JP is writing. Thoughts about TTRPGs, game design and how to tell stories together.
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Philtres of Timeless Ash
As a writing exercise I am currently writing a series of objects, magic items and spells for Dungeons & Dragons in the style of Dark Souls or Elden Ring equipment.
Philtre of Timeless Ash
The arcane schema preserving the Moment works tirelessly to hold at bay the long night.
The ashes of this labour can force time’s retreat from the body, though maladies can only be arrested. This time must come again.
This is a magic item. As a Bonus Action, you can administer it to yourself or another creature within 5 feet of you. When the ashes are applied to a creature they regain 2d4 + 2 Hit Points. The effect of any disease you are suffering is suppressed for one hour. Philtres are expended when used but not destroyed. The ash is nebulous and particles settle randomly when agitated.
Ashen Imprint
A scrap of cloth pressed against part of the Gran Schema, bearing the soot mark of its complexity.
Let this be a testament to the labours of those who sacrificed to forge a day without end.
When applied to a Philtre of Timeless Ash by an Arcanist or Priest it amplifies its effect.
With one imprint the Philtre restores 4d4+4 Hit Points.
With two imprints the Philtre restores 8d4+8 Hit Points.
With three imprints the Philtre restores 10d4+20 Hit Points.
Timegiver’s Ritual
Ritual of the Timegivers who offered up the sands of their lives to become the ash of the Kingdom.
Borrowed time coerced is stolen and can never be returned.
Level 1 Transmutation
Casting Time: 1 hour or Ritual
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (A number of expended Philtres of Timeless Ash)
Duration: Instantaneous
You perform an arcane ritual to gift your time to the ashes. You may restore expended Philtres of Timeless Ash, reversing their time as if they had never been expended, stealing moments from your own lift to do so. You may restore a number of Philtres up to the level of the spell plus your Wis or Int bonus.
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The Price is Right Core Mechanic
I started to like 1d20 roll under for a couple of reasons.
It keeps the maths simple, with 5% increments that feel meaningful but aren't as fiddly as d%. By using an over/under system; rolling under your stat but over a difficulty rating of 5 or 10 (with exact numbers being a crit success) we end up with a core mechanic that is pretty direct and you can pack most of the stuff players need to make decisions right there on the sheet.
There are, of course, quirks to this.
Firstly you do lose natural 20 as a critical. The odds here have not changed. However Nat 20 has a certain meme quality that shapes thinking, and the casual player values familiarity over simplicity.
As such you will watch them roll high, look at the dice and then look deflated as they realise this isn't D&D.
In a similar vein rolling low when the task is difficult allows you to watch the arc of someone realising their roll is under their stat, but too low. Like you've stolen their success from them.
What players want is to know if they're rolling high or low. They don't want to be told it's like The Price is Right. Which is annoying, because this system should work. It does work.
You could simply calculate character attributes and then give them a -5 (difficult) and -10 (hard) rating. This would allow you to keep everything on the sheet, but you do end up with a table and some players do get lost the moment they see that many numbers in one place.
To retain roll high you would either need to invert attribute rolls or, more sensibly, use something like a standard array. Now you need to roll over your attribute score, lower attributes are better, which will also feel wrong to players. Minus numbers being good and positives being bad feels similarly wrong.
You could, of course, apply those numbers to the roll instead of the attribute. However I like my mechanics to have an arc where any mathematics and bargaining takes place before the roll, and once the roll is pitched it's a straight line to the outcome.
Besides, once you're modifying the roll we're no longer working off a number on the players sheet, which is really what I want.
So The Price is Right takes it; it does enough of what I want that I don't mind overlooking its foibles.
That and, at the end of the day, I need to write for the players I have and not some mythical D&D player who won't pick up my teeny-tiny indie game anyway.
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Back in the Habit
What is this blog even about?
I kept asking myself this as I tried for about a month to start a blog post, something suitably appropriate, for what I thought would become the masthead for where I would keep my writing work going forward.
And then I did nothing.
More than that I realised I couldn’t do anything. I’ve known I’ve been suffering from burnout for a while; ever since ‘the incident’. Ideas don’t flow as easily and when I do have them I’m more distracted. I used to push through this feeling and write anyway; anything at all, 500 words every week day. It was rarely good, but it was something. Now I can’t manage even that.
So I considered quitting.
Plenty of people live their lives every day without the gnawing worm of writing eating through their skull. Without the desperate need for the attention and validation of the people around them and the pitiless fear of rejection, or worse, complete indifference. I don’t have to do this to myself. You’re not proving anything by holding your hand to a hot stove. I could stop any time I wanted.
But would it make me happy?
The fact that I’ve written this probably tells you my answer. Even though it hurts right now, writing is one of the few things that genuinely makes me happy. It is a conversation with myself that increasingly I feel I need to order my thoughts. It takes the jumble of things inside my head and lets me lay them out so that I understand them better.
So what is this blog even about?
It’s about me, my writing and my relationship to it. It’s a place to be a sounding board for my thoughts on stories, world building and design. But more than anything it’s a place for me to put my work as I try to fall back in love with writing again.
I don’t know how this journey will go, but I hope you’ll come along on it with me.