Opportunities & Complications

 

As mentioned in my latest video, I'm trying out this new "narrative die" game mechanic in our upcoming session (Cha'alt 3.12).  

Well, it's new to me.  Apparently, this has been around for a long time and is used by several RPGs already.

Basically, you roll a d6 along with your d20.  If the d6 results in a 1, there's a complication.  If it's a 6, there's an opportunity.  And the d20 decides if you (crit) succeed or (crit) fail, as usual.

As the GM, I'll be rolling this narrative die, as well, for monsters, NPCs, and whatever else.

After this trial session, the opportunity / complication d6 - I need to come up with a catchy name for it; ironically, "narrative die" doesn't really tell any kind of a story - will become optional for whoever wants to continue the practice.  I'll probably award a bonus Divine Favor for those who keep up with it each session, to mitigate the potential downside the game mechanic yields.

In preparation, I thought it would be handy to come up with a few default suggestions for both opportunities and complications.  Obviously, these things are situational and depend on the condition, context, and present circumstances.  But in the moment, it's also nice to have a go-to narrative detail.

Opportunity

• Some sort of feat, mighty deed, or stunt is possible.
• An additional 6 points of damage during an attack.
• If the attack was unsuccessful, a mere 6 points of damage is done via glancing blow or skin-deep cut.
• You have a moment of clarity, and are able to see things for what they really are.
• You notice your opponent is standing under a precarious stalactite. 
• If already successful, the attack becomes a crit.
• You get an attack of opportunity.
• If a saving throw is required, it's rolled with Advantage for you or Disadvantage for your opponent.
• Advantage on your next action.
• A PC or NPC is able to provide support, help, or aid.
• A weakness, flaw, tell, or new understanding appears.
• "A plan comes together" - if the PCs have a plan in place, the necessary missing piece of the puzzle suddenly falls into place.
• A resource renews or becomes available for the first time.
• Massive hit knocks opponent unconscious.
• If it's a weaker opponent, the attack outright kills them.
• PC's ferocity makes one or more opponents run away.
• You make it look easy.
• Someone watching becomes enamored of you.
• Your grace, skill, or ridicule unsteadies an opponent, giving them Disadvantage.
• You happen to be at a ley-line crossroads that rejuvenate, heal, or strengthen magic.
• Opponent's weapon, device, instrument, or whatever breaks, runs out of ammo, juice, charges, etc.
• There's a substantial crystal within view.
• They planned to spring a trap, but you either saw right through it or it failed.
• The Gods smile on you once again... that Orion whore you laid with did not have space herpes.
• Your belt is slashed and your pants fall down - red heart underwear activated!

Complication

• Reinforcements enter the fray.
• An ally runs away.
• If a saving throw is required, it's rolled at a Disadvantage to you or Advantage to your opponent.
• Your fazed by the sheer strength of their attack and get Disadvantage on your next action.
• You drop something.
• You have an allergic reaction to something nearby.
• You suddenly realize this isn't your enemy's final form.
• The enemy gets an attack of opportunity on you.
• One of your companions pulls a "wild card" on your group.
• Ammo, energy, fuel, juice, magic, or mojo runs out.
• Your war-scream has lured a wandering monster into environment.
• Just before dealing the killing-blow, your opponent uses his "one time," get out of jail free card, ring of teleportation, cloak of invisibility, or Predator camouflage armor to slip away and fight another day.
• Your opponent is immune to that form of attack, or has learned how to counter it, or adapted in order to make such attacks ineffective.
• Your mind plays tricks, you have a moment of confusion, or you're just getting old.
• An environmental hazard like a Cha'alt-quake, volcanic eruption, cave-in, or poisonous gas happens.
• Your opponent somehow knows something about you, an important detail that could lead to your undoing.
• Your bad back, knee, hip, elbow, or fractured tibula is flaring up again.  You're gonna need to sit out for a few minutes.
• You happen to be your opponent's favored enemy - they get Advantage when attacking you.
• The thing you need to protect is (almost) destroyed.
• A random NPC appears through a portal and smacks you across the face with a fish.  You're dazed for one round.
• Your weapon, device, or whatever you're carrying vibrates, ricochets, recoils, spits, chirps, reverbs, glistens, pulses, explodes, echoes, thrums, or belches fire and it somehow negatively impacts you.
• Whoops, that blade is poisoned... make your save or nighty-night.
• A trap was laid for you, and now it has sprung. 
• That three-breasted hooker has a dead-eye pimp who walks around with a thermal detonator.

____________

So, yeah... those are just some things that occurred to me as I sat down to type this blog post out.  I tried to come up with both in-combat and out-of-combat ideas.

You can use Divine Favor or say the phrase "By His loathsome tentacles" to reroll or bump your d6 narrative die, respectively.  Speaking of "By His loathsome tentacle," I'll allow players to shout "Cha'alt!" instead, if they'd rather say that in order to get a +1 on a die result.

If your a Daggerheart or Genesys RPG player and get some use out of this, remember to support small-time, independent content creators.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July (Sandy Petersen will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor).  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!

Cult Classic Influence: Heathers

 

For a long while, I've been using this blog for either session reports or announcements... product releases, crowdfunding, conventions, culture war politics, etc.  Which means I've been slacking on the gaming content front.  

Well, I came up with something to boost my blogging output and heighten its appeal - while also giving me yet another reason (aside from introducing vintage media to my kids) to revisit such cult classics as Blade Runner, Zardoz, Flash Gordon, Revenge of the Nerds, and Highlander, to name but a few.  

As long as I'm enjoying all the foundational cult classics that have inspired me over the years (including Cha'alt and other products), why not dig deep, deriving (even more, in some cases) campaign setting bits and pieces to make the world come alive?  Not just lore that adds a hint of color, but something tangible, mechanical, or substantive that is directly inspired by what I just watched... something that makes a difference to the players, that the GM can use, not just describe.

My goal is to put out one of these each week (and some weeks I might blog a TV show write-up).  While that might not be realistic, I'm going to try and keep to that schedule.  I'll be on a family vacation next week, so that's already shot, but don't worry, I won't give up!  

Want to motivate me?  I love feedback - especially when folks tell me how they used it in-game.  Last night, I watched Heathers (again) with my oldest, and so without further ado...

Cult Classic Influence #1: Heathers

Anytime the PCs come into contact with (hearing about, setting foot inside, staying there for a little while, and perhaps exiting) a matriarchal society - like the city-state of Ja'alette or Chud-Letha'az, the gilded mauve dark-elf city - or any culture where women are at least equal to or above men, the GM is obliged to come up with a feminine scheme.

Generally speaking, this feminine scheme comes directly from the "Queen Bee" herself, but possibly her subordinates... and on the rarest of occasions, the female drones rebel against her royal highness, either toppling her jeweled crown or their failed attempt merely incites deadly retaliation - "Off with their heads!"

Most importantly, the feminine scheme must show strength, be cruel in nature, and include an aspect of humiliation and/or degradation.  

For example, the Golden Goddess forces her least productive handmaids to fully inhale the magenta lotus which temporarily turns them into "free-use" sluts who will do anything with anyone, anywhere.  As the masculine slaves ravage them, the Golden Goddess and her Priestesses watch from their ivory balconies.  

Now that we have the what, how could this be incorporated into one's game?  I have some ideas...

Maybe the PCs hear a rumor of what will eventually go down, what's already taken place, or happening right now... are the PCs participating?  Perhaps they see the results for themselves or a feminine scheme fugitive runs away, falling into the arms of the reluctant adventurers?  What if the PCs get swept up in the scheme, or one of their friends?  What if it doesn't directly affect the PCs at all, but it goes to show (rather than tell) how messed up their society really is?  How does this alter their relationship with their neighboring city, settlement, or realm?  If everyone's distracted, will they take the opportunity to attack?  Steal that coveted artifact?  Will this stunning and brave display of feminized degeneracy make them less likely to interfere in female-dominated politics?  Going an alternative route, is it possible that bend-over-backwards kindness results in suicidal empathy, leading to the downfall of their civilization?

__________

Ok, if you enjoyed that, let me know.  I probably won't blog again until after I get back from vacation, so comment down below if you want to make a suggestion.  And thanks for tuning-in, hoss!

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July (Sandy Petersen will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor).  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!

"The Somewhat Purple Bastards" - CHA'ALT 3.11

 

Yes, this is going to be another weird one... and it all takes place on purple-Cha'alt.

Botsterdomus' player couldn't make it because of work related issues, but we had a new player try our game out.  So, still the full compliment of 5.

  As I understand it, the last time our guest-player took part in D&D you had character classes like fighter, magic-user, elf, and dwarf.

He decided to play a dark-elf thief named Black Francis with lavender teardrops tattooed upon his deep-purple skin, just below his eye.  That was his noteworthy thing, and I also told him that he owed his life to the Purple Supreme Council (I started him at 3rd level so he wasn't a wuss compared to the others who were between 4th and 5th level).  He started out in a nearby cave, hidden and counting his loot when the PCs strolled in to check things out.

Moments later, they saw a flash of darkest periwinkle, heard a weird noise, and a familiar voice telling them to drop their weapons.  It was the Darkest Periwinkle Bastards (as opposed to the Crimson Bastards or Purple Bastards).  So, the PCs from another dimension or universe (but in darkest periwinkle) came to purple-Cha'alt to steal their weapons and who knows what else?

The Darkest Periwinkle Bastards had a device (held by darkest periwinkle Bandersnatch - Thurberus had a darkest periwinkle pyramid with AMWAY written on it, because he always has some kind of business / cult scam going, Lol) that immobilized the PCs.  

Oh yeah, I wrote down speaking parts for a couple players to read for their doppelgangers.  As they were about to steal the weapons from their paralyzed selves, the would-be thieves decided to monolog about how they got here, murdering and cutting up the Darkest Periwinkle Supreme Council so they could be easily digested by Botsterdomus' darkest periwinkle anal worms.

That was all the motivation Black Francis needed to come out of the shadows, creep up behind Bandersnatch, and slit his throat.  Rolling high on his sneak-attack damage, darkest periwinkle Bandersnatch gripped his neck as the blood spurted and the device fell to the ground and broke.  Before that, Bandersnatch-prime attempted to use his psionic abilities to disrupt the device.  Partially successful, he made it go on and off like a strobe-light.

Now completely free, combat ensued.  It didn't take much for the PCs to best their darkest periwinkle selves.  Not wanting the moral weight of killing oneself, Thurberus merely knocked his mirror image back into the darkest periwinkle portal with his shake-weight.  Being an agent of chaos - I should say agents of chaos - purple-Tinker and darkest periwinkle Tinker traded places as the pixie-fairy poontang is always a more favorable hue on the other side of the portal.  However, the new Tinker got a shot off with his sorcerer-bard companion's bass guitar that was pre-loaded with a darkest periwinkle fireball, wounding Thurberus the most - but everyone, except Black Francis - took some damage.

By the end, all the bodies were looted (Bandersnatch acquired 9 darkest periwinkle crystals from his counterpart), Thurberus held a dagger up to darkest periwinkle's neck and a blaster trained on Black Francis because he was coming for the new Tinker in order to avenge the Supreme Council that the Darkest Periwinkle Bastards had been bragging about murdering only a few minutes earlier.  

Confused yet?  Lol.  It all pretty much got straightened out enough to continue on to the wine tasting / timeshare pitch that was happening a few caves over.  

Before getting there, Bandersnatch felt the aura of evil magic coming from a side cave.  They found a way to breach the force shield and entered to find a Ms. Pacman coffee table style arcade game, lava lamp, infernal glyph drawn upon the floor, and a curious machine at the back that said a numeric code had to be entered and button pushed or else there would be a "catastrophic planetary shutdown."  When first glanced, there was 7 minutes and 43 seconds remaining.  By the time they found the code, there was 1 minute and 11 seconds.  Thurberus did all he could to destroy the machine and evidence of the code before leaving, as the machine re-set for one million seconds.  I just looked up how long that is...  11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds.

After that was the wine tasting hosted by a mutant named Scum Weasel (yes, he looked like a humanoid weasel).  He had several guards, a few small sandworms, over a dozen patrons drinking his delicious twice-peed wine, a sack of money and IOUs, and handful of beautiful women.  Scum Weasel explained his "hot chick filtration" system of which he was so proud.  You see, once you move the sandworm's fat out of the way to find his neck-penis, and pour that into a glass, you then have your hot chick drink it... then you wait about 30 minutes, and when she eventually pisses it out you have the best tasting worm wine on Cha'alt.  

The new Tinker, we decided, had an amulet that could turn him into a 7-foot darkest periwinkle worm, and he went to work putting the moves on one of Scum Weasel's sandworms.  Turns out, Tinker's seduction was successful.  He had her take him to Scum Weasel's "bedroom cave."  After about 20 minutes, they came back.  Tinker announced that Scum Weasel was hoarding scratch-off lottery tickets.  Thurberus was amazed and impressed by his business plan (of course), so they stole the 17 tickets yet to be scratched-off, no winners were among the tickets littering his abode, killed the few guards who didn't immediately surrender, zapped Scum Weasel with the wand of lightning, and took off with all the valuables.  

The next cave was divided by a portcullis.  Tinker flew in to see what was happening, found a two-headed dragon, decided to betray the party by leading them into the dragon's den, was found out by Bandersnatch, and eventually (after feeding about 8 humanoids to the dragon) turned invisible thanks to Bandersnatch (after drinking his vial of zoth), and led a tied-up Tinker out of the cave and into the next.  

Soon after, another weird scifi noise was heard as a bunch of nerds were transported into that cave.  One of them was named Gary and they all had uniforms with their name and FGS written on them.  This was the Federation Geek Squad.  The geeks asked if anyone in the party was named Isithar, but none were.  Moments later, a group of dark-elves came by to lead the FGS to Chud-Letha'az, the dark-elf gilded mauve city beneath Skra'ath cavern.  However, you could only get there by traversing a 7-mile stretch of dangerous tunnel.  

Isithar and his dark-elves would be grateful for the PCs' help escorting the FGS back to Chud-Letha'az.  And so it went.  Briefly, they encountered a reluctant band of bandits (analogous to The Orphans from the 1979 movie The Warriors), a golden rust-monster of sorts, a vibration surfing elf wearing a tie-dyed cloak and holding plutonium nyborg (which one of the theives stole) there was a sign notifying those who knew the dark-elf language of a ley-line intersecting the tunnel, a giant purple-scorpion who immediately killed the gold rust-monster which Tinker claimed as a pet and Thurberus decided to capture it in the rainbow-obsidian stone that transported one into a black room of hellish torture, and a newt fancier who was having fun with all his many newts.

Eventually, they reached the city of Chud-Letha'az.  There were two major factions - Isithar's House Drentreatise and House Purpria who looked rather unfriendly when the PCs and FGS arrived.  House Drentreatise were very interested in getting tech support for the alien technology recently discovered in their city.  

The Federation Geek Squad looked around for an hour or two while the PCs did other things, such as check out the bazaar.  Tinker found some wondrous daggers belonging to a shopkeeper who was trying to find a love connection for his daughter.  She was half dark-elf and half pixie-fairy.  Considered ugly by the standards of Chud-Letha'az and wearing many veils (just in case one of them should accidentally fall off), Tinker did what he had to do to earn a set of almost magical daggers that represented the story of the scorpion and the frog.

Bungalows were arranged, Black Francis took possession of the party's newly acquired non-binary slave, and a dinner party was offered by House Purpuria in the PCs' and FGS' honor.  Though, Isithar warned them it may be some kind of trap.  

By the end of the session, the PCs learned that the FGS would be able to repair the first bits of alien technology, which was planetary teleportation.  Given enough energy, anyone could be teleported to another part of Cha'alt and back again.

From movie references to tiny shake-weights to the business venture of designing and selling shake-weight thumpers for sandworm booty calls to the idea of being driven mad by the lack of hot, mutant, pixie-fairy women, this was an odd session.  It was fun playing with Black Francis and his player.  I'm not sure what he expected, but we can all reasonably assume he wasn't expecting this.  It's hard to put our Cha'alt campaign into words.  Like in The Matrix, no one can be told what Cha'alt is (like), especially the way I run it, you simply have to experience it for yourself.  

Although, Tinker's player said something which I found rather telling... before he knew what fantasy roleplaying was really about (ahead of trying it for himself) our game is what he thought it would be like.  But then when he actually got to play (in other peoples' games), it turned out not to be like that at all... but then with our game, that's what he had originally envisioned.  Fascinating!

Because I'm blowing through a couple of weekends back-to-back (family vacation), the next session won't be until Saturday, June 21st - 4 weeks from now.  It's been so long, we'll have to go back to Cha'alt-prime, I expect, and see what's happening there.

Thanks for reading, hoss!  If you have questions, just ask.  

Oh, my latest PDFs are up on DriveThruRPG - Fairy Dust and Play Like A Fucking Boss.  I've been blessed with tremendous players both in my home game and at the various gaming cons where I GM... such as VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse.  

The stuff I've learned by watching and interacting with a player pool one-thousand strong over the past 42 years has taught me many things.  That wisdom was distilled into Play Like A Fucking Boss (also a print-on-demand softcover on Amazon that includes Fairy Dust at the back of the book).  I know it will help you become the best player at any table.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July (Sandy Petersen will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor).  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!