The Thing as a Fight: Crafts as a Party

Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.
"No, no – no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.
"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood. 

As a kid this scene from Moby Dick always spoke to me.  The blood, the curses - the hate.  In magical traditions & tango there's a concept of intention a sensibility that guides you from the essential core of the self.  It's not something you can fake or pretend to have - it's something that projects from out of your self.  Ahab's got all kinds of intention, and he binds the rest of the crew to his mad purpose.

There's another influence from my youth that speaks in the same tone of voice.




The team gathering together to create something as a solution to the immanent crisis is an interesting trope to work with.  Building it into the system to create a Game-Within-The Game then becomes an interesting challenge.

Based upon my deconstruction of the basic Game-Within-The Game  I'd like to create a mechanical system that allows everyone to participate in a kind of building-montage.  In order to create a bounded scene with full-participation we need to look at the requisite features of a proper encounter.

It must have a clear boundary - something analogous to Initiative.

It must have an implicit objective - something similar to the win & loss conditions of a melee

It must have opportunities - a chance for each player to participate using their distinct abilities

It must have a time frame - a sequence of phases in which each player can interact with the task.

In the Moby Dick passage Perth is creating the harpoon's head but Ahab filibusters & insists on making it participatory for more of the crew.  In the A-Team example everyone is busy constructing a different component of the battle-jitney and even those bringing little to the task at hand are able to contribute in some way.

So we want to establish a system that is recognizable from its inception as a Crafting-Game with its own internal framework & opportunities for player agency to be respected.

Initiative is highly focused & a crafting game needs for a similar mechanic.  In the Game of the North we can consider Initiative not merely as the order of combat - but use the first definition of initiative & reflect the individual's desire to initiate action.  Do the PCs spontaneously begin creating something?  Does one lead the project?  There's no reason we can't repurpose the initiative score encompass the larger meaning - saying that the character's innate drive & alacrity sets the terms of their participation.  So one system for creating a Game that encompasses the crafting montage would be to simply call an initiative roll - giving everyone participating a place in the order of things, allowing them to put the thing together.

If we use the Moby Dick passage as a template - Perth has taken the initiative while Ahab follows & is in turn followed by Queequeg et.al.  Then Perth finishes & then Ahab offers his diabolical benediction.  There's no necessary order to the creation - rather its designed after the initiation.

So let's consider the path here - One person is committing the muscle & the skill - creating the object itself.  Another person is affecting this initial plan by devising a complicated ritual surrounding it.  The three pagan participants are offering their blood to the project & the mastermind of the enterprise consecrates (or desecrates) the whole project. This is interesting in relation to basic framework which demands the inclusion of an objective - but I'm not exactly certain what to make of it mechanically. 

Compare to action economy in The Game of the North & in other games. 

In Game of the North – players have a movement capacity – they can move a number of spaces or meters equal to their Movement statistic.  All players can move – so we want to carry over this mechanic – say that players can range as far as they need to to make the thing.  The distance they travel then sets the timetable for the rounds & turns structure that the system prefers.  If they must travel around the world to get the things - the project may be a months or years long process.  This in turn sets the parameters of what can be used to make the object.  Say that the PCs have an afternoon to rig their van into an ersatz tank.  This limits the scope & means the PCs may only be able to deal with the materials they have on hand.  

Start with the basic elements -

Move- everyone can do it if not prevented & they have unlimited choices.  Giving everyone a universal capacity for movement makes time the abstraction & the amount of movement required sets the abstracted time.  I need to run all over the city to make this = hours or days of construction. I need to run all over the territory = days or weeks & etc… We look at the distances traveled to gather materials to set the time frame.

Turns – establishing a series of turns that don’t coincide with the time-scale of the combat – everyone has a chance to participate in the making.  Actions on your turn:

-          Make a Stat check

-          Supply materials

-          Use a piece of equipment

We want for players to have options here & for each player to be able to participate - even in a small way.  So bloodletting by making a CON check or carrying the ammo crate by making a STR check.  This type of action can be easily included but not intensely planned out.   

Rounds – The whole project can be considered as a Round

-          Use a skill check to plan the construction

-          Use an ability like magic or tinkering

In a combat encounter the round encompasses everyone's turns - so the round here must be all the turns of the characters involved - certain actions should require the complete round - these are the main activities in the creation-game, the guiding activities.  

Objectives – So there's a basic objective-  build something.  But in a fight there's an opposing side with an opposing objective.  Here the Players are just rolling dice & narrating - which is amusing, sure, but it falls short of being a Game.  This is another area where I've got competing notions of how to execute this.  First, I'm thinking of Hit Points - HP is best when used abstractly - in my opinion to indicate the vitality & willingness to fight of an opponent - rather than the actual integrity of their corporeal form.  So it's an abstract quantity that sets a goal that the team of players must whittle down to zero in order to win.  It's almost dirty, when you put it that way, but it's also true.  It seems that this is a portable mechanic - something that could be used in this crafting game.  Perhaps there's a secret value - held by the Referee who considers the item's ultimate value in say - Silver Pieces.  Each action could add to this value & when the value is reached the thing is created. 

That's not a terrible way to go - it has the virtue of including the unfortunate anti-climax all players know about.  How many times have you stood, poised to unleash your best & most useful move only to have the player whose turn strikes before yours end the battle.  You're left with nothing to do as the game crosses out of initiative.  So Imagine the harpoon being made before Ahab even speaks up, in the example from Moby Dick.  I like the potential for this in any given system - surprises & disorientation focus attention.  

But what about opposition.  In the Combat Game the players can be hurt, can be killed themselves by an opposing side.  What about here - what's the opposition?  So here, maybe the Referee can oppose with a series of approximate NPCs.  Have you ever heard of the Person From Porlock?  Having your efforts to create things spoiled by random intrusions is something every creator knows about - why should PCs be denied the pleasure of thwarted dreams?  

So - If we consider the crafting game as a series of activities aiming at completing a task - we can look at the things that oppose or hinder that as effective counterattacks.  In the combat-parodying system above the idea then is to include these on separate turns.  This would mean that hindering events would need to be treated as NPCs or environmental effects.  This is...  Actually Fine.  Perfect in fact - but an idea that needs more development prior to presenting (I work through ideas here, I work through concepts with the intention of figuring out how I'd like to create a game - so this is me having an epiphany).  

Simplified:  

On initiative turn 20 - The environment intervenes.  Rain?  Hurricane?  Power outages?  Earthquakes?  These are things that should be randomly decided & then resisted through Saving Throws.  Failures increase the final cost of the thing.

On initiative turn 10 - NPC interventions.  People come around to pester you about your insurance situation, neighborhood kids come to watch & ask too many questions.  A wandering monster appears on site & attacks...  This is something that needs to be beaten through a Social test or a combat encounter (although - probably you shouldn't beat up some neighborhood kids for being curious).  Failing means that the thing is set back - maybe considerably.  Maybe the NPC intervention is a robber who steals what's already been made, for example.

On initiative turn 5 - Moment of Truth - Here's where the project enters its proving phase.  It's all well and good to bolt armor to your custom van - but what if it's too heavy & it pops all the tires?  What if your blood-soaked harpoon deforms under stress?   This should be worked out as a single check made by the initiating player.  Let them devise their response to the proving of the work & then have them make the check - aided or assisted by the other players as they're able, of course.  A failure here sets the project back considerably - but doesn't thwart it utterly - work can resume, but it's almost a back-to-the-drawing-board scenario.  

What's left then is to quantify the respective values.  How much does a skill check remove from the target value?  How much does a failed NPC interaction deduct from the Player's accumulated points?  How many of these abstract points need to be accumulated in order to create the object in question?  

Finally - how does creating the object affect play going forward?  What good does making the battle-jitney do you?  Does it allow you to defeat a specific encounter without a combat?  That's not a terrible conclusion to come to.  Does it allow for a single, ruthless, magical attack upon a single, ruthless, magical enemy?  From here - at the end of this effort to work through the ideas - I think that the effectiveness of the thing being made should be built into the initiative declared when creating the thing.  So - when Ahab plans that the harpoon be a cursed weapon of Moby Dick slaying - that is where the desired effect is being declared & the value of the object must be adjudicated by the Ref.  When B.A. starts customizing the van to allow a bloodless defeat of the impending mook-wave - that sets the target.  

Good.  Good...  Work cut out for me, objectives defined, I must begin making all of my rolls to accomplish the crafting of a rulebook.  

... the underside of the door's lever has a cleverly concealed pin - easy to avoid if you know to look - and you know to look. You've spared yourself an ugly death here but more danger lies forward...

A rose by any other name wouldn’t be a rose though would it, it’d be whatever that other name is.  I dunno about sweet smells – I live in Cleveland. 

The name of the thing – the thing in itself.  I gotta tell you – writing up spellbooks?  It makes you kind of philosophical.  What does it mean to be well? What does it mean that there are other dimensions?  You read up on some things you might not otherwise have glanced at.  The unity of ideas – synthesis of them – they come together and mix creating a kind of thing – an idea – the existence of which isn’t directly predicated upon perception – how weird.  A thing that is that can’t be touched or seen.  This we regard as the Unreal – and I have to tell you – the different names you give to your Unreality have a whole bearing on what’ll become of them.  At the very least they’ll set an expectation.

Star Wars – I’ve been running Star Wars – a neat game – and it’s been cool.  Everything you need to know is right in the name though – Stars?  Yep, in the stars?  Yes.  And War?  Not just war – but WARS – there’s lots of them.  Short, sweet symmetrical & kind of rhymes.

Middle Earth – As a kid I never got this.  I took it, as a child, to mean that there were supposed to be layers – worlds within worlds and the middle one was in the middle shell of the concentrically hollow earths.  Which – Maybe that’s what old JRR was going for?  Probably not, but not something I’d just put past him.  Anyhow – It’s the kind of name that raises questions – and that’s what you like because it engages. 

What I thought Middle Earth might refer to before I read the Hobbit

I’m not the worst at names.  Not even. 

The Fabulous Unknown City is still just fun to say – and it was a great campaign – maybe my best ever.

The First Campaign Guide is Intended for Fall of 2017

The Hundred Worlds?  I kept thinking – this could be better – and then kept thinking – this could be worse.  It’s the perfect middle ground for a setting with professional adventurers & jaded interdimensional travelers – it’s Fine.  Not great and that kind of fit the bill.

In the Ruins?  Whenever this gets its proper launch I think it’ll land with some poise & have a lot to say for itself.  I think the name really emphasizes broken dreams & landscapes & the instincts of people in the ruins to rise.

Expect the Campaign Guide in late summer 2017

The War of the Kliali Succession?  Still love it, still maybe just for me and no-one else.  Who knows?

So when I started down the OSR path the game I ran wasn’t of my own design – it was someone else’s with the hard parts provided by me -  I ended up calling it The Game of the North – and the whole matter seems to have taken off from there.  I liked it so much in fact that when I put all the customized modified rules all together I decided to name them collectively The Game of the North.

So now that I’m putting together guides & appendices for that campaign – to share it with everyone instead of the (really devoted) audience of 10-12 people who played it with me for a few years.  I, anyway, think it’s got value – value & heart & a good deal to offer the community of gamers OSR or otherwise.  So now that I’m writing it all down & making it into a nice book?  Well Game of the North is already taken – it’d be confusing to call that campaign the same thing as the rules no?  Probably I should name the campaign setting.

Sometimes I think a campaign is named really well, evocatively.  Sometimes I think the name that’s on the package isn’t really explanatory or it’s somehow contradictory of the whole premise.  Sometimes it’s a neat name that just lingers in the consciousness. 

But I like a good name for a campaign – something that will make it memorable, tangible – something you can hang your hat on and say – “I did that adventure”. 

I’ve come to see some of the shared experiences that a canon provides as being really valuable in making This Thing We Do Together into a community – and it’s the community aspect of our Hobby that’s got the most to recommend it (I mean, otherwise – we’d all just be novelists right?  Not that we can’t be that too).  Anyhow – shared experiences that disparate people can all point to and recognize – That’s a Big Thing – to me.  So I don’t do this just to do something – I do this to try and do something Great.  May as well be ambitious no?

But let me talk about that first Game of the North campaign.  I’d drifted out of running and playing in some big campaigns that had all contained a real abundance of cosmic power & eternal struggle – that worked on a scale & in a direction that I just couldn’t really buy anymore.   I was tired of playing characters that most certainly must have been tired – who rose levels encounter after encounter without barely pausing to rest.  I was tired of running PCs through these ordeals & being run through them myself.  “Just to say this – my fighter has not slept in a bed in almost two months, has not showered – ever – has killed, personally something like a hundred guys – all of whom wanted to fight to death rather than surrender all so I can get this one McGuffin upon which the whole universe spins?”  I’d really, factually, burned out of the epic scale.  Everything was so urgent, everything was so demanding – and in the end not fun.  Fun for me – Sure!  But I thought about my character, my PC’s and I just felt bad for them.  Absurd magic power and enough gold coins to build a house out of – but who could even imagine being bathed in so much blood and so little soap.  So I thought about that – what if I was my PC – not what I would do if I were a player – but what I would want if I were the player’s character – in the setting.  What would I want.

I settled on Adventure.  And after that I resolved that the stakes for the PC in this campaign would only be as high as they set them.  The rewards would be numinous & physical and Every Waterfall Would Have A Secret Cave Behind It.  Adventure, thrills.  No cosmic struggles, no Forces of Good & Evil.  Adventure.  Only.

And that was fun.  I had the right players – for sure – and they were game for an adventure where they got to drive the story forward with their character’s own ambitions – to conquer the wilderness, to defy convention, to name & to defeat enemies

.

The game itself became a game within the game – the meta-game of party vs. party and stronghold vs. stronghold – the things that I think somewhat distinguish The Game of the North from other OSR systems. 

And it was good.  It was so good I write books all about it now.  For fun. 

The trouble – again – is now what do I call these books. 

Thematically the game – this campaign, that is near completion in terms of publishing and accessibility – final forms and all that – thematically that game is about the wilderness, about conquest & colonization.  It’s about intense competition between factions to accomplish all of those things & it’s about trying to knock over the petty fiefdoms of your adversaries. 

So I got philosophical about that.  I end up on Hobbes – the Leviathan – Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes – the war of all against all. I mean –that’s not an inaccurate assessment of how the various playtests & playthroughs of that campaign have gone – they’ve gotten to be brutal. 

But it’s a little on the nose – a little too…  Latin. 

Eh, not quite.  Pass.

(now, bear in mind that I came up in gaming while gaming was coming up – and back when, back in the 80’s – they’d advertise these books & say that they were the Hardest or the most complicated – like that would win over players – and knowing the old school of players – it probably did.  And I came up in gaming so I… respond to that kind of pretension.  To the point that I don’t mind including common latin phrases in my own stuff – sure!  Why not?  Why not?) 

So I looked a little deeper and ended up following the trail – Homo Homini Lupus – Man is a wolf to other men – that’s yet more latin and with a better vintage – not English but Roman.  Still a bit on the nose – and really I’ve got to give some consideration to the material in question – Man is  a wolf to other men sounds a lot like this is a game about Werewolfs. 

Instead of being a game that Might be about Werewolfs.

So Durkheim. 

Insatiable Will.  I liked that – I liked that plenty – it encapsulates what the Ref needs the PC to portray – to have in the game – ambition, drive & desire.  To get rich & to dominate.  Things, again, that I felt were woefully missing from my years-long sessions about saving the world.  I thought- to hell with the world – what about mine?  And while that’s probably not a great attitude as a citizen – it’s exactly what I thought of when I thought of adventurers.  Not heroes, not villains, not saviors at all.  Adventurers – out for their own – Wolves to each other, At war with the world & driven in the end by their own implacable desires. 

Too similar to something else - something I can't quite recall the name of...

What name goes here?  Huh?  I mean - it's ALWAYS going to be The Battle of Lepanto because of course The Battle of Lepanto.  

So I got Unquenchable Will of Wolves.  It anagrams nicely – UWoW – as well.  A fair title for a fun campaign.

It’s pending – this month the first installment – the Arrival, as well as the first guide to NPCs & Monsters and procedurally generating encounters – all of that is upcoming. 

In the meantime – the first appendix is up – in case you want to have some OSR style naval conflicts – you can help yourself.

An Ominous Wind Blows - You Seek Shelter From The Threatening Storm. You See Ahead, In The Forest...

Well.  There it is.  This project has been an ongoing labor of aspiration, love & foolishness.  Among all the follies man is subject to - running a game must be the most pernicious.  

My prior experiences in being a creator (of sorts) have prepared me a little, just a little, for the work I decided to set out to accomplish here, though the effort has never been quite as reasonable as it ought to be.  Unreason.  That's the territory - the High Country - where we think deeply and for long about things like Our Purpose, Our Goals, Our Dreams.  So how did it come to this?

I was more or less destitute - to the point of having a roommate long past the point where you'd reasonably expect an adult man in late-capitalism to have a roommate.  We gamed.  Him and me, and our friends who'd come over just as often as we could get them to.  We gamed a lot.  Now Roommate, a good guy - a player.  A maker.  He says to me - complaining about his day in the healthcare industry at me, who's simultaneously none too keen on my work in the legal field.  "Boss was at me and said - 'well if you don't want to do this what do you want to do?'"

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I'd make a game design company and make games all day."

And I thought.  Well that's not bad.  I never got the sense that I'd be quitting my job to pursue this hobby, this dream.  But I never got the sense that I wouldn't, if I could.  So, like anyone who wants to win the lottery I bought myself a ticket.  In this case - I made some books.  I keep making these books.  

The Game of the North is a project that comes from a place of hope & dreams, of magical thinking & abiding passion.  The stories we tell in this hobby of ours - this Thing That We Do Together - these are worth effort, worth time, worth a little sacrifice.  Because they're stories & stories are the ever-expanding frontier.  The boundless horizon of what could be and what might be and what can never be.  We, us, Who Do This Thing That We Do Together - we're pioneers.  In my estimation - pioneers of the unexplorable country of the imagination.  Off forever, limitless we decide how it will be and how to get there and what can and can't happen in the billion, billion unseen worlds that We All Make Together.  

You like stories, I like stories, You have this hobby, I have this hobby.  Maybe I've taken it a little farther than is reasonable, maybe I'm committed to making two books a month, a monster a week, two or three worlds a year - maybe I have more games in me that are waiting to be written down, bound and offered up.  Maybe.  But this is the work of a person, alone.  The Thing We Do, We Do Together.  And that makes all the difference.

This is my preface, my statement of mission & intention.  I expect to use this place to speak about the work of game-making, of running tables & as commentary on what I know & think about This Thing Of Ours.