing spells.

But the design feels compromised. A lot of cruft obviously stayed in. The designers didn't use those tools nearly as much as they could have, or should have. I don’t know that 5E would really work with the truly level-less/balance-agnostic magic of Knave; but I do believe 5E could have gone much further than it did, and would have played that much better if it had.

Themes, Thesauruses, Mysteries, and Megadungeons

Last Week: Premises, Themes, Genre Hacking, and Shower Thoughts

Last week I wrote about turning a premise into tangible themes. This week, let’s get into a crunchy, digestible example.

The premise of our Knave game involves a mystery train that stops at various locations for the players to explore. But neither the premise itself nor the ensuing session zero discussion really defined what kind of locations the PCs would explore. It was an open question. 

So I made a list of words that either came directly out of conversations with the players, or were a step or two removed from those conversations. 

1. Brutalist
2. Cyclopean 
3. Alien
4. Oracular 
5. Innervative
6. Biomechanical
7. Hypnagogic 
8. Demoniacal 
9. Entropic
10. Stellar 
11. Temporal 
12. Apocalyptic
13. Resurrectionist 

I decided to go with all adjectives for a feeling of internal consistency. It’s OK to flex the dictionary and thesaurus a bit here, as long as the words are evocative and interesting.

Because Strangers on a Train is a mystery game, information is revealed gradually. The words at the top of the list are close to the surface, things that might come through within the first few sessions. The second location the PCs visited had very literal brutalist and cyclopean design characteristics.

The terms further down the list may only be perceptible after many sessions. Many megadungeons essentially contain a mystery in the same manner. The first level might be full of sundry bandits and cultists, but the lowest level is the hollow earth / portal to hell / crashed spaceship part of the dungeon, secret from all but the most accomplished adventurers.

Remember that in the last post, we talked about the value of compounded our terms. Words on their own might not get us very far in developing something unusual. They are instead more valuable when we combine them to create something really novel. So oracular-stellar becomes “a structure for studying the stars to predict the future.” Brutalist-hypnogogic becomes “a vast dreaming amphitheater for sleeping explorers.” And so on.

Missing Memories (Part 2)

Last week: Missing Memories (Part 1) 

Last week I detailed three possible approaches for our amnesia-themed campaign. What did we go with? Well, we didn’t really use any of those ideas. Or, in a sense, we used all of them.

After consideration, my desire was to reduce those hacks down to the simplest, most universal rule possible. So in a sense, the output encompasses what each of those mechanics were trying to do:

• Flashing Before Your Eyes: The mechanic can still be used at “instant-speed” to save your bacon, but it’s not tied exclusively to such moments.
• Piecing It Together: Memories are tied to leveling up; leveling up comes from exploring. The basic gameplay loop is supported.
• Incepting Your Past: The recovered memories still function as a sort of background/class system, when desired.

We also added some context for roleplaying fantastic amnesia, with serious inspiration from the rules for the Fugue system.

Below are the rules in their current form in our campaign guidebook.

Amnesia and Flashbacks

Roleplaying Fantastic Amnesia

You have complete amnesia -- what people sometimes call "Hollywood amnesia." This is distinct from real-world medical conditions that involve memory loss, and the two should not be confused. Our use of amnesia is nothing more than a convenient narrative conceit to frame the game.

Assume the following is true. If you want your character to deviate from these assumptions, discuss your ideas with the DM.

You can speak, read, and write English. You intuitively know "common sense" things that most adult humans would know. You can do basic math. You know what everyday tools and objects are for. You have a basic understanding of how the world works.

You do not have any specialized skills or trained information. You have forgotten this information, and getting it back via flashbacks is part of the game.

You lack any specific cultural information. For example, you understand the concepts of theater, politics, and sports, but you can't remember any specific plays; you couldn’t say who you voted for, or if you even come from a democracy; and you couldn’t explain the specific rules of any particular game.

Flashbacks

A flashback is a recovered memory, something that you remember at a key moment. It’s a moment from your previous life, and may tie into other flashbacks and memories you’ve had before.

Flashbacks happen in dangerous or high-stakes situations. Imagine you are about to fall off a cliff, or staring at a bomb ticking toward detonation, or attempting to rescue someone from a raging river. You focus and ask yourself, “was there something about the person I was before I lost my memories that would help me here?”

How It Works

A flashback can happen at any time; if you are in a situation that involves initiative, it doesn't need to be your turn. Declare that your character is experiencing a flashback. If you have an idea of what the flashback might be, briefly describe what is happening, and the DM will ask you questions or suggest additional detail. If you’re not sure what the flashback might be, the DM will ask you a question or give you a prompt, and you will exchange details until the flashback comes into focus.

The DM will bring a “yes, and” attitude to flashbacks, but reserves a final veto on all details of the flashback, particularly if the events in the flashback would contradict information the players don’t yet know, or would constrain or conflict with the actions and intents of other PCs or NPCs.

A flashback will usually be between one player and the DM. The player may ask for suggestions or ideas from others, but other players should otherwise stay in “audience mode” and listen until the flashback ends.

Resolving the Situation

Depending on the situation that triggered the flashback, the DM will adjudicate how the flashback helps the character in their present situation. Typically, it will provide one of the following:

• Automatic success on a save that would have otherwise required a roll.
• Advantage on a save that otherwise would have been made neutrally or with disadvantage.
• A chance to roll a save in a situation where a save otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed.
• A second chance at a save after a failed save.
• A new approach or option for addressing the present situation.
• A reprieve from some injury, harm, or negative status that would have otherwise been applied.

Tracking Abilities

The flashback does not just help you in your present situation. The recovered memory is part of your character’s skillset going forward.

The PC and the DM should agree on a short phrase that describes the relevant ability. Add this phrase to your character sheet. This phrase could be verb-object (like “repair machinery”) or a job or background description (like “cook”).

Generally the DM will err in favor of the PCs when deciding if an ability could apply to a situation. But they also will not hesitate to tell you no if something feels like a stretch. If you are unsure if an ability will apply, ask the DM before you attempt it, and they will tell you before you commit.

Abilities can be a bit “fuzzy.” You can add a bit more detail later on, as long as it stays true to what happened in the flashback.

Serendipity by Design

If it seems awfully convenient that just as you find a useful item or encounter a dangerous situation, you recover a memory that helps you out, remember that the incident or object is what has triggered the flashback. Also bear in mind that our game is set in a fantastic world where serendipity may well be an actual force in the universe, as much as gravity, magnetism, or magic are. 

The More You Know

Exploring the world and taking risks primes your mind to accommodate more memories and associated abilities. You can recover a number of memories equal to your level. You can never recover more than one memory per session.

Missing Memories (Part 1)

When I pitched six ideas to my players for the game we kicked off last fall, they ultimately chose Strangers on a Train. The premise is simple – the characters wake up on a train with no memory of who they are. The train stops periodically at different dangerous locations.

As I started to prepare for the game, I realized that the system for simulating memory loss was the big question mark. We had agreed on Knave for our system, so I knew the rule(s) should be relatively simple. But there were clearly many ways to incorporate memory loss in the session-by-session play. After some consideration, I drafted three ideas.

Flashing Before Your Eyes 

When you drop below zero HP – or otherwise face imminent doom – scenes from your forgotten life may flash before your eyes, giving you insight into your lost past. When you declare this is happening, you and the DM conduct a brief flashback.

After the flashback is complete, you will be rendered unconscious or incapacitated, but spared death or the full brunt of whatever situation triggered the flashback.

Each character can only use this ability once per session, and X times over the course of the campaign, after which they must risk death without mercy.

Pros: Happens at a moment of high drama; provides (limited) safety net for lethal play.

Cons: Limited supply may induce some PCs to play too conservatively.

Piecing It Together 

Among the lost ruins of civilization outside the train are objects redolent with mnemonic power. Finding these objects not only grant PCs power, but also restore some of their memories.

A sliver of memory grants 50 XP. A fragment of memory grants 100 XP. An aggregate of memories grants 200 XP. All rewards are shared among all PCs who participated in the session in which the memories were recovered.

When characters level up, in addition to the normal benefits they receive, they recover memories. This can either be a flashback conducted with the DM in real time, or a brief piece the player writes or otherwise creates between sessions, with DM consultation.

Pros: Encourages exploration and ties the main theme of the game to advancement.

Cons: MacGuffin-izes central conceit of the game.

Incepting Your Past

You have lost your memories, but some of the actions you take, the tools you use, and the dangers you risk, may feel familiar, providing hints to your past life. Were you a baker, doctor, gambler, spy? Quick with the knife, handy with machines, or learned in lore? Only you can say for sure.

When you attempt to do something that would require training, knowledge, or experience particular to a certain profession or background, you may decide to incept a memory. You have advantage on rolls associated with that memory.

You may only incept one memory per session, and X memories overall. If you have already incepted X memories and wish to incept a new one, you must decide which of the previous memories was a lie. The DM incorporates a consequence of your self-deception into an upcoming session. You have disadvantage on all Saves associated with the consequence.

Pros: Gives players a clear utility and flavor for their memories as they introduce them.

Cons: Fuzziness / openness of what the incepted memory would cover, and how broad or narrow it should be.

What did we go with? Well…

Next week: Missing Memories (Part 2)

Knave-ifying 5E Spells

D&D 5E advocates a rulings-not-rules philosophy, rejecting 3.5E’s and 4E’s attempts to capture as much of the game as possible in formal rules. 5E is better at sticking to this philosophy in some places than others. One of the weakest areas is the spell list in the Player’s Handbook.

The 5E spell list takes up a full quarter of the total page count of the Player’s Handbook. Some descriptions are admirably succinct. Jump is 14 words long. Others are beasts. Symbol takes up more than half a page on its own.

What if all the descriptions were like the former? More specifically, what if they followed the logic of Knave's spell descriptions? 

What does it mean, mechanically, for time to move 10 times faster, or gravity to triple? 5E would work these details out with a dozen paragraphs explaining saving throws, special conditions to end the effect, interactions with ability checks, and combat implications. Knave simply assumes that the DM could reasonably adjudicate the effect based on common sense and the shared logic of the game world. 

So could we do it? Can we Knave-ify 5E spells? Let's try the first dozen spells in alphabetical order.

For this exercise, we won’t cover level, school, casting time, range, components, duration. Note that Knave uses “nearby” for range and common sense measures like “the size of an apple.” We’ll assume that anything not outright stated would be adjudicated at the table. As with Knave, there is no effort to balance these, and they are treated as basically level-less, or having effects that scale with level (denoted by “L” below).

Acid Splash: Conjure a goblet’s worth of weak acid, dealing Ld6 damage to a creature or destroying a fragile object.

5E has an abundance of spells that deal damage and do little else. 5E’s system for upcasting spells keys to tier rather than directly to level, which has a balance logic, but isn’t intuitive or easy to condense to a formula. If it were up to me, cantrips would be out of the game entirely, but that’s an entire post of its own. 

Aid: Temporarily increase L friendly creatures maximum HP by 5.

Note that Aid temporarily raises maximum hit points, but is different from temporary hit points, and a character could benefit from both simultaneously. Have I mentioned that I do not enjoy explaining the moon logic of this game design to new players? This effect is not even particularly interesting, and would be on the shortlist of spells that I would consider cutting entirely for its non-diegetic “numbers go up” implementation.

Alarm: An audible or silent alarm (your choice) triggers when an unfamiliar creature enters a warded space no larger than a 10xL cube.

Alter Self: Adapt the physical means of locomotion, survival, or predation – such as wings, gills, or talons – of a beast or monster you have seen before.

The last part is an underrated trick. 5E occasionally uses this conceit – the druid’s Wild Shape ability is limited to “a beast that you have seen before.” If a player wants to Wild Shape into a particular animal, the DM can ask them to make the case for their past encounter with such a creature, or even briefly flash back to their pre-adventuring days. This also gives 5E players a strong incentive to go out into the world and see new and dangerous creatures. More 5E spells and abilities that do things like summon creatures or create illusions should be predicated on the caster’s direct observation and interaction with such things.

Animal Friendship: Target beast must make a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed.

Animal Messenger: Target tiny beast reliably delivers a short message to a recipient, within L days travel, based on a general description of the recipient.

Animal Shapes: Target creatures transform into beasts with CR no greater than L/4.

There may be a more elegant way to cap the size of the beasts involved. Considering that Animal Shapes is an 8th-level spell, I’m not sure why 5E is so stingy about the strength of the assumed form. Or why this spell doesn’t simply re-use the logic of the Polymorph spell.

CR is also annoying because it is mostly a DM-facing stat (essentially, a rule for encounter balance and experience calculation) -- but, rarely, character abilities key off of it. When I homebrew beasts in 5E, I have to reverse engineer a CR after the fact, because the druid will ask me if they can Wild Shape into the fantastic animal they just encountered.

D&D 5E’s various transformation spells all include extensive language about what happens to equipment, what effects or conditions would return the subject to their normal form, and so forth. If this can’t be left to DM discretion, 5E should just have a universal rule for how transformations work.

Animate Dead: Raise L-2 skeletons or zombies capable of obeying simple orders for as long as you exert conscious control over them.

Animate Objects: Imbue a collection of objects the size of a person or smaller with temporary life; use a swarm stat block for many tiny or small objects, or a bear stat block for one big object.

Antilife Shell: Living things may not enter the 10’ radius shimmering dome that surrounds you.

Antimagic Field: Magic is blocked or suppressed within this invisible 10’ radius sphere.

Antipathy/Sympathy: All nearby creatures of a type of your choice must make a Wisdom save or be attracted or repelled (your choice) in your presence.

Note that in 5E’s rules, antipathy applies the frightened condition, but sympathy does not apply the charmed condition. I cannot think of a reason why this would be. GAME DESIGN.

We could repeat this exercise for the rest of the alphabet, but as with so many hacks, you have to stop and ask yourself if it would not make more sense to just design from the ground up, rather than painstakingly fixing the things you don’t like about the existing system.