I've grown to really dislike the framing of tabletop RPGs as being about story. To some extent this is unreasonable and knee-jerky on my part. I've talked to several people who just use "story" and "imagined world" interchangeably. But, I do think talking about RPGs in terms of "story" does impose, intentionally or not, the concerns of storytelling on the act of play.
For me, the draw of playing an RPG is in adopting the persona of a character and seeing how they mesh with the imagined world, treating that world as a real place. Putting that in the frame of story can nudge the concern of play from engaging with the world organically to engaging with it as a narrative canvas; in terms of "what makes a good story?" or "what is narratively satisfying?"
RPGs are their own artistic medium. And, they are a medium for play. I think we do a disservice by burdening our expectations of play with the framework of storytelling mediums.
Plunderdark is a Dice Game for Heroic Adventures in a Late Medieval Dark Fantasy Anti-Canon Sandbox. It centers play around underdog Heroes pursuing their Convictions to make their grim and perilous world a better place.
Dark Fantasy
Imagine the world at the start of Willow or The Dark Crystal. The world is in the grip of an Evil Despot. The forces of Good, insofar as they exist, are in hiding or on the back foot. Foolhardy scholars collude with the powers of the Hidden World to work sinister sorceries. Remnants of past ages dot the countryside, promising wealth and fame to those who plumb their depths, and doom to those who linger too long in their hollows.
Late Medieval
Imagine our world in the decades preceding the Protestant Reformation and the invasion of the New World. Armored knights exist alongside castles and early firearms. The printing press is a new invention, allowing information to move and propagate faster than ever before. The progeny of conquerors and despots have grown fat on the exploitation of the common folk for nigh on a thousand years. Wealthy merchant adventurers exploit the trust of their common kin and the greed of the nobility they aspire to surpass to amass their own great fortunes.
Anti-Canon Sandbox
The Gamemaster is not solely responsible for defining the setting of play. The entire table collaborates to define the contours of the world, and creates Heroes invested in that world. Play is directed by the Heroes and their Convictions. The Gamemaster does not compose a plot, but provides opportunities and obstacles for the Heroes to pursue their Convictions.
Borrow a page from depthcrawl procedures and have your encounter table be 1dX+Y where X is the size of the die you want to use and Y is your "depth", measured as distance in hexes from a central "safe" hex. The higher the encounter roll result, the more dangerous or weirder the encounter. So, you can get the feel of the world becoming more and more dangerous the farther from town you get.
First pass at a list of Action Ratings for Advanced DNGN FKRS / Dwindeltol.
The game is going to be FitD-ish, as DNGN FKRS is, with a cruftier skill list. (Despite BitD calling them "actions," I still think of them more like skills in my head). I've divided them into categories of four, but the divisions are imperfect. Break in the Craft section is kind of more of a Shadow action. "Drink" in Labor and "Deal" in Craft are both kind of really Social actions. And what's the difference between Drink and Consort, functionally?
Of course, a little overlap is normal for a FitD. And even desired since I'm thinking of borrowing FoRKing from Burning Wheel.
Important Principles:
Every action must be active. If a player is rolling the dice, their character is doing something in the fiction of play.
Absolutely no perception or knowledge actions! The closest thing is Research, which still requires going somewhere and doing something.
Questions?
Keeping the principles in mind, is there anything that feels like it's missing?
Mucking around with a starship sheet partly inspired by Starfield. But also inspired by every piece of space opera fiction I've ever seen.
You have a number of dice to assign to systems equal to your ship's Reactor. You do this by actually placing physical dice into the slots for each system.
If a character on the crew has a relevant Skill, they can put a different color die into the system as long as at least one die is assigned from the Reactor.
Damage to the ship is marked by Xing out the topmost square of a system. Hull is the max system damage a ship can take before it shakes apart. Of course, the Reactor is a system that can take damage, and damage to the Reactor reduces the power dice to go around; so it's possible to be dead in the water before you explode.
Ship Systems
W01-03: Weapons. Roll to do damage to other ships (or to shoot down incoming missiles, if you have PDCs).
Thrust (THR): Going fast/sublight maneuvering. Roll to evade missiles and get enemy ships in your crosshairs.
Kinetic Dampers (DMP): Roll to defend against high velocity ballistics like PDCs and rail guns; not effective against missiles. Passengers take Stress every round equal to Assigned THR minus Assigned DMP, so also important for keeping your crew from blacking out or suffering strokes.
Warp (WRP): FTL nav computer and engines. Roll to calculate the jump to "lightspeed." Use a clock. When it fills, you can jump out of a tight spot.
Making of Ship
You start with a basic ship frame.
In the fiction, the frame is the reactor + sublight engines which the rest of the ship is built around. The bigger/more powerful the frame, the more shit you can strap to it.
In the rules, the frame gives you your Reactor Rating, Thrust Rating (always Reactor -1), Total Cargo, and Hard Points (for weapons, dampers, and scanners). You then buy the rest of your stuff with Cargo and Hard Points.
Big ship modules like FTL drives, heat sinks, and crew quarters cost Cargo to install. Actual Cargo space is just mounting points for depressurized cargo containers. Not accessible without a space walk.
Smaller ship modules like weapons systems, shield projectors, and long range sensors take up Hard Points.
Still thinking about Hull . . . I figure it should start at Reactor +1. Maybe increase with armor Modules? Or at some fraction of total System Rating?
When I play TTRPGs, I try to do something I call "Playing at the Game." Basically, this means portraying a character that's invested in engaging with the principle activity of the game or scenario. This means, like, making a character who wants to explore the dungeon/derelict spaceship/whatever.
It seems obvious?
But I can't count how many times I've played with people who tried to remove their character from the scenario? Maybe they're trying to portray what they consider a realistic character?
But.
That's not the game.
The dungeon is the game.
Find a reason to want to explore the dungeon. Or play a different game.
Muddling out an adventure setting. Developing out some ideas present in my work since Plunderlight.
The hexes connected by thick lines are big regions. The hexes connected to those regions are locations, factions, notable wandering monsters, and other features within those regions. Alignment/proximity kind of matters. The Bloodleggers in Nightcastle are conceptually close to The Bleed. The Hemophages in the Bleed tend to hang out closer to Nightcastle, etc.
Goal is to have some specific geography and themes while leaving enough blank space for individual groups to make the place their own. Or, in other words: anticanon motherfucker.
Loose idea is to tie this in with Plunderlight's successor project, which may end up being "Advanced DNGN FKRS." Or I may just end up using the name of the setting, "Dvindeltol."
Or maybe I should just let this be fucking around with the map and some GDocs notes for now and not get ahead of myself.
I made a test character for Mud+Laser. Just took a few minutes, which shouldn't have surprised me but did. Really, the thing that took the longest was fishing the item tokens out.
