Posts Tagged ‘mythender’

The following is an excerpt from Mythender, and is a work-in-progress. I was having fun with the language, and I thought I would share to get some reactions. The following covers the rules for doing super awesome shit outside of a battle (though not some of the related rules, like creating lasting blights that mark the land or terrorizing mortals for power from this act).

Enjoy!

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Performing Badass, Epic Feats

Mythenders are incredible titans, who can do amazing feats! Break mountains, move rivers, control mortals—there’s little you cannot accomplish. But that power comes at a cost, for those feats are powered by your Mythic nature, and from there lies corruption.

When you want to do an epic feat and you’re not in a battle, answer the following:

Is This Feat Mundane or Uninteresting?

Then don’t use these rules. It just happens, with no benefit or further effect.

Is This Feat Inhumanly Possible?

Answer these questions:

• Are you capable of this feat?
• If so, are you creating or destroying a blight?
• Are you embracing or resisting corruption?

Are you capable of this feat?

No Mythender is omnipotent; you each have limitations. You can accomplish an epic feat if it fits under one of these conditions:

• It is merely something that takes godly might, speed, skill, wit, etc.
• You can explain how your Weapons enable you to do this feat.
• You can justify it either directly or inspired by your Fate’s power.

In addition, if there’s a blight that would prevent you from doing this, and the feat you’re doing isn’t attacking that blight, you’re restrained from this action. At least, for the time being.

If you cannot do the feat because it doesn’t fit any of the above, don’t worry! Once you fall and become a Myth, you can totally do it.

If you can do the feat, then it is done, unquestioningly. You and the Mythmaster describes what happens.

Are you creating or destroying a blight?

Epic actions can create or destroy blights. This is optional; not every epic action needs to deal with a blight. (For more on Blights, see page XX.)

If creating a new blight, pay 2 Might, take a new blight card and write its description down. Write your Mythender’s name on the “Created by” line. Finally, check off the first charge box and the Lasting box.

In lieu of creating a new blight, you can bolster an existing blight that you or another Mythender created. Rewrite the blight’s description to reflect how its more powerful, then check off two more charge boxes.

If destroying a blight, pay 2 Might, take the blight card, write your name on the “Destroyed by” line, and cross the card out. Or, if you’re feeling particularly theatrical, rip the card up.

You may only create or destroy one blight if you’re resisting corruption (below).

If embracing corruption, you can create and destroy as many as you can afford. You can use Might gained from embracing corruption to pay for them.

Are you embracing or resisting corruption?

The choice you have here is if you are trying to use Mythic power while attempting to resist its corruption, hoping that it does not change you and make you closed to becoming a Myth; or you can embracing what the world of Myth wants you to become, and gain power from it.

Embracing Corruption

If you are embracing your mythic nature, this is also Terrorizing Mortals for Power, even if you’re doing this in a “nice” way or for kind reasons. If there were no mortals in this moment to begin with, the Mythmaster will introduce some witness your horrific power. Do everything in those rules as well.

If this action assaults or removed a mortal’s free will, it is always embracing corruption. That’s pretty inhuman.

Resisting Corruption

If you are attempting to resist corruption, this is a risk. Grab two dice if the Mythmaster says there are no mortals to witness your act, or one if there are. (Note: the Mythmaster will usually play handball here and introduce mortals in a scene where there didn’t seem to be any. Mortals are drawn to horrific power.)

Reminder: Companions don’t count as mortals, because they no longer have true free will.

Roll the dice. If either come up 5 or 6, you have resisted Myth’s corrupting influence! You’re unchanged. Otherwise, treat as the result of Terrorizing Mortals for Power, except you only claim 1 Might. There is less reward if you resist your mythic nature.

Oh, and if you do fail, the Mythmaster might create a new Blight for the Myth based on how you were unable to contain your nature. Or not. Whatever.

Describe the Feat and Push Forward

You and the Mythmaster should describe what happens, based on blights created or destroyed and how you handled corruption.  Once everyone at the table is satisfied with playing out that moment, move on.

Limits to These Gains

While you can do incredible feats, you do not have limitless power. After a feat, you must rest for a few moments—walking around and talking will suffice. And if you do one shortly afterward (around two hours or less), you will not gain any additional Might. The Mythic World cannot grant you limitless power while you still have the scent of mortality about you.

Examples

Resisting Corruption

Rashid wishes to put out a raging inferno consuming a town and surrounding forest, one started by fire giants in the prior battle. (Raging Inferno is a persistent blight.) So he summons the very spirits of the fire and shove them back down into the deep earth.

Now, no one had mentioned anything about the fire having spirits before, but the Mythmaster knows better than to question it. Of course it’s fire spirits! And it’s interesting, so we proceed.

The feat’s inhumanly possible, all right. Qualifies for these rules. And Rashid is capable of this feat through his relic weapon, The Book of Dominion over Demons and Spirits. No question about that. He’s focused on destroying the blight, so that question is taken care of.

All that remains is to see if he’s embracing or resisting corruption. He could easily embrace it, shouting at fire spirits and making everyone in the town bow before his terrible awe. But no, he decides that mortals should keep their free will or some junk, and resists.

There are mortals around, so Rashid’s player picks up just one die. He rolls it, getting a 5! He successfully resists corruption! (Which is handy, because I haven’t described how Terrorizing Mortals for Power works yet.)

So he describes forcing the fire spirits into the deep earth, and the fire vanishing with it. The people witnessing still bow before his terrible awe, but not in a “I accidentally destroyed your free will while trying to help” way.

Embracing Corruption

Unna arrives at a village after some monsters have already slaughtered many of its people. So she figures, hey, why not just bring them back?

That certainly isn’t boring. Her Fate is Death, so that fits with her Fate’s power: Power over the life and death of mortals. There’s no blight in play that’s she’s destroying—there are no inactive blights like “people are dead”. She also doesn’t really care about creating one, though she could make one like “my loyal risen army” or the like. But that’s not Unna’s point. She just wants some dead people to be…less dead.

As for corruption, her player says “Bring it on!” Because corruption is sexy, and also gives you sweet, sweet mythic power. Sure, it’ll mean that the mortals she’s bringing back to life will have their free will destroyed, but them’s the breaks, I guess.

The rest of this example is covered in Terrorizing Mortals for Power (p. XX), since Unna’s embracing corruption.

Not Bothering With These Rules

After the battle against giant scorpion-men, Erik the Hated jumps from one side of a chasm to the other, in order to retrieve his sword, Viperbane. The scorpion-general knocked it out of his hands as his last action, as it was being totally ended. Since there’s nothing interesting going on, just a bit of color to show how casually Erik gets his sword back, none of the Epic, Badass Feats rules are used.

Now, if Erik’s player wanted to make a big deal about it, he could push it further, but he just wanted to say “Yeah, I just wanted to describe how I got my sword back. Let’s move on.” Everyone’s happy.

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- Ryan

I’m not as far along on Mythender as I’d like — a function of Doing Free Work and the issues around that[1]. Part of that is because of the form factor that I thought was genius turned into a liability. I have a booklet for the rules outside of a battle (which is getting rather large), the rules for in a battle (which is also getting rather large, enough to where I took an optional rule out), the GM stuff, character creation, even a “booklet of contents” that really just serves to point out that the other booklets exist and some basic tone-setting stuff.

It doesn’t work, so I’m going to ditch the idea. I’m running out of room, so I can’t fit in examples. And I have a hard cap at 32 pages for a given booklet, because that’s eight sheets of paper, and stapling more than that in the middle is asking for even more trouble.

I’m dead sure it would work for other games, but isn’t working here. The idea is of making the game easy to print & have at the table, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible with this setup, which means I shouldn’t sacrifice clarity for this goal that I can’t achieve. The better product then is the one that’s clear rather than the one that’s printable.

That means one PDF that contains everything, and shifting it from having natively printable dimensions to having tablet screen dimensions. (Which isn’t a huge shift, from 8.5″x5.5″ to having a 3×2 setup, but changing the paging elements to be uniform rather than left/right will take a bit of work, and that changes the atomic unit of information from the two-page spread to the screen — what a reader sees at one given moment of time.)

Mythender will still have booklet-sized stuff; after all, I have to still make twelve Mythic Worlds thanks to the Random Kindness Bundle $250 backers. And instead of making larger booklets that contain everything, I can make smaller booklets that are quick-references & other handy stuff.

(There’s a larger point here about how in the process of open design, you’re going to backpedal because some ideas don’t work, and what that means to the work and the process. But, as I’m fond of saying, that’s another post.)

- Ryan

[1] I didn’t get paid for Mythender, even though people paid for it, so it’s free work. Incidentally, this is why when I do charity stuff, I know not to take offers of work to support that charity unless the work’s already done. Why did I do that this time? Because I knew I wouldn’t totally flake on myself. :)

Some of you are probably wondering where Mythender is, so here’s an update:

Mythender is still in the writing process, but that’s coming along. Garret Narjes has run a couple games, and has told me places where the rules need better explanation, where it needs to be clearer what the Mythmaster should be doing during the game, and where the rules totally broke.

On that last note, I have a quick story:

I was enjoying my pipe while hanging outside at JoshCon. During that time, Garret was running Mythender inside. I didn’t want to poke my nose around too much — as I joked, Mythender was getting its run-by-someone-else cherry popped, and I wasn’t going to be a weird voyeur around my “kid.” But really, I didn’t want to chime in at all.

Garret comes out and says “So, uh, they almost one-shotted Odin in the first round. And now he’s not threatening at all. What do I do?”

I thought for a moment, and asked him what Odin’s Weapons were. He told me, though I cannot recall exactly what he said at this point. I replied “Odin can destroy one of his Weapons to gain ten thunder dice. Be epic in description.”

He smiled and went back inside. Later, he debriefed me and said “Dude, when I did that, the players freaked. It was awesome!”

So now that’s a rule, which I’ve used in my own games since. Combined with a couple other rules changes I made back in November, Mythender finally had the last piece of the game to make fighting a god feel desperate & winning early crucial.

 

The form factor has proven a hell of a challenge, but one that’s forced me to write better. I hope to have it done and ready for folks I’m calling “my cabal” in the next couple weeks. These folks will check what I’ve written and tell me if it’s off. Once that’s done, the game will be available for Random Kindness Encounter donors in its pre-edited state. Once it’s edited, it’ll be available to the world & I’ll start on the custom content that I promised high-end donors. I’ll also probably leak a bit out beforehand, because I’m that sort of guy.

I’ve got some near-done sheets:

• Character sheet
• Myth sheet
• Blight sheet

I’m also starting to work with an artist for the individual covers. I’m pretty excited!

Finally, Mythender will be released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Because why not.

Thanks for being patient! :)

- Ryan

Rare weekend post! Because I’m probably not posting early next week.

Since there’s quite a bit of investment in Mythender, I thought I would be upfront about why I said “two months” for the initial set of booklets going out to donors:

• I start a new job as a social game designer on Monday. Yay job! But it means I can’t 100% gauge my evening bandwidth, so I’m assuming roughly 12-16 hours a week to work on stuff. Part of the reason I won’t be posting on Monday or Tuesday, likely.
• I am finishing up some work for Evil Hat Productions on The Paranet Papers. After that’s done and off to peer review, I’m taking a sabbatical from EHP to work on my own books — not jut Mythender, but starting with that.
• Speaking of Evil Hat, there will be revisions on my short story for the upcoming Don’t Rest Your Head fiction anthology, Don’t Read This Book.
• I have Void Vultures to edit, which I’m working on now. It won’t take too much of my time — the form factor & Roby’s writing is pretty solid, but that’s ahead of Mythender because it got funded first. And because we said backers are getting it in December (as well as the rest of the world).
• I have a holiday trip to Seattle for personal matters. Some work will totally happen then, and some won’t.
• I have a trip to Minneapolis for JoshCon in January. I’ll probably run Mythender then, from pre-ready booklets if I bust my ass enough, so that’s my current goal.
• Oh, and I have to learn how to do InDesign competently for Mythender’s layout.

Once Mythender’s written, it goes to a Secret Cabal of people who have played before (and a couple who haven’t) to make sure everything that’s in my head is out, before it goes to donors & the editor.

The bonus content starts once I have that off to donors and my editor. And yes, I’m paying for editing on a free project. That’s how I show my respect to people who are willing to take the time to read my game and how I show respect to those who helped Kelly out. Seriously, mad love y’all.

 

Here’s a bit about my plans for the form factor & production:

• The game will be in electronic form (PDF), visually-designed for iPad and similar use. That aspect ratio, minimal art for easy loading, good contrast, with some color & iconography to aid in explanation.
• The game will be made easy to print as a series of booklets, using normal 8.5″x11″ paper & normal desktop printer margins. There will be a black & white version of the PDFs for those who don’t want to use color. Folding the pages in the middle and stapling (or however else you’d like to bind it), the sort of thing that some folks can do at home or work, and isn’t too horrible to do at a Kinkos.
• Each booklet will range from 8 pages (taking 2 sheets of paper to print) to 32 pages (taking 8 sheets of paper to print). By “pages” I mean once the booklet’s printed. Four pages fits on a single piece of paper when printed double-sided and folded landscape.
• Ideally, each idea will be contained on either a page or a spread, with larger ideas being broken up. Sometimes this won’t work, but I’m trying this as hard as possible.
• There will be a version of the PDF that is set up for booklet printing without needing special printer/PDF reader options to make that happen.
• I want to have art on each booklet’s cover, to visually distinguishing them at a glance.
• The back of each booklet will be some form of quick reference.
• The middle spread, the one that naturally falls open, will be another reference.
• The planned booklets:
• The core booklet/table of contents/tone setter/basics, 8 pages
• “Creating Your Mythender”, the rules for making a character, 24-32 pages. It’s streamlined from what I have posted before.
• “Moments in your Adventure”, the rules for everything that isn’t a Battle, 24-32 pages
• “Your First Battle”, a tutorial battle for first timers, 24-32 pages
• “Epic, Godending Battles”, the battles rules, 24-32 pages. The tutorial will not refer to this booklet.
• “Mythmaster’s Handbook”, what a Mythmaster (GM) needs to keep in mind in order to make Mythender rock, 16-24 pages.
• “Mythic World #1: Mythic Norden”, the first world of gods to kill in Mythender, 16 pages.
• Loose leaf material: the character sheets, the Mythender Archetypes for character creation, some references, sample characters.
• (Note: these are estimates)

If that sounds like a lot of printing, note that I’m saying a total of 8+32+32+32+32+24+16 booklet pages, or 176 pages (which are small pages, since we’re talking 8.5″x5.5″, before printer margins are taken into account). That’s 44 printed pieces of paper. Anyway, I think that’s all. Writing this may reveal another. Plus, I am intending this to also be easy-to-use electronically, so hopefully that works for y’all.

And other Mythic Worlds will be around the same page count, maybe large, depends on the world.

I should say that most of the text is written, in some form or another, sometimes as outdated rules. So I need to quickly rewrite it for this form factor and shift in tone. (I’ve abandoned the “woe is the mtyhic world and let’s be emo” tone for a “CHOKE THOR AWW YEAH and emo optional” one.)

 

What, you wanted to know about the actual game? :)

I’ve talked about it quite a bit on my blog, and I’ll keep talking about it. But too much posting about how Mythender works keeps me from writing about how Mythender works in the text. :) Here’s what some folks who have tried it said about it:

It certainly had a lot of cock. And not in a bad way.

- Filamena Young

I GOTCHER DIVINE RIGHT RIGHT HERE GOD BOY

- Cam Banks

Mythender struck me like a thunderbolt. I’ve seen it light wildfires in people’s imaginations. It’s part game, part legend.

- Will Hindmarch

My dice wept tears of blood.

- Logan Bonner

Roll the storm, gain the thunder, unleash the lightning — and End a Myth!

- Chad Underkoffler

Finally, a game that weaponizes my existential angst.

- Nora Last

The finest game of deicide since Candyland.

- Josh Roby

I know what kicks ass. Mythender kicks ass. A Mythender stands on the battlefield atop the broken and bleeding bodies of his enemies, screaming defiance at the gods…and the gods are afraid to answer. That is kick ass.

- Brennan Taylor

I hate this game.

- Thor, wananbe “god” of thunder

Anyway, there you go. Those are my plans. Perhaps they’re ambitious. Perhaps not. I should briefly thank Jeremy Keller for inspiring the form factor, which is a bit amusing. Technoir’s Player’s Book and Transmissions are easy-to-print, and I really dug them hitting the table. Why it’s amusing is that I inspired his Transmissions. All life is circular, baby.

Thank you again.

I’d better get to fucking writing.

-Ryan

A personal video reaction to how amazing y’all have been:

 

Too Long; Didn’t Watch:

• We’re capping the donations at $15K, because woah.
• Holy crap, you’re awesome. wut i dont even
• I’ll talk more about Mythender later, because I have my hands full with managing this project. :)
• Holy crap, you’re awesome.
• I drink passable coffee.
• Apologies to David & Filamena for spacing — it’s been a long couple days.
• Incidentally, in the first 24 hours, 395 people raised $11,325. Again, holy crap, you’re awesome.
• My video comment about the amount is awesomely out of date.
• And for Will Hindmarch‘s Always/Never/Now:

- Ryan