Player Character Progression

I've been thinking about how to handle Player Character progression in Legends of Alba. My initial inclination had been to pretty much ignore it. This stance mostly came from my personal preference (as a player or a GM) for low-level play. A group of Player Characters are equal to the challenge of, say, half a dozen bandits. If those bandits are backed up by a heavy hitter, an ogre or a ferocious beast, the PCs are going to have to get creative. Facing a dragon head on is certain death, but defeating one is definitely possible: You'll need to make the most of what's on your character sheet but you also need a plan.

I desperately want to avoid what I've seen in plenty of 5E games where PCs get up to Level 10+ and it's  as though each Character is lugging around a heavy chest full of highly situational, minor, or otherwise forgettable 'ride-along' abilities. The game feels heavy, and everything takes ages. It actually breaks the core loop of the game in which the GM describes the situation, the players describe their Characters' actions, then the GM narrates the result. I've been in the situation as a player myself where, between the first 2 steps, when the GM throws it over to the players "What Do You Do?", I'm looking down in panic at this Character sheet crammed with abilities and bonusses and asterixis and page references thinking "What can I do?". I've stepped out of the fiction of the game. For Legends of Alba, I want to stay in the fiction as much as possible.

So why am I thinking about progression? I've had a chance to play a few different systems over the last year: Mork Borg (through Cy-borg); Into The Odd (through Mythic Bastionland); and Break!!. All three of them take a different approach to progression:

Mork Borg, as you'd expect, is super minimal. The rules for progression take up less than half an A5 page! There's actually a decent chance your Character gets worse when you level up, because of course there is. It's Mork Borg! Are you actually expecting your Character to live long enough to level up?!

Into The Odd doesn't really have progression, but Mythic Bastionland sorta does. Knights have Glory, which is more a reflection of their standing in the world than a mechanical benefit. I quite like Glory (keeping it in the fiction). They might get more Guard through scars. They also age, which usually sees young Knights improve as they reach maturity but with their Virtues failing as they cross into old age. I liked what this brought to the story of our game and its very fitting for a game about Knights in which part of being a Knight is considering your legacy.

Break!! has progression through the Callings, which are that game's take on classes. They go as far as Level 10, and although each Calling uses a different advancement table, they all get something each Level. Usually it's an Attribute increase or select an Ability from their Calling. 

So it's been interesting trying these out, seeing how they went down around the table and catching up with my players during and after games about it. I think most players in my group would look for some progression if they were playing a system for anything more than a couple of sessions. I know as well that players definitely notice the shift of how light a Mork Borg Character is to a 5E one. Hardly surprising - these are totally different games. These games that have lighter Characters don't expect you to be with a Character for long, so it's no problem if they feel a bit thin or one-dimensional and if a player is not writing pages of background lore for their Character between sessions. But it's made me think about what sort of experience is Legends of Alba closer to, and it's closer to 5E than I thought. I want players to invest in their Character, use them an an anchor to the setting, and go on a weird long mythic journey with them. 

So I'm starting to think more along the lines of something like Break!! (also looking to Shadowdark though I've not played that one yet!) for progression in Legends of Alba. 10 levels is plenty, and alternating level up rewards between getting a new ability and 'number go up' feels like a good starting point. So I've been messing around with a few ideas in that vein, and will post them here if I get them into a decent shape!

-Till next time.

Armour in Alba

 Talking about Armour today!

Along with Weapons, which I made some changes to the rules for recently, Armour is part of a Character's wargear. Wargear isn't a formal term in the game (maybe it should be!) but if I'm playing an RPG in which my Character is expected to do some fighting, I want to know what they fight with, and how they protect themselves.

As with Weapons though, the Iron Age (-ish) setting has an impact on how I want to handle this. While Armour is a thing - an important thing - in Legends of Alba, your Character is not a Knight in full plate. A fully armoured Character in Alba might wear a helm, chainmail shirt and carry a shield, but probably only starts out with one of these. So I want Armour to be itemised, and to have a cap on how much a Character can equip. Three slots seems reasonable: You can wear a helmet on your head; you can protect your body with mail or padding; you can carry a shield.

In Other Games

So what does armour do? I've been thinking about examples from different games, e.g.

In 5E games, Armour makes you harder for your enemy to hit. Or rather, to land a telling blow. AC incorporates both Dexterity and Armour to account for a fast Character dodging the blow; or a heavily armoured Character being hit but protected by their armour. I like this system but it requires enemies to be rolling against the Characters, which is not a thing in Legends of Alba.

In Into The Odd style games, and Mork Borg, Armour reduces incoming damage. This makes sense but having played with this mechanic I don't really like it. It never feels good to be subtracting from a number you roll and it makes a low damage roll - already a disappointment - even worse. Both of these systems have quite brisk combat compared to 5E but the impact that armour can have on bogging it down is actually one of the reasons I haven't used either of those games as the basis for Legends of Alba.

In 24xx games, any equipment can be Armour. If your Character would take damage, you can always describe how something in your inventory is broken or lost to avoid the damage completely. I like how straightforward this is. My only issue with it is the implicit survivability of Characters with deep pockets. The rule of common sense is an important part of 24xx games but personally I'd want to be a bit more specific about this.

Looking outside of RPGs, wargames often allow for an Armour Save. If your Warhammer 40K Space Marine has Power Armour, he avoids damage on a roll of 3 or more on a D6. It might just be familiarity but I do like this and have thought pretty seriously about just doing this for Armour in Legends of Alba (e.g. Characters have a base 6+ Save, that improves by one for each item of Armour they wear). But I don't like the introduction of this extra step to combat with the Armour Save. It also introduces of a completely new concept of 'saves' more generally: If a Character gets an Armour Save, can they get other types of Saves? I'm trying to keep this rules light, so no thank you.

In Legends of Alba

Here's the current rules for Armour in Legends of Alba:

Armour

Protects Characters from Wounds. When a Character suffers a Wound, they may instead break an Armour [A] item they have equipped and ignore the Wound.

Broken Armour must be repaired to be used again.

So of the options mentioned above it's mostly a constrained version of the 24xx approach. 

How much of a drag is it to have your equipment break? It's easy enough to repair equipment at a Settlement but you'd be without it till you reach one. That could lead to some interesting decisions, or just be annoying. Something to focus on with playtesting.

Why are we breaking armour at all? Well, this piece of equipment has taken a blow that otherwise might have killed you. How likely is it to be in a decent state after that? When I was a teenager I once cycled out in front of car and went head first into the windshield. Luckily I was wearing my helmet, so I was fine. My helmet was not. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to rely on it to protect my skull from a second impact. So it seems more of a stretch of the imagination that your armour is completely fine after a battle, than completely trashed and in need of repair or replacement. 

Other Ideas

A slightly more forgiving version of this would that instead of breaking your Armour to avoid the damage, you 'Check' it but putting an 'X' next to it on your Character Sheet. You can't use Checked Armour. When the fighting stops, you check your gear: Roll a dice for each Checked item. The roll could be based on the item's quality or a flat value, but on a Success you'd refresh the item by removing the 'X' from it on your Character Sheet. A Failure would indicate that, on inspection, you find the item too badly damaged to rely on. It's now Broken, as above. I don't mind this, but as with the Armour Save discussed above it's an extra step, so it's going to have to fight for its place.

A slightly different direction to go with Armour is to lean into how it almost functions like HP (protecting you from life-threatening damage) and have each item of Armour contribute +1 to a stat e.g. Defence (or Guard?). Whenever you'd suffer a Wound, you subtract from this value. If you're at 0 Defence and suffer a Wound, that's it, you suffer the full effect of the Wound. Your Defence would recover either after the battle, or as part of making camp (as you rest and repair your gear). 

I quite like the abstraction of 'Defence'. Your Character has some protection from harm, but this will get worn down the more they rely on it and, the longer a fight goes on, the more chance there is they'll be seriously hurt. It adds an extra stat, yes, but there's no rules or procedural overhead. This actually provides some scope for cutting rules because with Defence I could maybe be do away with the different types of Wound (Minor, Major, Mortal) and just have them all be bad?

The idea of 'Defence' stat also allows for things other than armour to protect your Character. For instance a Hunter's Sharp Reflexes might contribute +1 to this value, or a Druid might be able to conjure a Spirit Ward to achieve the same effect.

Hmm this is definitely one to think about!

-Till next time!

The Clans of Alba

The word clan carries a lot of unwelcome baggage. Historically, in Scotland, it's a better metric for dividing people than uniting them. Nowadays they're a cultural relic, with as much fiction remembered as fact, if anything is remembered at all. So I want to talk about what I'm talking about when I talk about Clans in Legends of Alba.

This is All Made Up

Before I ever started working on Legends of Alba, I was on a sustained deep dive into Scottish folklore, trying to get to the roots that surely lay beneath the Christianised tales that made it into the books. After a year or so I started to realise that this is an almost impossible task. Or at least, it's certainly one that sits more appropriately in the realm of academia than the kind of armchair archaeology I'm up to here. So I put this fixation on finding "The Source" to one side and tried instead to pull what I liked from I'd learned and write about that. 

For the folklore side of it, the actual "Legends" of the Legends of Alba, this has already provided many hours of fun, suspenseful and silly gameplay in my games. For that alone it's already been a huge success.

So I've stayed with this approach, doing enough research to get inspiration, then using that as a jumping off point, when it came to the Clans. So this is not by any means how I think it actually was. This is all fiction inspired by how I imagine it could have been.

Bound by Oath, Not by Blood

This is probably the most important thing - so important I put it second in the list. Clans are not families, they are communities. They exist because Alba is a harsh and dangerous place to live and folk survive more successfully if they work together. And folk work together more effectively if they share common values. These are the virtues that bind the members of a clan together. Concepts like honesty, justice, generosity, courage, wisdom, integrity: Ideals that facilitate community. Each Clan holds one of these as sacred, and this forms the basis of the oath that new members swear to join the Clan. 

Birth does not guarantee a place in a Clan, commitment must be demonstrated and the place must be earned. If a person is born into a Clan whose ideology does not match their own, that's a strong motivation to set out on their own and find their people, with no ill will on either side. So if the Clans are any sort of family, they're found family.

Chiefs Are Not Born

Each Clan is ruled by a Chief. The process of appointing a Chief varies from Clan to Clan but just as above, where being born into a Clan does not guarantee your position therein, being born to a Chief does not give you right to rule.

Chiefs Do Not Rule Alone

While the Chief has final say on all matters of Clan business, there's a common wisdom that a Chief is only as good as the Council they keep. Amongst the Chief's advisors might be found:

Clan Nobility (with titles varying between Kingdoms), living and working among the folk of the Clan, ensuring the Chief stays well in touch with their needs, and that the folk in turn feel safe, heard and valued.

The Archdruid, leading the Clan's Druidic Circle, providing spiritual guidance, acting as a conduit between the folk and the land on which they live, and upholding the unwritten Law of The Land.

The Storyteller, responsible for promoting the bardic arts, by which the Clan's deeds are immortalised for future generations. They speak with authority on Clan history, as well their standing and relations with other Clans. 

The Storemaster, linking hunters, farmers, miners, loggers and anyone else who brings resources into the Clan. They ensure that there's always enough to go round, and enough put away to see folk through the hard Winters.

The Warlord, leading The Chief's warband in battle. In peaceful times they are devoted to improving the stronghold's defences, training warriors, and co-ordinating scouting missions to stay one step ahead of approaching threats. 

The Clans Are Just Folk

Well, if everybody holds the same values and agrees on everything, and there's no nepotism, and the Chiefs always keep and listen to good council, then this must be a utopian society where nothing bad ever happens, right? Wrong! Everybody in the Clan, whatever their role, is a person. Everybody is capable of greatness, of upholding and exemplifying the virtues of their people. By the same token, everybody is also susceptible to ambition, corruption, cowardice, hubris, or any of the many vices that make life messy, that make a story interesting, and that make the Clans of Alba an essential part of the game. Against the surreal backdrop of The Otherworld and The Legends, it's the mundane dramas between people make the thing feel real.

At least, that's the hope.

-Till next time!

Custom Backgrounds

We're at an exciting time in my local gaming group, talking about starting a new campaign! There's a few options on the table, one of them being to run something in the Legends of Alba setting again. The rules I've been writing for the setting could do with some (a lot?) of playtesting before diving into a long-term game with people, so we'd be looking to run it in 5E again.

As a player in 5E games, I've been impressed by how big an impact Custom Backgrounds can make on getting into the mindset for a setting. So I've been thinking about writing some Custom Backgrounds for Legends of Alba!

...And immediately ran into trouble, haha. In 5E the backgrounds usually represent a profession, what your Character did for a living before becoming an adventurer. This is relevant in LoA, but so is a Character's Homeland and Clan. And then I start thinking about Species and how they fit into it all, and it'd probably be a good idea to review the Equipment list and make sure players don't end up with tools that would either not exist or serve no purpose in an Iron Age setting, and suddenly the task of writing some fun and evocative Custom Backgrounds has become completely lost in the weeds of noodling with the Character Creation system for 5E. Time to simplify things.

What's in a Background? 

Here's what you get from a background as per the 5.2.1 SRD :

• An Ability Score boost (either +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1) and a choice of 3 Abilities to spend them on
• An Origin Feat
• 2 Skill Proficiencies
• 1 Tool Proficiency
• Equipment

I'm trying to cram a Homeland, Profession and Clan into there.

Let's take Clan out of the mix - the benefits of being in a Clan are mostly non-mechanical. I could offer Heroic Inspiration for players going out of their way to honour the Oath of their Clan. OR have it replace Alignment...

So that leaves Homeland and Profession. Can we split a background between those?

Homeland

• Ability Score boost
• Origin Feat

Profession

• 2 Skill Proficiencies
• 1 Tool Proficiency
• Equipment

That maps pretty neatly IMO! I'm slightly concerned that I've taken an aspect of the 5E Character Creation system, already one of the most granular and fussy ones out there, and subdivided it further. But there's an intention to this. It is really important for Characters in Legends of Alba to start the game with a tie to the land itself. Alba makes it's mark on Characters, just by living there, and having that on the Character sheet will help convey that connection to players. Similarly the Professions are not just providing Characters with tools for adventuring. The Clans of Alba are each a community, and if Characters are to get anything from those communities, they need to bring something to the table. Some downtime helping out the local smith, or foraging in the nearby woods, or sharing stories round a hearth fire is more valuable to most communities than gold, and such acts will be rewarded in kind.

So that's it, problem solved. Now I just need to write these backgrounds!

-Till Next Time!

I can forge weapons for you...

Brightsmiths

Smiths who learned their trade in The Otherworld can imbue mortal weapons with power. Bring them a Smithing Stone and they'll do it for the love of the craft.

Smithing Stones

Found in The Barrowdeeps, the power of these stones can enhance mortal weaponry. Seek a Brightsmith to fortify a weapon with a Smithing Stone.

Example Stones and their effects on a fortified weapon:

• Hardstone: Add MIG to Attack Bonus
• Sharpstone: Add AGI to Attack Bonus
• Clearstone: Add AWA to Attack Bonus
• Spiritstone: Add CHA to Attack Bonus
• Flamestone: On causing a Wound, all nearby enemies suffer a Wound as well.
• Brightstone: On causing a Wound, also blinds enemies who saw it for one Round.
• Coldstone: The attacked enemy can’t move for one Round.
• Venomstone: On causing a Wound, the target suffers an additional Wound next Round.
• Lightningstone: On causing a Wound, make a Ranged Attack against an enemy you can see.
• Thunderstone: On causing a Wound, enemies next to you are flung in a direction you choose. 
• Bloodstone: Attack with help, then take one fatigue.
• Thornstone: Attack an enemy, gain +1 to Attack Bonus vs the same enemy next Round (stacks).
• Moonstone: Weapon gains the Ranged [R] property.
• Shadowstone: Wounds cannot be avoided using Armour.

Black Sands

 

One of my intentions for this year has been to get back into a writing habit. How's that been going? Mixed. I've been doing some writing. I've developed a bad habit of justifying RPG related stuff as writing. Although, in fairness to myself, it kind of is. I've read so many more RPGs than I've played, and I don't read anything I don't enjoy. So good writing belongs in RPGs. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, we're not aiming for good. We're just aiming for writing, whatever writing is. So I wanted to bite the bullet with this post. Sit down, write something, post it. So here it is.

-Till next time!

Black Sands

You wake upon a dark shore.

Pale fires light the sky.

The lake is flat calm

The surface swirls iridescent.

A tuneless song hums from

A tiny tent, wax canvas

A fishing rod rests on

A bone tripod

The angler asks

What brought you here

You think

but 

can’t 

remember.

They laugh as they tell you

That the palace lies over the hills

Beyond this beach you see

The high and rocky round-topped hills.

The screech

Of a terrible bird

Echoes unseen across the lake.

You’d best be on your way.

But, of course, you still have questions.

What do you do?

Creature Feature: The Kelpie

If the tales are to be believed, Scotland is lousy with Kelpies. It's one of the most widespread mythical creatures: We have rivers, lochs and coasts all over the place, said to be haunted by a Kelpie.

Hippocampus and fish, Fantasy animals (1596–1610)
by Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt. (public domain via Rawpixel)

Often there's not much of a 'story' to go along with The Kelpie, wherever it might appear. They're usually a cautionary tale, a warning to steer clear of dangerous rivers, strange horses, strange men. The 'classic' Kelpie ploy is for it to appear as a horse at the side of a river, waiting for someone who needs to cross. When they do, the horse kneels down, inviting its victim to climb onto its back. No sooner have they done so, than they find themselves stuck fast to The Kelpie's back. It takes off into the river, dragging the victim down with it. Some variations have The Kelpie as a kidnapper, taking the victim to The Otherworld. Others have it as a murderous beast which consumes its victim, leaving only their lungs, which float to the surface in evidence of their fate.

I have come across a few stories that stuck out though:

Taming The Kelpie, which I heard on the excellent House of Legends podcast, read by Daniel Allison. It's a beautiful take on The Kelpie as not so much a malevolent force but a primal, essential one. In the story, a poor ploughman loses his plough horse to old age during a rough Winter. Without his horse, he's left destitute, unable to make a living. But through a series of favours he performs for a Hag, he gains the means to tame a Kelpie, securing his livelihood indefinitely. But he cannot bare to see such a creature - magnificent and wild - bound to his service, and releases it.

"The Kelpie" in Peter Berresford Ellis' Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths And Legends treats the creature as a singular being: The Kelpie, Each-Uisge, lord of the deeps. He's very impressive, but also gives off vibes of a conceited Fey Prince. In the story, The Kelpie falls in love with a mortal woman, and kidnaps the heirs of every Chieftain to bargain for her release to live with him in his domain under the sea. Understandably, she is not keen on this deal, and with some magic of her own tricks The Kelpie during the Saimhuin festival.

Then there's a couple of legends around The Stone of Morphie in Kincardineshire, which I read about in The Lore of Scotland by Westwood & Kingshill (never far from my desk). This is an origin story for the stone, suggesting it's all that remains of the House of Morphie. The Lord of Morphie had somehow managed to bind a Kelpie to his service through an enchanted halter, and forced the beast to drag the heavy stones which were used to build his castle. One of his human servants, took pity on the Kelpie and removed the halter. The Kelpie, now free, took off to wreak havoc and revenge on The Lord of Morphie, destroying his castle.

So these were some of the inspirations for writing "The Water Horse" as a Legend for Legends of Alba. I ran an early version of this in D&D 5E and it was a really memorable set of encounters, with a satisfying final confrontation and resolution as one of the Player Characters got to decide the fate of The Kelpie. So this is the updated version intended for use with Legends of Alba.

***

The Water Horse

The torrent owes nae debt o' thanks

Fir bursting free it's shackled banks

Augurs

1. A crumbling broch, flooded with silt grey water. Youngsters, drunk on salvaged whisky, plunder the treasures of Brightstone (see below), ruined stronghold of The Trueanvil clan.
2. A raging grey river blocks the way. The Kelpie, as a silver-haired lord, offers to calm its flow for a safe crossing: A trap. D6 Silt Bogles lurk in the shallows.
3. A woeful stonecarver bargains with a grumpy mare, overburdened with salvage from Brightstone. He carries the iron bridle that once bound The Kelpie, broken and irreparable by mortal craft.
4. Horses graze by a silted riverbank, The Kelpie among them as a silver-maned stallion. Any who sit on its back become instantly stuck as The Kelpie carries them off to its domain.
5. Druids from the nearest Stronghold, marooned in their boat as Silt Bogles torment them from a driftwood skiff. The druids know of a secret entrance to The Kelpie’s domain.
6. The Kelpie, as the trampling river, floods the Legend Hex. The river spreads, flooding one hex per day, towards the nearest Stronghold, to be dragged down into The Kelpie’s domain.

Cast

The Kelpie, Each-Uisge, Vengeful Shapeshifter

C25, Trampling hooves [M], silken voice.

Toiled for centuries in service of The Trueanvil Clan, now hates all mortals.

Silt Bogles, misfit subjects of The Kelpie

C10, Silt clod [R]

Launch ambushes from the river, retreating if they lose the upper hand.

Oskar Trueanvil, Woeful Stonemason

C10, fine clothes

Released The Kelpie out of pity. Regrets it.

Treasures of Brightstone

D6	Item	Tainted by
1	Whisky barrel	Greed
2	Golden cup	Sorrow
3	Exquisite cloak	Hubris
4	Carved idol	Guilt
5	Restorative tonic	Cruelty
6	Clan brooch	Avarice

***

If you've read this far, you might be wondering where the Silt Bogles came from. Bogles are a specific type of thing in Legends of Alba and might even get their own post some day but they're in the category of Weird Little Guys that I like to feature in adventures. Some goblins to The Kelpie's Jareth .

Till next time!