Using 2d4 for Hit Locations in BRP

I haven't yet, but I'm going to experiment at some point with using 2d4 for hit locations in Mythras. It has seven results on a bell-curve, to match up with the seven hit locations of a character. I think you could use this to emphasise armouring certain parts of the body that are likely to be the target of strikes, without requiring a full suit of armour. 

I think this might work particularly well in games where you wanted a gladiatorial feel where a combatant has one armoured arm and leg, but it could also work in a campaign where characters were scavengers who needed to eke out combat with only a few scraps of armour. I also think this is probably easier for people who have trouble remembering the d20 table from Mythras to keep in their heads as well.

For the system I'm thinking of, you'd decide at some point before a fight which side of a character is "dominant" (the right side in right-handed characters), and thus is more likely to extend towards the enemy at any given point. The other side is the "trailing" side.

Then, the distribution would go:

2 - Trailing Arm
3 - Dominant Arm
4 - Head
5 - Chest
6 - Abdomen
7 - Dominant Leg
8 - Trailing Leg

This would make wearing a helmet and cuirass (chest and abdomen-covering) particularly valuable since about 62.5% of all hits would land on one of these three locations. This would direct most strikes to the centre line of the person. The dominant side is more at risk (25% of all hits go to it - 12.5% to the arm and the same to the leg on that side) thus motivating the next heaviest armour to be placed on it. The trailing side's limbs each only have a 6.25% of being hit, representing them being both mobile and placed furthest away from the attacker. 

If anyone has experimented with this, I'd love to hear about it. Otherwise, I'm currently on hiatus from roleplaying and when I do start up again it'll be as a PC in a 5e game, so it'll probably be in 2021 at the earliest before I can test it out.

Simplifying Theism in Mythras Pt. II

Blog comments have been reactivated and the spam wave appears to have passed.

This is a follow-up to this post, using some of the problems with theism and religion in Mythras that I mentioned there as the basis for a post discussing my changes to theism. Thanks to the Raptors NBA finals run, the start of the new Dawnlands campaign has been pushed to July, so I have even more time to plan than I originally thought.

There are two proposals I'm going to advocate for here:

1) Opening up theism miracle lists by removing cult restrictions on miracles
2) Eliminating the High Priest rank of initiation and changing the size of the devotional pool of the "Priest"

Miracle Lists

My proposal here is basically to allow every cult access to almost every spell. It's worth creating a list of spells you don't want any cult to have access to (except maybe a bad guy cult) and then allowing everything else to whoever.

Theist miracle lists tend to be very similar at the best of times, and limiting the number of miracles available in a cult is the worst of both worlds. Allowing only a subset of miracles per cult emphasises the duplication problem - where there are some miracles that every cult needs to have (e.g. Consecrate, Dismiss Magic) and if you follow the rules-as-written about how many miracles a cult has, these semi-mandatory options mean that out of a total of nine maximum miracles, four or five will be identical across most cults.

Allowing every cult to offer every spell doesn't fix this problem per se, but it dissolves one level of ineffective differentiation (the cult-level restriction) but intensifies the second level of restriction: the individual's knowledge of miracles.

This is good because this is de facto the point at which restriction is going to be managed in the game anyhow. By clearing away layers that obscure that fact, we can consolidate our attention on what actually matters.

Doing this also has the advantage of lowering the overhead for creating new cults. Picking out miracles and then double-checking to make sure it's not a bad or near-useless list of miracles, is one of the more onerous elements of creating new cults, and making this faster and easier is an unmitigated good if you want lots of cults.

Finally, because most PCs only ever belong to one theist cult at a level beyond "Lay Member", the broader miracle list deepens cults' offerings and encourages PCs to stick with a single cult, rather than trying to jump around and learn from 3-5 cults (which mechanically, is a recipe for being mechanically terrible at doing the thing you want to do - be a priest - for long stretches of game time)

Here's my recommended list of miracles from the Mythras core to restrict: Awaken, Corruption, Harmonise, Heart Seizure, Obliterate, Raise Undead, Resurrect, Sever Spirit

From Monster Island: Ageing, Grimoire, Summon Dead, Wish

This list is mostly composed of the most deadly "zap" spells, as well as the ones most likely to be disruptive to a campaign in a PC's hands, and the ones that work best in villains' hands.

Another alternative is perhaps to create a universal theism miracle list which all cults have access to, and then to add on additional miracles to delineate a cult's theme. This is a more conservative solution, which may make it more appealing to others.

If you want to do this, here is my suggested list for universally accessible theist miracles::

From the Mythras core: Consecrate, Dismiss Magic, Excommunicate, Exorcism, Extension, Lay to Rest, Soul Sight, Spirit Block, Steadfast (I would either restrict Awaken to NPC-only cults, or make it universal and include it on this list - your choice)

From Monster Island: Foreboding, Omen, Sagacity

Eliminating the High Priest Rank

There are only three levels of theism spells in Mythras, but there are four levels of initiation (not counting lay members). Each level of initiation increases your devotion poll by a quarter of your POW. I think it makes more sense to make "High Priest" purely a roleplaying thing, and to reduce theism to three levels because as it stands, High Priest is unexciting to achieve.

e.g. A theist PC has 12 POW and becomes an initiate. They can cast 3 initiate spells (1 magic point each). They become an acolyte, and can cast 6 initiate spells, or 3 acolyte spells (2 magic points each) or some combination of them. They become a priest, and can cast 9 initiate spells, 4 acolyte spells, or 3 priest spells (at 3 magic points each) or some combination. Then they become a high priest, and they get a devotional pool equal to their POW which allows them to cast 12 initiate spells, 6 acolyte spells, or 4 priest spells.

Compared to the previous levels, High Priest doesn't grant a new level of miracle, and it grants only a marginal increase in # of miracles over priesthood.

I believe you're supposed to sweeten the pot by making the rank of High Priest also come with a bunch of Gifts that give it extra oomph, but this violates the otherwise straightforward progression up the ranks, and Mythras is a bit shaky on how you get Gifts (e.g. do you automatically get all the relevant gifts when you attain that rank, or do you have to spend experience points, etc.).

Another benefit is supposed to be that it's comparatively easy (only a Hard test of Devotion) to invoke divine intervention for a high priest compared to anyone else, but I've never actually seen anyone do it at the table. I'd alter it so initiates and acolytes make Formidable tests of Devotion (as opposed to RAW, where only priests can do this) and let priests make Hard tests. The drawbacks - burning your skill points - to pull it off are already adequate to prevent abuse of it, and this change doesn't affect those drawbacks.

So I propose reducing initiation to three levels, and having the rank of Priest allow access to a devotional pool equal to your POW and to make a Hard test of Devotion for divine intervention. "High Priest" ranks can still exist, but they are not sacrally distinct, rather they are functional roles within the hierarchy of the cult (perhaps accompanied and distinguished by acquiring Gifts from holding the office).

Since making these two changes in the design of the Dawnlands, I've found it much easier to create theist cults and characters. I'm going to be testing this out in the Dawnlands campaign when it finally gets going, and we'll see how it does there.

Shapeshifting Mystics in the Dawnlands

So there are shape-changing cults in the Dawnlands, and I model them using Mysticism from Mythras. They're most commonly found amongst the plains nomads - the Jarushim and Kadiz - where they are cross-clan associations of hunters and herders. Eagle, bear and coyote are the most common male shapechanging lodges, and crane, snow leopard and deer being the most common women's lodges.

Here's the talent list for the Coyote Runners, one of the more common male shapechanging lodges:

Augment (Athletics)
Augment (Endurance)
Augment (Survival)
Augment (Track)
Enhance Healing Rate
Enhance Movement Rate
Formidable Natural Weapons
Shapeshift (Coyote)

So this necessitated creating a Shapeshift trait. I'm using some of the information drawn from the shapeshifting spirits in the Animism chapter of Mythras (pg. 152).

In the Dawnlands, the mystic must be wearing a cloak made from the skin, feathers, fur, scales, etc. of whatever the creature they want to shapeshift into is, and they must hunt the creature and make the cloak themselves. They also can learn a "Beastform" combat style (common to all forms) that gives proficiency with Unarmed and Natural Weapons, and comes with Unarmed Prowess as a combat trait.

Shapeshifting is associated with a specific animal form - it's always Shapeshift (Coyote) or Shapeshift (Bear), etc., allowing access only to that animal form, rather than shapeshifting into any animal whatsoever. The mystic gains the average physical characteristics, armour points, hit points, creature abilities, and locomotion types of the animal when they shapechange, but keeps their own skills.

Unlike other traits, Shapeshift has variable intensity (similar to augmentations), costing 1 Magic Point per point of intensity. The mystic must maintain the trait with a minimum intensity equal to the intensity of a shapeshifting spirit able to transform them into that animal, as per page 152.

e.g. Transforming into a giant lizard requires a minimum intensity of 2, since a giant lizard is SIZ 19, and one requires an intensity 2 shapeshifting to transform into creatures between SIZ 13 and 21.

However, each level of intensity beyond the minimum required that the shapeshifting mystic invokes allows them to increase the SIZ of the animal form by 3. The mystic's new form gains the benefits (increase hit points, damage modifer, etc.) of the increased SIZ.

e.g. If our lizard-transforming mystic were to maintain their shapeshift trait at intensity 4, the extra two levels of intensity could be spent to increase the SIZ of the giant lizard to 25 (3 per additional level of intensity beyond the minimum).

Wounds and fatigue are carried over between forms.

Shapeshifting's meant to be a capstone ability for mystics who are progressing through one of these totemic cults, so I'm pretty good with it being a strong trait.

Learning New Combat Style Traits

More Mythras-posting is coming as I refresh my memory of the rules and prep for the upcoming Dawnlands campaign. This time around, I was reflecting on this post I made at the end of January talking about combat style traits.

I think its reasoning is still solid, but now that I'm looking at teaching three new players the Mythras system, I want something a bit simpler. I want to pace the accumulation of exceptional situations to the players' growing familiarity with the system. I also want them to be able to look rules up in the book independently of me, which should reduce the amount of time I spend explaining, rationalising, and recording house rules, and empower them to answer rules questions themselves.

Therefore, I think the easiest rules change that resolves my frustrations with the limited number of combat style traits without loading on complexity for the PCs is to allow them to spend Experience Rolls to add new traits onto their existing styles. I'm going to set the cost to acquire a new combat style trait as Five (5) Experience Rolls.

This makes acquiring a new combat style trait as difficult and time-consuming as learning a new spell or talent in the advanced magical traditions, which I think is about right. It should also keep the number of combat style traits people acquire more limited than the other obvious option, which would be for them to cost 2 Experience Rolls (the same as opening a new Professional Skill or learning a Folk Magic spell).

So, to summarise:

New Trait for Existing Combat Style = 5 Experience Rolls

Mounted Combat Damage in Mythras

"A mounted warrior may, when charging with a braced weapon, substitute his own Damage Modifier for that of his mount." (Page 104 of Mythras)

Superficially, this seems to say that you can use your own Damage Modifier instead of your mount's when you charge while mounted. I think this is confusingly worded, but actually means you can substitute your mount's Damage Modifier for your own. Even if it's not what this passage means, it is what should be the rule.

My reasoning:

The average human has a Damage Modifier of +0 and when charging, this goes up to +1d2.

The average horse has a Damage Modifier of +1d12, and this goes up to +(1d8+1d6) when charging.

These are not aberrations in the rules, but rather almost all mounts are stronger than their possible riders, and because of the doubled bonus to Damage Modifier increases that quadrupeds receive when charging, they will almost always have a higher Damage Modifier than their riders.

The mounted warrior normally makes the attack when the combined unit charges, not the mount.

I can see no situation in which someone charging would want to substitute their Damage Modifier for their mount's, and for the situation to even make sense, the mount itself would have to be making the attack on the charge, which is a nonstandard situation itself.

Therefore, it seems sensible to assume that the preposition "for" is being used in a slightly odd way here, and what the rule is asserting is that a rider can use their mount's Damage Modifier when they charge (which makes charges that hit super powerful).

As a further piece of evidence, I ran a one-shot for Lawrence Whitaker once, and someone got charged by a mounted foe, and we used the interpretation of the rule that I'm elaborating here at that time without complaint.

I'm doing a big review of Mythras combat in preparation for a Dawnlands campaign I'm starting up with my D&D 3.5 crew come mid-May. I'm spreading the good word, getting some experienced roleplayers but newcomers to Mythras to try it out and see how they like it compared to D&D 3.5.

This line struck me because I thought I knew Mythras combat reasonably well, and yet suddenly I thought that I had misunderstood a situation that I've adjudicated many times. I'm posting this at least partly so that no one else undergoes the confusion I did.

(Also, happy Easter)

Flipping the Core Mechanic of Mythras

I'm prepping for another Dawnlands campaign, and one aspect I'm debating is flipping Mythras' core mechanic around and simplifying it.

Mythras is a typical BRP game in that all skills have a percentile rating which one attempts to roll under on 1d100 to succeed. Critical successes occur when one rolls less than 1/10 of the skill's percentile rating (rounded up). Regardless of skill level, a roll of 01-05 is always a success, and a roll of 96-00 is always a failure. Fumbles occur when the roll is a 99 or 00. When two characters make opposed rolls, the one with the higher result within the same band of success (regular or critical) succeeds.

This isn't hard, but it's more complex than it needs to be. As Delta has pointed out in designing the Target20 system for OD&D, based on a commonplace amongst math educators, addition is the least demanding and most accurately performed mental calculation. Because of some of the fine details, logjams tend to occur in a couple of places in the current Mythras skill algorithm.

The first place is understanding that bonuses and penalties change the percentile rating you're rolling under, not the roll itself. This takes people a bit to wrap their head around.

The second is that you're trying to roll under a skill rating, but as high as possible within that band. This is sometimes called a "blackjack" method - you're trying to get as close as possible to the rating without exceeding it.

The third is determining which band of success you're in for certain low rolls. It's very easy to confuse a high critical success roll with an extremely low standard success roll, especially when you start adding on difficulty grades, augmenting skills with other skills, and all the other stuff.

To resolve many of these issues, I'd like to offer my simplified Mythras skill resolution system, which I am tentatively calling Target101.

1d100 + skill value + difficulty value + augmenting skill with a result greater than or equal to a value of 101 is a success. If two rolls are opposed to one another, then the higher result wins.
Successful rolls (not total sums) ending in 5 are critical successes. 
A roll of 01 or 02 is a fumble.
A roll of 00 counts as 100.

NB: I'm electing to go for the static difficulty values per the "Simplified Diffcult Grades" table on page 38 of Mythras.

The advantages of this system are that it involves a sequence of simple 2-digit additions that sum to a single score. It reduces or maintains the range of possible exceptional rolls (fumbles, automatic successes). And it allows a simple one-digit recognition operation to determine whether a roll is a critical success or not. The chances of success are mostly mathematically identical to stock Mythras, with only the range of automatic failures and successes reduced.

I haven't play-tested this yet, but I'm hoping to in the upcoming Mythras campaign.

Overland Travel in Mythras

So I've been running overland travel in Mythras since back when it was still Mongoose Runequest II. I used to use a convoluted hexcrawling system that I ran off a cheat sheet I put together, but these days I've come around to running most overland travel in Mythras as pointcrawls.

In the Dawnlands, I use a songline system for pointcrawling, partially to show some love for the much-neglected Sing skill, but the system I'm going to lay out here is probably more useful to people using generic settings without songlines. The system I'm outlining is really a variation on the system for extended tasks laid out in this (free to download) expansion of the Mythras task rules, which I think is good enough that if there's ever a second edition of Mythras should become part of the core rules.

Basically, I think you should set up Mythras overland travel as an extended task where each extended task covers travelling from landmark to landmark. One PC should be appointed the expedition leader who makes the rolls (which are team rolls, effectively), but other PCs should be able to assist the expedition leader using teamwork to augment their skill rolls (Conveniently, I wrote some teamwork rules for Mythras a while ago).

The base difficulty of the rolls should be based on how easy to traverse and straightforward the path is. A road leading from one landmark to another should set base difficulty of easy while navigating trackless wastes from the peak of one massive sand dune to the peak of another sounds like herculean difficulty.

I also think that the extended task system for overland travel works best with a slight variation. Instead or rolling the same skill four times and determining the outcome based on that, breaking it up into four different skill rolls will make other PCs feel like they are meaningfully contributing, and encourage them to mix-up who is the expedition leader from time to time, instead of always relying on the one guy with Navigate 90% to lead them everywhere.

In particular, when no better ideas suggest themselves, I would recommend Navigate, Bureaucracy, Endurance, and Survival. Streetwise, Track, Seamanship, Boating, Ride, Stealth, or others might be appropriate as well depending on circumstances. Basically, think of the four biggest obstacles to overcome, find the appropriate skill for dealing with those obstacles, and make those the skills that are checked. The good thing about doing this is that whenever the PCs fail a roll, you'll know exactly what obstacle is slowing their progress down, instead of having to make stuff up off the cuff. Are they failing their Bureaucracy checks? Clearly, their camp is disorganised, and packing things away, getting everyone ready to go, making sure all the chores have been done properly, etc. takes forever.

The final result of the test tells you the pace of travel - 150% means you travel 150% your normal speed (The base for travel per page 69 of Mythras is 3 km/h for a normal marching pace or 5 km/h while riding horses). 25% means it takes you four times as long to get there. Survival rules in case you run out of food or encounter bad weather are on page 82.

I roll for random encounters on each leg (landmark to landmark) of the journey using an encounter grid, and I use my reaction roll system for weather for each leg as well (weather effects are on pg. 85 of Mythras). If these are too D&D-esque for you, in the past I have used a die drop map and you might prefer something like that to determine random encounters and terrain the PCs see around them.

I haven't playtested this system yet, but it's cobbled together out of bits that I have playtested previously, and I'm curious to see it at work in the Dawnlands campaign I hope to run later this year. If you give it a try before then, let me know how it goes for you.

Combat Style Traits in Mythras

If it's never come up, I'm not a huge fan of the default combat style traits in Mythras, since the effect of most of them is to make you ignore a cap on your combat style in some situation. e.g. When you're riding a horse in combat, your Ride skill "caps" (determines the maximum percentile value of) your combat style - unless you have Mounted Combat, in which case you get to use your full combat style.

Rules-as-written, a combat style trait only grants one benefit, and you can only have one trait per combat style, but this seems to be something honoured in its breach in fan-made material (Shout out to the Notes on Pavis guy for running a great blog). My assumption is that this represents running up against the limits of how this works in actual play, since it's something I've run into as well.

To recap the situation with combat styles in Mythras: The average Mythras character has 1 or 2 combat styles to start, and perhaps learns 3-4 total over the course of a long career. These combat styles form the primary skills characters use in combat for both attack and defense, and thus are a priority for most characters to boost. Those 1-2 additional combat styles will primarily be driven by either the traits of a new combat style, or the need to shift the weapons they use (or some combination of these two).

With the typical split between combat and non-combat characters in the parties I've seen (about half of all characters being combat-focused, meaning they get two styles), assume a starting party has about 1.5 combat styles per party member, except these aren't unique styles - most characters have a single cultural style common to all of members of that culture, and most Mythras parties are from a common cultural background. So only the 0.5 extra combat styles per PC are actually unusual or unique ones. In a party of four characters of shared background, that means you'll have one common style, and two unusual ones, each accessed by only a single PC.

How many combat styles there are in a particular setting varies widely, but typically you have between 3-6 per culture, depending a lot on military specialisations available within that culture. Most Mythras settings only use a small subset of the giant list of weapons included in the Mythras corebook - between 6-10 is typical, with 3-4 weapons per combat style, and in practice, you see a lot of repetition of the best weapons in different styles (Hello shortspear my old friend).

What this means in practice is that a lot of the odder combat style traits tend not to appear - they're either not attached to the main 3-6 options available, or they're just not present among the 3 different combat styles in a 4-person party (if you run with six PCs, you'll end up with 4 different combat styles on average). Also, some of the traits are far better than others because the combat situations they apply to are far more common, and these traits tend to be the most common, repeating across combat styles.

One of the outcomes of all of this is that combat style traits are not actually a very good method to ensure PC combat styles aren't capped. I'd rather just not have the caps in the first place, since they tend to take exciting action combats where the PCs are doing things like chasing people around on horses or climbing the rigging of a ship or storming a castle's walls and turn them into frustrating whiff-fests. Realism be damned, this is a game where you can play a cat-man wizard, and that cat-man wizard should be able to stab a guy while swinging from the rafters.

In place of the current combat style traits then, I propose that caps should be abolished in most cases, and combat style traits should not be the mechanism by which they are nullified. Instead, combat traits should focus on empowering characters with options or intensifying their combat advantages.

Here are some proposed new combat style traits. Each one has several abilities it grants to someone trained in a combat style, and most a couple of regular combat style traits cobbled together.

Berserker
Allows the use of the Flurry special effect so long as the character is wielding two weapons and the extra attack uses the second weapon.
If a character's damage modifier is two steps higher than an opponent's, their weapon size is considered one step larger for the purposes of bypassing parries.
Any psychological resistance rolls by an opponent are one step harder.

Duelist
May use Evade to dodge attacks in melee combat without going prone.
Allows use of the Flurry special effect so long as all extra attacks are made with a single weapon.
Can use the Change Range action to automatically withdraw from combat without a roll.

Lancer
Making a mounted charge with this style does not incur the one-step penalty to hit.
A character may spend action points to defend against attacks targeting their mount.
A character's damage modifier counts as one step higher for the purposes of calculating knockback.

Line Infantry
If three or more characters with this trait are in close order with one another, then:
Any enemy who engages them has their action points reduced by one.
They automatically get the benefits of using the Brace action against Knockback, Leap Attacks and Bash attacks.
Each character can ward an additional location using a shield or secondary weapon.

Marksman
A character may make ranged attacks while running (but not sprinting).
When using a ranged weapon, the hit location of a successful attack may be shifted to an adjacent location.
If three characters with the Marksman trait attack a single target or group of targets in close order, the targets are automatically Pinned Down (per the special effect).

Mounted Archer
A character may make ranged attacks while their mount is running (but not galloping).
When using a ranged weapon, the hit location of a successful attack may be shifted to an adjacent location.
A character can evade attacks without going prone while mounted, using their Ride skill in place of Evade.

Self-Defense
Can use the Change Range action to automatically withdraw from combat without a roll.
A character increase the size of your weapon by one step while parrying so long as they don't attack that round.
Outmaneuver rolls are one step easier.

Stalker
Can use the Kill Silently special effect.
When using a ranged weapon, the hit location of a successful attack may be shifted to an adjacent location.
Opponent's rolls to outmaneuver an attacker using a combat style with Stalker are one step harder.

Wrestler
Can use Grip as a defensive special effect
Opponent's rolls to evade, break free of, or resist immobilisation in a grapple are one step harder.
Unarmed blocks and parries count as "medium" sized.

Because the average character has only 1-2 combat styles, adding a couple of extra conditions or abilities onto each combat style trait doesn't increase the complexity very much for any given player. Monsters and most opponents don't even have combat style traits, so while the occasional custom-built major villain will have a touch more complexity due to this, most opponents won't be any harder to run for the referee.

You can make combat style traits that require 3 or more characters to get their full benefits available as cultural styles, so that most of the party will end up with them.

If you don't want to get rid of caps, then I would suggest at the very least combining a no-cap combat style trait with at least one other combat style trait that does something interesting.

I haven't play-tested these yet, but I'm hoping to later this year when I start up a Dawnlands campaign.

Organising the Senses in Mythras Sorcery

Mythras sorcery has a number of spells - Mystic Sense, Phantom Sense, Perceive (Sense Type), Project Sense - which are broken down into individual spells by which sense they affect. Only Phantom Sense explicitly lists the folk taxonomy of five senses and how each can be altered by the spell, but I think the default assumption for all of them except Perceive (Sense Type) is that the folk taxonomy is fine, and Perceive mainly involves augmenting the existing senses, so that one can e.g. see infrared or smell fear and the like.

I, along with modern science, think the folk taxonomy of five senses leaves out a lot of actual senses that humans have, let alone weird creatures that might exist in a fantasy setting. I thought it might be worth reorganising and categorising senses that sorcerers can affect with a single spell. Such a catalogue would hopefully help spur the imagination and make some of the selections more desirable than relying on the folk taxonomy alone would.

Here's that catalogue, along with the explanations for each. Each line is a single sense-type for spell purposes.

Sense Types
Electroception & Magnetoreception
Sight (Visual, Infrared, Thermovision, Ultraviolet, X-rays) & Chronoception
Sound & Echolocation
Smell, Taste, & Chemoreception (Flavour)
Touch, Proprioception, Nociception, Balance, Mechanoception, & Thermoception (Feeling)
Thaumoception
Bioception
Thanatoception

Electroception and magnetoception are the abilities to sense electro-magnetic fields. The difference in the two tends to be whether it involves active pulses (most electroception) or not (magnetoception). These senses are especially common in insects, birds and fish, and extremely useful for navigation (humans use compasses to similar ends). This is an unusual set of sensory modes, but I could see it being kind of cool for Mystic Sense in particular - you feel yourself in a rippling field of magical energy that conveys information through prickling feelings. Scientifically sophisticated sorcerers could do all sorts of interesting things with the ability to sense and measure paramagnetism, diamagnetism, ferrimagnetism, antiferro- and antiferrimagnetism etc.

Sight's domain is obvious, but I do think it should explicitly cover sight beyond the ordinary visual spectrum. I'd include chronoception (the sensation of the passage of time) with it not because they're tightly linked (they're not) but because I think the most obvious way to mess with, fool, or manifest altered chronoception involves vision. If suddenly everything you can see is moving in a blur, or like molasses, your chronoception is going to fool you.

Sound and echolocation are similar to electroception and magnetoception in that one is a passive sensation and the other involves actively pulses which are received and processed. I think this is a fairly obvious combination of senses. I would allow Phantom Sound to produce fake speech, something that's not explicit in the spell description but that extends its usefulness while not cleanly being covered by another spell.

Smell, taste and chemoception are all variations on the same sensory mode, coming in through different organs. I would let Phantom Smell /  Taste / Chemoception include faking the effects of poisons and other drugs, albeit these effects would be illusions. Great for psychedelic purposes or for making someone feel like they've been cured of an ailment. I would also allow the Phantom version of this spell to trigger allergies. Taste on its own is one of the weaker and less useful sense types to associate with a spell, so combining it with smell boosts the desirability of taking it. For shorthand, I'd call it "Flavour", a word that (at least in my dialect of English) refers to both smell and taste.

Touch, again, has an obvious domain. Proprioception is being able to feel the movement of your body, including locating where your limbs are (Octopi, oddly, lack this sense and use visual cues). Nociception is feeling pain. Thermoception is feeling heat and cold, though strangely, it's a separate sense from feeling burnt (which uses nociceptors) which is why you can feel like your mouth is one fire from eating a chili without being confused about the actual temperature your mouth is. Mechanoception is feeling and interpreting vibrations in the medium around you (with its finest and most powerful expression being the Earth Sense ability on page 215 of Mythras). Balance (and feeling the force of gravity more generally) is distinct from proprioception. I will admit to a slight inconsistency here, in that smell, taste and chemoception are related senses performed by different organs, while this collection of senses is mainly the range of senses performed by a single organ (the skin), combined with proprioception and balance. I think English, which uses the verb "to feel" to cover all of these, provides a verbal-conceptual nexus by which players can get a handle on the collection. In fact, to avoid having such a large list, I would recommend calling this "Feeling" for labelling purposes - Phantom Feeling, Mystic Feeling, Project Feeling, etc.

Thaumoception would be the ability to detect magic. This is already a sensory mode some monsters have in Mythras (using the "Magic Sense" ability on Mythras p. 216), and including it as a sense allow one to use Phantum Sense to replicate something like "Nystul's Magic Aura" and other misdirection spells from D&D - hiding the aura of magic, making a non-magical item seem magical, or changing what kind of magic seems to be behind an effect.

Bioception and Thanatoception are the abilities to sense the presence of life and death / undeath respectively, as covered by the abilities "Life Sense" (Mythras, p. 216) and "Death Sense" (Mythras, p. 215) respectively. No real creature has these, but they exist as senses in Mythras, so spells that manipulate them or that allow one to adopt them briefly (Perceive) should be possible. At first I thought these should be expressions of a single underlying sense, but they're mechanicall and thematically distinct enough to make sense as different senses.

Anyhow, I hope this catalogue is useful and encourages players of sorcerers in Mythras to learn or develop spells involve some of the more unusual sensory possibilities. Just to be clear, this isn't the only way of carving these up - many people (e.g. neuroscientists using a categorisation based on nerve-functions) would probably treat thermoception, nociception, chemoception, and proprioception as distinct from touch but integrally related to one another.

Songlines in the Dawnlands

I've written about songlines before, back when I was using Openquest to run the Dawnlands, but as I convert it over to Mythras, it's time for new rules.

A brief recap of songlines for those new to the Dawnlands:

Outside of the cities of Durona and Kaddish, there are no maps of the Dawnlands, and even in the cities, most maps are cadastral surveys used to sort out parcels of land rather than tools of navigation. While people are loosely familiar with the concept of maps, the low levels of literacy in the hinterlands would make them near useless anyhow.

Instead, people use songlines to get around. These are songs that encode the necessary directions for someone to get from one place mentioned in the song to another place mentioned in the song by decoding the rhythm, tempo, mode, scansion and actual semantic content of the lyrics.

Most songlines are vast historical epics tracing the journeys of heroes and peoples across the Dawnlands, criss-crossing and entangling one another to create both a tight mesh of navigational information as well as a comprehensive history. Songlines do not necessarily trace the shortest distance between two points it may connect, and part of the expertise and lore of using them well is to understand when and how to switch from one songline to another to cut a journey short. The elders of a clan typically serve as a storehouse of knowledge about the songlines, and clans trade unfamiliar or new songlines with one another as prized goods.

What this means is that there are two skills in Mythras that allow one to find one's way from place to place. The first is the Sing skill, and the second is the Navigate skill. Navigate covers overland travel off the songlines (which for the purposes of the skill's description on pg. 48 of Mythras are "unusual journeys" "in completely unfamiliar territory"). It works exactly as described in the Mythras corebook, and is mainly used by people who learn it as a professional skill through their careers.

When PCs are following songlines, which count as the "normal" way to travel in the Dawnlands, they use Sing to find their way (Sing is a standard skill available to all characters).

To determine the length of a journey, either pick a number between 50 and 1000, or roll 1d1000. This is the percentage the navigator has to accumulate in an extended task roll using their Sing skill in order to successfully guide the party to where it wants to go.

Each day of travel, they roll their Sing skill. On a critical success they accumulate 50%, on a standard success 25%, on a failure 0%, and on a fumble, -25%. When they have accumulated a percentage roll equal to or higher than the roll of 1d1000, they have arrived at their destination. If for any reason they drop below 0 due to fumbles, they are lost. It's very hard to get lost while using songlines, but they also channel travellers along courses that may not be the most direct route, and other travellers, bandits, etc. are much more likely to be following songlines themselves rather than roaming around randomly.

PCs may aid one another or augment their Sing skills with relevant passions, skills, etc. If they can collect an especially useful or direct songline, they can shift the base difficulty of the Sing rolls down to Easy (rolling 1.5x their skill).

For every 100% accumulated, the PCs will come across a landmark or area of interest that serves to reorient them with a new verse (that is, verses typically cover 2-4 days worth of travel).

PCs can also use the rules for crafting equipment on pgs. 65-67 of the Mythras corebook for crafting songlines, using the Sing skill for task rolls. This requires them to have travelled the course involved, and can either involve merging together two or more songlines, or being part of a group where someone successfully uses the Navigate skill to find the way.

Literacy Specialties in Mythras

I want to apply the specialities concept to the Literacy skill in the Dawnlands (my Mythras iron-age central Asian-inflected setting), but without simply having it be a repeat of the specialities of the Language skill. A simple repeat of the same specialities would just turn Literacy into a skill tax imposed on PCs. I also think it's pretty boring.

I also think we need to avoid the obvious extension of it, which is to separate the ability to interpret and decipher writing in a particular form into speech. I initially made this error and had five different alphabets, syllabaries, abugidas and pictograms, which Literacy would let you turn into something you then needed a Language skill to make sense of. I think this would increase referee cognitive load in planning and preparation, without adding much to the game.

You, my well-educated audience, may have already encountered the idea of "literacies" in contemporary educational theory. This is often used in the context of explaining various digital media competencies, but I think elements of this can be projected backwards in time, and laterally, for our purpose, to make the Literacy skill interesting and fun. To tip my hand, I want to expand the Literacy to cover a variety of hermeneutic practices, of which reading plain text on a page is only one example. Literacy now becomes the skill of interpreting symbol sets other than speech. I do want to be careful not to step too far into the domains of other skills and replacing the need for Customs, Culture, Lore or Art, but I think there are a few pieces that could fall under Literacy or one of these skills that we ought to bring under the Literacy skill.

NB: Along with allowing you to decipher the types of texts below, I think that in many cases Literacy should also cover producing examples of them.

Here's a brief list of ideas of interpretive practices that might be important to someone in a fantastical pseudo-ancient or pseudo-medieval setting.

1) Reading out loud
2) Codes and ciphers
3) Dreams, omens, oracles
4) Technical, mathematical, and scientific jargon and diagrams
5) Financial and legal records and accounts
6) Reading silently
7) Magical writing (or this may be a subset of #4)
8) Maps & calendars

A brief justification for each of these as ideas:

Reading out loud and reading silently are separate developments historically, as weird as it may seem to a modern person trained in doing both from a relatively young age. It seems like in the Western world, reading silently emerges shortly after monasticism, as part of the contemplative practices of monks. Until that point, so far as we can tell, people mostly read things aloud, even when they were reading for themselves. Breaking them up as specialties is a minor but fun idea with the effect of estranging the setting in a subtle way for players.

Codes and ciphers represents the ability to encipher and decipher texts written in codes and ciphers. It's handy and it doesn't cleanly fall under any other skill unless you make up a Lore speciality covering it. If you have "thieves guilds" or the like, you might want to make up a separate speciality for their specific codes, but I think the narrower this speciality, the less useful it is.

Dreams, omens, and oracles are in the representations we have from the ancient world almost always vague, riddle-like things that require expert interpretation, and dramatically much can turn on the ambiguous possibilities of an oracle or omen. I think this should also cover things like astrological charts, hexagrams from the I Ching, and the markings on the intestines of sheep. I think this is, like literacy in codes and ciphers, rapidly becomes less important or useful the more narrow it is (i.e. just interpreting dreams or just interpreting sheep intestines or just looking at chickens pecking grain out of a grid).

If you've ever tried to read an old mathematical or technical manuscript, you probably understand why this is distinct from one's familiarity with the scientific concept under discussion, or one's ability to read the plain text of the manuscript. For that matter, if you've ever seen two people quibble over what a blueprint means, you've probably had the same experience. Diagrams can be surprisingly ambiguous, especially if it's stylised so that particular design choices are intended to cover specific information rather than serve as a picture. It's also less relevant in an ancient or medieval setting, but I think reading graphs probably falls at least partly under this speciality as well. Whether you want to make a "high-falutin' writin'" speciality that combines this with the no doubt extremely similar problems of interpreting magical writings is your preference. I would separate them into two specialities mainly as a matter of personal taste.

Financial records and accounts remain a specialised form of literacy with entire certified professions dedicated to them (accountants, stockbrokers, etc.). Understanding them is distinct from mathematical knowledge per se (which I think is properly one or more Lore specialities). Historically, this type of writing precedes the others - records of debts and receipts are the oldest writing we can find evidence of. Legal records and documents, which are often tax records of some sort historically, are similarly obtuse and impenetrable even if one has a rough and ready sense of what the actual law applying to a situation is. You may want to roll these under the Commerce and Bureaucracy skill, respectively. Mythras doesn't have a forgery skill, and allowing this as a speciality allows you to make a forger, which I think is something PCs want to do often enough that it's worth having a special skill covering.

Maps and calendars are really two different types of literacy in real life (interpreting abstract spatial representations and abstract temporal relations), and understanding them were specialised skills historically. Thucydides found calendars in contemporary Athens so confusing that he simply invented his own method of tracking time in his historical work. How to calculate the exact date of Easter is a perennial dispute amongst the Christian sects even now. I'm not sure either kind of literacy is quite useful enough to be worth a speciality on its own, but together they're fairly handy, especially since having them as a Literacy speciality should allow a PC to produce them.

NB: I considering reading maps quite different than the Navigation skill, since the later covers going to places, and maps do all sorts of things other than guide you somewhere (here's a neat one that's useless for navigation).

Some of these might reasonably be Lore specialities instead of Literacy specialities. But, I think one thing to bear in mind if one is using the specialities system is that getting more than 5 specialities in a particular skill is a challenge because of the difficulty of acquiring skill ratings above 100%. So loading some potential Lore capabilities onto Literacy means that characters don't have to sacrifice one of their Lore specialities to get ahold of them, and can instead raise their Literacy skill (which is often surprisingly low).

Other than the ones listed above, I'm open to suggestions for other Literacy specialities.

The Disruptors' Plans

One of the great mysteries left to referees to decide on in Luther Arkwright campaigns is what the larger master plan of the Disruptors is. This is partly because the source material doesn't specify it, and partly so you can make it whatever you want it to be in your own campaigns. I did some thinking about it based on playing a bunch of Luther Arkwright and planning a bunch of one-shots, and wanted to lay out what I decided what I think makes sense in the sort of games I'm interested in running. The idea of all of the following is to give one ideas for Luther Arkwright plots that Valhalla agents can stop, in case that isn't apparent.

In broad strokes, I see the Disruptors are trying to collapse all of the infinite possibilities of the multiverse into one parallel, one where they are utterly triumphant and all-powerful. Once they have discovered this parallel, they will destroy all other parallels and become gods in the remaining universe.

To do this, they undertake several kinds of large-scale missions and campaigns.

1) Destroy parallels with a low-probability of becoming the "right" one, ideally after first harvesting all useful resources from them. This releases the psionic energy bound up in the parallel and distributes it back across the multiverse. These sorts of parallels are also probably the ones where they're doing their most strenuous and large-scale experimentation, like running genocidal eugenics programs on entire worlds to see if they can improve the rate at which psychics are born, or

2) Testing different historical developments to see which increases the probability of a parallel becoming their ideal-universe. This means both encouraging convergent developments that they know increase their possibility of success, while experimenting with new developments and new parallels to ensure they are not stuck in a local pseudo-stable maxima (that is, a course of development that seems to be progressing in the right direction but which ultimately turns out to plateau before success is reached).

3) Experimenting with the occasional high-risk, high-reward, parallel in case doing so pays off (parallels where aliens powerful to challenge them exist, parallels with lots of psionically-aware people, technologically advanced parallels sufficient to compete with them scientifically and militarily, etc.).

4) Infiltrating parallels where their enemies, potential competitors, or serious resistance to them is available, undermining the capacity of these forces to fight them by destabilising these parallels politically or otherwise, and eventually either destroying or isolating them from the multiverse.

To break these down further:

Destroying low-probability parallels

These operations first require an assessment of the situation culminating in an analysis of its probability of Disruptor success. After that, the Disruptors will attempt to strip the parallel of any useful resources, and neutralise or avoid any major threats to doing so. After that, the Disruptors must destroy the parallel, which means somehow causing the psionic energy that maintains its existence to disperse.

Dispersing the psionic energy can be done in a variety of ways. The first is to find some highly psionically active and powerful entity or object, perhaps a multiversal constant or a powerful spirit, and cause a psionic energy feedback loop that "explodes" the parallel. This might involve importing additional psionic energy from another parallel, or concentrating much of the psionic energy of a given parallel into a small area. The second option is to construct some device, or bring in some psionic entity, that will drain the parallel's psionic energy back into the multiverse. The device might operate according to impossible physical laws that the host parallel can't accommodate, or it might link two parallels and transfer the energy from one to the other. A third would be simply to kill every psionically active entity (every living thing) in a given parallel, and then simply wait for it to dissolve.

Utilising these parallels for the Disruptors probably falls into a couple of main methods. The first is grabbing or using any unique features of the parallel. Are there connections to more valuable parallels that can only be reached via this one? Technology from long-dead aliens? The second is running damaging and awful experiments. These are the sorts of parallels that are candidates for the Disruptors to use as vast eugenics farms to experiment with the birth rate of psionically active people, to test their most horrific and devastating weapons and tools on, and to examine the most dangerous unknown artifacts that they've recovered from the rest of the multiverse. The third is just straightforward economic exploitation - the enslavement of entire worlds to turn out the weapons of war for dominating the rest.

Valhalla is no doubt very interested in preserving these parallels, since they offer the least gain to the Disruptors' plans. Without the active interference of the Disruptors in exploiting and destroying them, these parallels get along just fine.

Converging and collapsing history

Boosting any given parallels chances of becoming the ideal-universe for the Disruptors probably take several forms. The first step is establishing whether the parallel is a good candidate for the ideal-universe. We know the Disruptors like powerful, hierarchical governments, preferably as few as possible, that they can take control of secretly. They also seem to prefer parallels where technological and scientific development can be made beholden to Disruptor influence. Worlds teeming with people, who produce a lot of psionic energy the Disruptors can utilise, are also ideal. The second is changing the world to better suit their needs. This means introducing various multiversal constants if they don't already exist, or aligning them with the ideal-form of each constant if they're slight deviations. It also means taking over the governments of the world. Chances are, the Disruptors also look for worlds with lots of psionic connections to other parallels that they can send psionic influence through. I figure there are probably "anchor" parallels that serve as the local node through which a series of parallels with minor deviations are connected (e.g. a bunch of worlds that are almost identical except for small quantum variations).

Once they have them under their control, the Disruptors are probably seeking to prevent them from deviating from developing into the ideal-universe. My basic assumption is that the Disruptors can't reliably see the future (except insofar as psionics allowed very limited precognition). So they don't know which one will pan out as the ideal, and have to constantly adjust and readjust their development in line with what they predict, but can't know, is the ideal course. Some will fail, of course - Valhalla or others will free them and drive the Disruptors out, asteroids will destroy others, and others will turn out to be pseudo-stable local maxima that will plateau rather than continue to develop into the ideal-universe.

I expect that ODIN, Valhalla's supercomputer, is pretty savvy to what these parallels look like, and can even guess how far along the Disruptors' plan is based on an in-depth study of its history. While these are the toughest nuts to crack, Valhalla gets the most gain when it manages to flip one of these from a high-probability parallel to a low-probability one, either by eliminating the Disruptors' control, or undermining their development and forcing them into pseudo-stable local maxima.

Experimenting with high-risk, high-reward parallels

These are parallels that are so unique or unusual that the chances of them becoming the ideal-universe are extremely low, but that can't be written off for all that. Worlds where the entire population is psionic, or powerful aliens friendly to the Disruptor cause are willing to trade unusual technology, or where technology is 10,000 years more advanced than our own world, or where some species other than humanity has dominated the planet. Depending on the multiversal savvy of the entities running these parallels and the resources they command, the Disruptors are probably more or less aggressive. Attacking an enemy who can chase you through the parallels with glowing clouds of mind force is stupid - trade or wary observation are more likely. On the other hand, even a galactic federation of energy beings can be conquered if you can simply retreat to another parallel and regroup safely whenever they start to make gains. Some worlds are also weird enough that the Disruptors probably have a small monitoring presence to continuously evaluate and nudge their development towards the ideal-universe, but little more.

This class also includes parallels like the one that Firefrost was found on, where the main interest is in some one thing that's super-powerful and is way more interesting and important than the rest of the parallel would be in its own right. In these cases, the Disruptors would only bother to get enough control to find and control that one thing, extract it to their home base, and then send a clean-up team to eliminate the parallel like any other low-probability parallel.

Some of these worlds will also be ones where a small group of Disruptors with a heterodox vision of the ideal-universe might be operating. You might have a small clique of knights and bishops who've taken control of a parallel (or at least a large part of it) and are using it to prove the superiority of their ideas versus the mainline Disruptor vision of development. If this parallel does well (by Disruptor standards) they'll be vindicated and rewarded, while if it deviates into a low-probability parallel or plateaus, they're liable to be punished for their heresy.

These are also the sorts of worlds that Valhalla is likely to send agents to for other reasons - trading with the aliens or super-intelligent chimpanzee empire, or whatever - who then stumble across Disruptor schemes. Or Valhalla agents might go on a variety of missions to deny the Disruptors whatever key resource they're drawing from this world.

Undermining the opposition

Parallels where the opposition to the Disruptors is organised and effective are no doubt their worst nightmare, with the absolute nadir for them being a parallel where the original aliens opposing them way back when succeeded without perishing. You probably see an escalation here, as the Disruptors go from identifying and analysing the opposition to adopting a plan to destroy them, and if that fails, seeking to destroy or isolate the parallel itself. 00-00-00, Valhalla's home parallel, is the most well-known of these in the Luther Arkwright universe, but we can assume there are others (heck, there's probably at least one more Valhalla out there).

Interestingly, it seems like a lot of parallels with alien contact and/or powerful psionics probably fall into this category. Disruptor control is probably highly contested, though they may have footprints in governments or other power centres that allow them to strike out at the opposition. In some of these worlds, the Disruptors will be trying to "flip" their enemies into allies, or at least neutralising them, perhaps by offering them resources they otherwise lack. In others, they may be trying to destabilise the mundane governments and institutions of the world to gin up chaos and destroy the support system that their opposition relies on to be effective.

Valhalla agents are no doubt assigned to get out there and form alliances with these groups, as well as to study their technologies and methods that make them so dangerous to the Disruptors. Once they are identified and alliances made, agents will no doubt have to occasionally go and help their allies fight off Disruptor plots to undermine or destroy their parallels.

Mixing and matching ideas from the above categories can help you put together a consistent and interesting set of Disruptor operations that either span several parallels or deeply engage with a single one.

A Few Notes on Combat Styles in Mythras

Combat styles in the Mythras family are left with relatively undefined scopes in the rules as written. Individual referees are left to figure out how many combat styles their setting will have; how many (and which) weapons any given combat style encompasses; and which the special trait(s) each style will have. Having now designed about twenty different combat styles for several different settings with very different feels, I'd like to share some of my impressions.

As an initial qualification, I'd mention that Luther Arkwright, the one published science fiction setting, breaks from a bunch of what I'm saying below, though it arrives as a similar set of conclusions about how combat styles should work nonetheless. I'm also leaving aside "Monster Styles" since they can be created off the cuff without consequence.

The Observations

1) PCs will typically have between one and two combat styles right out the game, and the slow increase in skills in Mythras means that most will either stick with their original styles or pick up at most a third. I've never seen a PC with four or more combat styles, never even heard any one discuss the possibility as a realistic option for their character's development.

2) In my experience, the typical Mythras party has PCs all come from a shared cultural background, so you'll find that most of them share the same primary combat style. But, every other character in a typical party will have a career that allows them to access a second combat style (or in the case of Mythras Without Tears, will sacrifice a professional skill choice to gain access to a second combat style). Most of these PCs will want their second choice to be unique withing the party (unless one of the combat styles is particularly good). So when you're trying to judge how many combat styles you need for the party alone, use that as your baseline assumption.

3) Though they may not realise it at the start, most PCs will eventually want one of their two combat styles to have a fairly good ranged weapon (usually the short spear), at least one to let them use a shield, and at least one with the Mounted Combat trait (even if they don't need to invoke it all that often). The more they can layer these into a single style, the more desirable or necessary that style becomes.

NB: If you're a PC and you notice your enemies are using a combat style that has a trait other than Mounted Combat, try to get your enemies to jump onto their steeds (perhaps by fleeing on your own with them in hot pursuit) and then remind your referee about capping their combat styles with their Ride skill. You won't be popular, but you will be nigh-invulnerable to most stock enemies.

4) If there's a trait that rewards a bunch of PCs using the same combat style in tandem with one another (i.e. Shield Wall, or Formation Fighting) either everyone in the party will take it as their primary combat style or else it'll fail to reach the critical threshold of three PCs and be ignored / snubbed. If you're using careers, it's extremely unlikely that three PCs will get access to, and choose, the same secondary combat style through their careers, so you have to make it available at the Culture stage. In parties with multiple cultural backgrounds, don't expect people to take these combat styles.

5) The Mythras core has just under 60 weapons in it (counting shields), but most settings use a much smaller subset - I believe there's about 13 (counting shields) in Mythic Britain, and around 25 in Shores of Korantia's combat styles (with most of the variety in a small number styles that are less common). In the Dawnlands, I went for 12 - ten actual weapons, and two kinds of shields (I am considering adding another three of four, but haven't made up my mind).

A certain amount of doubling up on weapons between styles is good (since it allows a character not to have to carry a golf bag of swords), but you don't want too much overlap since that lowers people's willingness to take it as a second style without a further incentive. And that incentive might actually convince them to take the second style and ignore the first anyhow.

In practice, I find the ideal is about three weapons, especially if you're designing a lot of styles that count shields as one of those three. That lets PCs who take two combat styles use four offensive weapons, and at least one kind of shield, possibly two, without penalty. Three weapons also helps keep the style focused - with four weapons you tend to start asking yourself "What would the most common secondary sidearm for this person be?" a lot.

I also have a tendency to create a single combat style in a campaign that allows you to choose any two weapons you want. You gain in freedom of choice by losing that extra slot. This helps accommodate the folks who really, really, really want to wield a particular weapon that wouldn't otherwise be available.

6) There's a temptation that's indulged a lot to create near-identical combat styles differentiated by culture (usually with a slightly different sidearm or . Instead, I recommend picking the common types of soldier in your campaign setting, creating a combat style for each one, and then just reusing them across cultures to save time.

The Conclusions

Combat styles tend to work best when they have about three weapons per style. You should assume that at least every other character in a typical party is going to want a unique combat style. If you want a style that synergises when multiple characters have it, make it a cultural style rather than a specialty style you get access to through a career. Mounted Combat is an inobviously excellent and useful trait, so having it in a couple of styles is a good idea.

Mythras Without Tears II

I've been fiddling and experimenting with the character generation system for Mythras since writing this post, and here's what I've decided to use for skills in Dawnlands games. To me, this combines the ideal amount of customisation with speed and ease. I'm also including some passion house rules that make them easier to calculate (and slightly lower on average) than the stock rules.

Starting PCs pick seven standard skills, seven professional skills, and one combat style. They can swap out one professional skill choice to get a second combat style choice. They get 350 points, and can spend up to 45 points on any skill, adding 1% per point spent. They also add +40% to their Native Tongue and Customs skills.

Starting PCs also pick three passions. The first passion has an initial rating of POWx5, the second has an initial rating of POWx4, and the third's initial rating is POWx3. Skill points may also be spent increasing passions as if they were skills. PCs may also swap out one professional skill choice for a fourth passion, which has an initial rating of POWx5.

Art, Culture, Craft, Languages, Literacy, Lore, and Musicianship each have a number of specialties. Customs is the equivalent of Culture for a character's home culture, and Native Tongue is the equivalent of Languages for a character's home culture, but Customs and Native Tongue are distinguished by not having specialties. A character with these skills has a number of specialties equal to 1/5th the skill. Characters test their specialties at full. Outside their specialties, any tests with the skill are at least one grade harder.

One side effect of these passion rules is that most spellcasters are going to start off a little obsessive. I consider this a feature, not a bug.

Teamwork Rules for Mythras

I had always thought that the rules I'm about to outline were actually part of the core rules for Mythras, but it turns out that they weren't and I'd only imagined that they were (or else Loz and I couldn't find them when we glanced through the rules). I used these rules at Lozcon this weekend (Lawrence Whitaker's weekend roleplaying convention held annually at his home) and they were a hit. In hindsight, they're a simpler version of the teamwork rules I came up with for Openquest.

Whenever characters want to assist one another (i.e. they are all searching a room together; or two smiths working on the same project), they designate a lead. The lead is usually the group member with the highest skill. The lead is the character who will make the roll. The lead may have up to three assistants. Each assistant must have a score of at least 25% in the relevant skill. Each assistant reduces the difficulty grade of the roll by one. If the lead fails or fumbles, both the lead and the assistants suffer the consequences of failing.

This tends to simplify perception and sneaking rolls tremendously.

Simplifying Religion in Mythras

Religious organisations in Mythras theoretically have up to five levels of membership: lay member, initiate, acolyte, priest, and high priest. Three of these are spell-casting categories as well: initiate, acolyte, and priest. All theism spells are categorised as one of these three levels, and the level categorisation is based on the spell, not on the religion. The different levels of membership control the size of your "devotion pool" which is the number of magic points out of your total pool of magic points that you can devote to casting theistic miracles, which each miracle taking up 1 MP from the devotional pool (e.g. an initiate with 12 POW can devote three magic points to their devotional pool, allowing them to cast three miracles).

This adds an extra layer of complexity when you're designing religions, as you have to keep track of the level of the spell when you're putting together their spell lists, otherwise you run the risk of accidentally creating a religion in which initiates or priests or whoever don't gain access to new spells with their initiations. Considering the limited suggested number of available miracles per cult (up to 1d6+3 total per cult in a high magic campaign), this becomes especially difficult.

Having created my fair share of cults and played a fair deal of Runequest 6, I'd make the following observations:

1) Most of the published campaign worlds don't actually follow the listed guidelines. Mythic Britain uses a totally different system for Christianity that offers 4 miracles per interceding saint you invoke (with some overlap between saints), and has ten or twelve saints in the corebook. The Taskan Empire and Shores of Korantia have different cults offer between 3 and 19 miracles each, depending on the power and prominence of the cult. Classic Fantasy uses some other system entirely that involves three ranks of spells and limits the number you have access to by INT and your level. Monster Island is the one rulebook-following exception, which grants three initiate spells, two acolyte spells, and one priest spell per cult. Some of the top-tier miracles priests get access to are a bit shit tho' (one is "Rain of Fish").

2) Some progression or development is necessary to keep PCs committed to cults. If they can just dip in casually, become an initiate, and learn every possible spell (or at least all the good ones) right off the bat, they're not incentivised to engage further with the cult. Keeping the really good stuff for higher levels of initiation gives PCs something to work toward, so any proposed simplification or solution needs to keep at least two levels of access to spells, and possibly more.

3) I used to think it was feasible to run games where any individual PC might belong to many cults, but after playing RQ6 for a while, I think because of the slow acquisition of new skills and the way devotion pools work, most PCs are going to belong to 1-2 theist cults maximum (and probably one of those will be as just a lay member). That's assuming you even open up the possibility of characters becoming priests if they don't start with access to theist magic (this is something the rules-as-written discourage, but that, once again, is widely ignored in practice). So, if we assume that most PCs are going to belong to 1-2 cults, and probably only one as more than a lay member, a certain amount of depth should be available so they can feel like they're progressing through it.

To simplify the process of creating a religion, my proposal is fairly simple, and really represents a rationalisation of what I see people doing online when they homebrew cults. That is simply to calculate the level of membership required to gain access to a spell on the basis of each religion, rather than the spell. So initiates of one solar religion, acolytes of another, and priests of a third each gain access to say, Sunspear at different levels of membership. This allows greater customisation of each religion, and I'm surprised it's not the default.

Mythras Without Tears

Creating characters in Mythras is reasonably complicated, especially since one must go through three separate steps to spend skill points, each of which has different restrictions. I won't be using the rules below rules for character generation for the pre-generated characters I'm putting together for the scenario I'll be running at LozCon, but I may use them for Runequest / Mythras character generation in the next campaign I run.

Instead of selecting a culture, career, and spending bonus points, you select seven standard skills, seven professional skills and up to two combat styles (not counting Unarmed). You must spend at least five skill points improving each of the fourteen to sixteen skills, and may spend up to 45 points improving them. This produces characters who are almost identical to regular Mythras characters but without all the substeps. Theoretically, characters could end up knowing two kinds of advanced magic (sorcery and theism, say, or even just two schools of sorcery), which I'm personally fine with. If you're not, simply impose a limit on how many kinds of magic a single person may know.

The restrictions of the substeps theoretically force you to spend points to ensure your character has a basic competency at things their culture values, but in practice, I don't think dumping five skill points into standard skills you've already got a basic ranking in accomplishes that. What it does do is force you waste about 20% or so of the points you got from your cultural background on skills you don't want more than a basic ranking in anyhow. At least by choosing the standard skills, you'll be able to make sure they're all ones that match your character concept.

Personally, I think I'd all up to +50 to be added, to encourage a slightly higher degree of specialisation, but keep the overall size of the pool (350 points) identical.

Some people no doubt find the culture and career process helpful for shaping their character concepts, and I recommend people who do so use the method in the rules as written, but I often find them at least as much a hindrance to realising a character concept as a help personally.

Language and Lore Skills House Rules for Mythras

I've played a lot of  Mythras and Runequest 6 over the years (and Mongoose Runequest 2 and Legend - it's all the same game under different labels, and I've been playing it off and on since 2010). In the current version of the rules, it's difficult for characters to either have a lot of lore skills or to know a lot of languages. It's even more difficult to play a character who both knows a lot of languages and has a lot of scholarly knowledge because of the way character creation works, where you end up having limited slots for professional skills.

As someone who likes to play scholars in settings with lots of languages, I wanted to make this a bit less demanding on the fairly limited pool of skill points starting characters have. So I use the following rules for each skill:

There's no longer separate Lore:Whatever or Language: Whatever skills, except for Native Tongue. Instead, there's just Lore, Native Tongue, and Language. Lore and Language are both professional skills, and swap in during character creation whenever the originals do. Characters pick a number of specialties equal to 1/20th of their skill rating in the relevant skill (round down). For Lore these are areas of study and knowledge, for Language they're languages you know (other than your native language, where in Mythras you receive an automatic 40% bonus to make its role as a skill-capping skill that sets a limit for other skills easier to bear). For the purposes of skill rolls and caps, you use the single rating of the skill whenever you're dealing with an area of specialty.

e.g You have a Lore of 60% so you choose three areas of specialty. For your badass Kadiz gnostic, these are Dreams, Geomancy and Spirits. Whenever you need to make a Lore role involving those subjects, or use your Lore skill as an augment, you base it off the 60%.

This means starting characters will typically have 0 to 3 specialties in each skill, depending on their level of specialisation. A character made using the stock rules could have a similar range, but would have to spend three times the skill points to get this level, and would probably have to choose either language or lore skills instead of being able to do both. The net effect of this will be to make multicultural parties easier, and to allow characters to be knowledgeable without sacrificing all of their skills points to be so.

On a related note, Mythras and Runequest 6 don't actually explain what to do when someone attempts to test a professional skill they lack (if it does do so, it's not mentioned in the index under the entry for "Professional Skills", and it's not in either the skills chapter or the character creation section. The training rules imply you can't test without having opened access the skill, since it costs 3 experience rolls to "get a basic grounding" which I interpret as being able to get access at the level of the sum of the two relevant stats (i.e. it costs 3 experience rolls to develop Literacy at Int x 2 if you don't start with it as a skill).

With that in mind, I tend to favour not allowing rolls relevant to professional skills a character lacks. Even if one did allow them at severe penalties (i.e. one adapted the rules in the Combat section for using weapons outside those allowed by the Combat Styles you're trained in so as to apply to other skills), since you're only using a low base to begin with, you're almost never going to succeed.

On a second related note, I've debated making a similar change as I did for Language and Lore for combat styles, but I think this is a more radical change and needs to be tested and played around with before I implement it, since access to combat styles is much more strictly controlled than access to lore and language skills (starting characters still typically start with 1-3 combat styles, as this system would also be likely to produce).

I'm going to be running the Dawnlands at LozCon this summer (April 12-April 14, 2017) and these will be the rules I'm using for it. I just generated eight pregen characters in a row for a one-shot scenario I'll be running, one that involves a multicultural party, so I think it'll be a good test.

Live Settings

I like to do a review and update of the various settings I'm running, planning, designing, etc. This is partially for my benefit, partially for the sake of those interested in them.

Fantasy:

Moragne (Mongoose Runequest 2)- Dead (since 2009!) and cannibalised for the Old Lands. I took a few of the story-ideas and setting elements from this, but left the Anglo-Norman trappings behind. I ran one single-shot adventure and one campaign in this, and felt I'd done the bulk of what I wanted. The was the final campaign of the group I ran this for (my old university group) and it disintegrated as we moved onto other phases of life (only one other guy and I still play RPGs).

Emern (Swords and Wizardry) - Dead since 2012, when I ran the last campaign in it. The group I ran this for has basically dispersed as well. There are elements of this that have made it into most other D&D campaigns I've run or planned since, but I don't think I'm coming back to it any time soon.

The Wolf Sea (Openquest)- Dead and cannibalised for the Old Lands. This was basically a map and some notes, so I mostly reused names and a few setting elements. The work I did on this was as much about learning how to use Hexographer to create child maps properly as anything else.

The Dawnlands (Openquest / Mythras) - Still alive, but I haven't run a campaign in it since 2013! I'm converting it over from Openquest to Mythras and revamping the setting extensively to remove some of the D&D 4th edition-isms from it and replace them with other weird fantasy and Central Asian elements. I'm working on turning this into a setting book, in fact, which is why a lot of what I'm writing for it isn't turning up on my blog right now. I think I'm going to aim to run another campaign towards the back half of 2017, when a rough draft of the new and revised material will require some playtesting.

Necrocarcerus (Swords and Wizardry / Into the Depths) - Still kicking. I was running a campaign of this as recently as the end of 2015 / start of 2016, and ran an adventure - Ribshack of the Demon Prince - in summer 2016 using Into the Odd. I took a break from running to free up the time slot to play in Courtney Campbell's Perdition game. In hindsight, what was slowing me down was writing a huge house-rules document that quickly spiraled out of control without adding a ton of fun to the game. I wrote Into the Depths as a chassis to run Necrocarcerus and the Old Lands, and killed the giant house-rules document. Over the holidays, I also read the Doomed City by the Strugatskys, which is surprisingly Necrocarceran, though I'd never heard of it prior to seeing it in the book store. Reading it got me a bit fired up to work on the setting again in a public-facing way. I'm going to go back to writing fun, fluffy content for it. Expect more Necrocarcerus content for the blog, but I don't think I'll start working on a book for it until 2018.

The Old Lands (Into the Depths) - Living and currently under development. Basically a garbage-can setting in the good sense. Necrocarcerus is a high-concept setting in a lot of ways, and running an adventure that assumes you're dealing with a medieval village full of living people doesn't quite sit well within it. So I created the Old Lands to let me run modules, pre-written adventures, megadungeons, etc., and to recycle the best ideas from Moragne, Emern and the Wolf Sea into one setting. It's an early-modern setting with weird and dark fantasy elements. Expect to see it pop up from time to time, but probably as actual play reports. I'm hoping to start a campaign set in it sometime in February and run it for at least the first half of 2017 (hopefully longer).

Science Fiction:

The Tellian Sector (Stars Without Number) - My 40K / Stars Without Number mash-up is effectively dead. I haven't worked on it in years (though I still get a few hits a day of people looking it up). I worked on it originally because I really disliked the original Dark Heresy rules, and when I looked at 2nd edition, I liked them even less. I think I've also had my fill of fantasy translated to space settings, and want to run some (slightly) harder science fiction. If anyone wants to finish this, the only things it really needs to be a complete conversion are a weapon and gear write-up, and a consistent way of converting Spike Phases and their effects into Void Shields (plus, I guess, Space Marine rules if one must).

Unnamed Transhumanist Post-Apocalyptic Star Trek Thing (Openquest - River of Heaven? / Stars Without Number?) - I've been reading Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space books, Peter Watts' Blindsight stuff, Transhumanity's Fate (the FATE conversion for Eclipse Phase), Feersum Endjinn and a bunch of other semi-hard transhuman sci-fi stuff of that ilk. I've been having an itch to run a science fiction game for some time that would focus on a small group of post-human post-scarcity explorers sent out to recover and enrich the beliefs and ideas of the devastated star systems around them. That sounds boring, but the idea would be to delve into ancient space hulks to recover encrypted data libraries with the cultural production of entire clusters, to encourage and assist the masses of crapsack worlds to overthrow their feudal masters by smuggling them cornucopia machines through cyberpunk hijinks, and beat back interstellar imperialism through cool space battles. I'm still thinking this one through, and it'll probably be 2018 before it's ready to go.

The Dawnlands are Back / Dooms

I'm going to be converting the Dawnlands over to Runequest 6 from Openquest. My plan is to run a third complete (fourth total) campaign set in the Dawnlands sometime in the next year or so. I've been playing in Lawrence Whitaker's Mythic Britain campaign now for a little over a year and Legend / RQ6 has always been one of my favourite systems, with only the challenge of teaching it to new players holding me back from doing more with it. Here's a bit about cursing the people who killed you using the passion system from Runequest 6.

Dooms

Anyone with a passion rated higher than 100% may, upon dying, choose to utter a doom - a curse or prophecy on or about the subject of their passion. The doom must be made in the round the person expires, and must consist of a few short sentences, with a total length in words of 10% of the passion's rating (so a 100% passion allows 10 or fewer words). The character must be able to speak aloud.

Upon making the doom, the character checks against their passion. On a critical failure, the doom is realised only as a cruel joke of fate on the curse-giver. On a failure, the doom has no effect. On a success, the doom takes effect until the next dusk or dawn, whichever comes first. On a critical success, the doom becomes permanent until the character's body is buried or cremated with suitable ceremonial pomp to appease their spirit (requiring either Customs or Exhort), or a shrine, idol, totem or other marker is erected to honour them (such a marker must be Consecrated as per the spell by a priest of the same religion as the character). Dooms come into effect immediately.

Dooms make all skill rolls directly related to avoiding them one step harder, while all skill rolls directly related to bringing them to fruition are made one step easier. If the dooming character includes an end-condition to the curse, all skill rolls are either two steps harder or easier, as appropriate. Characters are not automatically aware of dooms.

e.g. Torun Half-Nose is stabbed to death by Hafek the Unwise. As he gargles out his last breath, he curses "My children will avenge me!", rolls his passion [Love (Children) 115%)] and gets a critical success. Torun's children will then find all skill rolls related to avenging their father to be one step easier, while Hafek finds any rolls to resist them will be one step harder.

e.g. Bjan the Wolf-Eater returns from campaigning to find a Kaddish warband (the Locusts) has destroyed his kraal, slain his family and friends, and plundered his village. He commits ritual suicide out of shame, cursing the destroyers of his line "Kaddish will bleed until the mountains are ground to dust" and rolls his Hate (Kaddish) 130% passion. Bjan critically fumbles, and so a Kaddish herbalist investigating the healing properties of a rare clay in the northern mountains suddenly finds it makes the perfect addition to bandages to encourage clotting (or at least her Lore roll to identify this property is two steps easier).

Some Extant Dooms in the Dawnlands

"The Kaddish will never know peace" - made by the (now) Lich-King of Dlak upon his death during the destruction of Dlak (Affects all rolls to directly drag the Orthocracy into a war, or to start a riot in Kaddish)

"I will be slain three times, and three times resurrected" - Tegon, the Maimed Lord, vampire near-god (Directly affects all rolls to ritually resurrect him or to prevent this from happening)

"My children will feast on the graves of the optimates" - Mainos, halfling Broken Chain martyr (Affects all rolls to prevent revolutionary sentiment from growing amongst the Dwer helots and slaves)