Session Report: Cosmic Wound 2

Players

  • Ald Sunhelm, thief and cooper
  • Dravein, traveling outlander
  • Glühbirne, mercenary strong-man
  • Maeric Fairwind, itinerant folk mage
  • Osric, the holy initiate of the Order of the Luminarch

Events

  • The adventurers continued through the forest to discover the small village of Gothi.
  • They witnessed dozens of villagers going about their day-to-day
  • In the center of town, a ceremony was being conducted, where a large ash pole, topped by a mirrored crest of two wolves was being pivoted and paused between the cardinal directions.
  • They entered into the village, and convinced the peasants to take them to the village elder, a yellow-eyed wiseman known as Gaedra.
  • Parleying with the priest, they learned that their liege’s family had made a pact with pagan wolf spirits, offering a sacrifice of live young, to be raised by the wolves.
  • Since Thane Oswyn was remiss in his side of the bargain, the village has taken village children by force, citing blasphemy to those that resist.
  • The characters decided to make their way out of the village before any trouble could begin.
  • Returning to Oswyn, the Thane decides to call for the strong folk of his domain, and conduct a ceremony under the watch of his wisewoman, Beoth.
  • Maeric and Ald take part in the ceremony, making boasts of harming the wolf spirit patrons of the village of Gothi.
  • The others follow the words of the Thane’s priest, citing it to be tempting fate and taking power from demonic forces. They have the priest bless their weapons in the morning.
  • Six men-at-arms join the party, although they suffer a hangover by drinking too deeply at the ceremony.
  • Venturing back into the woods, the party tracks towards the den of these primordial wolves, and stumble upon a Gothi villager posing as a woodsman.
  • After seeing through this villain’s ruse, the party jumps him before he is able to alert the village, bound him and toss him in a cart.
  • The troupe discovers a cave being guarded by four brawny looking villagers, and they can see faint light within the cave, and the scent of incense from Gaedra’s hut.
  • Attempting to draw these guards out, Dravein shoots at them, but when the struck guard immediately fells, the remaining guards retreat into the cave.
  • Glühbirne charges the guards, and the party, along with their henchmen enter into melee within the mouth of the cavern.
  • As their adversaries, and the hung-over men-at-arms being to fall, a disembodied voice emanates from deep within the cave, and the fallen warriors begin to arise as the hungry undead.
  • Combat continues to unfold, and once the revenant’s numbers are thinned, Gaedra appears, seeking a parley.
  • We end the session there.

After Thoughts

A fun session. We had a bit of back and forth, and I think I was able to introduce to the players more of the folklore-ish tone of the setting. As always, the players either saw through traps ands conflicts, or were able to figure out ways to leverage the odds, which is always a fun experience for a referee, in my opinion.

Session Report: Cosmic Wound Session 0 + more

I recently pivoted my almost-two-year OD&D open table to two different open table campaigns, this one, a sort of eldritch, dark fantasy game inspired by stuff like Averoigne, Berserk, We Are All Legends, Lovecraft, and plenty more, titled “Chronicle of the Cosmic Wound,” and a campaign of Gradient Descent. Eventually I’ll write a retrospective on the OD&D game, but for now I’ll go over Cosmic Wound’s session zero, and the hour or two we got to play before our time limit was reached.

I pitched Cosmic Wound as a dark fantasy setting I’ve been working on for some time, although “lower” magic than the OD&D game we had been playing, with a higher emphasis on stuff like Hammer Horror and some Cosmic Horror stuff. To serve this premise, as well as to hopefully address some of the open table issues I was having, I decided to turn the BRP nob on my home system WAY up, using effectively a homebrewed version of OpenQuest 3e, plus some Dark Ages Cthulhu and Mythras material in it.

My players had all voted for this game via a pitch doc where I outlined the CATS of the game – so they were at least familiar with the pitch. Here is the text of that pitch content:

continue reading

The Myth of Free Improvisation

One of the many problems referees encounter is the notion of how much they should prepare for a given session or campaign. Roleplaying games are very open-ended, which can often impose the feeling of a lack of structure when it comes to scenarios, and unfortunately most RPG texts don’t do a great job at providing new referees with tools or procedures to conduct play of any length greater than a combat or a “scene.”

Often this leads to over-preparation – worried that something will happen that will be unaccounted for, the referee tries to come up with absolutely every situation that could occur in game, and after learning that this is impossible, instead leans on techniques that reduce player agency. If the possibility space of what can happen is limited to only what is accounted for, then the referee is covered, right?

This is probably not new to anyone reading my blog, we’ve all (hopefully) progressed past the 90s and early 00s style of illusion of freedom style games, but there are always new referees joining the hobby.

Unfortunately the advice they’re often given is flippant, and the absolute reverse of “prep everything” – instead they are told to “prep nothing.” You especially see this in indie and DIY scenes where this kind of play can be popular. And I think there is a place for completely improved sessions, just as I think there is a place for consensual railroads – they’re just different styles. But I think advising new referees to “just wing it” is just as problematic as telling them they have to account for every possibility.

Improv Isn’t Easy

To just tell someone to improvise several hours of NPCs, locations, items, quests, challenges, combat encounters, is a massive endeavor. Especially if they have yet to really learn what makes any of those, or other game elements, “work” in a fictional world.

This is also pretty dismissive of how much of a skill improvisation is. There’s a reason why improv performers have to try out for places in a troupe. Whole businesses are built around the concept of teaching the skill. Even within roleplaying games, it has become very in-vogue to host workshops adapting improv for tabletop gaming, and Karen Twelves has written a book on the subject.

It’s not a skill that can just be formed spontaneously, especially in a hobby notable for its inclusion of less socially adept people (myself included).

Spontaneity Fatigue

Spontaneity, while exciting, can be mentally exhausting, particularly for those who thrive on structure and planning. Constantly needing to generate material on the fly can lead to burnout, I find this to be especially true in situations that continually ask the GM for “mixed results” – needing to always tell a player “you kinda get what you want, but you also kinda don’t,” when the statistical chance is going to be a repeat of this result when they try to find an alternative path.

Additionally, the necessity to come up with ideas quickly often results in the referee falling back on their most familiar tropes and clichés. The first idea that comes to mind isn’t always the best, and without the time to refine and develop these concepts, the situation can become predictable and less engaging. I know when I get tired, needing to spontaneously formulate big pieces of a situation can lead to a reliance on well-worn paths and typical responses rather than fresh ideas.

Balancing Improv & Prep

The best way I have found to feel comfortable for a scenario is to balance improvisation and preparation. This advice will be familiar to anyone who has read anything by Kevin Crawford or the Alexandrian. Prep while you’re having fun, or feel that what you are preparing could be useful, while keeping in mind that players may attempt anything sensible. Formulate tools and procedures to help guide you and your table when uncertainty comes up. Make plans for what may happen, but leave a lot of open areas for weird player hijinks to flourish, and for novel characters and situations to flourish unexpectedly.

Status Update & Adventure

I hope the summer finds you all well – I have been hard at work juggling a number of various tasks so I thought I would provide a bit of an update here just to keep the blog feed rolling.

A few months ago I was unfortunately laid off in one of the many mass layoffs in the gaming industry. Fortunately I had been a part of the company for time, and I received a good severance package. None the less, if you need someone with almost two decades of engineering, development, and design experience feel free to reach out.

One of the many projects I have been alternating between is an adventure titled A Blight Upon Sombreval. It’s a fantasy medieval investigation scenario, very much in my style of gaming and preferences – inspired by all kinds of 70s and 80s horror flicks, low magic fantasy, a rough take on “medieval” fantasy, etc.

This is an adventure I ran years ago, and decided to dust it off again for some friends. I got great feedback and encouragement to put it out somewhere, so I decided to work on it in a slightly more “professional” capacity. Mostly acquire art for it, playtest some variations on subject matter, figure out how to lay out something besides two-column text.

I decided to throw together another site for my adventure “publishing” stuff, as I have a little bit more time to focus on that stuff, and I thought it might be fun to put out more adventures and tools that I myself wish for. I hope you don’t mind the shilling, so I’ll just put a link to the site here and keep any publishing endeavors separate from my “free” stuff.

Cryptic Codex

reCalled From Action: Primeval Edition

Recently Sahh and a few other folks put together a blog bandwagon topic called reCalled From Action where bloggers describe a fight scene from a source of media, and try to frame it as if it were an at-the-table play session.

There have been several posts for this challenge so far, including Sahh’s, Havoc’s, diregrizzlybear’s, and Mr. Mann’s. I’ll try to remember to update this with additional entries that I hear of, but I make no promises, so apologies to anyone I have missed.

I will be using the fight from Berserk that inspired the challenge, the fight between Harvey Berkman Guts and Lord Zondark. For rulestext, I’ll use Primeval 2d6 for the resolution mechanism. I will also be posting images and describing the scene from the comic, which has hefty violence and gore, so feel free to skip this post if that is an issue.

The Battle Begins

Towards an Interaction Model

I have been chatting with several people about my last post, MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games. In particular, Sam Sorensen posted his thoughts on the framework—suffice to say, he is not a fan and does not feel the model applies to tabletop games and, in many cases, not even video games.

I appreciate the discussion I’ve had on this subject – and I’m a big fan of Sam’s and find many kindred points in his post, especially in his New Simulationism pamphlet, which purports a play perspective very close to my own and many of us flag-waving in the FKR (although I am a fan of dropping pretty much all terminology that got associated with the Forge, of course “Simulationism” predates that place, so it is very much ingrained into the hobby and I need to get over myself about that).

Speaking of FKR, a big reason I’ve been gung-ho about that gaming culture and why I even posted about MDA was that I am specifically interested in discussing how interactions elicit different emotional responses among people. The interaction of coordinating play tests in video games that held MDA (at least lightly) reminded me of how I view referees and players iterating over the techniques they use at the table.

This is not meant to be dismissive, but in many of these conversations, I almost feel like we sometimes get stuck in the whole “self-reference” Russel Paradox of set theory. The details of this paradox aren’t super important to this discussion, but suffice it to say that it is easily circumvented through axiomizing the details. If we have a problem of “who shaves the barber!?” given the condition that “the barber shaves all men who don’t shave themselves,” – create a new theory where you add an exception to this, and see if anything breaks down.

Coincidentally, when working in research and development for video games, I often dove into this kind of discussions quite a lot. I would cite something for potential reference, usually an experimental game or toy, and the first response I would receive would be, ” But is it a game?” To which I’d shrug and say, ” Whether it is or not, by whatever definition you have, I still wanna look at it for potential influence.” Determining what is a game can be enlightening, fun, whatever – it’s just not something that currently interests me.

I honestly couldn’t care less about “defending” MDA from a strict “does everything in this paper line up with what we now know” standpoint. I think it was born out of a very specific context, and while it was doing a lot of trailblazing, I do not think every statement contained within was ironclad. I am more interested in looking at my personal experiences with the model and asking, “Can I extrapolate/adapt this to make running games more fun for me and my players?” Maybe yes, maybe no.

Defining an MDA-like

So, given what I said about definitional arguments, let me post how I see an MDA-like (or MDA– or MDA++ or pMDA or however you wanna phrase it – I care absolutely nothing if people see this as an extension/adaptation of a theory or something else) working for tabletop adventure games.

Note the emphasis on adventure games, if whether or not this is applicable to story games or solo games or lyrical games, or anything else is not my current concern. This is not to disparage these games, they’re just not in scope of what I am thinking about.

Also note that in game studies, there is generally no consensus on what things like a “game” or “rule” is, so I am not proposing these are universally definitional, rather just short hand for the following ideas when talking in this context.

So an Adventure Game is outlined by Retired Adventurer in this post.

The word Game in this model refers to an instance of play. Sometimes we’ll use “game” as shorthand to refer to the idea of, general assumed rules and procedures, and culture of a particular adventure game title (eg. the “game” of Dungeons & Dragons), but really all that matters is what is living at the table (and to a lesser degree, how it is discussed/remembered in retrospect).

To me, every player and referee in an adventure game is a Designer. I don’t think there’s any special privilege to anyone who has produced a rulestext. Every game being a social interaction obviously changes dependent on who is involved – each game is designed by the participants, even if this “design” is just how they make rulings out of pre-existing rules, or if they’re coming up with their own defined rules (or many more cases).

Mechanics are all the rules, procedures, ludemes, fictional facts, etc. as they exist – on paper, or in peoples’ heads, or anywhere else. I know Sam wanted to distinguish mechanics as mechanisms as “instrument of play,” but I think we all kind of know that is not how roleplayers refer to mechanics, and honestly fit with the definition as I learned it in my game design courses (as well as many books on the subject). Things like “Roll a d20 and add your to-hit bonus, compare to your opponent’s armour class, and if you meet or succeed you hit” is an example of this. Also “falling into lava kills you,” as well as “the referee describes the world – ask questions to clarify then declare intent.” Basically its the idea of how anything gets resolved in game.

Dynamics are the actual reified moments of play where humans interact with each other and the Mechanics. So “rolling to hit” as outlined above is not a Dynamic, but when Joanna says what she’s doing, the referee asks her to roll to hit, and then she does is a Dynamic.

The way we perceive these Dynamics produce emotional responses, which are fine to call Aesthetics. I copied the original eight kinds of fun in my previous post – I certainly don’t think they are exhaustive, and I think when applied to tabletop there’s quite a few interesting bits of overlap and places we split some “types” of fun, and call out particularly interesting, recurrent unions between multiple types.

Note that Mechanics and Dynamics are definitely infinite, and they are mutable, within the same Game, sometimes even moment to moment. In one instance you may decide to use a traditional D&D to-hit roll in combat. In the following instance you may decide that in the current world context, or even social context (eg. its getting late let’s wrap this up we can imagine how its going to go) and elide this roll or use an entirely different mechanic. Sometimes you use rules to “zoom in” and de-abstract procedures, other times you “zoom out” and do the reverse.

I don’t think this breaks the model by any regard – each of these instances are themselves dynamics, and they’ll produce various aesthetics among the players. How, and more importantly – why they do is worth looking at. Of course dynamics and aesthetics are fractal – one emotional response accumulates and attenuates a large emotional response of the session which does for the campaign (if playing in one) which then expands out to multiple campaigns with a play group, etc. I think these are all worth investigating among a group, as they continue to drive towards experiences they want to share together.

So the above may be small fry, and for anyone looking for deeper more philosophical theory, this will either be disappointing I have spent so many words on, or seem like nothing at all. Which is fine, I’m not trying to make any real philosophical statements or not.

Why I bring up MDA is because I want to start talking about specific interactions at the table and the responses they bring up. The “Dynamics” and the “Aesthetics” terms are suitable language to use as short-hand here.

Anyway, this was a messy, long post, but I thank anyone who read through it. Let me know what you think, especially if it includes how we can better talk about the actual, in-play interactions.

MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games

I’ve been thinking more about the MDA Framework and how it can apply to tabletop adventure games. This is a framework related to video game design, and while it has received some criticisms and unanswered questions, it has pretty much stood the test of time in that field.

I’ll do my best to briefly summarize the framework, but it is a pretty easy paper to read, and I’d highly recommend it.

The framework posits that games are artifacts1, created by the designer, and consumed by the player. Games get broken down into kind of three components, or lenses – Rules, Systems, and “Fun.” Note the quotes on that last term, as the framework distinguishes that there are different kinds of fun for different kinds of people, so the term is only used loosely.

It’s also worth noting that Rules and Systems are distinct here. Often in tabletop games, we use the two interchangeably, or often indicating that a System is the sum of its rules, but “System” in MDA is much closer to the Baker-Care Principle: it’s how things are “resolved”, the kind of emergence of play.

Each of these three lenses has a counterpart that is more formally described by the framework – for Rules it is “Mechanics.” This is very close to the terms we use in tabletop games. These would be the mechanisms and (many) procedures as outlined in the rules texts – rolling a d20 and adding a modifier to see if AC is breached to score a hit is an example of a Mechanic.

For Systems, the corollary is “Dynamics.” Dynamics are the emergent gameplay features that arise out of the players’ interactions with mechanics. This includes such things as pacing, notions of challenge, degrees of autonomy and agency, etc. An example of this would be how the players decide to interact with D&D’s various “clocks” in the dungeon crawling procedures – the wandering monsters, choices related to resources, deciding if making a loud noise to bash through a door is worth the time saved by picking the locks or going around, etc.

And last, and most certainly not least, the equivalent to “Fun” in the model is “Aesthetics.” The Aesthetic lens pulls the conversation away from more ambiguous declarations of “gameplay” and, coincidentally, “fun,” and more so onto components found within a game that may be of interest to the table. These are the desired emotional responses to the game, as well as the priorities sought out by players (consciously or unconsciously).

In the paper, there are eight kinds of Aesthetics outlined, although they mention that this is not intended to be exhaustive. These types include:

  • Sensation: the notion of sense-pleasure. This ranges from responses to the quality of the art around a game, the tone of the writing, the feel of rolling specific dice, the look of a character sheet, and quite a bit more. I also think this heavily revolves around some of the place-and-space related to gaming, how cozy a table may be, the association of snacks and drinks with a game, and more.
  • Fantasy: this is not just “fantasy” as a genre, but rather the imagining of another world, another life. This is the appeal of “What would it be like to be in Star Wars,” or diving deep into picturing what it would be like to be your favorite fictional character (or their serials-removed equivalent).
  • Narrative: this is closer to what we would call “story,” a forever contentious term in this area of the hobby. In video games, this would be judging the plot of the game as a compelling (to you) tale or not. In our hobby, this would be more the tales one tells of the game – the transcript of events, and the high and low moments your table remembers. This could also cover notions of “plot” in terms of railroaded or participationist games, but I’m not an expert on that subject.
  • Challenge: our classic “mastery” aesthetic – the notion of rising to and overcoming obstacles (or not). Of course, challenge is always a little wiggly in tabletop games because there are probably as many “types” of challenge as there are referees or players (for example, combat-as-war and combat-as-sport are two classic examples of different expectations around challenge), but this is mostly the joy of being presented with something to overcome, and using one’s abilities to do so.
  • Fellowship: the joy in games as a social activity. Seeing your friends, making people smile (or gasp, or frown, or whatever your goal may be), showing acknowledgment to each others’ ideas and creations, fellowship is in many ways one of the defining aesthetics of tabletop roleplaying games.
  • Discovery: finding out new things, going to uncharted locations, unearthing the DEEP LORE, as well as being there for extremely novel outcomes of such things as random generation and emergent procedures. Like Challenge, Discovery has many forms, particularly in our sub-niche of adventure games.
  • Expression: game as a means of communicating one’s self. Creating characters to highlight some aspect of your personality, aligning oneself with games and scenes that exhibit personal qualities akin to your own. Choosing a style of play that aligns with one’s interest and expressing that in-game to the other people around the table, either mechanically or descriptively.
  • Submission: the fun of submitting to the notion of “the game” as a part of one’s life. The idea of setting aside time for “game night,” the lifestyle stuff, cons, the juggling of other aspects to be a tabletop adventure gamer and show up for your game.

These Aesthetics are usually described as being associated with, or served by, specific games, but with many tabletop adventure games, so much is left to the table, that many games can be melded to fit their tables’ aesthetic interests.

So the interaction of Mechanics with player “input” creates the Dynamics, and the Dynamics serve to create or reinforce the Aesthetics. Old-school, low-level D&D games often get cited as deadly(ish) games of resource handling with a tension similar to roguelikes. So these Aesthetics come directly out of the limitations on choices players make and the often dire repercussions that occur when a player opts to move much slower to carry a bunch of treasure or lose the AC bonus from a shield to ensure that they are the one holding the torch.

Now, how does this framework apply to tabletop adventure games? Well, I think the overall model fits very well. Some of the Aesthetics are framed in terms of video games, but I think I did a decent job of explaining how they fit adventure gaming. Similarly, in video games, we describe the Designer as “creating” the game in MDA order, whereas players experience the game in ADM order. I think this is largely true of tabletop games – you’ll often pitch a game by saying “You’re all the holders to secret pieces of information that could free a world ruled over by a dark lord who has suppressed that learning, and you can do magic!” But it is also not uncommon for gamers to eventually seek out games from a more Mechanical or Dynamic perspective. Not that I think this invalidates the theory, it is just something to think about.

Are these eight kinds of fun sufficient to describe most tabletop games? I think I already noted that I see some tension in a few of the classes – for example, the Fantasy of imagining crop rotation in Harn is a different kind of Fantasy when picturing awesome powers with whatever 5e subclass you are drawn to. There’s kind of that “immersion” vs. “world authenticity” vs. “OC” aspect to that, which has distinct parallels with the Expression aesthetic. Expression varies in terms of types of immersion, stances, character voicing and description methods, etc. In Narrative, we have the classic “railroad” (or “story before”) vs. the story now/after crowd.

We may have different aesthetics with tabletop adventure games, or perhaps my perspective is just one of a “splitter” rather than a “grouper.”

Finally, what use is all of this? Well, I think it’s useful to always think about your own (and your tables’) preferences, and realize that while the Dynamics may not necessarily force any one specific set of Aesthetics, they may do something along the lines of broadcasting likely subjects.

I think the framework is useful for thinking of kinds of fun as springing out of the interactions with the Dynamics and how they are perceived, rather than assuming that given X rule one will get Y result (having a to-hit and hp system does not, on its own, produce Challenge fun).

This all mostly gels with how I think about tabletop refereeing (because I think refereeing and playing is game design, as much as writing a rules text). Rather than thinking of what rules to add, I often think about what interactions can get us to where we want to go. It’s only when we decide that an interaction is procedural enough, needs to be abstracted, etc. does it need to become a “rule.”

Thank you for reading. That’s just something that’s been on my mind lately. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

  1. Note that I don’t personally agree with this, particularly for RPGs – rules texts are artifacts, and games to me are reified instances of play, living only at the table, created by everyone involved. I do not think this breaks the intention behind this model which may be a later blogpost. ↩︎

Ye Olde Fantasy: Family Matters

Here is a series of tables to generate an immediate family for your player character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. This assumes you are using Ye Olde Fantasy: Social Status, but if not, replace any social modifier roll with a character’s Charisma modifier or any equivalent the table deems appropriate.

Parentage

Roll a d20 on the following table(s) to determine the character’s parentage status.

d20Parentage
1-10Both parents raised the character.
11-14One parent is missing. Roll on the Cause of Absence table. Also, roll on the Single Parent table.
15-17One parent is dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table. Also, roll on the Single Parents table.
18-19Both parents are dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table, optionally twice. Also, roll on the No Parents table.
20Roll on the Unusual Circumstance table.

Cause of Death

Roll on this when you need to determine a cause of death for a family member.

d20Cause of Death
1Heart attack or other heart disease
2Common illness, such as the flu
3Infection
4Work-related accident
5Battle-related wounds (either by participating in combat, or being mugged)
6Starvation
7Weather
8Plague or uncommon disease
9Drowning
10Poison, such as accidental ingestion or contact
11Fire
12Fall from heights
13Domestic accident or manslaughter
14Childbirth (reroll if not appropriate)
15Execution
16Animal-related, domesticated, or wild
17Alcohol poisoning
18Suicide
19Murder, most likely by a rival
20Roll on the Unusual Cause of Death Table
d20Unusual Cause of Death
1Blasted by magic
2Teleported to the underworld
3Cursed by a witch or warlock
4Magical or rare beast attack
5Sacrificed to a Chaos cult
6Fell into a magical rift
7Transformed into a frog, eaten by a dog
8Killed by spirits
9Mistook a Mimic for an ordinary item
10Turned to stone, shattered
11Died from Potion Overdose
12Fell into the sky
13Murdered by humanoid monsters
14Contracted lycanthropy, executed by monster hunters
15Suffered magical backlash from a nearby Wizard’s failed spell
16Absorbed by a magical artifact, such as a mirror or soul-eating sword
17Drained by a vampire
18Spontaneously combusted
19Aged in reverse until ceasing to exist
20Dropped dead for no apparent reason

Cause of Absence

Roll on the following table to learn why a character’s family member was absent.

d12Cause of Absence
1Unknown, just went missing
2Affair related departure
3Imprisoned
4Seeking a cure for a disease
5On a long religious pilgrimage
6Exploring unknown lands
7Disappeared during a natural disaster, such as a flood
8Seeking a cure to a disease
9Exiled for political reasons
10Banished for religious reasons
11Joined a religious order
12Roll on the Unusual Absence Table
d12Unusual Cause of Absence
1Lost in the Realm of Fairies
2Kidnapped by humanoid monsters
3Enthralled by a vampire
4Abducted by a flying monster, such as a dragon or griffin
5Joined a Chaos cult
6Sucked into the amulet of a warlock or witch
7Fell into an enchanted, unending slumber
8Caught in a time loop, continually relives the same period over and over but unable to break out of it
9Attained some form of religious enlightenment, taken fully formed into the heavens
10Spirit separated from the body, either through magic or permanent astral projection
11Turned to stone
12Transformed into a toad

Single Parent

Roll on the following table to determine if your parent remarried:

d20 + SOCParent Remarriage
1-12Parent did not remarry
13-20Parent remarried

If the parent remarried, treat the character’s background as if both parents had raised them.

If they did not remarry, roll on the following Single Parent table:

d20Single Parent
SOC <= 0

SOC = +1

SOC = +2

SOC = +3
1-5Raised by parentRaised by parentRaised by parentRaised by parent
6-8Fostered by a family member or neighborFostered by another family memberFostered by another family memberRaised by parent
9-11Adopted by another peasant familyAdopted by another familyFostered by a guild memberFostered by another notable family
12-14Adopted by a religious institute, such as a monasteryFostered by a guild memberFostered in a religious institutionFostered by a high-ranking clergy member
15-17Adopted by a social institute, such as an orphanageFostered by a village or town officialFostered by an academic or notable village/town officialFostered by an important town official or notable academic
18-20Fended for self as an abandoned urchinFostered by a religious institute, such as a monasteryFostered as a page or squire with a bachelor knightFostered as a page or squire with an honorable knight

Note that fostered children are highly likely to know their birth parents, while adopted children are unlikely to.

No Living Parents

Roll on the following No Parents table to determine the status of your character’s upbringing:


d20
No Parents
SOC <= 0

SOC = +1

SOC = +2

SOC = +3
1-5Adopted by another familyAdopted by another familyAdopted by another familyAdopted by another family
6-8Adopted by an orphanageAdopted by a guild member Adopted by an important guild memberAdopted by another family
9-11Adopted by a monasteryAdopted by an honorable knightAdopted by a notable monasteryAdopted by a prestigious religious institute
12-14Adopted by a traveling group, such as roaming actorsAdopted by a merchantAdopted by an academicAdopted by an important scholar
15-17Communally raised in a communityAdopted by a village or town officialAdopted by a notable village or town officialAdopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry
18-20Fended for self as an abandoned urchinAdopted by a low ranking member of the gentryAdopted by a low-ranking member of the gentryAdopted by an important town official

Unusual Circumstances

Roll on the following table to determine your character’s particularly notable upbringing. Many of these get pretty fantastical, so feel free to restrict it to just the first six or so if you are playing a more grounded campaign or don’t want the PCs starting with more fantastical upbringings.

d20Unusual Upbringing
1Bastard of a higher-ranking noble
2Bastard of a notable religious figure
3Adopted by the community’s wise person
4Raised in a religious cult’s commune
5Raised by wild animals
6Adopted by a wandering adventurer
7Adopted by a wizard
8Magically aged to an adult
9Wandered into a haunted location, raised by ghosts or spirits
10Immaculately conceived
11Was a spirit or fae-being who was condemned to live as a mortal
12Descendent of divine or spiritual lineage
13Sired by a human and a demon
14Transported from another reality, likely ours
15Crawled out of a shallow grave with no memory
16Born with an ominous birthmark, such as a religious symbol or a daemon’s sigil
17Born under an astrological anomaly.
18Willed into being out of someone’s dream
19Was a monster, polymorphed into mortal form
20Sprung out of a natural disaster, such as a fire, floor, or comet strike.

For the above, you may have to reroll on the Parentage table to determine conditions beyond the unusual circumstances or ask your Referee to work with you on the details.

Siblings

Roll d6 + SOC modifier to determine the number of siblings the player character may have lived with. To determine the character’s sibling rank, roll a die equal to or greater than the number of siblings plus one, rerolling any results greater than the total number of children.

The character has a SOC modifier of +0, so they roll a d6 and get 4. Since the total number of children is 5, the player rolls a d6 to determine where they fall in the birth order, rerolling if they get a 6.

To determine how many siblings survived until the current game, roll a d20 per sibling on the following table, adding in SOC modifier unless a natural 1 is rolled.

d20Sibling life status
1-4Dies in childbirth
5-6Dies within three years of being born.
7-8Dies within the second year after birth.
9-10Dies within three years of being birth.
11+Survives, hurrah!

Relationships

You will likely want to establish relationships with your parents and siblings. Using your game’s notion of Reaction Rolls works fantastic for this. In the future, I will post my rip-off take on Pendragon and BRP’s Personality Traits for running Crusader Kings-esque reactions, but in the meantime, 2d6 + CHA mod, higher is more favorable works.

Ye Olde Fantasy © 2024 by Justin Hamilton is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0