Five or So Questions with Becky Annison and Josh Fox on Lovecraftesque

I interviewed Becky Annison and Josh Fox about their new game, Lovecraftesque! It’s currently on Kickstarter and looks awesome!

Tell me a little about Lovecraftesque. What excites you about it?

J: Lovecraftesque is a storygame of brooding, cosmic horror. It recreates the rhythm and style of Lovecraft’s stories, and gives you the tools to collaboratively create monsters and other horrors that feel like they could have come from Lovecraft’s notebook.

B: I really enjoy the typical model of a Lovecraft story – the single protagonist getting deeper and deeper into a terrible mystery only to find they are already doomed. But the majority of Lovecraft RPGs focus on a party of investigators instead of the lonely protagonist. What excites me is how Lovecraftesque takes the story back to that lone protagonist. I love the fact that the rotating roles in the game mean that everyone is trying to doom that character in their own way.

J: For me, this is the GMless mystery game I’ve always wanted to play in. I love the fact that I get to put my own stamp on the story, while getting the uncertainty and suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen. And the game’s rules mean you still get the coherence and direction you’d normally get from a GM, without the need to break the atmosphere to discuss what’s really going on.

Lovecraft and associated mythos are, historically, kind of problematic. What have you done as creators in regards to problems like sexism, racism, and ableism?
B: Lovecraft is very problematic and we are approaching that openly. We have done a number of things to try and de-toxify Lovecraft. I think there are 3 main areas we have worked on this.

Firstly we wanted out art to be as diverse as possible and part of the reason we chose Robin Scott was for the amazingly inclusive art in her Urban Tarot series.

Secondly we’ve put a lot of thought and guidance into how to create a good safety culture at the table. We encourage players to agree up front their approaches to sexism, racism and abelism and ensure everyone’s views are heard.

J: The setup phase of the game includes a step in which players can ban specific themes or elements, and we’ve included a prompt to consider banning in-character racism and racist themes.

B: Lastly we’ve written two guidance sections in the game text, one on mental health and one on racism. In those we explore the stereotypes in Lovecrafts’ work and give practical guidance to ensure people don’t unconsciously replicate them.

J: The mental health side is handled a bit differently. It’s fair to say we encourage people to omit racism entirely from the game, and we don’t think that will hurt the story in the slightest. By contrast the effect of the horror on the human mind is an important theme of Lovecraftian tales.

We’ve analysed the different ways that the horror can impact on someone’s mind or their behaviour, giving you a set of options for a respectful portrayal that steers well clear of the stereotype of the horror driving people “mad”. The key thing is to portray a character, not a collection of symptoms.

How do you envision a typical session of Lovecraftesque?

B: This is a story game in which the players rotate the role of a single protagonist and share out narration. Everyone creates clues and then secretly leaps to a conclusion about what those clues mean. A typical session should have people inventing clues, building on each other’s details layer by layer and dripping atmosphere and tension into every scene.

But my favourite bit is when the players leap to conclusions secretly. Because at the end you not only have a finale which feels like it was planned all along, but you have a the fun of comparing theories at the end of the game.

J: As you near the end of the game, the protagonist begins what we call the Journey into Darkness, where they travel to an old, dark or sinister location where they’ll confront the horror. It’s one of my favourite bits of the game – you ramp up the tension and shift the game’s gears from “I’m sure all this can be explained rationally” to a scene of stark, alien horror.

The Final Horror is the apex of that journey, where all those theories you’ve been building are finally resolved. And there’s always a bleak epilogue where you see what happens after the story ends.

Which Lovecraftian works did you pull from the most for the themes in Lovecraftesque?

B: Our biggest influence was Graham Walmsley’s Stealing Cthulhu which does an inspiring job of deconstructing Lovecraft’s stories, breaking down their rhythm and structure. His work focuses on a smaller number of key stories which we have expanded on. But we’ve also looked at the following in more detail: The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innmouth, The Whisperer in Darkness, the Haunter of the Dark, At the Mountains of Madness, Cool Air and Pickmans’ Model.

J: I’d add the Colour Out of Space and the Call of Cthulhu to that list.

B: I’d be hard pressed to pick a favourite but I do love The Whisperer in Darkness.

J: For me it’s the Colour Out of Space. It’s such a great example of Lovecraft’s weird blending of the themes of what we’d now call science fiction with a classic horror tale.

If you were to set up the ideal environment for a session of Lovecraftesque, what would you have there? (Props, music, location, etc.)
J: Atmosphere is key for Lovecraftesque, and a lot of the game’s mechanics are targeted on building tension. The gaming environment should support this. Low-key, instrumental music played at a low volume. Ideally play at night (we did one of our playtests on a dark and stormy evening and scared the bejeesus out of each other). You can even turn the lights down or use candles, since the game doesn’t require much in the way of rules look-up.

If I had absolute freedom to choose any venue, I’d choose an old house, old enough to creak and sigh a little. It would be in the countryside, far from any main road or settlement. It would have old paintings on the walls and a fire crackling in the corner.

B: My favourite place for playing Lovecraftesque is our own dining room. We are lucky enough to have a oak panelled dining room which is dark, intimate and atmospheric.

Five or So Questions with Jacob Wood on Psi-punk: Worlds Edge Arena!

Today I have an interview with Jacob Wood about his Kickstarter, Psi-punk: World’s Edge Arena!

Tell me about Psi-punk: Worlds Edge Arena. What excites you about it?

World’s Edge Arena is the second sourcebook for Psi-punk, a Fudge-compatible cyberpunk RPG. It introduces players to the city of punta Arenas, Chile, where characters compete in a televised bloodsport known as the World’s Edge Arena.

Players form teams and face two qualifying rounds against psychicly-controlled, cybernetically-enhanced predators such as wolves, eagles, bears, and komodo dragons. If they survive the qualifiers, they enter a single elimination tournament against seven other teams and battle for fame and fortune. Also, just to keep things interesting, the layout and terrain of the Arena shifts and changes between matches so every fight is new and exciting.

World’s Edge Arena is televised globally and has a huge fan base. Players can tap into their excitement and approval by means of a Fan favor mechanic which gives them an edge in combat.

The huge success of the Arena draws thousands of people to the formerly-small city. An influx of outside wealth and culture has created a rift between old traditions and new customs. The setting explores what it’s like for people who live in the town and the conflicts that arise because of its sudden population explosion.

To me, the most exciting thing about the book is that it gives both plaayers and GMs a lot of hooks to really get invested in the setting. It would be simple to play an entire campaign set in and around the area–there’s downtime between matches at the Arena, and there’s plenty to do around town. For groups who are fond of combat, the Arena itself offers a lot of diversity. For those who like to mix in intrigue and traditional cyberpunk-style street running, it offers a lot of that too.


How does the Fan Favor mechanic work, and what do you think it puts into the game?

Fan Favor is pretty simple: do something awesome and you gain Favor, do something shameful and you lose it. The book has a chart with a few examples of ways to gain and lose Favor. For example:

Incapacitate or kill a wounded opponent: +1 Favor
Incapacitate or kill an uninjured opponent: +2
Victory against overwhelming odds: +2
Heal a creature during combat: -1
Execute an incapacitated opponent: -2

Fan Favor is accumulated on a team level, so everyone contributes to the team’s pool. Anyone may spend some of their team’s favor to do something cool, such as:

Add +1 to a roll: -1 Favor
Re-roll and take the better result: -2 Favor
Force an opponent to re-roll and take the worse result: -3 Favor

Favor rolls over between matches, and GMs are welcome to start opposing teams with some Favor of their own. From my experience running Psi-punk, re-rolling dice in Fudge has the potential to alter the course of a conflict and makes for some pretty exciting gameplay. The mechanic also gives a trackable meta-game element which players can use to get an idea of just how great they’re doing–it’s like unlocking achievements or levelling up, but without any pre-set goals.

Tell me about the creatures in your bestiary – which ones are the scariest?
The Arena has a sizable bestiary filled with augmented predators. During matches, these animals are controlled by humans with the mind control power, so they think and reason like expert strategists but have all of the natural (and cybernetically-enhanced) abilities of a normal creature. The beasts are clone, so there’s a near-infinite supply of them, and they represent the largest and fiercest animals of their species.

A couple of my favorite examples are:

Coyotes augmented with sonarkinesis so they can unleash a howl that literally damages their opponents.
Black panthers with the ability to dim the lighting near them, which gives them an even greater stealth advantage.
Wolves with a frost breath attack capable of freezing multiple opponents.
Komodo dragons… because they’re komodo dragons.

How do you emulate the changing layout and terrain?

One of the key aspects of the Psi-punk setting is technology built on emulating psionic powers. This tech is known as magic, and magic devices can perform a huge variety of tricks based on what they’re programmed to do.

The World’s Edge Arena is built with a device capable of using a power known as control animate to terraform the arena’s terrain. As a televised broadcast, the Arena is set up like a season of a TV show. Each season has one terrain theme–jungle, desert, tundra, mountains, grasslands, etc.–and every episode (that is, every fight) takes place in that one terrain. It influences the types of beasts from the bestiary who will fight during that season and has a huge impact on how the human warriors interact with their environment.
To keep things from getting stale or from someone gaining the upper hand by studying the environment, the arena changes shape between episodes. During one match a player may have discovered a helpful cave to hide in or a particularly large tree to climb, but when they get to their next match they’ll need to explore all over again.

The specifics about how things change are intentionally left vague so the GM and players can decide on that themselves. I’m a really big fan of players being able to ask questions like “Is there a tree I can climb to get a height advantage?” and the GM can make that call. it creates an environment where the players get to have a say in what’s happening around them.

In creating the game and prepping it for backers, what is the coolest experience you’ve had?

While running the game at a local convention for a group of people new to Psi-punk, I got to see how different people and different personalities interact with the setting and the mechanics. In particular, there was one character who was a skilled hacker but was a total coward when it comes to physical combat. Instead of the player spending all of his time running and hiding and generally not feeling like he belonged in a combat arena, he tapped into his hacker skills to generate Fan Favor for his team.

Every Arena match is televised and even people in the live audience watch the matches on enormous view screens. This player hacked the camera feeds to close in on all of the cool things his teammates were doing to ensure the audience saw the best and most favorable footage. He also hacked the feeds to try to counteract the team’s blunders.

The approach struck me as a really creative way to get a non-combat character involved with the fight in a way that could help his team, and I incorporated that tactic in the rules to make sure I called it out as a viable option.

Thanks Jacob! Make sure to check out the Kickstarter, running now!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Oliver Shead on Infected!

I interviewed Oliver Shead about his new game, Infected!, currently on Kickstarter!

Tell me a little bit about Infected! What excites you about it? 

Infected! is a zombie setting placed after the outbreak. It’s around five years on, and the infected have been all-but wiped out after years of brutal quarantines, outright warfare and anarchy. There is now a chance for humanity to rebuild society – or to tear it down.
To be honest I’ve had a lot of people tell me that zombie settings have been done to (un)death, and when I first started this setting I would have agreed with them. 
However, after quite a long time playtesting it and re-working it, I found the setting had changed. It was no longer just a story of crazed survivors clinging together and killing zombies. Instead, it’s a living, breathing world that has evolved to still work in many ways. That’s the funny part – a lot of it is kind of normal, in a Dark-Ages style of normal.
I get excited when I think of the cultures that evolve in the wake of this sort of an event, as well as the political entities, and the countless ways they can interact. For instance, there are governments that still exist, holding a tenuous web of power over wide geographic zones. However, without much of a standing army, they are reduced to a sort of feudalistic-loyalty system, and some will resort to almost any measures to maintain that control – including having overseers who couple as standover men, commanding the loyalties of local factions – all the while with the risk of the infected looming in the background…like a particularly dangerous pest that refuses to go away.
Basically, it’s the richness of the setting that interests me. I think any setting should really inspire you to play it, and make you dream of some of the intense scenarios you can concoct as a Narrator or Player.

Infected! has a classless system. How do you handle experience and advancement?

It’s done with a point-buy system. Basically, when you get experience, you can save it up to improve higher stats, or spend it more quickly to improve lower stats. I feel it quite accurately represents how people actually learn – a little bit at a time, rather than by suddenly jumping up to a new range of abilities. We ultimately leave it up to the Narrator’s discretion as to what is permitted to be advanced, and by how much – with guidelines that stats should go up a bit at a time, not all in one go, and should represent what characters are learning and applying themselves to as they go. So if you never use Athletics, for example, it should not go up unless you start attempting to work the Skill.

Can you give me a brief description of the type of characters people would play in Infected!?

Ooh, this is a great question! 
Really, they can play anyone they want. I personally love to see real characters. Not muscle-bound, gun-toting Rambos, but rather deep, varied and interesting people. People who are ultimately flawed, and who all face their horrors in countless different ways. In a zombie setting, many people instantly assume that everything is about fighting and killing, but in fact the Immersion RPG system supports characters doing far more than that. We have had players in our games who almost never fired a shot. Their characters were all about discussion, statescraft, the controlling and manipulation of people, commanding groups, and so forth. Because of the lethality of the system, groups of relatively normal people are still a tremendous threat if they wish to be, so the use of your diplomatic skills is in many cases far more important than your fighting skills. Try fighting your way through ten armed men… talking, on the other hand? That’s a real possibility.
Also, with the setting being quite dynamic and “alive” with trade routes, even highways, and societies ebbing and flowing along these channels as they always have (ultimately, it would be quite difficult to survive in complete fortress mode), there is the real possibility of players running characters like dedicated traders, scrap merchants, snake-oil salesmen, travelling shows, gypsies, spies, informants, farmers, soldiers… really, the gamut of usual societal roles.
I personally love unusual characters with detailed histories. They are shaped by their pasts. They may be scarred by them. But they are surviving in their own ways.

Can you tell me about the infrastructure and logistics in the Infected! setting? (anything from politics to how they handle power and water!)

Great question! However, the answer to this really varies greatly from location to location. One of the great things about the real world, is that there are just so many exceptions to every rule! It’s almost impossible to generalise – when you do, you miss out on so much of the quirky, odd, different and outright bizarre things in the world. That being said, I’ll now generalise as best I can!

By and large, the logistics are reduced to a 3rd or 4th world level. Because a fairly substantial portion of society is still alive and functioning, the need for supplies, water, sanitation and equipment is paramount. No society can survive without a steady stream of resources coming in and going out – few could be completely self-sufficient.

There are communities left in the ruins that range from a few lonely hold-outs, to burgeoning cities of ten thousand people or more. But no matter their size, their positions, strategy and very lives depend on a few basics – fresh water being one of the most critical. The loss of a functioning water system in the cities means that people rapidly shift to those areas that water can be readily found. Some townships use pumps (usually man-powered, as diesel is in short supply for powerful generators). Others use the most age-old method there is: the bucket.

This also creates other issues. Sanitation of river water is dodgy at the best of times. Some years on, much of the pollution has eased off from the waterways, but even so, it is an easy way to gain a nasty disease (or even the nasty disease). As such, most people at least try to boil their water before drinking it, or use other methods of purifying it, like tying cotton over the water spout, or making rudimentary carbon filters.

Power is another interesting one. In some areas, there are still power plants functioning – though they are highly prized commodities. Hydro-electric dams tend to be the most valued of all – an infinite power source at your fingertips. Despite this, most communities are without anything but the most rudimentary power supply. Lamps and candles are far more numerous. Working electricity is also a status symbol – only the greatest, richest political entity has access to as much power as they need. Just as only such groups have manufacturing of complicated items – like guns and bullets, or the refining of petrol.

This brings in the political entities of the world. It’s a multi-layered situation. At the local level, many towns and communities band together out of mutual protection. Often they decide that having a government is a bad idea – they can handle things much better on their own! Most governments are fractured, splintered things, just vestiges of their former glories. However, they still have many resources garnered from those who remain under their sway. And many make use of “overseers” – those who watch, and observe…and sometimes take precipitate action to ensure loyalty is kept. Many are nothing more than glorified assassins, enforcing loyalty.

Really, the question of power comes down to knowing who will back you. It’s a game of chicken. If you revolt against a more powerful group, then do you have enough support from other communities to see the revolt through? Or will they leave you in the lurch, even team up against you when the government soldiers arrive, and then seek to split the spoils?
Besides, most communities are all-but on their own anyway. So how important is it if a government claims them?
Then again, rival governments can attack and destroy communities, simply because they’re part of the other side.

Ideally, what do you want players to experience when they play Infected!?

I would like them to experience a rich world, with the opportunity to really experience the adventures and the horrors of this new dark age. I would like them to make characters that live and breathe, and to have deep campaigns that are about so much more than zombie killing! I would very much love for the societies to shine through. The bizarre new cultures and trends.

And that being said… I would also love them to feel the gut-churning, cold-sweat fear of realising the Infected are hunting them – and then truly discovering what that terror would be like.
Thanks to Oliver for the interview! Make sure to check out Infected! on Kickstarter!


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on War Birds

Today I have an interview with Moyra Turkington of Unruly Designs talking about her amazing project, War Birds, currently on Kickstarter. 
Tell me a little about War Birds. What excites you about it?

War Birds is a gigantic passion project for me, and so just about everything about it gets me excited. J

It was going on twelve years ago that I was in a discussion about what makes a flying ace a flying ace (It’s generally five aerial kills, but rules vary based on country). I did what all internet era folks do and looked it up on Wikipedia. There I found a list of flying aces of World War II and in it was a name that sparked immediate interest: Lydia Litvak. A female flying ace??!! How on earth didn’t I know about that? The link was red though (there was no bio page for her) so I started feverously searching the internet. Not only was she a flying ace, she was a flying ace way back in WWII! The White Lily of Stalingrad – part of the 586th Fighter Regiment of the Air Defense Force of the Soviet Union, and there were others, lots and lots of others that flew with her!

This started a very long fascination for me about WWII and history in general – about what women did and really what we were and are. The more I read, the more I wanted to know. When I was in school and they taught the history of Women and War, it was an addendum – one story. Rosie the Riveter, the middle class white woman who came to work in the factories to free a man to fight and through that, heralded a new era of economic independence for women. But that’s an extremely narrow story, and not an entirely true one.

The stories I read were about women who served on the front lines as nurses and as ambulance drivers, snipers and tankers, spies and code-breakers! And of course I read about the prisoners and POWs and civilian women whohad the war come down on their heads. As I read, a much fuller multiplicity of women’s experience in the era started to unfold before me. I started to think about how we choose whose stories get told, and how we determine who the heroes are. I started thinking of the hardships of women on the home front, I started thinking about the courage of women in war zones. And I started thinking that I had to do something to make that story wider. To let other women experience the joy I had in finding out that we were always greater than I’d been taught we were.

And larp and freeform is a fantastic way to give people access to that experience. To become it, to feel it thumping in your chest. To really understand the courage, the compassion, and the resilience of the women whose shoulders we stand on.

And that’s just one of the things I love about this project.


When Against the Grain is happening, how does the structure and any mechanization of the game promote the vibe of the game and interaction between players?
The aim in Against the Grain was to create a story that was emotionally engaging and satisfying to play, that also acted as an exploratory model of how intersectional bias works. The game isn’t just about a moment in history where a bunch of random racists decided to launch a hate strike. It’s about everyday people that are a complex product of an unequal and unfair system, that have real struggles and who think they’re just doing what they need to survive. And it’s about how they will end up marginalizing others for what they think is their own survival. It’s about how what we want and think we need is often in direct opposition with equality because we’ve never been taught to find a better way.

To support that, in designing the structure of the game I contextualized the characters to help modern players feel like they could advocate for their character goals — even when they strongly disagree with them — to allow them to play functionally and in doing so, to create a situation of dramatic tension. I carefully calibrated the characters into a position of scarcity to ensure that the game wouldn’t result in easy answers, and I encouraged embodiment and emotional investment in that scarcity with physical mechanics that keep the pressure on. I borrowed on Nordic larp techniques to put tools in the facilitator’s hands to ensure the players could not escape the pressures and social context of their world. Perhaps most importantly in a game with particularly difficult subject matter, I framed the whole game in a context of transparency, safety and community to help players approach the game vulnerably and take as much away from the experience as possible.

You have some amazing stretch goals, and some great goals already hit. When looking for creators and authors for games, what did you look for, and what did you expect from them in theme and development?
I looked for passion — people that were really excited about the stories of women in the era, and people who could really connect with the goals of the project. I also tried my best to look for diversity across multiple axis points: in designers, in games, in the stories we were telling and who and how they were being represented. The base framework I put down in front of the designers was this: each game should explore a story about an experience or contribution that was real for women in WWII. The game should explore what opportunities the war provided to the women involved and also to look at the costs of the opportunity. The game should illustrate how it affected who the women were, how society’s view of them changed, what they could do, and what they could become.

What is your favorite moment in the experience of creation, research, and application of the games in War Birds?

Favorites are too hard! I’ll have to give you a few:
  • As a designer, the eureka moment of figuring out how Against the Grain was going to work and then watching playtest group after playtest group engage with it vulnerably and meaningfully, and tell me about the power of the experience. This was despite the fact that I thought there was a good chance that no one would choose to play the game due to its difficult subject matter. It taught me that big design risks really are worth taking.
  • As a creator, the moment I played We Were WASP at Fastaval. I was deep in gleeful research for an British Air Transport Auxiliary game called Spitfire Sisters when I saw the preview in the Fastaval program. I had an insecure, frustrated, competitive response to seeing it there, as creators sometimes do. But after being powerfully moved by playing the game, I had to let all of that go. I asked Ann that very night if she would consider submitting We Were WASP to the anthology, because she’d gone and written the game I wanted to write, and done it better than me. It made me totally recalibrate how I defined success on the project, and the project is 1000% better for it.
  • As a curator, the moment I read the first draft of Kira’s Mobilize. Including Ann was easy, because her game was already complete and my experience in play was proof it was the right decision. Kira was the first person I asked to write a game from scratch. I saw Kira talking on social media about _Coming Out Under Fire,_ a book I had on my (way too long) research list. It was clear that she was a right fit for the team by her approach to the history. I approached her to write a game and she committed right away. I always had faith she would do well, but tend to hold my breath when a thing so close to my heart is in someone else’s hands. The day I got her first draft I rushed home to read it, and it was great! The experience taught me that I can and should approach people to collaborate in creative projects, and it allowed me to get to a new level of trust in giving control away.

Finally, what do you hope people get out of playing the games presented in the War Birds Kickstarter?
I’m ambitious in my hope.

First and foremost, I want them to have great play experiences! I hope they connect with the games and the stories they’ll be telling, and I hope they serve as compelling communal experiences with their fellow players. I want the games to help them engage with history: I hope that play will expand the story of what women are and do and allow players to see the women that enabled the core infrastructure of the war through their work both at home and on the front and have a new appreciation for why it was important. And I hope the games are all thought provoking in their individual ways and individual themes. I hope they help us appreciate how hard we have fought to get here we are, and how far we still have left to go.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Paul Riddle on Undying

Hi everyone! Today I have an interview with Paul Riddle about his new game, Undying, currently on Kickstarter!

As a disclaimer, I’ve played a session of Undying, and I totally loved it. I’m a fan. 🙂


Tell me a little bit about Undying. What excites you about it?
Undying is my first published game, so getting it out there is a huge deal for me! I’m blown away by the support for Undying on Kickstarter and on social media. To everyone supporting Undying, thank you so much!

Undying is a diceless vampire roleplaying game of predation and intrigue. I think what excites me the most about Undying is how elegantly the game functions in support of the core theme of vampirism. Blood, debt, humanity, and status work together to create a common tension that plays out in really compelling ways. I think the simplicity of the rules are great for people of any experience level and I think there’s enough complexity in the interplay of the rules to keep game play engaging time after time.

Your examples for meddling, hunting, and feeding feature characters of a variety of genders and identities. What inspired you to make sure you show diversity in roles and representation? Will we see more of this in the game?

Blood and sex are both very intimate things and blood, at least, is essential to a vampire roleplaying game. Sexuality is a spectrum and I believe that the same concept should apply to blood and feeding. I want to cultivate an environment for Undying where folks playing the game are empowered to explore genders and identities in both feeding and sexual contexts. I hope the examples I’ve provided for hunting and feeding help by showing strong female characters and strong non-heteronormative characters.

As a gamer and lover of fiction, I’ve seen a fair share of vampires. What makes Undying different than, say, Anne Rice or Bram Stoker inspired media?

Undying is an amalgam of various vampire media. I think what makes Undying special is that it isn’t strongly typed to any one take on vampirism and, instead, offers a toolkit in the form of predator lore that allows you to design the vampire roleplaying experience that you want. Predator lore teaches you how to make house rules and encourages you to do so on the fly, while you’re playing the game. For example, when the question comes up, “Will staking a predator through the heart kill them,” there’s no canon, you decide while you’re playing whether it does or doesn’t.

One of the most complicated factors of vampire lore is the matter of consent. In Undying, how do you approach this concept, and did it impact your design?

That’s a tough one and yes, consent is definitely a factor. As far as the design goes, since losing your humanity by doing horrible things — often to people who can’t resist or wouldn’t consent — is an open ended question, the game itself doesn’t dictate that the taking of blood or sex must be consensual. Instead, it’s an exploration. To help frame things in a positive way, I’ve tried to give examples that show a variety of situations.

The Hunting and Feeding moves provide a solid framework for taking blood and the choices that a predator of various levels of humanity must deal with. While blood is covered, sex is not. Sex is left entirely to the gaming group to decide what works best. There’s a section in the book that discusses how to play in a supportive environment. This gives you tools for how to work together to set expectations and be respectful of each other at the game table.


If someone was on the edge about kicking in to get Undying, what would be the most important aspects of the game, mechanically or fictionally, that you would like them to know?

Well, if the diceless thing is the hang up, all I can say is, no one (except my wife perhaps, who knows me better than anyone) is more surprised that I made a diceless roleplaying game. The diceless system works! It really clicks — delivering a high-stakes experience! If it’s something else they’re hung up on, I’d just say that the mechanics give you enough flexibility to play the vampire game you want to play, whatever that means to you.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Update! – Details on current projects

I know I have not posted this month on my blog! I have been super busy with life, but I’ve spent a little bit of time on editing and prepping and doing photography (which will hopefully eventually be art) for Sweet Valley Hell. It’s a work in progress! I’m still planning on releasing it eventually. I still haven’t figured out how to make playtests happen, unfortunately. 

Hearts in Crisis is on hold pretty much until I finish school because I can’t really do the amount of research I want to do for the project while also doing school. It makes me sad, but it is still something I intend to finish – I just need to build a stronger supporting text for it than I had originally planned.

Finally, I’m hoping to start work on a new project soon (starting with writing down stuff), but it is pending the final release of someone else’s project, because it is… well, a hack. Hacks aren’t normally my thing, but there is a big fiction property that I want to try building a game for. I don’t think it makes sense to make a whole original system for it when it will work well as a hack – this might change, but the main plan as of the moment is to hack another game for this project. I’m not much for secrets, so I’ll let you know: I’m hoping to hack Urban Shadows (because it is a beautiful game) to fit the Parasol Protectorate series universe. It’s obviously an unofficial thing, but I still want to make it, and it will probably be a massive undertaking. If you’re a fan of the series and familiar with Urban Shadows (via G+, the Kickstarter, or otherwise), feel free to drop me a message with any tidbits of ideas you have, if you want and don’t mind me using them. 🙂 

I’ll try to update more! It’s been pretty hectic around here, so please accept my apologies.

Sweet Valley Hell – MONSTERS!

This is the draft Monsters section of Sweet Valley Hell. It’s in raw text form for now. Check it out!

MONSTERS AND YOU


There are tons of monsters in the Valley thanks to the Hellhole. This section goes over how they work, a little of their history, and then tells you what happens if one of your players gets the Hellhole treatment? Oh. My. God. Yes, it’s true, sometimes the monsters you see are like, the monsters you know, or something.


How the skill blocks work:

Name of Monster
Description
What they do: This is what the monster’s primary goal or action is.
How they do it: Their method of killing or whatever.
How to kill them: Pretty self-explanatory – how the player characters can kill the monster.
Powers: Any special abilities the monsters have.
Hit Points: How many hits it takes to kill or socially dominate the baddie. These are often variable – the number here is an average, and can change with the specific NPC monster.
skills: What die type they have in each skill, Fight and Sosh.


Dead-walkers

Ugh, gag me with a spoon. Not really, tho – you won’t need to, because these guys are grody to the max and totes unchill on top of that. Dead-walkers are literally dead people? They are the spirits of the idiots who got sent to Hell for doing like, bad stuff, and they kind of find a body of some variety when they crawl out of the Hellhole. Usually they’ll just grab like, a dead guy or something from a cemetery? But sometimes they get fresh meat, push the Granny outta Granny and go grocery shopping for more than just prune juice, and start murdering as soon as their body starts rotting because it doesn’t have a clean soul in it anymore.


What they do: Eat people. Ew.

How they do it: Biting, and like, tearing off limbs.

How to kill them: Headshots, and not the modeling kind. Oh, burning them works, too. Or a woodchipper.
Powers: None.

Hit Points: 5 Body, 0 Mind.

Skills: A regular dead-walker comes in at Fight: d6, Sosh: null. These aren’t the brightest bulbs in the closet. Tougher ones have a Fight of d8 or d10. If it’s like, a serial killer guy’s soul in a dead-walker body? They sometimes have a Sosh up to d8, but never higher. Groups of dead-walkers happen sometimes – see the Mob rules later on.


Vamps

“See ya later, suckers!” Yeah, the vamps are tired of hearing that joke, too. They’re sometimes super old, they spread like the plague, and they really, really like blood. Vamps are your garden variety vampire, with the same needs as any old creep: blood. Humans or animals, it doesn’t really matter, but most of the jerks always want to have like, live human blood or whatever, while the practically vegan vamps stick to critters – and they totally recycle, too. They have retractable pointy teeth, can turn into bats, and they can get a tan.


What they do: Suck blood and sometimes making new vamps.

How they do it: Tricking or capturing their victims, then getting their slurp on.

How to kill them: Stake to the heart, decapitation, or cremation.

Powers: 

Entrance – If a Vamp has a Sosh encounter with a player character and they win and have more successes than half of the player’s available Mind hit points, they can Entrance the player and give them one Sosh-based command. Example: Laurel (vamp) Entrances Hilary, a player character, and has her tell another character, Todd that his girlfriend Allie is totally cheating on him, and it stirs up conflict in the group.
Fly – Vamps can fly, but only when they change into a bat. This makes them much sneaker, and obvs much more, uh, flighty, but they can’t use their Sosh skill at all when they do it.
Regeneration – Unless the players stake the vamp’s heart, cut off their head, or burn them to ashes (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), vamps regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Vamps never die, and never age past the point they’re turned, unless they’re killed in the three ways listed above.
Super-senses – Vamps all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Turning – Vamps can turn a human into a vamp, too, and it just takes one bite and a quick stab to the heart. No, seriously, like, they bite a person? And then they stab them in the heart! That person then dies and wakes up as a vamp, pointy teeth and all.

Hit Points: 5 for standard vamps, 8 for tough guys, and 10 for serious baddies in Body and Mind each.

Skills: Standard vamps run Fight: d8, Sosh: d6. Some of the smoother cats will go Fight: d8, Sosh: d8. Queens like Laurel would be hitting Fight: d10, Sosh: d10.




Demons

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned… except it kinda does. Mostly in the like, hundreds of demons that hang around in the Hellhole, some of which have managed to climb out and be like, human looking and stuff. Demons don’t possess people initially, they make their own bodies from the ether. This means they’re typically pretty hot, and not just in the Hell way? They can possess people, though, and often do, but it’s really taxing. They have a wide range of agendas, and some could even be allies to the player characters? Some want power, some want love, some just want to watch the world burn. Like, literally, they want to make Hell take over the Earth.


What they do: Possess people, manipulate people, and pursue agendas.
How they do it: Using their demonic powers and their charming personalities.

How to kill them: Capture their soul and toss it back into the Hellhole. Capturing a demon’s soul requires an incantation (any priest should know it), a vessel (a jar, bottle, locket, etc.), and the demon’s Mind hit points to be at 0.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players capture their soul (after reducing them to zero Mind hit points), demons regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Immortality – Demons never die, and can appear in a body of any age. They can only be stopped if their souls are captured, and even then, they might someday rise again from the Hellhole.
Possession – if a demon reduces someone’s Mind hit points to zero, they can possess their body. While in possession of the body, they can do like, basic stuff? But they can’t perform anything huge like, killing other people or whatever. Simple tasks, man.
Mind over Body – A demon can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.

Hit Points: Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12. Demons are like, totally rad.

Skills: No demon will have a Sosh of less than d6. Like, ever. The sky’s the limit, too, with that. Fight skills for demons range between d4 and d10.




Were-beasts

Have you ever heard of like, a menagerie? It’s kind of like a bunch of animals, and that’s what there are roaming the streets of the Valley. Well, kinda. were-beasts, or shapeshifters if you want to be fancy, include run of the mill werewolves to stealthy werecougars, but just about any kind of creature works. There are two types of were-beasts: ones who were animals first, called like, therians, and ones who were humans first, called anthros. were-beasts are the result of a magical infection, kind of like, chicken pox or something? It’s totally bichen for the humans who get infected. For the animals, though, it’s more like punishment. The infection is spread by bites and exchange of bodily fluids – basically anything hotter than a kiss will spread it, so cover up.


What they do: Honestly? They just wanna be left alone. But sometimes they eat people, or maim them.

How they do it: Gnashing teeth, grody claws, and crazy serious strength.

How to kill them: Silver bullets do okay – heart and brain only, and cutting off heads only works if you, like separate the pieces? They might still get chatty, though. The hardest, but most effective method, is (like so many things) to just light it up.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless they are torched to ashes, decapitated, or shot in the head or heart by a silver bullet (and reduced to 0 Body hit points) were-beasts regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. In the case of were-beasts, they will even regrow limbs and reattach heads if there’s nothing keeping them apart.
Strong Body, Strong Mind – All of the were-beasts are like, super smart or strong. The Principal decides, based on the type of animal, whether the were-beast gets a bonus d6 to add to their dice pool for Sosh or for Fight. For example, a werewolf might get a bonus d6 to their Fight, while a wereraven (no joke!) might get a bonus d6 to their Sosh.
Super-senses – Were-beasts all have advanced senses, so they all can hear better, see better, smell better, and pretty much anything else. Kinda icky, but really useful.
Transformation – Any were-beast can appear as a human, a specific animal, and a hybrid form. Most newer were-beasts experience involuntary transformations, particularly around the turning of the moon, either new moon or full moon. Extreme emotion can also result in transformation.

Hit Points: Were-beasts are pretty much the heavy-hitters of the supernatural world, and they have the hit points to show it. Every were-beast, no matter how small, starts with at least 6 Body hit points. They can have up to 12. Mind hit points have the same range for anthros, but therians are typically an average of 2 Mind hit points lower than average, so they’d run from 4 Mind hit points to 10.

Skills: Were-beasts have different specialties, so like, they do different stuff? And like, depending on what kind of animal they are, they’ll have different skills? So the Principal can be super creative here. To toss examples out a werewolf would be like, Fight: d10, Sosh d6. A wereraven would be like, Fight d6, Sosh d8. Keep in mind that therians are often more vicious and less sociable.




Archons

So like, you know when you think of beings of light and energy and people call them angels? Yeah, well, angels exist, but those beings? Not angels. Archons are these totally cool beings that kind of transcend reality, and like, they’re basically untouchable. They come from beneath Hell and above Heaven and they’ve always been here, just as elements of the universe. They are super rare, but when they do show up, they bring either a lot of good or a hell of a lot of bad. The only way to beat them if they’re gunning for you is to basically convince them the world is worth saving. Good luck with that.


What they do: Grant grace or destruction.

How they do it: Self-sacrifice.

How to kill them: You can’t.

Powers: 

Apocalypse – They either temporarily boost the Mind hit points of everyone in the surrounding 30 miles by 2, or they temporarily lower their Body hit points by 3. This effect lasts for one session (if it happens at the end of one session, it would be effective for the whole of the next session). There is no roll, they just do it.

Hit Points: Body is irrelevant. Mind is between 5 and 10.

Skills: Yeah, dude, you can’t even imagine going toe-to-toe with these guys, so let’s just pretend that their Fight is like, infinity. Sosh, though, ranges from d6 to d10.




Ghosts

They clang, they howl, they shake chains. Spooky! Ghosts are, in general, pretty chill. They’re just spirits who spirited out of Hell and didn’t grab a body on the way. They’re undead, not deadly, and basically like your second cousin Lenny who won’t stop leaving his gym shoes in the hallway – kind of a pain the ass, but like, mostly harmless. If they do cause trouble, like, by causing car accidents, disrupting the peace, that kind of thing, they can be exorcised. Call your local priest!


What they do: Cause a nuisance.

How they do it: Haunting.

How to kill them: It’s more like, you know, banishment? But yeah, exorcism. Good ol’ fashioned Latin prayers.

Powers: 

Dead – They aren’t alive, they don’t have a body, they kind of wisp around and are generally immaterial. Oh, and they can’t be killed. Again.
Washington’s Curse – If you think they might have useful info, just ask them – ghosts cannot tell a lie.
Hit Points: Null and null again. To get rid a ghost, seriously, just pray in Latin.

Skills: None.




Cherubim

The holy host has no clue if there is a god, but they def want to be righteous, dude. The cherubim are one of the types of angels, and the only ones you’re likely to meet. The archangels don’t make visits to Earth, so the cherubim do the dirty work. The dirty work being Hellhole crowd control. Almost every cherubim is on the side of the good, or at least the mostly-good. One or two might have delusions of grandeur, though, so like, look out? Oh, also? When you see one, you’ll know it – cherubim have a body like Bessie the cow and faces like Janus, with a couple of sets of wings to go ‘round.


What they do: Defend the righteous.
How they do it: Angelic grace.

How to kill them: Silver cross made into a sword. In the heart. Ouch.

Powers: 

Regeneration – Unless the players stab them in the heart with a fancy sword (after reducing them to zero Body hit points), cherubim regenerate all of their hit points after a fight is over, even if they’re reduced to zero. Basically, don’t leave their bodies laying around.
Mind over Body – Cherubim can never be knocked out until their Mind hit points reach 0. Even if they’re completely physically disabled, they can still talk and stuff.
Immortality – Cherubim never die, and only appear as their totally rad winged form. They can only be stopped if they’re killed, and even then, they are only sent to Heaven again, and might come back someday.

Hit Points:  Body hit points can range from as little as 3 to as high as 10. Mind hit points never go below 5 and can go as high as 12.

Skills: Cherubim rarely have Fight skills of less than d6, and can go up and up from there. Sosh skills for cherubim, however, are like humans – d4 and up.




Void

Void are the depths of Hell, the darkest of nights, the deepest of seas. Epic, yeah? They’re super creepy little guys – typically the size of children or teens but not kids at all. They are literally Hell beasts who have crawled up to devour souls. They have these wicked big mouths with sharp, pointy, needle-like teeth. Too many teeth. Ugh. They’re not super sociable, and mostly speak in the tongues of Hell, but they’re quick and stealthy.


What they do: Devour souls.

How they do it: Bite, suck, slurp. Soul be gone.

How to kill them: They die like mortals, so you can mow ‘em down.

Powers: 

Devour – they literally eat your soul. If they get a bite on you, they’ll suck Mind hit points out of you by the minute, getting an extra bonus d6 to add to their Fight that always counts as a success so long as they get at least one success in their roll, including that die.
Stealth – They’re creepy, they’re crawly, and they blend into the shadows like… uh, like a shadow.
Speed – Void are totally fast. It takes one additional success to get the first hit in on them in a fight.

Hit Points: They average around 5 Body and Mind hit points, just like humans.

Skills: Void have no higher than Sosh: d8, and average around Fight: d6.


Mob Rules

When monsters get together in groups of 3 or more, they’re called a mob. So, like, when this happens? Treat the monsters as one unit, where the stats are equal to the most powerful monster, but raise their die type for their stats by two ranks. As an example, if you have six dead-walkers, and the like, strongest of the deadwalkers is at Fight: d6, the mob as a whole would be at Fight: d10. Their hit points will still be equal to the highest hit points.

It’s important to keep in mind that major NPCs should not be part of mobs and should have their hit points and rolls monitored individually. Basically, like, if they are important enough to have a name? Like, they aren’t totally mob mooks.

PLAYERS AS MONSTERS


It would be like, totally uncool if they players couldn’t be like, monstrous. Here’s the way that works.


Players get the powers of all of the monsters applied to their character, so they can transform, possess, all that. If the monster has higher hit points and/or skill rank dice than them, they gain one hit point in each hit point set that is higher and/or one skill rank die in each skill that is higher. If it is the opposite, where the hit points or skill rank dice are lower, then the player character would lower their hit points and/or skill rank dice by one. For example, if a vampire bites a player character, and the vampire’s hit points are Mind: 6, Body: 7, and their skill ranks are Fight: d8, Sosh: d10, while the player character’s hit points are Mind: 5, Body: 5, and skill ranks are Fight: d6, Sosh: d6, then you would adjust the player’s stats to be Mind: 6, Body: 6, and Fight: d8, Sosh: d8.



This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Sweet Valley Hell – Principal’s Instructions

This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. This is the Principal’s instructions and I’ll soon be releasing the Monsters section. Enjoy!

PRINCIPAL’S INSTRUCTIONS (DRAFT)


So like, you’re in charge? Wow! You have a really good chance to make the players have loads of fun, so grab a seat and listen up.


Your first responsibility as the Principal is to like, set the scene. This is pretty cool. You get to decide who will be in the world and what the current events are. You can probably sum it up in a paragraph, and you can make a few predictions for the future. Keeping a handful of index cards or scrap paper with your notes would be a good idea, or even a notebook, and always have some blanks on hand to take down really important events and new non-player character names. Non-player characters are suuuuper important, so make up a few! You’ll need to assign them skills, too, so think about how tough and how clever these dudes are, and write down a die type for their Sosh and their Fight. Don’t stress about spending points on them, just be reasonable.


Setting
This game is set in the Valley in the year 1994, right after the Hellhole opened. Everyone knows about the Hellhole, but not everyone deals directly with it – most people, honestly, just try to keep it a secret from anyone outside of the Valley. The main players in town are Azazel, a demon with aspirations of mayorhood, and Laurel, the queen of vamps, who has tons of minions crawling around the town. The player characters are all seniors at the local high school.


Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
Coach Wilson – the coach of the Stallions, the football team of West Valley High. Stubborn, funny, and surprisingly caring, this guy knows the students better than anyone. He also supports the Fillies, the cheerleading squad. Fight: d8, Sosh: d6
Mayor Andersen – the town mayor. He’s prickly and like, really doesn’t like kids. His politics are pretty ace, though, so he’s not too bad to have in power. Unfortunately, he has little social klout. Fight: d6, Sosh: d6.
Lindsay Golden – the mayor’s right hand, and the power behind his words. Without her, the mayor has no chance of keeping his political position. Fight: d6, Sosh: d10.


(see the Monsters section to skill up Azazel and Laurel.)
Shelley Winters – a local reporter who knows way more about the Hellhole than anyone else, and no one is quite sure why. She is friendly and useful, but kind of creepy, really. Fight: d8, Sosh: d8.


There’s your starting setup. You can create more NPCs on the fly, just make sure you write them down so you can bring them in for later scenes.


Running the game should be pretty chill. What you want to do is try to encourage the players to have a good time, while like, not forgetting to make them feel like the bad guys are a real threat. Pull from media resources to get the feel just right if you want to, y’know, like TV shows and books. The players’ enjoyment comes first, so be okay with flexing your story a bit – don’t get too attached to the plot and forget about having fun.


In the player’s instructions you can find an example of play, and for what you are doing, things go about the same. FYI, fights are over when the baddies are knocked out (at zero hit points), or when they or the players retreat. What you need to know is how to build your dice pool for Fights and Sosh encounters. It’s easy!


The Principal gets an allowance just like the players do, based on how many players there are in the game. You start with two Pops and $100, and then for each player in the game, you get one Pop, and $200 in Daddy’s Money. You spend them just like the players do.


Remember, you’re representing like, bad guys, superiors, and people in power, for the most part (sometimes you’ll be other teens or whatever, too, but they should be pretty breezy for the players to deal with). You want to make it a challenge without ripping any hearts out… unless you’re representing something that like, rips hearts out.


Sweet Valley Hell doesn’t have like, totally strict scene framing. This is kind of cool, but makes things a little tougher when you’re in charge? You’ll want to try to keep players focused, and the best way to do that is by keeping it interesting. If an in-character conversation starts to die down, move on and come back to it later if you need to. If a fight seems futile or boring, call a retreat.


Retreats are simple: the baddie backs off and gets away. You’ll want to give the players a Pop for this to make up for it, but it’s just a good way to keep the villain active without like, totally boring everyone? So keep it in your pocket, just in case.


The Principal’s agenda is on-point, man. You want to:


Give the players a good time.
Creep people out.
Make the baddies feel real.
Encourage players to build the fiction.

Create a good story.

Sweet Valley Hell – A like, Hellhole in the Valley

This is the game I’m working on during my pre-week of summer classes. I’m hoping to write up the Principal’s instructions and the monster section over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy!

SWEET VALLEY HELL (DRAFT)

PLAYER’S INSTRUCTIONS


“Oh. My. God. Did you see the dagger that Azazel was carrying last week? Did you know it like, devours souls?”


“No way!”


“Yes way. It was totally rad!”


—


So like, in this game, you play valley gals and guys in this totally sweet alternate universe where a portal to Hell has opened up in the Valley. There are like, really rad monsters, demons, and dead-walkers roaming the ‘burbs and like, magic is a thing. It’s bitchen.


Most of the time, you’ll be hitting up the mall and hanging with your friends, so sosh skills are like way important? But, you’re gonna find out how dangerous it really is living on the edge of Hell, too, so whether you’re into football or cheerleading, rock those abs.


In the game, you’ll see demons – some are friendly, others are, like complete jerks? I mean, what is their problem? Then, there are the monsters – you know, dudes and chicks who are like, not human and stuff, and they range from vamps to werecritters to like, other creepy stuff. Last are the dead-walkers. They’re like zombies or whatever, but most of the time they’re totally grody and used to be like, murderers, so you gotta watch out.


When you start the game, you get like, anywhere from 4 to 8 points to build your character’s skills, depending on how hard the Principal (the like, person running the game?) wants the game to be, or how long after the Hellhole opens they want it to be. You have two skills: Sosh and Fight. Life is simple in the Valley, so don’t bum anybody out by making it complicated. Your skills buy you die sizes in your skills. The first point in a skill buys you a four-sided die. This is like, sooo lower than average. So you can spend another two points to buy up to a six-sided die. Each die up costs two points, so if you wanted to start the game with a six-sided die in Sosh and an eight-sided die in Fight, you’d spend 3 points in Sosh and 5 points (3 for six-sided and 2 to move up to eight-sided) in Fight. This makes you a little tough for fighting and pretty average in social situations.


Your hit points are on your character sheet. There are both Body and Mind hit points. You only get 5 of each unless you get a magic boost. 

Each player (like, you guys) starts with these things called Popularity Points (We’ll call them Pops, because yeeah) and duuuh, some of Daddy’s Money! Pops are really cool because you can spend them to increase the size of your dice when you are rolling against the baddies. Daddy’s Money buys you more dice to roll! The dice you buy are equal to the die size that your base die is or to the size that is bought with Pops, so like, if you buy your base die up to a ten-sided die, all of your dice you buy with Daddy’s Money would be ten-sided. Sweet!


Each session of the game, you get a bit of each of these – kind of like, an allowance or something. Along with setting the difficulty of the game with the skill points, the Principal will decide how many Pops and how much of Daddy’s Money you get. Typically you’ll start with two Pops and, since Daddy’s Money only comes in hundreds, like, $400? Each die you add with Daddy’s Money will cost you $100. Cha-ching! If it’s going to be an extremely long game or the Hellhole is going to bite you hard, the Principal might up it a bit. You can always gain more Pops by doing sweet things in game, like risking your life for another player or a bystander, or maybe like, doing something epic. Daddy’s money, though, only comes once a sesh.


Fighting demons, monsters, and dead-walkers is pretty rad. You like, run up to them, or try to trick them, or something like that, and then you grab a die from the table – a like, six-sided one sometimes, or bigger. You can change the size of it and totally add more dice.


You’ll roll the die and the Principal (the like, person running the game?) will roll a die or a couple of dice to represent the monster (find more on that later), and you compare them to see who has the highest numbers, and how many of them. The roller who has the highest number on a die wins, and the loser takes hits equal to how many dice show a number higher than their highest.


So like, if you’re rolling against a vamp, and the Principal lays out like, four dice – all six-sided – based on the vamp’s powers? You put out the same number of dice, using your base die (In this case, for your Fight skill), which you buy up to an eight-sided die, and then some added ones. You both roll. You get a 6, 8, 3, and another 3. The vamp’s results are 4, 5, 3, and 2. You win because you have the highest number – 8. They take 2 hits because you have two dice (6 and 8) higher than their highest number (5). Bam, bam! You kick ass.


Social situations are simpler, because bystanders and non-player characters (like your BFF or your Dad or your Coach) mostly have skills equal or lower than yours. If you’re going up against them, this is normally a time you can be pretty chill, unless it like, means a lot. If you’re in a social situation with a demon or a monster, it rolls like the Fighting scenes, except you use your Sosh skill. Dead-walkers can’t be reasoned with – they’re raw and stupid, just filled with rage.

You’re ready to start the game. The next part of this is for the Principal’s eyes only – like, seriously, dudes, you don’t want to be totally uncool.

Hearts in Crisis – new project

Hey everyone!

I started working on a new project yesterday that I’ve had in mind for a while. It may be a long-term project because of how research intensive it might be, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about it.

The game is called Hearts in Crisis. It is set during the Vietnam war, and focuses on the lives and stories of the women (primarily nurses) who worked in the war. It’s focusing on drama and personal relationships while dealing with intensely difficult crises.

I’m really excited about it. Here is why.

I grew up hearing a lot of stories about Vietnam – from people who opposed the war, people who carried legacy racism and bigotry from the war, and people who served. Most of the people I knew who served were men, and hearing stories of women working in the service during that time was really rare and that actually makes me kind of disappointed. Most of the stories I heard were not heroic or even hopeful, they were stories from the perspectives of snipers and soldiers who had to do awful things just to survive and protect their fellow soldiers. From everything I know, the Vietnam war was a horrible, terrifying experience for everyone involved.

There were not a ton of women who served in Vietnam. The total numbers I can find are at highest around 10,000, but more likely around 7500, and over 6000 of them were nurses and medical personnel. While I wouldn’t ever discount the experiences of women who served in administrative roles, from what I have read, they typically were far from most of the trauma and immediate danger. Those who were are the kind of characters I would see being played in this game, but most of the characters will probably be nurses. Nurses were not in combat, but they dealt with some of the most tragic and intimate crises, saving lives and comforting the people who were suffering.

One of the stories that really inspired me was not of a nurse, but of a stenographer, Karen Offutt, who was awarded the Soldier’s Medal around 32 years after her actions in Vietnam saving injured children from a fire (when she would have initially been awarded the medal during the war, she was given a certificate and told that women weren’t awarded the Soldier’s Medal). The actions of women are so often forgotten and dismissed, and I think that we can take the step forward to tell these stories.

I intend to do a fair amount of research about this piece of history, and I want to really work on telling the stories that many people have let fall through the cracks.

As far as mechanics, I’m working on structured scenes with token exchanges and flipping tokens for success/failure. For me, the mechanics will be important, but will have to be very strong and support the feel of the game as well as possible in order to ensure that the mood isn’t lost.

ETA More details on the mechanics:

Right now, I have it set up so that there will be three scenes: one intimacy scene, one crisis scene, and another intimacy scene. Each player will have certain numbers of tokens that they start with and that they can earn, and during intimacy scenes players will give each other one type of token that can be used in the crisis scenes to save casualties who are brought in to the triage. The main way to determine who lives or dies is by flipping the tokens and seeing which comes up heads or tails. The main characters themselves cannot die unless they elect to for story reasons, because part of the point is that they have to live while others don’t.

I’m looking forward to sharing my progress with you!