So I've decided to put Undermountain to rest for a bit, and wait for Ian to come up with the next encounter for us. This is supposed to be a collaborative process, and while I'm totally down for taking his idea and running with it, I'd prefer to give the idea some time to breathe and let Ian get some input going. He's got a couple of weeks to make that happen before I jack the idea entirely. ^_^
Instead, I'm going to talk a bit about the first adventure I want to run for the Bones of a Dead God campaign. I suppose it's too much to ask for that potential players of mine avoid reading this blog, so I can't exactly get into too much detail about the first adventure or anything, but I'd like to talk a bit about the theme, the flavor and the set-dressing of the thing.
There are a few ways you can take a game setting like this one. The first thought through my head was "gothic Cthulhu horror" as we try to stop the evil cultists from waking up the dead god that makes up our whole plane of existence. Which was pretty dope. But then I got to thinking about crazy cultists, and how Rasputin (the guy that lives in my head next to the heading "cultist") wouldn't look out of place at all on a metal album cover. Tattered black robes, wispy black beard shot with streaks of gray, long black hair blowing in the wind as he holds out his hand toward you, the heart of a small child, still beating, gripped within. Yes. Rasputin-cultist is fucking metal.
Which forced the whole thing to shift in my head to become this huge, over-the-top heavy metal rock opera about stopping monsters and cultists from waking this dead god and bringing about the End of All Things. There's a very metal edge to that. Huge, macho barbarians oiled in the blood of their enemies, streetwise elven rangers dressed in spiked leather, sultry witches that look more like suicide girls than Elminster... Love it. Impossibly high castles looming over intricate cave networks of doom. Long-haired, wild-bearded cultists destroying the world. Lots of pentagrams, blood sacrifices, images of skeletons in dark robes, piles of skulls, tentacles and pig heads, anything Brom ever painted. Yeah. That's goooooood.
I'm thinking the first villain is going to be a fully-statted out cleric a few levels above the main crew. She'll be based on Baba Yaga, using a broom as her holy implement and flying about in a cauldron forged from the skulls of the children she's eaten. She'll be the leader of this death cult. The first adventure will have something to do with retrieving a very important book that has been stolen from the cobbler of the town of Capp. There will be many fights with Rasputin-cultists, a boss-fight with someone who isn't Baba Yaga, and the shocking discovery that the world is going to end in three months if y'all don't stop that bitch. ^_^
Also, I'm thinking each player should have their own WWF-style theme song. Oh fuck yes.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Why You Can't Rest in Undermountain
One of the things that Ian and I kept coming back to when we were discussing a return to Undermountain for 4th Edition was that you can’t rest whenever the fuck you want in a dungeon like this. There are entirely too many things that would like to eat you, and part of the Undermountain experience is learning to deal with some resource management. You bust a daily in your first encounter, there’s no getting that back for a good long while. If you’re out of Healing Surges and you don’t have anything that heals without using them, you’re in a pretty rough position. Being able to sit down for four to eight hours every once in a while is a luxury, and it’s one you can’t have when running around this dungeon.
Think of Undermountain like a city; it’s a city in which every single one of the citizens would be more than happy to spill your entrails on the ground and bathe in them. Every place in the dungeon gets used, and gets used fairly regularly. The only places that people might visit less often are places that are completely barricaded, places that are only accessible through secret doors, or places that are so incredibly dangerous to get to that no one ever bothers. Those places are, to be honest, pretty few and far between.
Halaster’s a dick. He’s like this retarded five year old with a +5 rocket launcher of doom and a crack habit. He built this dungeon as the ultimate expression of his douchebaggery, and he knows that people are going to come in and try and fuck with his shit. To do that, they’ll need resources, and they’ll need chances to rest up, heal, get their shit in a group, and come up with a plan for how they’re going to tackle the next ring of this circus of death. He isn’t going to make that easy. If you want to sleep in Undermountain, you’d best be prepared to work for it.
Barricading a room seems like it might be the best way to make that happen at first, until you remember how much noise that makes. Monsters like noise, it’s like a dinner-bell to them down here. I don’t have a Wandering Monster chart kicking around for Undermountain yet, but if your players want to barricade more than one door of the dungeon, I’d suggest you kick in one of those doors and make them fight some monsters. “Oy, right, yeah. Heard ya bangin’ about up here an’ thought, ‘Well them’ll make a nice bit o’ supper, ne?’”
So we have a few rooms kicking around that are inherently difficult to find and/or get into. Those rooms have one entry and exit point, and that entry point is easy to barricade and make relatively safe. There's some room for discussion in how many safe rooms there are. Personally, I think it should be every six to eight encounters. So you won't see me detail a Safe Room on this blog for at least three more encounters (probably closer to five). The nature of each of the safe rooms will be different, as well. Some of them won't allow you to sleep; you can meditate fine, if you're an Elf or a Warforged or whatever, but characters that require sleep will find the safe room entirely too uncomfortable for that. Other rooms will make it impossible to mediate, but sleeping creatures will do just fine (some sort of psychic interferance). Some will allow you to do both. Some will have to be barricaded, some will require a skill challenge or an encounter to get rid of the Things Here Before You, some will need to be made more comfortable, some will have tricky little bits that will fuck with your day, some will be completely harmless but have strange features that make you think something's up. It'll be fun coming up with them.
Also, getting BACK to a safe room should be a terrifying ordeal in it's own right. Comfortable rooms in Undermountain are a premium; monsters fucking LOVE comfortable rooms. When you come back to a Safe Room after a couple of encounters, expect it to have become the home of something Terrible and Weird that will need to be defeated before you can sleep away the last three encounters.
Think of Undermountain like a city; it’s a city in which every single one of the citizens would be more than happy to spill your entrails on the ground and bathe in them. Every place in the dungeon gets used, and gets used fairly regularly. The only places that people might visit less often are places that are completely barricaded, places that are only accessible through secret doors, or places that are so incredibly dangerous to get to that no one ever bothers. Those places are, to be honest, pretty few and far between.
Halaster’s a dick. He’s like this retarded five year old with a +5 rocket launcher of doom and a crack habit. He built this dungeon as the ultimate expression of his douchebaggery, and he knows that people are going to come in and try and fuck with his shit. To do that, they’ll need resources, and they’ll need chances to rest up, heal, get their shit in a group, and come up with a plan for how they’re going to tackle the next ring of this circus of death. He isn’t going to make that easy. If you want to sleep in Undermountain, you’d best be prepared to work for it.
Barricading a room seems like it might be the best way to make that happen at first, until you remember how much noise that makes. Monsters like noise, it’s like a dinner-bell to them down here. I don’t have a Wandering Monster chart kicking around for Undermountain yet, but if your players want to barricade more than one door of the dungeon, I’d suggest you kick in one of those doors and make them fight some monsters. “Oy, right, yeah. Heard ya bangin’ about up here an’ thought, ‘Well them’ll make a nice bit o’ supper, ne?’”
So we have a few rooms kicking around that are inherently difficult to find and/or get into. Those rooms have one entry and exit point, and that entry point is easy to barricade and make relatively safe. There's some room for discussion in how many safe rooms there are. Personally, I think it should be every six to eight encounters. So you won't see me detail a Safe Room on this blog for at least three more encounters (probably closer to five). The nature of each of the safe rooms will be different, as well. Some of them won't allow you to sleep; you can meditate fine, if you're an Elf or a Warforged or whatever, but characters that require sleep will find the safe room entirely too uncomfortable for that. Other rooms will make it impossible to mediate, but sleeping creatures will do just fine (some sort of psychic interferance). Some will allow you to do both. Some will have to be barricaded, some will require a skill challenge or an encounter to get rid of the Things Here Before You, some will need to be made more comfortable, some will have tricky little bits that will fuck with your day, some will be completely harmless but have strange features that make you think something's up. It'll be fun coming up with them.
Also, getting BACK to a safe room should be a terrifying ordeal in it's own right. Comfortable rooms in Undermountain are a premium; monsters fucking LOVE comfortable rooms. When you come back to a Safe Room after a couple of encounters, expect it to have become the home of something Terrible and Weird that will need to be defeated before you can sleep away the last three encounters.
Undermountain Encounters 3, Nimraith’s Rest
In this alcove lies a human skeleton, huddled under a riven brass shield. It is clad in the crumbling remnants of leather armor. A metal, visored helm sits upright on the flagstone floor nearby.
Nimraith's rest is a pretty simple room. In it, there is one thing, a skeleton under a shield. At least, that's the original encounter as written. If you disturb the shield, you have to deal with a stirge, which is never pleasant because stirges were assholes. In 4th Edition, they're pretty tame little guys. They don't have many hit points, their defenses are low, and a group of kick-ass adventurers taking down a single bug is a pretty stupid encounter.
So fuck the single bug, says I. The obvious answer is to make the stirges a swarm, with a couple of singular stirges kicking around for good measure. But the smallest stirge swarm is a level six monster, and I don't really want to dumb a six down to a one. Another option is a few pesky bugs working in conjunction. D&D Encounters' first skill challenge could end in a random combat with a few different things. One of those things was a trio of bugs; a stirge and two fire beetles. Fire beetles, for the record, are fucking terrifying. 3d6 damage over a blast 3 is insane at first level. With a critical hit, it could take fresh controllers into the negatives. Put two of those assholes in the same encounter, and you've got fricassee wizard.
Normally, when I'm looking at inventing an encounter, I don't take the XP reward system into account much. I know what seems like an easy, balanced or tough encounter to me, and if it turns out it's different from what I imagined it would be like, I change it around on the fly. Today, though, I'm going to break this down by experience point values, because it seems like fun.
I'm figuring on a single flame beetle, at 100xp. It gives out a big burst to begin with, and can be either a recurring threat (depending on how your recharge rolls go), or an easy target for your players. After that, we need a stirge to hearken back to the original encounter, so I'm thinking a single stirge at 100xp. After this, we can get a bit more creative with it. I love minions because they pose a viable threat without overpowering an encounter. So I invented stirgelings by setting their Secondary Role to "minion" in the Adventure Tools, changing the amount of damage it does to a static 3 with 3 ongoing. We're throwing three of these babies in there, for another 75xp. That leaves me with some 125xp to play around with. Just enough for a second-level monster!
Going along with our bug room theme and rocking the swarm idea, let's throw in a second-level centipede swarm. For parties that don't have a lot of blast or burst damage at their disposal, swarms prove a hell of a challenge. For more balanced parties, or parties that love them some mages, swarms are easy pickings, while the critters that hang out around the swarms are a bit harder to deal with.
For tactics, I'm thinking the stirges are going to attack as soon as the party is visible to them. They're going to go for the weakest looking characters, even if they're marked; they aren't smart enough to realize they're in danger of the fighter's opportunity attacks, or that the Warden is going to push them away from their food. The fire beetle is going to step out from behind the shield and let go with its recharging blast attack, then hide behind the shield for the extra cover and take a total defense action until the blast recharges. The centipede swarm is going to come from the hall to the south, a good choke point, where it will try to draw their enemies so that they can make short work of them between their own aura attack and the fireballs behind them.
This isn't intelligence, mind, this is blind instinct. The bugs don't want to deal with a group of people, they want to deal with small chunks of a group of people so that they can eat.
The (F) can be a little tough to see over the skeleton and the shield, but that's where the Fire Beetle is.
Stirge (S) | Level 1 Lurker | ||
Small
| XP 100 | ||
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +0;
| |||
m
| |||
+6 vs AC; 1d4 damage, and the target is grabbed (until escape) and takes ongoing 5 damage until it escapes. An attached stirge doesn't make attack rolls while grabbing a target and gains a +5 bonus to its AC and Reflex defenses | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Skills Stealth +8 | |||
Str 8 (–1) | Dex 16 (+3) | Wis 10 (+0) | |
Con 10 (+0) | Int 1 (–5) | Cha 4 (–3) | |
Monster found in Monster Manual and Compendium | |||
© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. | |||
Stirgeling (L) | Level 1 Minion Lurker | ||
Small
| XP 25 | ||
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +0;
| |||
m
| |||
+6 vs AC; 3 damage, and the target is grabbed (until escape) and takes ongoing 3 damage until it escapes. An attached stirge doesn't make attack rolls while grabbing a target and gains a +5 bonus to its AC and Reflex defenses | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Skills Stealth +8 | |||
Str 8 (–1) | Dex 16 (+3) | Wis 10 (+0) | |
Con 10 (+0) | Int 1 (–5) | Cha 4 (–3) | |
This one's my own creation, based on the Stirge, above.
© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. | |||
Fire Beetle (F) | Level 1 Brute | ||
Small
| XP 100 | ||
Initiative +1 Senses Perception +0
| |||
m
| |||
+5 vs AC; 2d4 + 2 damage | |||
C
| |||
Close blast 3; +4 vs Reflex; 3d6 fire damage | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Str 14 (+2) | Dex 12 (+1) | Wis 10 (+0) | |
Con 12 (+1) | Int 1 (–5) | Cha 8 (–1) | |
Monster found in Monster Manual and Compendium | |||
© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. | |||
Centipede Swarm (C)
| Level 2 Brute | ||
Medium
| XP 125 | ||
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +1;
| |||
m
| |||
+4 vs AC; 1d6 damage, and ongoing 5 poison damage (save ends); a creature already taking ongoing poison damage is also weakened (save ends). The centipede swarm's attack deals 1 extra damage for each centipede swarm adjacent to it | |||
| |||
The centipede swarm shifts 3 squares. | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Skills Stealth +9 | |||
Str 9 (+0) | Dex 17 (+4) | Wis 10 (+1) | |
Con 14 (+3) | Int 1 (–4) | Cha 6 (–1) | |
Monster found in Monster Manual 2 and Compendium | |||
© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. | |||
The skeleton has some gear on him, but it's mostly useless. The shield is split in half (the word "Nimraith" written across it in Thorass). The leather armor is old and cracked and parts crumble into useless strips of leather when someone attempts to wear it. The rotting remains of a backpack are folded under the corpse containing a moldy mass of cloth scraps and a polished ivory tube worth 2sp. Inside the tube are two scraps of parchment. One is a partially completed map of Undermountain called Nimraith's Map, the other is a scroll with the Comrade's Succor ritual written on it (Dragon, 380), which is a godsend in a place like Undermountain. With it, a group can give up healing surges to give those surges to other players. And in a place as deadly as this, every one of those surges counts.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Undermountain Encounter 2, The Hall of Many Mirrors
The corridor ahead seems to reflect your lights back from many glimmering surfaces, on both walls. All is quiet. Something small is lying on the floor, part way down the corridor.
The thing on the floor is the burnt out stump of a torch. The only reason I can gather that anyone would put this into the room is to get players to wander in, hoping that the small thing is, in fact, a Hackmaster +11 that just happens to be lying on the floor. Today's players will see a fucking torch stump and wonder why whoever was using it didn't bring sun rods.
There are sixteen large, heavy oval glass mirrors in this corridor, eight on each wall. They all look basically the same, though a few are showing signs of wear from being in a dank dungeon for a very long time. Some have a faint aura of magic about them, old protection spells meant to keep the soggy atmosphere of the dungeon from damaging the silver mirror-backs.
Three of the mirrors hang in front of small storage caches. The contents of these caches changes with the seasons. Sometimes creatures leave a little something in one of them to save for later. Sometimes adventurers, believing their goods will be safe in such a cache, leave themselves something to help on the way out. Below, you'll find a chart. Roll to see what your players find in the caches.
Things You'll Find in Undermountain
01-07 | A garlic-stuffed, deep-fried rat. | 51-57 | A jar of dead bees. |
08-13 | A gem worth 50gp | 58-59 | A suit of leather armor +1 |
14-20 | A potion of Healing | 60-69 | Frighteningly well-drawn goblin pornography |
21-25 | 2 leather-bound books. One level 1 ritual. | 70-74 | A potion of Cure Light Wounds |
26-35 | A +1 sling | 75-83 | A gnawed-on dragon-femur (40gp) |
36-42 | A pile of shiny rocks and a 10gp silver statue | 84-88 | AD&D Undermountain poster map. |
43-45 | Poorly drawn goblin pornography (1cp) | 89-98 | A religious amulet to a dead god |
46-50 | An amulet of defense +1 | 99-00 | A +2 weapon of the player's choice |
The westernmost mirror on the north wall is a Mirror of Opposition. In Second Edition, what this basically meant was "Steal your player's character and beat the snot out of her with it." The mirror creates a perfect likeness of the player's character with her stats, her abilities, her armor, her weapons. Then it tries to kill the original. This was terrifying mostly because a single player character was a lot more proficient at the killing of people than any monster in a dungeon. While that's still true in 4th Edition (even more true, actually), the fact that stat blocks have changed so drastically over the past few editions, makes creating a duplicate of a player character difficult. Add the fact that Dungeon Masters have a hard enough time trying to remember everything in a stat block, let alone look it up in a character sheet that doesn't even belong to them, and you get a trickier situation.
Lucky for us, then, we have the Doppelganger. Now, so far Wizards hasn't really put out a lot of first-level dudes that don't suck. So I was forced to make a few. Below, you'll find stats for copies of each of the main character roles: there's a defender, a controller, a leader and a striker. When a player examines the Mirror of Opposition, a Doppelganger of the appropriate type will come out of the mirror and immediately attack him or her. Whenever another player character is within line-of-sight to the mirror, another creature steps out of the mirror and begins the next round with the initiative. The mirror has 50 hit points (being a magical artifact, it's tougher than your normal mirror). If it is broken, the Doppelgangers are dazed (save ends) and take a -1 to rolls to hit and all of their defenses. Two more doppelgangers will appear the round after the mirror is broken, also dazed (save ends) but without the -1 to attacks and defenses.
Doppelganger Mirror-fighter | Level 1 Soldier | ||
Medium | XP 100 | ||
Initiative +2 Senses Perception +0 | |||
M | |||
+8 vs AC; 1d10 + 3 | |||
| |||
+4 vs Reflex; the doppelganger gains combat advantage against the target until the end of the doppelganger's next turn. | |||
| |||
A doppelganger can alter it's physical form to take on the appearance of any Medium humanoid, including a unique individual. | |||
C | |||
Close burst 1; targets all enemies in burst. The targets are marked until the end of the doppelganger's next turn. If a marked creature makes an attack that does not include Doppelganger Mirror-fighter, as an immediate interrupt, the doppelganger may slide that creature one square. | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Str 16 (+3) | Dex 10 (+0) | Wis 10 (+0) | |
Con 10 (+0) | Int 10 (+0) | Cha 10 (+0) | |
Doppelganger Mirrormage | Level 1 Artillery | ||
Medium | XP 100 | ||
Initiative –1 Senses Perception +3 | |||
m | |||
+6 vs AC; 1d8 + -1 damage | |||
r | |||
Ranged 10; +7 vs Reflex; 1d10 + 3 necrotic damage, or 2d6 + 4 necrotic damage against a target at full normal hit points | |||
C | |||
Close burst 20; targets cursed enemies; +4 vs Fortitude; 2d6 + 4 necrotic damage | |||
| |||
The Claw doppelganger darkmage curses the nearest noncursed enemy. The curse lasts until the end of the encounter. Once per round when the darkmage hits a cursed enemy, it can deal that enemy 1d6 extra damage. | |||
| |||
The Claw doppelganger darkmage makes a basic attack | |||
| |||
A doppelganger can alter its physical form to take on the appearance of any Medium humanoid, including a unique individual (see Monster Manual, page 280) | |||
Alignment Evil | Languages Common, Elven, Goblin | ||
Skills Arcana +7, Intimidate +8 | |||
Str 8 (–1) | Dex 8 (–1) | Wis 7 (–2) | |
Con 10 (+0) | Int 14 (+2) | Cha 16 (+3) | |
Equipment Mace, Rod Implement | |||
Doppelganger Mirrorpriest | Level 1 Lurker | ||
Medium | XP 100 | ||
Initiative +7 Senses Perception +0 | |||
M | |||
+6 vs AC; 1d10 + 3 damage | |||
C | |||
Close burst 1; targets allies within burst; targets gain 1d6+5 hit points, plus an additional 1d4 if bloodied. | |||
C | |||
Close burst 1; targets one ally in burst; target gains 1d6 hit points. | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages — | ||
Str 10 (+0) | Dex 16 (+3) | Wis 10 (+0) | |
Con 10 (+0) | Int 10 (+0) | Cha 10 (+0) | |
Doppelganger Mirror-rogue | Level 1 Skirmisher | ||
Medium | XP 100 | ||
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +0 | |||
m | |||
+6 vs AC; 1d6 + 3 damage | |||
M | |||
+4 vs Reflex; the doppelganger gains combat advantage against the target until the end of the doppelganger's next turn | |||
| |||
The doppelganger sneak deals an extra 1d6 damage against any target it has combat advantage against. | |||
| |||
A doppelganger can alter its physical form to take on the appearance of any Medium humanoid, including a unique individual . | |||
Alignment Unaligned | Languages Common | ||
Skills Bluff +9, Insight +7, Stealth +7 | |||
Str 10 (+0) | Dex 15 (+2) | Wis 11 (+0) | |
Con 12 (+1) | Int 9 (–1) | Cha 14 (+2) | |
Equipment Short sword | |||
© 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This monster statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools. | |||
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Comments on a Theme, And a Favor Mechanic
So I'm on a bit of a design kick this week. First the World-god, then The Role-playing Game About Role-playing Games, now I want to talk about rewarding in-theme play on the fly. I've been watching The Wire this week, and it's my first time. Yes, I know that means I'm living in a time before electric lights or the lever, but I don't have cable, I don't _want_ cable, so I usually end up seeing these sorts of things well after everyone else has. The thing that has struck me as most important to The Wire, and indeed all television (and perhaps all stories ever) is that it sticks to its themes in a very close way. When you're watching the show, you get a very real sense of the policing institutions in Baltimore breaking down around the city's ears. This theme, the dysfunction of the system, is something that the series would be completely hollow without. Sometimes stories need to adhere to themes. A lot of role-playing games pay some lip-service to thematic elements, talking about how it's typically the Game Master's responsibility to present those themes in his or her descriptions of events, characters and locations. But themes in fiction are more pervasive that that; they make the characters who they are, and they dictate, to some degree or another, how those characters are going to act in certain situations. So how do you motivate your players to stay on-theme? Well, pretty much the same way you motivate your players to do damned near anything else: carrot or stick. You can try and motivate them with rewards, or you can punish them for doing things that are against the theme. Personally, I prefer to bribe my players to do things, as they resent bribes less than they resent getting slapped around for doing something they want to do. If you make them want to do things in-theme, and they'll do those things without complaint. So then you get to the question of "Well, how do I motivate my players to behave in a way consistent with a dysfunctional policing system?" It's not easy, because a lot of times, acting in a way consistent with a dysfunctional policing system... Well, sucks. You're going to do things that are not good. You're going to do things that are frustrating. You're going to do things that put your character into situations that suck. So you're going to need a pretty kick-ass reward system, and it can't be something that breaks the game. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, by the good kids at Eden Games, had a pretty amazing dramatic editing system that rewarded players for being in shitty situations. Xander got kidnapped by the Big Bad who is trying to get him to reveal Buffy's most secretest weaknesses? Xander gets himself a drama point, letting him do some really awesome stuff later (such as survive getting batted around by said Big Bad). That works in a system that's all about Teh Story, but it's less great for things like, well, The Wire. The Wire is not a dramatic show; it's very gritty and realistic. So what to do, what to do... Something that fits within the theme of The Wire is the idea of Favors. When you do something for someone, that someone owes you a favor. When something happens to you that sucks, when you act in a way that is on-theme, someone owes you a favor. In particular, the Game Master owes you a favor. And there's no one more powerful in terms of Favor-granting than the Game Master. Favors are the currency of politics. When you do something for someone, it isn't forgotten. If ever you do someone a favor and they renege on their responsibility to return it, you are perfectly in your rights to completely fuck with that person for the rest of his or her gods-given life. It is within someone's best interest to cash in the favors he or she owes, lest he or she get caught in a political shit-storm regarding those pictures he or she took with that little boy in Thailand. Player characters start off as bad-asses in the world, and as such, some people owe them something big. Each player's character starts off with three Favor Points. Favor Points may be traded in for special treatment or assistance when it's needed. Different favors are worth different amounts of points. The more powerful the person you are calling on for the favor, the more points it costs. The more difficult or dangerous or expensive the favor, the more points it costs. Let's look at a chart! Favor Difficulty Favor Point Cost Easy 1 Average 2 Difficult 3 Very Difficult 6 Dangerous 12 Who Owes You? Multiplier Peasant, Civilian, Street Bum, Average Joe /2, round down, minimum 1 Merchant, Union Leader, Your Boss 0 Minor Noble, Your Boss' Boss, An Old Rival x2 Ranking Noble, CEO of the Company, An Old Enemy x3 Prince, A Current Enemy, A Mob Boss, An Ex-spouse x4 The King, A Mortal Enemy, The Mob Boss' Boss, Your Ex-mother-in-law x5 A Demon or Wizard, God, The Dungeon Master All of Them So if you want a Dangerous Favor (dangerous as determined by the character being asked for the favor, mind, not by you) from the Crown Prince of the Awesome Kingdom, it's going to cost you 60 some Favor Points. To rack up that many Favor Points, you're going to have to o through some shit. Serious shit. World-altering, nuts-in-a-vice shit. But if you need that guy who sells dope on the corner to stand in front of you while people start shooting, well it's going to cost you 6. That you can do after a few sessions, if your life sucks. And if you're trying to capture the feeling of gritty urban dysfunction, your life is probably crap. A few notes: This system is mostly built as an add-on to role-playing bits. You want something done; you're going to need to convince these people that you need their help. Sometimes, they aren't going to want to help you, no matter how many Favor Points you have in your pool. People have their own shit going on, and most of the time that shit isn't "Huh… I wonder how I can best help that guy who helped me do that thing one time." Favors are trades. When you gain a favor point, you did something for someone, and doing that thing sucked. It may have happened off-camera, but you did it, and the person you did it for is going to remember it. Alternatively, someone you know needs to do something, and that thing is going to suck for you pretty bad. They owe you for that, and they'll pay up. The same goes for them, though; if you're going to be using a favor point system, understand that sometimes someone is going to try and call in a favor, and if you don't deliver, it's putting your reputation on the line. You don't want to be the guy who doesn't return favors. That guy gets really lonely (or really dead) really fast. Favor Points are usually a response to some really shitty thing happening to you. This is pretty similar to the way Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters regain their Drama Points. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. The reward for bad things happening to you is that you get a Favor Point. Someone has fucked the pooch and the pooch fucked you, so now someone owes you. You don't get favor points for breathing. If you show up to your session and bad shit does not happen to you, or you do not agree to do something you're going to hate doing, well then you don't get any favor points. These are handed out at the DM's discretion.
Favors
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