PicoBlog

Greetings. With the school year done, I can catch up on some games projects. Here’s a look at some of what I’ve been playing, running, and designing of late.

We have been hosting sessions at our new home playing Fall of Magic with a few close friends. Fall of Magic is a beautiful storytelling game from Heart of the Deernicorn. As you play you unroll a hand-sewn, elegantly illustrated scroll that represents the lands your characters are journeying through.

Highlights: As I said above, it is a beautiful game. Everything is evocative and well-crafted, from the art to the story prompts to the name choices. But nothing is further elaborated, so it’s very much up to your table of players to decide what being a “Fugitive of Stormguard” or a “Golem of Ravenhall” means.

Many fun moments emerged from the combination of story prompts and player interpretations. At one point the map prompted me to describe Caspian’s morning ritual, which I had conclude with Caspian kissing a locket he wears. I didn’t know exactly what the significance of the locket was until later, when our shapeshifting Fox decided to try impersonating the Usurper Queen of Stormguard. At that point, I knew what I had to do. “Try to look like this,” said Caspian, handing the Fox his locket, “but older and crueler.” Caspian’s complicated feelings about the Usurper Queen then drove much of the second session.

Another one: Isha the Crab-Singer has been scrupulously avoiding playing her crab-pipes for the whole of our journey so far. When Isha’s player had me voice the mysterious Pool Crone in a scene between them, I took the opportunity to prompt her to play. Isha reluctantly sang a crab-song for the Pool Crone, which caused the Pool Crone's hut to sprout giant crab legs and scuttle off like Baba Yaga's chicken-house. Later, another player had the scuttling house return, enlarging itself by stealing pieces of the Machine Fortress of Karst.

Musings: Fall of Magic is not naturally an action-packed game. The mechanics are primarily story prompts, with the occasional die roll that spits out… more story prompts. Nonetheless, nothing breaks if your table wants to tell a more action-packed moment, you just need to know that much of the resolution will come from players integrating their ideas of where things go. My character Caspian attempted a coup to unseat the Usurper Queen (yes, he opposes her but is also in love with her; it’s complicated). We found a way for a die roll to play into the resolution of this, and the die told me to add “Dishonored” to my character sheet. Our telling of the story leaned into this, handing Caspian a messy defeat that left him fleeing underground with the Usurper Queen’s child cousin as a kidnapee/ward.

Another fun moment with the die came at the hut of the Pool Crone (before it scuttled away). The map offers these outcomes for a conversation with the Crone, based on a die roll:
1–3, a lie you wish were true
4–5, a truth you wish were a lie
6, silence

We decided to play out the scenes with the die roll hidden from the player asking the question. Only after each person’s conversation with the Crone would the player know what the die had specified (when I rolled a 6, of course, it wasn’t too hard to guess).

Final Thoughts: Someday, I want to play Fall of Magic and sail across the sea. Both this time and the prior time I’ve played, we’ve ended up opting for the deep way, and underground route along the back side of the scroll! Which is pretty cool too, but there’s a whole deck of islands I have yet to explore.

I ran an online two-shot of my game Vow of the Knight-Aspirants to test out some new mechanics and setting elements. It was a lot of fun! A playlist of the sessions is available here.

Highlights: One change I tried was expanding the scope of the game’s quest. Must the Tower Perilous only appear in the Bleakwood? It’s a magic tower, after all, so I thought I could justify the squires ranging all through the realms of Castony. This paid off as I was inspired to work out what the coast of Castony was like, and what sort of challenges might confront the player characters there. We got a lot of great flavor out of the setting of a mist-shrouded port town under a sleeping curse, where the squires parleyed with a nightmare horse and fought off a raiding party of Seathlanders.

Perhaps my favorite character moment came when Andromeda, the Stag and Hourglass, weaponized her prophetic powers. She spent 3 Heart to get a vivid prophecy of the Seathlander leader’s future, then intimidated him into running away by ominously expounding his fate!

Musings: The major mechanical tweak I was testing was an alternative to Conditions. I had gotten intriguing feedback that Conditions which made your character roll more misses felt unfun and out-of-genre. An aspiring knight becoming “Fearful” and getting -2 Valor didn’t fit some players’ views of their characters. My alternative was Tarnishes. Tarnishes modify your stats, but actually convey a bonus—a double-edged bonus, that makes you more fragile. So now if you Valor is tarnished, you mark “Wrath” and roll a bonus Dark Advantage die on Valor rolls. You get to count the highest two dice to resolve the move, but if the Dark die is highest, no matter what else happens, you mark an additional Tarnish. (Wrath could lead to Shame, Shame could lead to Folly…) When all five stats are tarnished, your character must make a dramatic exit from the scene—e.g. storming off, passing out, etc.

Obviously I’m drawing some inspiration from Trophy Dark and its Dark Dice here, and also a little bit from Urban Shadows and its Corruption track. Tarnishes represent a short “upwards death spiral” where a character gets certain bonuses at the cost of moral hazard and fragility. A squire dealing with the temptation and consequences of Tarnishes seems like a compelling story to me. Now I just need to think about how that mechanic and story beat might evolve as characters advance and mature into being worthy of knighthood…

Final Thoughts: I like the way this two-shot played. I’m looking forward to running the game again with these tweaks at Gen Con!

—Nephews in Peril, a supplement to Brindlewood Bay, is available now on DriveThruRPG. This expansion to the game of elderly women solving murders and unravelling an occult conspiracy includes a mystery written by yours truly: A Throng of Vice and Liars. In this mystery, the Murder Mavens book club investigates the mysterious death of a curmudgeonly fantasy author, Herb L. L. Paxton. And perhaps in the process they’ll find the lost manuscript of “The Augurs of Autumn”…

Get Nephews in Peril!

—Speaking of Gauntlet Publishing: My Trophy Gold Incursion, the Rime Palace, was featured for several sessions of the Scoundrel’s Quarter Actual Play series. Starting with this video, you can see a foolhardy band of treasure-hunters try to reach an icy fae palace and make it home again alive. I really enjoyed the way the players leaned into the decadence of the fae court here, especially in the Hall of Games and on the Masquerade Garden’s dance floor!

—Friend of Cloven Pine Games Lin Codega (now a Diana Jones Award nominee!) put together a list of heist-y games for io9 and included The Great Soul Train Robbery alongside many other excellent games, notably Blades in the Dark and Stealing the Throne. Check out the whole list here!

—I had a great time running Vow of the Knight-Aspirants on a Plus One Exp stream. Check out the video to see our squires deal with a scarecrow knight gone haywire (and, in one squire’s case, the tainted legacy of her traitorous usurper father).

—Lastly, I am quoted as an "independent game designer" & Tolkien-enthusiast (true!) in this NPR piece on the new Magic: The Gathering set based on The Lord of the Rings. I discuss what I liked and where I found a sticking point—namely, the Ring's temptation mechanic.

Till next time, may your life unscroll in a beautiful way, and may your virtues remain untarnished.

Gamefully Yours,
Alexi

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