Moves That Make Promises In Pasión de las Pasiones
One of the tricks I like to use for writing effective, interesting custom moves in Pasión de las Pasiones (my Ennie 2023 Best Game nominated game of telenovela drama) is to build it around a promise.
I'm a sucker for a payoff in a piece of media, I love to be promised I'll be shown something and then be shown exactly that. I think it's innate to want exactly that, we love foreshadowing and getting that payoff. That's the entire basis of telenovelas honestly, through all of the twists and turns and questions, we have a promise (sometimes direct, sometimes implied) of how it will end.
Bonus points to those who get my gif choice.
Im going to give the quickest background I can before showing the move.
Briefly Custom Moves
Moves, for those uninitiated to Powered by the Apocalypse, are little bits of rules with a trigger, a mechanic (often rolling plus a stat), and a result.
When you MAKE A TUMBLR POST, tell us what it is then ROLL PLUS SHARP. On a hit EVERYONE REBLOGS IT.
These little mini bits of rules let's games really focus on specific genre conventions of the stories they are telling. When they do a good job, they focus play.
Custom moves are invented by the GM either before or during the session. They are for a scenario that the game didn't see coming or that normally wouldn't necessarily be a focus of the game. They follow the same structure and can be a little tricky to master, because often you're doing them quickly!
Briefly Pasión de las Pasiones Moves
Pasión de las Pasiones is a variant on PbtA which instead of stats uses questions. Simplistically, for each "Yes" answer to two questions on a move, the player adds +1. Those questions usually have to do with fictional positioning (what is happening in a scene or what advantages/scenarios a character has).
The Move
When you race across the jagged cliffs, trying to claim the prize that will forever change your life, roll with the questions:
* Are you willing to die to win?
*Are you willing to kill to win?
On a hit, you make it to the end, neck and neck with your greatest rival. On a 10+, pick 1. 7-9, pick 2.
*You chicken out at the last minute and lose, mark 1 conditions
*You make it over the line, but you're busted up to the point that you're not walking away from this. Face Certain Death.
*You drove someone off the cliffs. If they're a PC, they Face Certain Death. If they aren't, they are dead, dying, or missing.
On a miss, you screw it all up. You lose control of your vehicle. If you were willing to give your life, Face Certain Death. If you weren't, watch as someone else takes your place at the podium.
So why does this custom move work?
It asks the player, what are you willing to give for this and the player makes a promise. For promising to give their life, they get a +1. For promising to kill, they get a +1. That's a great little moment, of all of the players listening to the racer say that.
Then, if they roll poorly, we get that payoff. They promised they'd give their life, let's see it happen.
If they roll well, we also get that payoff! You said you would give your life, will you now? You said you'd kill, will you now?
This design basically makes a mirror around the objective, you tell me what it's worth to you and then I ask you if you'll pay it.
For the record, our roll had the racer falling off the cliff, but being saved at the last minute by a mysterious racer who turned out to be the missing heir to the fortune and identical triplet to two of the players.
While I work on Sacrament, it's been kinda fun making other, smaller games as a way of figuring out different parts of Sacrament? I've been struggling lately with how to do the Skills in the skill trees as they're a core part of Sacrament, so I switched over to another project to work through the design block and making things for that game has done a great job of helping out with the skills!
A singular rite in the life of a tabletop designer is the creation of their D&D heartbreaker. I’ve held off on it personally, in part by making near-misses like RADCrawl, but the siren song has proven to be a little too powerful and thus I’ve started on extremely temporarily named BL-G Hack. It is just coincidence that I’m additionally trying out blogging at the same time, after reading a Twitter (X?) thread with discussion of how much in the indie space is lost to Discord.
I’m starting from a framework of what I want the game to feel like and how I want to work on the game.
What I Want The Game To Feel Like
In terms of the table experience, I want the game to feel like playing a mostly theater of the mind D&D. I’m a huge 4e apologist, but for this I want to try to capture what it felt like to play D&D as a kid and we goofed around with world and city maps, but didn’t usually get out the grid for combat. I want to evoke some of the Catalogue TTRPG feeling, but ideally with choosing things pretty quickly. I want for characters to feel powerful and be able to do cool things, without feeling like bags of HP.
There’s definitely some merging of PbtA and D&D that I’m aiming for; but I don’t want it to feel like PbtA. I’m aiming for resolution systems that give interesting results, not full on Moves. You roll d20s.
I want to have players battling monsters and feeling like badasses. I want the game to feel ‘gamey.’ I’m developing a set of toys that tell a fantasy story.
I want to simultaneously have the joy and excitement of playing a West Marches game while avoiding the feeling of ‘go out and conquer.’ I love looking at a map, exploring it, battling things, and grabbing riches… but I don’t want to casually recreate the same approach of D&D of ‘orcs are evil, we are allowed to take their stuff.’ Balancing that is a little fiddly, but I think I have a solution that I am comfortable with.
How I Want To Build This Game
I want to approach this game in the style of blogs, Dragon magazine, and tiny splat books of the 3.5 era. Scenarios, skills, abilities, classes, monsters, etc should be able to be relatively stand alone; the kind of thing that I can sit down and crunch something out over the span of a lunch break or two. I think I’m going to try to keep barrier to entry on this low, the intent is to let people explore what kind of D&D I like to play.
That said, I’m aiming to be able to after initial release have some fun with zine-size releases that give some locations, some monsters, class options, etc. I’m actually truly hoping to get a group together to actually PLAY this game and have that playing inform design… but, let’s stay realistic here.
Core Systems
So, without further delay… the first bites of The BL-G Hack.
Characters have stats, probably six of them, probably the same D&D stats. When a roll is called for, the player rolls at least a d20 and tries to get under their stat for a hit. A basic roll is d20, a proficient roll is 2d20, and there may be higher bonus dice than that.
One hit (rolling under your stat) gives you a partial, marginal, or barely managed success. Two hits (rolling twice under your stat or your stat exactly) is a full hit, a heroic hit. Three or more hits (rolling thrice under your stat or an exact roll plus an under) is a truly superheroic hit.
Characters have classes, which give them proficiency in some scenarios which allows them to roll two d20s instead of one. They also give them a couple of Abilities that allow them to do cool things and a table for starting equipment. When characters level up, they’ll get new abilities which can come from any class or situational ones. Character classes will be specific (think prestige classes from 3.5 rather than base classes), but hopefully pretty mix and match.
Between adventures, are Map Phase and Company Phase. The GM will run the Map Phase where dark forces move, quests and landmarks are added, and the map is revealed by the player’s actions. Additionally, some player abilities will allow them to be invited to Map Phase or give input into Map Phase. Company Phase is run by the players, where they can share equipment, spend gold to roll for purchases, and take downtime activities.
Call to Adventure
The world is misted in a choking miasma; remnants from the Shattering when the death of gods sent magic running wild, slaughtering and corrupting all it burned over. In few seats of power the mages who did not succumb to the falling produced the Dimlight crystals that hold back the corruption and prevented all life from being burned out. The spells that produce these Dimlight artifacts destroyed the mages who cast them, turning their bodies into haunting, crystaline statues that radiate safety. In larger cities, where mages worked in circles, the protection may extend over neighborhoods. In rural areas, where only a single adept worked the protection may be as little as a room.
The world in miasma is dangerous; elemental monsters and corrupted humanity feeds on all who dare delve into the mist. The very air stings to breathe where Dimlight doesn’t clarify it and can have worse effects. There are refugees in the miasma and small enclaves that have gained access to Dimlight, but most are clinging to a solitary existance separate from the world. Those who live in cities where Dimlight is more plentiful have can live more normal lives, though communication with other cities and wealth remain exclusive to the hands of nobles and the wealthiest merchants.
The world just changed; Dimlight has been miniaturized. A new generation of Dimlight spells can be created without killing it’s user and requiring significantly less space for the artificial crystal. Dimlight torches offer the greatest possibility, an opportunity for adventurers to delve into the miasma and destroy the godsplinters that corrupt the land. The world is still dangerous, even when the miasma pulls back the monsters remain. But there is no end to the treasures that could be gained; abandoned riches, incredible power, and reclaiming homes long lost.
Roadmap
Currently I've got this, four out of five starting character classes, and some ideas that I've got to get into paper. The actual PDF of it is probably a little bit off, but I'm hoping to have an accessible, playable version available soon.
If you'd like to get it as soon as possible, consider backing my Patreon where I'll be doing an announcement post with a link soon! There'll be an itch page too, but it'll need to be more final before that.
It's cold out there and the orders are stacking up for new ttrpgs so it's time to check the ttrpg stovetop. CHEF, I NEED HANDS
Maybe lost the metaphor a bit there.
TTRPG designers tend to have a lot of games in progress at once and it's useful/nice to be able to check in on those things! Here's what I'm working on!
I'm structuring mine (as I have for a little while) as front burner (active), back burner (paused, but simmering), cold (essentially abandoned, but may pick up again), or done.
I think probably that's also the order of how interesting they are, so I'm going to write them in that order. Feel free to ask me about any of these games or ask if there's something else you know I've worked on!
Front Burner (by approximate time focus)
Pasión de las Pasiones: Tormentas del Corazón
Contract Work That Isn't Public Yet (but a preview is 💀🤹🏽♀️)
Towershield/The BL-G Hack/Three Musketeers/Romantasy Roll Under Apasionado por el Apocalipsis Game
Deadly Kobold Racing: Artful Version
Pommel Ball
Back Burner (by approximate interest)
Bottle Episode (to be inserted into long-running campaigns or played as a one shot experience)
RADCrawl Roguelike
Dancecards & Debutantes (may be part of Towershield, etc)
Can't Handle The Heat
XOXO
Cold
Catching the Nice Guy
Luchadorratón
Chase the H0ll0w (hopefully will revive with edits for 2023 Spooky Season?)
Done
Pasión de las Pasiones
Deadly Kobold Racing: Artless Version
If you want to know anything about any of these projects, give me a shout!
Oil your sword, check your engines, and get ready to race! Deadly Kobold Racing is coming!
EDIT! The Minimal Viable Product of the game is available now on itch.io! Check it out here!
Deadly Kobold Racing is a kart racing board game built for quick one-off sessions, a legacy racing campaign, or to slot into your existing dungeon game. Players choose a racer, pick a track, and slam on the accelerator to take home the win! Use your hero abilities, track hazards, and a pile of chaotic items to dominate the opposition.
Deadly Kobold Racing will run on a one-time-buy seasonal release model that allows players to contribute to world-wide achievements that unlock new loadouts, characters, items, and more! At your own table, unlock Fans and get permanent equipment to chain together races, or just drop in a single race for a change of pace!
The Game At A Glance
All of the materials for this game will be available as print and play or in a digital format. Print out the race and both the racer card and mini for each of the racers.
Each player chooses a racer like Beins & Bufo below!
1) Name, team name, and flavor to introduce the character
2) HP: The number of hit points you have before you get spun out
3) Size: The weight of your vehicle
4) Gears: How many spaces you can move each turn (speed) and how many of those can be diagonal at each gear.
5) Stats: Your four stats, roll under these when you use them (the picture shows an old version! These will be more like D&D stats!)
6) Defenses: Your four defenses, turns a hit against you into a partial hit if the roll is under this
7) Abilities: Your two racer abilities. Includes how often they can be used, their effect, and whether it is an Action, Reaction, or Passive.
Rolls and Actions:
When you make a roll (from an Action, hazard, or otherwise), roll a d20 under your indicated Stat. If you roll under your Stat, that's a Hit!
If you have a target and roll under their indicated Defense, that hit becomes a Partial Hit.
If you roll exactly your stat, that's a Crit. Be sure to make an appropriate sound to your character (ex: a Wahoo! or a Ribbit!)
Play goes in turns with play order determined by the current track.
On your turn:
1) Move your current Gear's Speed forward. You may use Swerve to move diagonally instead of straight forward.
2) At any point during your movement, you may use an Action, resolving it as it requires. You may also use as many Free Actions as you would like.
3) If you enter a square with something in it, resolve that immediately as explained by the rules for common situations (ex: Crashing Into Walls, Jumping Ramps, or Picking Up items) or using the special track rules (ex: Entering Blood Portals, Bouncing on Crocs).
4) At the end of your turn when everything else is done, you may choose to shift your Gear up or down.
Items
As you move around the track, you'll sometimes pass over item chests. When you do, get an item by drawing a printed card or using [perchance link]. Some items will activate automatically, but most can be held and used like any other Ability. Unless the card says otherwise, assume that an item is a one-time use.
Events and World-Wide Play
Creating new stuff for Deadly Kobold Racing is easy! Racers require only a couple of stats and two abilities, items are extremely simple, and even tracks don't add a ton of complexity.
Because of this and a deep abiding love of Events, my intention is to continue to support Deadly Kobold Racing far beyond it's initial release. When an Event is launched, it will introduce some new Racer options (either loadouts that change an existing Racer or a whole new one), a track or race-style, and a handful of items. These themed Events will also introduce at least one world-wide achievement.
After each race, you may fill out a form that gives the results of your race. You'll be able to say who raced, who won, and check off whether certain events occurred. When an achievement is fulfilled, all players will unlock something new for the game! Additionally, when each Event ends, the results will have an effect on the world (ex: changing a Racer, giving a new loadout, altering a track, etc).
Down The Road
There's a lot of things to come that I'm excited about, but I don't want to let this post get too much longer. So just as a little treat for myself, here's some of what's to come!
*Long Term Play: Upgrade your character, get new cool equipment, and build a fan base that gives you bonuses!
*Campaign Play: Travel from track to track dealing with bandits, street racers, and explore the locations around the racetracks!
*Original Racers: Make your own Racer, including advice for using your other dungeon game's stats to inform your racer!
*Collabs: Play as characters from and inspired by indie ttrpgs, podcasts, and more!
SO WHEN IS IT?!?
As soon as I'm done with layout, a minimum viable product will drop! Following that, it's art for minis and races! I'm hoping this month!
What do you think? Excited? Confused? Are there collabs, racers, or other stuff you'd like to see? Let me know!
I saw a post yesterday from @drakeanddice about Blaze of Glory mechanics in tabletop games and was going to just show him what I'm doing for that in (the still obnoxiously named) The BL-G Hack, but then realized it could maybe be a post of my own.
Let's talk mechanics for heroic sacrifice.
Okay, maybe I lied, we're going to talk briefly about WHY mechanics for heroic sacrifice make sense for a game. This is still going to be mostly me dumping over a box of toys, a quick glance at planned mechanics, but I want to ground it a little bit first.
Why would a player want to have a heroic sacrifice moment?
Thematic Payoff: Fantasy fiction is full of moments of a character (especially one who has broken oaths and bonds) sacrificing themselves for the good of the many. We want to see a someone who we didn't think could live up to being a hero doing it.
Strategic Goal Reaching: Setting up a heroic sacrifice will often allow a momentary contract between the GM and the player; I really want X to happen, so much so that I'm willing to give up my character. In exchange, will you give us the cool thing? Yeah, nice.
Character Shuffling: Players don't always want to stick with one character or may have an RL reason that they need to change. This lets them not just fade away.
Kicking Up Drama: In a lot of games (lookin' at you dnd) combat can be lengthy and cumbersome for players that want dramatic play. This shortcuts combat (usually) in order to hit that drama.
With these goals in mind, an ability that does heroic sacrifice needs to be redemptive (it makes the character feel heroic even if they have not been previously), effective (it succeeds at a task), lethal (it definitely kills them), and big (the moment feels important).
The BL-G Hack's Approach
As discussed elsewhere the BL-G hack is a class based DnD-like that uses PbtA inspired abilities and has a focus on World Map play in a West Marches style.
If that sentence didn't make sense, don't worry, it's a game where you do fantasy stuff.
Characters in the BL-G hack will be able to gain Abilities through leveling up, circumstances, equipment, etc, and some of those will be Heroic Sacrifice moves. One of the classes that gets one of these abilities is The Tactician.
The Tactician is based on using martial prowess and tactical knowledge to improve your party's fighting and provides an inroad to the Map Phase. It's based on the 4th edition Warlord pretty explicitly, though it's exchanged martial healing for troop movement in a way that I think will be fun. Here is the Tactician's Heroic Sacrifice Move.
Sheath the Sword: When all is bleak and you take position at a choke point, you may give up your life to hold the position for as long as your allies need to escape to safety. You have a moment to speak with them, confessing your weaknesses and sharing your love for them. You battle long, until the ground is slick with blood and the bodies have stacked before you, weakening the enemy and ensuring that pursuit is delayed long enough to give your allies a true advantage. The spot you died becomes a Landmark where future heroes can use this ability at will.
Notice how this move is aimed to handle those four pieces:
Redemptive: You confess your weaknesses, a fitting redemption for a class that is about not showing weakness.
Effective: It definitively allows your allies to escape to safety from a bad situation. It specifically weakens and delays the pursuit.
Lethal: There's no roll, you die.
Big: Your sacrifice is so noble and awesome that the Map is permanently changed.
When a player picks this ability, they are letting the GM know that they want to have one of these moments and they are setting themselves up for it. It lets the GM know that they can kick up the danger, somebody has an out and they'll want to use it when the moment is right.
Not all classes will get Heroic Sacrifices (multiclassing is SUPER supported and I don't want the classes to feel same-y), but others will include magically pulling down a building onto yourself to destroy a major villain, healing those around you and creating a healing garden around your grave, and writing your soul into a song that can later be played to strengthen your friends.
Roadmap
Work on The BL-G Hack continues to slowly roll on according to my whims and lunch breaks. The actual PDF of it is probably a little bit off, but I'm hoping to have an accessible, playable version available soon. Being honest, Deadly Kobold Racing is going to come out before this in all likelihood, but BL-G Hack should be close behind.
If you'd like to get it as soon as possible, consider backing my Patreon where I'll be doing an announcement post with a link soon! There'll be an itch page too, but it'll need to be more final before that.
When it does come out, maybe I'll have a Heroic Sacrifice contest and add a Dramatic Location to honor whoever manages to pull one of these off first.
Additional Edits:
Thiago makes such a such a good point! I've got two concepts that I think could handle this well to make it a little bit more tempting to take one of these possibly hard-to-pull off abilities.
I might take a look at adding an additional smaller rolling benefit onto these moves. Probably in a way that builds up their reasons for making the move! If I do that, I'll need to make sure that it's not too hugely impactful on it's own; I want it to be a little cherry on top, not a reason on it's own to get the move.
Also, free Abilities are DEFINITELY going to be a thing! My intention is that Abilities are given out like candy, look to Compendium Classes from Dungeon World for some idea of what I'm talking about. You hit a trigger, you get an ability, you have future level up options!
I think every designer has a dozen projects that they are ostensibly working on and after seeing @temporalhiccup's list, I absolutely had to think on my own.
I'm structuring mine (as I have for a little while) as front burner (active), back burner (paused, but simmering), cold (essentially abandoned, but may pick up again), or done.
I think probably that's also the order of how interesting they are, so I'm going to write them in that order. Feel free to ask me about any of these games or ask if there's something else you know I've worked on!
Front Burner (by approximate time focus)
Pasión de las Pasiones: Tormentas del Corazón
Deadly Kobold Racing
The BL-G Hack
RADCrawl Skirmish
Pommel Ball
Back Burner (by approximate interest)
Hades Style Shared Journaling Game
RADCrawl Roguelike
Bottle Episode
Dancecards & Debutantes
Can't Handle The Heat
XOXO
Cold
Catching the Nice Guy
Three Musketeers Game
Luchadorratón
Tower Shield (has largely become BL-G Hack and RADCrawl Roguelike)
Chase the H0ll0w (hopefully will revive with edits for 2023 Spooky Season?)
OH GOD IM ALIVE anyways which of these sounds better for my gothic meatpunk renaissance game's version of subclasses
Option A - You get a few free skill points in character creation to unlock the subclass of your choice and a couple skills from it, the subclasses would be separate from the base skill tree you have
Option B - You choose one you are working towards but do not unlock automatically, working towards it on the game's skill tree. You get a passive bonus from the subclass you chose that goes away once you unlock it
