Posts Tagged ‘mythender’

I’ve been working on Mythender since late 2007. People have asked me a lot of questions about it, especially recently as folks are starting to know me from stuff I’m involved with (like Dresden or IPR) but haven’t heard me talk about my pet love over the last couple years.

So, I thought I would share with you the intro text to Mythender. Thank you to the couple dozen people who helped me workshop this, and my editor, Amanda Valentine, for being totally awesome. (I’m sure it’ll continue getting tweaked in further revisions, but not much more so.) Hopefully this gives you a taste of the thing I’ve devoted myself to for some time now. I’m still working on the text, and have a number of people slated to playtest the game from the text alone (in addition to the 70 people that have playtested it at home and cons via me running it).

Maybe tomorrow or later this week I’ll post about my philosophy of game text openers. But for now, I hope you enjoy.

Mythender – Epic Metal Opera

Far north, there is a place of legend, a land of gods and monsters. It is the home of cruelty and oppression, a domain of ice and peril. It takes its strength from the worship its gods demand of mortals, from the terror its monsters inspire in them. With the full force of Eternal Winter, it crushes any who oppose its gods and monsters. To free all people from this fate, these gods must die. This is Mythic Norden, and you are the living weapon that will strike true into the heart of Winter.

Mythender is a game about the handful of mortals who steal power from this land and wage a war against it. This is an epic metal opera, filled with raging battle anthems and reflective power ballads. There will be passion and blood, consequence and tears.

As a Mythender, you are a titan among men—the might of myth, bound within mortal flesh. Your rage boils rivers, sunders mountains, and brings the heavens crashing down upon the earth. The land quakes with each step you take. You rip out the still-beating hearts from the gods and destroy the mythic world. You are the walking incarnation of wrath, of death, of change.

Grand battles will scar the land. Screams will echo like thunder across the world. Rivers will run red with the blood of the fallen. Trolls, giants, witches, warriors long dead, valkyrie, and even Odin and his kin will all taste your blade and your hate. Only the gods themselves are peers to you, and you fill them with an alien sensation: fear.

Even that is not the limit of your power. With each god that you End, you deal another mighty blow against the land of myth itself. You carve away pieces of it and make room for mortals to live without fear of the night and cold. As you choke the life from a god, you rip the power away from Norden to reshape this newly mortal world with your own desires. You can End anything you wish—hunger, despair, illness, peace, love, death—striking it from the world and mortal memory.

Your power rivals that of the gods. But while many would aspire to apotheosis, for you it’s a fate worse than death. The moment you let it go to your head, the moment you give in to hubris, you become those you fight.

Your power—ripped bloody from the beating heart of Myth itself—will make you into the very thing you must destroy. A god. A champion of Norden. A myth.

That is your Fate, Mythender.

The only way to fight against this corruption is to bond with Norden’s people, the innocent victims of this terrifying world. You must struggle to gain their sympathy. But this will be your greatest challenge. You may be able to snap Thor’s neck, but no one will sit at your dinner table. They can no more relate to you than they can to a storm or the sea. As they fear the gods they rarely see, they fear you more. This is the curse of the power you steal from Norden. It is easier to rip away Fenris’ jaw than to put a smile on a child’s face.

But if that is the price of such power, so be it. You will not go quietly into that good night, Fate be damned! You will make Norden pay a dear price before it claims you. And when you fall, you know your comrades will continue ceaselessly with this quest. You trust that, when the time comes, they will End you. For you are the harbingers of destruction, the cleansing fire, the Spring that melts away Winter’s frost. You are a Mythender.

- Ryan

I’ve been working on the character creation text for Mythender lately, as my editor (the redoubtable Amanda Valentine, managing editor on The Dresden Files RPG) has given me the gift every writer needs: a deadline. So, I find myself going back through my old revisions and notes on the character creation, and have new opinions on the subject on how a text can best serve it.

Consider this post a “Dear self, here’s a reminder how to not fuck up.” Perhaps it will also be of use to some of y’all.

A good character creation text should consider a number of things (in no special order):

1. Inspire the players with thoughts of characters
2. Instruct players on how to make a character
3. Be usable as a reference while in the middle of the process
4. Help the GM/facilitator with his role in character creation

So, that said, and this is freakin’ key: I don’t have to get all of these right in the first draft. That’s been one source of paralysis lately, though now that I’ve realized that I’ve been able to move on.

Let’s specifically talk about the first bit, though, the “inspire” point. That is freakin’ key, more so the more specific your setting or your system is…like, say, a game where you’re a walking, talking force of nature that is still trying to remain human. If you don’t frontload with some ways of inspiring character, people may either have a hard time locking on to an idea or end up being inspired by something external to the game, thus making a character concept that doesn’t really work with your conceit. (A few dozen playtests of Mythender end up strongly corroborating this idea for me.)

Text I had last year said:

Question 1: What is your Heroic Concept?

Heroic Concepts take the form of:

[Adjective] [Noun]…[Prepositional Phrase]

These quickly generate ideas that, with the other four questions, kick-start ideas for the character. Examples:

• Determined Baroness…with a dying people
• Battle-scarred Knight…in need of a cause
• Scorned Scion…with a need to prove himself
• Wrathful Sea Captain…under pressure from his love

Pro tip: “Prepositional Phrase” is a good time to introduce a twist to the character concept, like “Villainous Prince…with a broken heart.” Alternatively, if you have a killer concept that doesn’t fit in that format, go with your concept and forget the format.

The flaw: wasn’t inspirational enough. Yes, it helped form an idea into something usable at the table, but did shit for coming up with that idea. So, I’ve thrown out this rubric for a new scheme. Character creation starts by picking two things: an Archetype and an Identity. Each thing is a general idea with some focusing questions, and only from there do we get into further character stuff. Here’s a (rather unedited) taste:

Archetypes

Mythenders have many different ways of achieving theirs goals, but each prefers a particular way of dealing with Mythic Norden. We call these Archetypes. Here are the six most seen in Mythenders:

Warrior

These Mythenders go by many names: swordsman, knight, master of arms, duelist, barbarian, even the common “warrior.” No matter the name, these men and women share certain traits—they all share a willingness (though not always the desire) to battle. They all prize skill over mere steel. Of all Mythender, it is the warrior that truly understands that they are the weapon, no what is in their hands.

• Why did you become a warrior?
• What skill do you value the most?

Crusader

Some crusaders champion a god. Others a king, a love, an ideal. But as much as crusaders struggle against one another, they have one thing in common: they do not wield sword or axe. They wield belief. Their passions are as sharp as any blade, strike as true as any arrow. No Mythender is more willing to accept his fate of falling than the crusader. If death or the loss of his soul is the price to pay for his ideal, so be it.

• What happened to turn you into a crusader?
• What do you believe in so strongly?

[Four more Archetypes are listed]

Identities

Fate takes mortals from all walks of life and turns them into Mythenders. There is no single background, single Identity, that they share. Still, some are more common than others.

Child

Of those chosen by fate, one could argue that the children who become Mythenders are the most tragic. With their innocence sundered, they make for fierce fighters—untempered by age or wisdom. But it takes more than a simple tragedy to turn a boy or girl into such a being. Seeing…no, enduring…the true cruelty of man, of armies, of nature, of Mythic Norden, that is how a child Mythender is made.

• What cruelties have you endured?
• What fuels your limitless rage?

Lost

Everyone loses something they care dearly about. Some lose much, much more than others. Some are unable to move on. And a very few are shown by fate how they can get back what they’ve lost. Those who’ve lost and become Mythenders have lost something so dear, so personal. They’ve lost in a way that’s broken them, that has them killing gods and risking their very souls to recover. The reason they do this to themselves goes beyond lost, though. They have grief and they have guilt, two forces as powerful as Norden itself.

• What did you lose?
• Why didn’t you prevent this loss?
• How has losing this changed you?

[Four more Identities are listed]

The bit of testing with this has told me that this is how I should be doing character creation, at least for this game: a number of choices that constrain (to focus characters to what a Mythender is, as it’s not just any fantasy hero), to inspire (as reading one of these count help spark a character idea), and to guide (with the questions that each section has to further character creation, Evil Hat-style). Of course, this is just one piece–albeit an important piece–of character creation, but it’s the one that’s taken me two years to finally understand.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll see if I’m onto something or if I’m totally off my ass.

- Ryan

Footnote: In a bit of parallel thought, some people talk about character concept vs. creation on a Story-Games post.

So, I get to show off two kick-ass things today: one is a character sheet Fred Hicks made for Mythender, and another is one of my home group’s Mythenders — a Spanish Muslim noble who had traveled to Mythic Norden in order to convert the world.

Specifically, I’m going tell you about the two Fates the all Mythenders know await them: The Mortal Fate to die, and the Mythic Fate to become corrupted and twisted into mythic godhood.

In our last game, they fought a particularly difficult being, a dead Valkyrie who was being compelled by another to poison the spring with her eternally-flowing blood. That ended up being the hardest fight I’ve even run, where they really thought that the three of them were going to fail.

They forgot, for a moment, that they were playing Mythenders. Failure can happen, but only if they consider the price of success too dear — the price of progressing their Fate.

Mike’s character almost paid that price. He kept tapping into his mythic nature and progressing his Mythic Fate, as seen on his sheet. Along with that, he was hit hard in one round that caused him to lose all his Thunder dice, thus requiring him to choose between staying out of the rest of the fight, or coming back in by checking off one of the Mortal Fate boxes.

He did, and at the end of the labor they were victorious. But Rashid al-Jabbar was in danger both of dying and of becoming a Myth — both fates that await every Mythender loomed over him.

Here’s where we get to why Mythender’s are so powerful — when they lose all of their Thunder dice, they are merely taken out of the fight. They aren’t dead. Of course, they cannot partake in the spoils after their fellow Mythenders are victorious, or do anything to help keep their fellows from failing, but that’s the price of being out. Being safe. Being alive.

Or, you could put your own life on the line, your Mortal Fate to Die, and come back into the fight with more dice. You don’t cheat death and leave the fight; you embrace the wound that would kill lesser men and continue fighting.  The most important thing is that we do not know if you’ll die until the end of the labor. We do not know if that mortal wound will be the one that kills you, not until you have had a chance to be victorious one more time.

Similarly, each Mythender can tap into their own mythic nature and draw power to conquer their adversaries. Each time they do, they push themselves closer and closer to revealing what they’re destined to become, their Mantle of Power. And each time, they risk being pushed closer to their Mythic Fate, to become the very thing they’re ending, to be ended by their friends. But that is such a small price to pay for incredible power in the moment — and like the Mortal Fate, it is something that a Mythender only succumbs to at the end of a fight.

Mike’s character had to deal with both, and Fate is cruel. He tossed a single die, hoping it was low. When you check your fate, that’s what you do — look at the lowest number checked, and hope you roll lower than that. There is no appeal to the die with Mythic Fate, and a very costly appeal with Mortal Fate.

The die rolled 3. The only kindness a Mythender facing down both Fates has when rolling is that he needn’t declare which Fate he’s rolling for until after the die is cast — in the end, facing utter annihilation or corruption, a Mythender still has some pull over Fate. Mike chose for that to be the die for his Mythic Fate, thus avoiding that for a time.

The die was rolled again, for his Mortal Fate. It landed 6. Rashid al-Jabbar was to sentenced to die.

Mike would refuse that. He spent his last remaining Stolen Power — the very power a Mythender can use to achieve their Impossible Drive, the very power that Rashid al-Jabbar would need to create a world where all worshipped Allah — to reroll his Mortal Fate die. It landed 2. Rashid al-Jabbar cheated Fate, at a dear price.

And now Rashid, after choking the unlife from this poisonous Valkyrie, knows that his chances of creating the world he wills is that much more unlikely. And now Rashid, after spending the last of his stolen power, knows what it means to have the Fates hovering over him, ready to feast.

He will have to spend a long time being mortal, to come back from the precipice, to undo the progression of his Mythic Fate. Rashid, who no longer appears remotely mortal, having activated his Monstrous Mantle of Power, must spend time among them to calm his mythic side.

That will be a trial. But as hard as that is, he must also face one more issue: there is no power in Heaven or on Earth that can undo the progression of his Mortal Fate. He chose to come back into the fight. He chose to progress his Mortal Fate. He cannot unchoose what he has chosen.

Today was not the end of the story of Rashid al-Jabbar, but I guarantee you, he is forever changed by this day. If he is wise, he will put down the scimitar, find a woman, raise a family, and let his Mortal Fate claim him in old age.

But he is a Mythender. So few ever take up this simple wisdom.

Last weekend at Camp Nerdly, I ran a game of Mythender for four peeps, including one John Stavropoulos. John posted some badass comments about Mythender on Story Games, which I am happy to paste here.

Ryan had to stop me from giving him money. And money is tight and he hasn’t even written the game yet!!!

In Mythender you play the equivalent of a 30th level D&D character killing myths and gods before you are ended or fall to a fate worse than death… become a god yourself to be hunted by your fellow Mythenders.

Imagine stabbing Odin in his good eye and telling him how much of a little punk he his.

I played a pirate who was drowned by her own crew after she was sacrificed to the god of the ocean in hope they would reach shore.

Some games have beliefs or goals. In Mythender you have impossible drives. Yup, impossible. I swore to rid the earth of all oceans. Yup.

My weapons? I can literally take the water from you.

I’ve enslaved my former crew who now drag my ship around by land since I refuse to sail again.

And as I grow in myth I become less mortal. My tell tale was that there is an anchor embedded inside me connected to a chain dragging across the land infinitely back to the exact location where I drowned in the middle of the ocean.

My favorite part was when I wanted to become more mortal. I told a farmer who just lost his family that he was my father now and to tell me the bedtime stories he used to tell his children… the ones that just drowned due to the serpent. Wow. WTF!

When the GM says no to you… about anything… they write it down and give it a number. You can then attack it till the no becomes a yes.

Ryan… write the game. Now… do it now!

John,

I would say “Dude, I’m working as fast as I can, but I don’t have time right this moment to finish the draft.” I would say that, but that’s effectively a “no,” and then I would assign some dice to that “no.” Then you would end that. So, I’m just going to cut to the chase and accept that I’m writing this draft even though I have half a dozen other things going on.

It’s my hope that I’ll have an initial rough draft by GenCon.

Yeah, I just publicly cited a date. Watch me totally blow past it.

As a little treat, let me post up John’s character:

Name: The Uncreated
Heroic Concept: Drowned pirate with enslaved undead crew
Origin: Mortal Europe (unspecified beyond that)
How You Became a Mythender: I drowned after my pirate crew sacrificed me
Character Reference: The girl from The Ring
Impossible Drive: Rid the earth of all oceans

Weapons

• I can take the water from you [Intrinsic, Mythic 1]
• The scum that drowned me [Companion]
• I’ve drowned…what the hell are you going to do? [Intrinsic]
• My old cannon is my pistol [Relic]

Mantle of Power

• Atmospheric Effect: It’s hard to breath around me
• Paragon Mantle: Single chain drags behind me to infinity
• Supernatural Mantle: Chains springing from me to all the oceans
• Monstrous Mantle: Replace the oceans with my blood

Why the adventure matters to you: The Midgard Serpent has bested me in battle multiple times
(We didn’t do any of the other Relationships, since it’s a con game)

Final Mortal Fate: 6
Final Mythic Fate: n/a

Gifts Gained

• Sureness [+upgrade to reduce cost]
• Grievous Harm

Impositions Gained

• The ocean is barren [5]

I should post up the other three from this game soon, and maybe write it up. I’m too infrequent of a blogger.

- Ryan

Last night, I was talking with Leonard Balsera about some elements of Mythender I discovered while writing up notes — going beyond mere mechanics & base ideas, into areas of the setting that I hadn’t yet fully explored.  I was telling him about how, in my home campaign, the players and I are pretty sure their characters are up against a “dark Mythender,” for lack of a better term.  Since it’s my damned game, so I need to be able to back this idea up with the right mechanics and in-setting justification.

I say “for lack of a better term” because it turns out that there are two things I could mean by that (either of which this foe could be at this point), and they’re vastly different in my mind.  The first is a “fallen Mythender” — a mythic being of some sort that was once a Mythender and now fully fallen to the Mythic World.  That’s the first idea.  But should “succumbing to corruption” br the only way you might run across a Mythender as a foe?  After all, based on what I’ve set up, at that point they aren’t even a Mythender anymore, just a myth.

That leads to the second idea — of a “renegade Mythender,” a hero who hasn’t changed or been corrupted, but has shifted his focus away from ending Myth to ending his own kind.  In explaining this idea to Lenny, who has listened to me at length talk about Mythender, I said (paraphrased):

It’s Clint Eastwood’s character from Unforgiven.  A Mythender puts down his Mantle to have a normal family and raise children.  One day, he goes off to trade when a new generation of Mythenders comes in and causes the chaos that Mythenders do, ending the status quo.  In the ensuing carnage, his boy is killed.  He comes back to his home — everything he put his Mantle down for destroyed.  So he takes it up again, this time to end those who would thoughtlessly leave heartbreak in their wake.

We talked about this idea at length (as this is just one form a renegade Mythender could take), and it occured to me how often I go back to Westerns rather than Fantasy to explain Mythender.  I have half-jokingly called this game the “Ryan Macklin takes Ken Hite’s axioms of the Western and applies them to epic, semi-historical fantasy” the RPG.

For those playing at home, Ken’s axioms of the Western are (and I’m going to misquote here, because my copy of Dubious Shards is at home):

Only the gun can keep civilization safe from the barbarians.
Those who take up the gun become barbarians.

And that explains why when I watch over-the-top semi-historical fantasy movies (300, Beowulf), I get a sense that that’s how a Mythender game should look like in the minds of the players, but also how I feel about how “look” isn’t the same as “theme.”  The themes of those movies and of what Mythender has become are pretty damned far off — which I consider this a feature, not a bug.

But to make sure I fully flesh out this feature when writing the text and to communicate it as best as I can, I need to add some more Westerns into my current media diet.  For that, I’m going back to Ken’s “Westerns 101″ list (posted last October), which I recommend to everyone interested in Westerns.  I’ve seen some of these, not all, but I’m going to re-watch those I have seen anyway just to refresh my memory.

Once Mythender is done and out for a bit, I might write an alternate setting for it: The Mythic West.  One that more directly expresses the original paradox of The Gun.  But, that is for later — now is the time for working on the original game itself and not setting hacks.  (But yes, when I do, it might be The Magnificent Seven meets 300.  And yeah, I’m sure that Ken would read that as utterly heretical.  I seem to get that response out of him, from time to time.)

- Ryan

George Cotronis, the badass artist who did those haunting images in Don’t Lose Your Mind, did up an awesome piece of Mythender fan art based on what he’s read from forum posts & talking with me a bit about the game.

(Click to embiggen)

I recall something that Daniel Solis once said when I talked about Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple last year or so on Master Plan:

“Woah.  This shit just got real.”

That’s how I feel now.  Man alive, I’m going to print this out and post it up, so that everytime I think “man, what should I do?” I can look at it and go “right, Mythender writing.”

Thank you for the inspiration, George.  And for the badassitude.  I will totally run a game involving skeletons & kraken for you should we get a chance to game together.

- Ryan

The other day, Carl Congdon (spookyfanboy on Story-Games) emailed me with some questions about Mythender.  There’s quite the thread on Story-Games about it, and both Chad Underkoffler & Remi Treuer have discussed their contact with Mythender some.  But, Carl’s got some great questions about the game overall that I don’t think I’ve entirely addressed publicly.  He shot me these three bits, so I’ll answer them one at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous post, Marhault asked:

Howcome they get charged +3, +2, +1 and not +1, +2, +3? The latter would seem to incent the player to hold off for longer when charging. Is that not desirable in this case?

That is, in fact, a fantastic question.

The reason I went the way I did (and, incidently, you’re free to charge in any order) is because I think this presents more choices than the 1-2-3 method.  With that method, you have to check the +1 box of one of your traits on the first turn, so that’s prescribed.  On your next turn, you have the following choices:

• Discharge your +1 box to roll four Storm dice rather than three.
• Charge your +2 box and roll three Storm dice this turn.
• Charge another trait’s +1 box.
• The game-breaking move called “Grandstanding,” which doesn’t affect your charging at all (and can potentially kill you if its too early in the game, should you not have enough dice and roll poorly).

In many ways, there’s really only one option: Charge your +2 box on the same trait.  After all, you can either roll 4 dice right now, 3 next turn, and then 5…or you can check and roll 6 on the following turn.  You get the most bang for your buck that way.  Of course, from there it might have an interesting choice between “Do I check the +3, or do I cash out now?”  Something certainly answered by tempo.

In the current setup, with the diminishing returns, the choice is initially more interesting:  on the second turn, you could:

• Discharge that +3 for 6 Storm dice.
• Charge your +2 box, so you can roll 8 next turn.
• Charge another +3 trait, so you can have two 6-dice turns in a row.
• And, of course, Grandstanding.

Much, much more interesting to start, and with enough little options the game will sing.  But, in thinking about your question, I did have to wonder about the value of the +1 box.  Sure, it’s tempting to go from the +3 box to the +2 box so you have one turn with a lot of dice, but checking the +1 is silly — you might as well charge your other trait or something like that.  So, I revised the +1 box rule — if you charge the +1 box, when you discharge it you also get a sweet, sweet point of Mythic Power.  So, really, it’s: [+3], [+2], [+1/1MP], chargeable in whatever order you desire.

So, thank you Marhault for questioning me on this.  I hope this new idea will pan out.

- Ryan

People who have playtested Mythender will be familiar with the first part of this post.

When I came up with the “stat subsystem” for Mythender, I was reacting the the concept of a “dump stat.”  I liked the idea of quantification & relative competence (and still do), and wanted to avoid a situation akin to Charisma in classic D&D — a place to put your worst stat and ignore it.

So, when I drafted up the stats for Mythender, I wrote down seven words — I can’t recall all of them, but “Guile,” “Fortitude,” “Nimbleness,” and “Prowress” where four of them.  The idea was that you would pick four of these seven essential hoeric qualities, and you would rank them something like 2, 3, 3 & 4 — the number of dice you would roll when you use that stat.  The core system is “dice pool, individual success” style, so rolling more dice is always good.

Now, with nebulous terms like “guile,” any half-creative player could come up with a way that anything they do is “with guile.”  This was intentional in the design.  Mythender is, in some ways, my answer to high-level D&D 3/e — demigods walking the earth should be nigh-limitlessly badass.  But, this means the dump stat problem exists, because anyone creative enough could avoid using the lowest stat (as opposed to games that are more rigid in their quantification, and can present problems to characters that require the use of said stat).

My “brilliant” solution: require the use of every stat for a bennie.  You would check off when you used a stat, and when you used them all you got Mythic Power — the powerful supercharge currency in the game that fuels special, rule-breaking abilities.  (Which is to say, yes, they’re the feat fuel of the game.)  I thought this was elegant and inspired and awesome.  I was eager to show it off.

I explained this idea to my game group, and they found it intriguing.  So, in our first few playtests of Mythender, back when the stats were set terms, it seemed to work (if a little flat).  I later switched to a “you come up with your own stat” method that I loved with I first discovered Unknown Armies (and seen in many indie games), to make it more interesting to the players.  And we played this way for months.

Did you know that sometimes your playtesters can be too nice to you?  Sometimes they’ll play along with your pet idea because they’re trying to test it out mechanically rather than play as they might truly do?  Yeah, sometimes your playtesters may accidentally lead you astray, if you let them and give them reason to.

There was this issue with human nature: given two options, you’ll want to pick the better one.  So, do you roll your best stat or your worst with facing down a dragon?  I was trying to encourage using everything to be awesome and breadth, but critical situations caused players to question the “I’ll get a bennie later if I totally hose myself now, but I might die if I don’t do well enough now” mechanic that I apparently devised.  Rob Donoghue brought this to head at GenCon, when he completely ignored the bennie element and completely destroyed the system in doing so.

I have to thank him so very, very much for that.  That was the kick in the ass that I needed, to see what someone would really do with the mechanic and how it didn’t work.

So, I came up with others ideas within the same vein, because I had spent so long with this “you have stats and they have numbers” idea that I couldn’t really see a way out.  Then recently, and I can’t remember how I got such inspired, I found a way to divorce stat & number, which keeping numbers which were important to the “so, how many dice do I roll right now?” element of the design.

This meant going back to the drawing board and trying something new, which I was scared of because Mythender was something people were looking forward to, and at the time I couldn’t mentally handle another huge delay.  I mean, yes, if the game’s no good it needs to go back to formula before publication, and intellectually I understood this, but emotionally I was frustrated as all hell and avoided the drawing board after Rob’s revelation for months.

“Sometimes, you just have to suck it up and press on,” I had to remind myself.  I seem to be in need of reminding myself of that a lot.

The concept I have is that all Mythender have a single, base rating, their Storm stat.  It defaults to 3, but there are reasons and times when it’ll go up or down.  (Why “Storm” is something you’ll have to wait for — the central mechanic of the game is a complicated dice exchange.)

A Mythender has (currently) four stats, in the “you describe it yourself with some guidance from the text” style.  Instead of separate numbers, each stat has three boxes: +3, +2 & +1.

To start off an encounter, each box is clear.  On a roll, a Mythender (and I should preface with: this is also how it works for Myths, so the system is finally more unified and non-crap for the GM) either “charges” or “discharges” (for lack of a better term) a trait.  If they charge, they put a slash through one of the boxes on that trait and just roll their base Storm dice along with their Thunder dice.  If they discharge, they put a cross slash through the charged boxes on a trait and roll Storm + charged box bonuses, again along with their Thunder dice.  Once a box is discharged, it’s used for the encounter.

Let’s show this visually.  Say you have the trait “Ancestral lance.”

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

On your first turn, you charge Ancestral Lance, talking about how you bring it to bear on the valkyres charging.  And you roll your base 3 Storm dice.

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

Now, on your second turn, you could choose to discharge it for a +3 bonus to Storm, totalling 6.  Or you could charge the +2 box, so you can get +5 next turn.  We’ll say that you’re not feeling the pressure at the moment, so you’ll charge.  (Yes, you could also use another stat, but let’s not overcomplicate this for the explanation.)  That means rolling another 3 Storm dice only.

Ancestral Lance [+3] [+2] [+1]

It’s your turn turn, you just got hit hard.  Your Thunder pool is almost depleted (seriously, there are maybe 40 people out there who have any idea what I’m talking about at this point — I should talk about Storm, Thunder & Lightning later).  It’s time to discharge your Ancestral Lance.  That’s +5 on top of your 3, for 8 Storm.

Ancestral Lance [+3]  [+2] [+1]

And those boxes are done and unusable for the rest of the encounter.  Since I haven’t yet had a battle that’s taken longer than 8 turns (and I’ve had a lot of battles), having two open traits should be no problem.

Now, I want a sense of breadth in Mythender, but also fiery focus.  So the solution I came up with (that is yet untested) is that you get to use two traits for free in an encounter, but if you want to open up your third or fourth, it’ll cost Mythic Power.  Playtesting will see if that works.

Luckily, my playtesters and I have learned how to better playtests — when to play around with my half-baked ideas and when to punch them in the moneymaker.

- Ryan

Edit: To answer Fred Hicks’ Twitter comment on “Can I charge the [+2] on my Ancestral Lance without having charged my [+3] yet? I want the answer to be yes.”  Yes, Fred, you totally can. An intentional part of the design.