Code 2 - Greatest Desire

Blood. Blood strained the otherwise white pants like a Roastank blot.

“Come out come out wherever you are.” The sing-song voice drifted closer and closer.

“I’m growing tired of this.” Came the second voice. Bright blinding light filled the dark alley and Rhett was forced to scrambled away, knocking over a garbage can as he went.

Rhett shivered and adjusted the glove on his hand again, his projector was warm to the touch. He couldn’t stop shaking, he could see the outline of his approaching death. He held his breath and huddled in the corner. The fear was worse this time, this time he had been confident and sure of his victory. This was supposed to have been easy, his opponent was supposed to have been a beginner, his opponent was supposed to have been alone.

Rhett waited as the shadows of his opponents passed by him. He continued to hold his breath, second after second, until he was sure that they were gone. He slipped from his hiding stop with a measure of relief. He twitched momentarily when he heard a snap. It took a moment for him to realize that it was because he had stepped on something.

The fear still hadn’t left him, he could still feel it permeating through his bones. He wanted to run, to escape, more then he had ever before wanted to in his life. Yet, he couldn’t, he had to win. He could still remember the haunting voice of the man who had given him his projector. It has been a moonless night then too.



---

“The power to change, the power to grant your greatest desire.” The man was tall, bearded, and dressed in black just like Rhett had been. Rhett didn’t even look up from that he was kneeling in front of.

“There is no amount power that could quench the loneliness that I feel.” His voice cracked as he spoke, tears still streaming down his cheeks. Rhett didn’t think that he would ever stop crying.

The bearded man took out something wrapping in a piece of cloth from the back at his hip. He unwrapped it slowly before setting the glove on the grave in front of Rhett. The stone embedded in the glove shimmer in the darkness. “No human power is capable of that. To free yourself you must become more then human. Then the serpent will grant your greatest desire. Look up, can’t you see it?”

Rhett raised his head and looked up at the dark sky. Even in the darkness he could see it, a light in the sky. He stared, uncertain is what he was seeing could possible be real, “What is that?”

“That is paradise.”



---

There was the faint tinkle of glass as Rhett broke a window. He lifted his leg and stepped inside of the dark building. The building belong to a college, so it should probably be abandoned during the night. Rhett sure hoped so. He hobbled down the hallway wincing every time he used his wounded leg. He needed to think of a plan, so way to defeat his opponents. Hey with two of them he didn’t know what he could do, if only he had an ally too.

His projector glowed slightly in the darkness. Rhett lifted it up and looked at it. Is that possible? Could his projector really give him an ally? Then the grow died and Rhett as left standing in the darkness. Of course it would be impossible for it to be able to give him an ally.

Rhett began climbing up the stairs of the building. Maybe if he fought them on the roof then he might be able to beat both of them. As he climbed the last couple of stairs he felt faint and heaved for breath. He could still feel the moisture of his own blood on his leg and he wondered how much blood he had lost.
He stepped out onto the roof. He stepped over toward the rail and collapsed. Now all he needed to do was wait for his two opponents to arrive. It was then that he noticed her, she was sitting on the floor in one of the dark corners of the roof.

The woman was just sitting there staring at the sky.

Ignoring his wound Rhett rushed over to the woman, “You need to get out of here right now!”

Thi stared back at him with a blank look on her face, “Why?”

Rhett began stuttering, he couldn’t just explain the he was going to fight some people here is probably only a few minutes. “It is going to be dangerous here, if you don’t leave now then you could die.” Said Rhett, it was the best explanation that he thought he could give her.

“Maybe it would be better if I died.” Said Thi in the same empty voice that she had used before.

Rhett stood there dumbly for a second, however when he was about to respond he hear a voice from behind him say, “Found You.” He spun to see two figures stepping out onto the roof. Rhett to feel his blood drain away.

iTunes App Store and Book Updates

There has been a lot of talk recently about the tablet that Apple may or may not be releasing on Jan 27th. One of the things that is speculated to be on the tablet is digital books which can be purchased like apps and music can be now. However I'm not here to speculate over what features the tablet might have, (others are doing a fine job of that) I just wanted to make a comment about benefits that digital books can have over physical ones.

One of the benefits of the App Store is what when the developer finds some bugs they can submit a patch and then the user can painlessly update their copy of the application. If digital books were sold through iTunes then they could be capable of doing the same thing. If there were errors in the text then when the author discovered them they could submit and update and all the users would then have a corrected version of the book.

Also is the books could have extras then the author would be able to submit other writings and information after the book is in the market. This would even book more useful in technical (or manuals) books which authors often try to release quickly after the product is released. Then they could add to the book and fix errors that are pointed out to them by their reader.

What do I want in a Roleplaying Game?

One of the questions I have continually thought about is what I want a roleplaying game to be like. What are the optimal features that I imagine in the "Hypothetical Favorite RPG"?

Non-binary success

After the players roll the dice is isn't just one of them succeeds and the other fails.



Wagers from Houses of the Blooded

Arbitrary Character Elements

Your character should have things about them that give them mechanical bonuses which are character based and can be almost anything that the player wants.



Aspects from Spirit of the Century

Fortes from Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

Dogs in the Vineyard

Rewards for attempting difficult tasks

Very difficult rolls should have some benefit to the player. Higher difficulties should have some reason the player does not want to avoid them and try for easier rolls.



Advancement in Burning Wheel

Player involvement in narration

The players should have some ability to narrate and add things to the story. These are things that are beyond just their character's ability to interact.



Wagers from Houses of the Blooded

Goal driven characters

It shouldn't just be the GM telling players where to go. The players should also have input on the flow of the plot and what they want to happen.



Beliefs from Burning Wheel

Characters of differing skill levels

There are many stories where the hero is trained by his more skilled colleges. I want there to be both weak and strong characters in a group and not have the players feel like it was unfair.


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I'll add other things I want in a game as well as more examples as I think of them.

Question Based Advancement

A recent post over at The Harping Monkey talked about characters and the fact that good characters are based around a question. I thought that was interested and decided that it would be interesting if the character questions went on the character sheet, sort of like the character concept.

However I didn't want it to just sit on the character sheet, forgotten like the character's eye color. To fix that there needed to be mechanic that dealt with the question. What if the question tied into character advancement? What if whenever there was a question about the character that got answers then the character got some sort of advancement.

My current idea is what whenever this happens the player gets to change something about his character to reflect the answer. For example, if you where playing Spirit of the Century then it would allow the player to change one of his character's aspect or swap two skills on his pyramid. Answering Questions seemed to subjective to use to grant people extra experience but it seemed to be a great way to let the player tweak his character.

Falsie the Pseudo-Science Girl

Sometimes something just catches your eye and you suddenly become a fan. While browsing the iTunes Store I just happened to run across Falsie the Pseudo-Science Girl. I immediately purchased the album and listened to it, but the thing that sold me was Falsie. Something about being the Pseudo-Science Girl appealed the geek in me. I'm a bit of an amateur skeptic so that might have been one of the reasons, or maybe it was just the giant wrench.



I'll give thanks to MOSAIC.WAV for creating the album and Falsie. She managed to make my day better, I hope that she can do the same for you.

City in the Dark Campaign

When I went to Neoncon I got to play a game of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. I really enjoyed it and decided to get a copy of the book because of that. I am really liking the PDQ# system and I think that it and FATE are two of my favorite systems.

Now I am going to start running a new campaign using an adaption of PDQ#. Earlier I posted my City in the Darkness setting idea and now I am going to run a campaign using that setting and PDQ#.

There are several rules that I am going to be adding to help bring in the flavor of the setting. The first is I am going to use Survival Resources which I am borrowing from The Blog of Justice. Since the city is effectively shut off from the rest of the world things like that are going to matter, maybe not immediately but they will eventually.

Currently the resources I am going to be using are Food, Water, Medicine, and Munitions (Protection) although I am might add more if I think of good ones. Resource Depletion is going to work differently, Food and Water reduce by one per day per person. Medicine does not automatically deplete but characters can spend points of medicine to heal a d6 damage ranks (More about healing later). Munitions also does not automatically deplete, they are spend whenever a character uses modern weapons (Guns) and it generally represents ammo supplies. Guns however are more powerful then other weapons (like Knives) because Munitions points that are spend give the player bonus dice just like Style Dice do in S7S.

I'll post more things as I think of them.

FATE - Court Cases

A court cases is a conflict between two lawyers. This is still really rough, one of the players in my game is a lawyer and I wanted to make sure there would be an interesting Court Case for him to take part in.

They lawyers take turns presenting their arguments and then refuting their opponent’s argument.

The lawyer declares the difficulty of his argument and described the argument he is making. He then makes a roll against that difficulty.

If he succeeds, he manages to convince the jury. If he fails then the jury fails to find your argument convincing and the Case takes stress equal to the number of shifts the character missed the difficulty by.

Next, the other lawyer rolls against the same difficulty. If successful, their Case takes no stress and inflicts stress to the first lawyer’s Case according to the shifts on its roll as he manages to convince the Jury of the flaws in his opponent’s argument. If he fails then his Case takes stress equal to the number of shift the character missed the difficulty by.

Eventually one party of the other will have taken three consequences. Once this has happened the case is almost over and it is time for the closing arguments.

Closing Arguments

Each Lawyer makes one final argument. They both make their argument and then the judge and jury retreat to make their decision. After deliberations they return and both players make a Rapport roll. However unlike a normal roll, all Aspects must be invoked before the roll is made and all the consequences of the opponent’s Case may be tagged at no cost. Once all both players are done invoking aspects then they both roll. The winner of the roll and won the Court Case, although they must still abide by any consequences that they might have taken.

Witnesses

Witnesses, both NPC and PC, are a common component in a Court Case. Each exchange the first lawyer may call out a witness to be examined. A witness may assist the lawyer, provided he wants to and has a means to do so. This allows the witness to contribute to the court case, as long as he finds a way to describe it, such as explaining the forensic report (Science). The witness rolls his skill while the lawyer rolls his Rapport (Leadership can not be rolled for examining witnesses), and the lawyer may use the higher of the two results. A single Witness may only be called once per Court Case. Obviously, a Witness may not be called on during the Closing Arguments.

Jury Bias

The Jury is unfortunately sometimes biased. They tend to already have an idea about who is innocent and who is guilty. By default, a Case has 5 boxes for their stress track. The Rapport of the defendant (or plaintiff) increases the number of stress boxes the same way as Resolve or Endurance.

Evidence

Evidence takes the form of aspects. Each piece of important evidence that the lawyer has gets one free invoke, after that the lawyer is forced to spend a FATE point as usual. Evidence is usually accrued before the Court Case has begun and the opponent Lawyer usually has evidence as well.

Skills

Lawyers use Rapport to convince the Judge and Jury that his position is correct. They can also use the Bureaucracy trapping of Leadership to remember laws and precedent set in previous court cases.

Designer Notes

Court Cases are modeled after the Chases in the core rules.

The closing arguments mechanic is added to provide some of the uncertainty of fictional court cases. Neither side really knows what the result will finally be until the judge finally delivers the line about the person’s guilt. Even if one side is winning there shouldn’t be complete certainty until the very end.

Witnesses is an adaptation of the Passengers rules.