Manage your game's mental load

A concept I don't see discussed often when it comes to RPGs is that of a "mental load". To put it simply, there is a limit to how many things a human mind can keep track of, and the same is true for RPGs. Once that limit is reached, you tend to either forget things you should be doing, or slow down considerably. Ideally, you want your game to work under that limit, where you can reach the flow state.

Lets break things down into a few categories.

First of all, complicated rules take up a lot of our mental limit. Remembering all the rules for something like Contact would take a lot of effort, so you're most likely be going over it step by step each time you engage in combat. Fewer special cases, exceptions and so on are much less strenuous on the players and GMs alike.

Secondly, more rules means more mental strain, understandably. You can either start off with a system that has a lot of rules for everything, or gradually build up as PCs gain more powers and abilities (which often come with their own little special rules as discussed last time). An example of that from our group would be Exalted, where after a few seasons of Princes of the Universe our character sheets turned into character booklets, with everyone having too many incremental charms to use effectively. This problem was solved when we switched to Godbound where powers were bigger in scope, but smaller in number.

Just one of many of Exalted's charm trees.

Most of those nodes are incremental powers, a small rule to remember...

On a similar note, letting players have limited access to a really large pool of powers can also lead to choice paralysis and increased mental load. A good example of this would be the power Brilliant Invention from Godbound. It's a power that lets you mimic any Lesser Gift from almost any Word. That's over 300 different Gifts you can conjure at a moment's notice - good luck trying to remember the best thing to use for any given situation off the top of your head (then again, 90% of the time you just use Purity of Brilliant Law with this one and call it a day)...

You can use 60% of all Gifts.

Hope you remember them all!

Thirdly, GMs have to juggle more things than players, so it's easier for them to reach their limit. When it comes to NPCs, you ideally want them to be much simpler than PCs. Fellowship handles this pretty well - NPCs only have one to two powers that also serve as their HP. They are much simpler than PCs that take up at least two pages of stats, powers and what have you. It's much easier on the GMs.

Fourthly, context switching can help to compartmentalise the rules and alleviate the mental load. While trying to say, hold 50 different powers in mind at one time can be hard, having 5 distinct and separate game systems each with 10 different powers can be much simpler. You don't need to remember rules for investigation or hacking during a shootout, and bulk trading rules don't apply during space combat. Being able to switch context and only consider a smaller subset of rules and powers can let you handle bigger things. For example, in our Stars Without Number game we use the Suns of Gold expansion that features a big trading system. It's not the easiest thing to use, but since when we are doing the trading there isn't anything else going on, everyone can focus on just this one thing and it flows pretty smoothly.

Fifthly, game aides can help a lot. It's much easier to remember rules when you've trimmed off all the fat and put them on a simple cheatsheet. Having all the rules you need for something on one sheet is ideal - you can context switch to that single page whenever you need to use those rules and follow along to make sure you're not missing anything. For example, while playing Mage the Awakening, having a printout of the Spellcasting Quick Reference pages really made the magic flow, rather than getting bogged down whenever we'd try to engage with the core system of the game.

Page 3 of 4 of MtA's Spellcasting Quick Reference

Sixthly, changing numbers doesn't increase the load. As discussed last time, RPGs usually have powers that come with their own little rules, and stats, which just alter the numbers you roll. Changing the stats doesn't really change your mental load for dealing with them (unless you have to deal with some weird dice mechanics). So if you want to balance your own mental load in a point buy system like Chronicles of Darkness, you can do so by buying powers when things are too simple, and stats when you are reaching your own limits. It can be an interesting way to balance the system without hampering character growth.

So all in all, there are many ways a game can manage the mental load of their players - by keeping its rules simple, avoiding too many small extra rules, keeping things simple for the GM, segmenting systems from one another, providing concise game aides, and letting you buy into more powers or stats to adjust your own load.

Taste of things to come - Miracles and Improvised Spells

A few times I've found myself in an RPG saying "man, that one power I didn't take could be really useful in this narrow situation we are currently in". It's usually a game with a diverse move / power set, things like Godbound, Mage the Awakening, or even Fellowship. It's not just "I missed the roll by 1, I wish I had that extra +1", but more interesting powers like "being able to transform into someone else" or "being able to trace back emotional resonance of someone being murdered". For most systems, you would be pretty much out of luck, but some games let you have a taste of the powers you can wield before you buy them.

Godbound's Miracles

Godbound is a game where you play as an epic hero empowered with divine Words - portfolios of power like "Dragon", "Sorcery" or "Intoxication". A lot of your powers come in form of Gifts - codified powers you can use easily like breathing fire, or flying. However, the game also encourages you to use Miracles - improvised magic that either copies the power of an existing Gift or creates a new power from your portfolio. So if you had the Word of Dragon, you could miracle breathing fire if you don't have that Gift, or you could, say, spread terrors in the hearts of men at your sight.

All of your magic if fuelled by one resource - Effort. Using Gifts is usually free, or costs you a bit of Effort for the Scene, but Miracles are always more expensive and don't last as long as actual Gifts. Taking a Gift of flight would let you fly forever for free, while a flight Miracle would drain your Effort and you could only do it for a Scene.

Overall, it's a very versatile system that lets you improvise the solution you need whenever the situation comes up while still rewarding you for committing to certain powers.

Mage's Creative Thaumaturgy

Mage is a game where you play as the titular mage - a mortal imbued with the True Magic. Magic is divided into a few Arcana (Life, Matter, Space, etc.), and codified into Rotes (fixed, known spells). You can cast the Rotes pretty easily and often for free, but you can also try Improvising with Creative Thaumaturgy.

An Improvised Spell usually costs a bit more Mana than a Rote, and you have to work harder to get it to work, but you can easily mimic the effect of any Rote or improvise your own and even combine a few Arcana.

For example, calling lightning from the sky is a simple Forces Rote. However, if you want the spell to go off in the future when your target will be walking down the street, you would be combining Forces (lightning), Time (trigger condition) and Space (remotely targeting a specific target).

All in all, Mage allows and encourages you to go wild with its Magic system, while letting you commit some of your favourite spells into Rotes as needed as well.

Conclusions

Mage and Godbound both feature interesting systems that allow you to tap into powers you might not yet have bought, or improvise new powers as needed. Systems like these could be fun in a lot of other RPGs, like Fellowship, Legacy, Stars Without Number, etc. Few people would want to spend their precious XP on a shark repellent, but that one day when you actually do face off a shark, you just might want to pay premium to have it right there and then.

Nitpicks about RPG PDFs

My group and I play a lot of RPGs. While some groups prefer to stick to traditional printed books and paper character sheets, we are pretty comfortable all sitting on our laptops, have our Google Drive character sheets open and a PDF of the rulebook handy. Unfortunately, we have seen our share of bad PDF rulebooks out there, which can make the process of running a game all the more frustrating. Below are some of our gripes and nitpicks around various PDFs we had to deal with over the years.

A number of the examples below may come off a bit harsh especially against small, self-published RPGs. This article is not meant to be an attack against anyone, or a criticism of the RPGs themselves, but it merely uses various RPG PDFs as an example of various mistakes you can make. Most of the RPGs used as examples are things we really enjoy playing - hence why we notice those problems in the first place - by being exposed to them through regular play. With that out of the way...

Good Index is important

First thing that is a must for a PDF or physical books is the Index. When you need to search a 300 something book to find a section explaining a specific topic, you naturally check the Index. Well, it seems that some people may have forgotten that. For example - Mage the Awakening 2nd Edition, a book with almost 100 pages of spells, released their PDF without an Index. Good luck finding Sympathetic Names out of the blue if you don't remember them being described under Space Arcanum.

Luckily, the second version of the PDF did come with an Index. It wasn't Bookmarked, but at least it was there. And it was a pretty exhaustive Index too, listing all the important pages something is discussed and highlighting the primary definition of something:

Now, if you want to earn your final brownie points for a good Index, look at what Broken Worlds did and hyperlink every page number, so that you can click on it and be taken straight into that page. Really solid work!

Speaking of Broken Worlds...

Hyperlink your PDF

This one might take some extra effort, but it is REALLY nice to have - hyperlinks everywhere. Whenever you refer to a specific concept, rule, power, spell or anything that has rules attached to it, make it a hyperlink. It really helps with navigating the PDF. At least do it for key concepts.

Broken Worlds does this pretty well. Take this part of the page from Character Creation section:

It links you to the Train Move, as well as rules for damage, armour, wounds and stamina. The PDF is pretty good when it comes to linking the core rules you might be interested in while reading certain sections and it really works.

Make your PDF copy friendly

Obviously, when you have a PDF, you will want to be able to copy parts of it for your own reference. I personally like making my own character sheets that have a copy of all the relevant powers my character has access to. There are a few things that make the process harder unfortunately.

Have a look at this Elven power from Fellowship playbook PDF

Looks pretty simple, has some bolds, italics and so on, but should be a simple thing to copy, right? Well, this is how it looks when you actually try to copy it:

enchanting performance (grace)
When you perform an Elven art for an attentive
audienceL roll (GraceE On a 10KL you may Forge a Bond with
as many audience members as you6d likeE The Bond should
relate to how much they adore and appreciate youE On a 7U9L
you may only Forge a Bond with a single listenerE On a 6UL no
one caresE

For some reason, every non-alphanumerical character is a special character or something. This means you have to manually correct anything you copy as some sort of copy protection mechanism or something. Luckily, this sort of thing is quite rare (although I have a bad luck with headers / power names...).

Other than that, you have a small issue of the power name being all lowercase, and then using hard breaks on every line rather than making the PDF format itself. The latter means if you want to make something into an actual paragraph, you have to delete every newline and add a space instead. Can get a bit tedious on bigger chunks of text.

But that's generally something you have to deal with infrequently, now let's talk about probably our favourite pet peeve - Bookmarks!

Bookmarks are important!

Having a good Index is crucial for having a good, accessible book. Having Bookmarks is crucial for having a good PDF. There are so many ways we have seen Bookmarks messed up it's not even funny. So let's start going over some things one by one.

So first, here is what you'd ideally see when you first open up the Bookmarks bar:

Clear, top-level categories, everything collapsed and visible on one page. You can instantly tell where to look. This would be an ideal version, but this example comes from Stars Without Number Revised, which has a few problems with its Bookmarks.

First of all, you shouldn't ever Bookmark trife. For example, the PDF has bookmarks to individual Backgrounds (which are irrelevant once you make your character) and individual Foci (which are only relevant during levelling up). Things that are so small you can fit 8 of them on a single page, yet you devote Bookmark real estate to each of them individually:

On top of that, that neat, top-level set of Bookmarks is all open when you load the PDF up, meaning this is what you see every time:

So if you want to use those Bookmarks, you have to devote a few extra clicks on closing the categories down one by one.

On a similar note, the same publisher has released Lexicon of the Throne which had some new problem with its Bookmarks:

Where some items in the Bookmarks turned into categories (Birds, Cities and Dance should be on the same level, but they aren't).

As nit-picky I might be about Sine Nomine while still enjoying it, at least the Bookmarks themselves are generally readable and usable. The same can't be said for Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd Edition:

First of all, the custom colour scheme looks awful in Acrobat Reader under dark mode. Something you'd expect a fair number of people to be using, but apparently nobody checked against. Similarly, the book itself uses flowery chapter names, which are pretty useless when it comes to quick navigation. Where would you look for character creation rules? "A Wolf I Am"? Wrong! That's where the lore is. "Laws of the Kill" is where you have those rules. Now you open up that tab and what do you see?

Sections like the Soul, Body and Spirit of the Wolf. What do those reference? Soul of the Wolf talks about the basic character concepts, creating your character and the pack. Body of the Wolf talks about various tricks you can do and transformations. Spirit of the Wolf describes various powers you have, Triggers is a half-page panel in the middle of the previous section, and Spirit Magic talks about even more powers you have but of a different variety. In general, a lot of flowery language that doesn't tell you much beyond a hint of what's present.

Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition suffers from similar mistakes, except they also bookmarked the fiction that comes between all of the chapters:

Honestly, looking at the various PDFs we used in our games recently, I think Broken Worlds hits the mark again with a pretty decent set of Bookmarks that aren't immediately a mess when you open the PDF:

They tend to unfurl a bit on the lower levels, but it's still better than a lot of the other examples used (especially a few systems that didn't bother putting in any Bookmarks at all).

Quick reference rules

Explaining rules in detail is fine, but when you play the same game over and over, you only want to have some quick reference rules. So either offer some free / low cost GM screen with all of the core rules on it, or at the very least stick a few extra pages at the end of the book with only the core rules and dice modifiers. For example, Mage did it pretty well with their Spellcasting Quick Reference:

While we're at it...

While we're talking nitpicks, here are some other, small tips to keep in mind when creating the PDF / book as a whole:

Avoid homonyms. In The Veil you can pierce the veil to gain information from the Veil. First veil is the name of the game, second is a phrase for a Move, third is the in-universe name for the Internet. You wonder how many times "veil" is used in the book? A lot. Good luck finding the correct information if you want to know about anything besides talking about what you can do in The Veil the game.

Be unambiguous. Again in The Veil, you have a Playbook The Dying that is dying from a disease.

The Disease's symptoms progress and will eventually kill the Dying (Prognosis). The Dying Special allows you to spend hold to keep the symptoms at bay when the Disease triggers. Now, does that refer to the things under the Prognosis section, or the move Trigger? Initially when we played, we thought it was the former, but turns it was the latter. Generally, when you use some common words for names of powers or moves, you should make them distinct - make them bold, or use capital letters. "when your disease would trigger" is ambiguous, "when your Disease would Trigger" is less so. Fellowship is pretty good at this in comparison.

Offer low-weight PDFs. Sometimes all you care for in a PDF is being able to quickly flip through it on your phone. It would be useful to have some low-weight PDFs for that reason, and they could double as printer-friendly PDFs.

Conclusions

Offering a high-quality PDF experience can mean a lot of work, but in the end you will be saving your players a lot time and effort. So please, if you can, put the effort in to make the lives of us players that use PDFs a little less grating.

Punch me in the face for XP - the failure of CoD beats system

Chronicles of Darkness is a pretty great series of games. It fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the oWoD and nWoD series and added a few interesting elements of its own as well. However, one thing I'm finding less and less fun the more I play is the beats system. While it seems fun at first, it starts to incentivise the wrong things after awhile. So today, let's talk about beat farming!

Beats - the small XPs

Beats system in CoD is a replacement of the traditional World of Darkness XP system. Both of them are radically different from systems like D&D - you don't get XP for killing enemies, but for things like accomplishing goals, roleplaying, or in general - having life experiences.

In the first edition of the New World of Darkness, you would gain XP at the end of the session or story based on things like "has your character learned anything?", "did you roleplay them in an entertaining or appropriate way?", "did you perform a heroic act?", etc.

Those were a bit hard to judge at times and often felt a bit contrived. "What did I learn today? Um, let me spin the Wheel of Morality real quick and come up with something". Worst yet - the system can also feel like a further downer after a session that might've not gelled as much. I remember feeling quite shitty after playing in a session that wasn't that great to begin with and the GM sternly proclaiming at the end everyone got the minimal, 1XP. Everything else about that game has since faded from my memory, but that one thing still feels bad...

But luckily, CoD is here to solve that problem with beats! Now each XP is broken down into 5 beats, and you accrue those beats through the game through a number of concrete ways. You get a beat when you accomplish a goal you set for yourself, when you complete a condition, when you get a dramatic failure, when you risk a breaking point (essentially losing sanity or humanity), or even when you get beaten up.

All of those conditions are concrete - it is clear when they are supposed to happen and you can proudly exclaim that you are getting that beat and why. The system is much neater and feels better. However, as anything that's driven by the actions of the PCs, it can get exploited a bit...

Beat farming - stopping the game to get your numbers up

Beat farming in CoD is perhaps the last vestige of minmaxing left from the older editions of the system. You can only get one beat from a given category of beat conditions per scene, but given that you have 3-5 scenes in a session, you can rack up quite the number of beats easily.

Generally, there are a few concrete ways you can reliably get beats in the game. First two are dramatic failures and Inspired cycling. You build your character up so they have at least one very crappy roll (1-2 dice max), and then at least one roll they can use often they are very good at. Usually for the last you combine high dice number with Professional Training 2 (9-again), or Trained Observer (9-again or 8-again).

Then each scene proceed to use your weak skill until you fail, upgrading that into a dramatic failure (giving you a beat), and then using your strong skill to get an exceptional success. While exceptional successes don't get you a beat straight away, the rules state that if that check doesn't have a specific exceptional success bonus, the character should get a beneficial condition. You opt to get Inspired, a condition that you can cash in for a willpower point, a beat, and an exceptional success on 3 successes instead of 5. This means whenever you roll your strong skill, you spend a willpower point (giving you extra 3 dice), spend the Inspired condition (getting that willpower back) and fingers crossed - you get that condition back again instantly. Rinse both each scene for 2 beats per scene.

In Mage the Awakening, I'm not sure whether by design or by accident, whenever a character completes an Aspiration (their short or long term goal), they get a new Aspiration. Moreover, higher-end Mages have more and more "Obsessions" - long-term Aspirations focused on supernatural things. You can cash both an Aspiration and an Obsession each scene for a beat and an "arcane beat" (beat you can only spend on magic stuff). This can start derailing the characters into "my current aspiration is to go to where the next scene is and do what we were planning to do anyway" and "I want to learn more about the particular supernatural creature we're currently investigating". This stops being conductive to "emergent gameplay" and just becomes a race to get more and more beats...

Moreover, Mages can also farm Arcane Beats by resolving conditions imposed by spells. The book even explicitly states that farming beats this way is normal. In a sidebar section called "The Beat Goes On..." we read - "At this point, you may be wondering what’s stopping you from loading up on Condition-causing spells in a relatively safe environment, resolving them all, and earning Beats by the bucket load? The honest answer is “nothing, mages do it all the time.”...". This means if you have a Mage with Fate 2 in your party, you can cast Exceptional Luck each scene, giving everyone in the party a beneficial condition they can use and gain a beat that way.

Finally, at the end of a scene, you can just punch each other in the face and get a beat (at least if you're mortal - supernaturals might have to cut one another up for it). If you take damage in your last three health boxes, you get a beat. For an average person, you need about 5 points of bashing damage, which heals after 75 minutes - most often enough for a scene change. Punch each other in the face each scene and farm those precious beats...

So if you're hard-core, each scene you can get a beat for damage, dramatic failure, fulfilling a condition and fulfilling an aspiration rather easily. That's a beat shy of a full XP each scene, so you might end up with about 4XP at the end of a session - which is an insane amount (1XP is healthy for a normal session). Would the game be fun though? Heck no...

Mechanics distracting from the game

Discovering an exploit in a game can be fun. It makes you feel smart for noticing the various mechanics that make something up, you go through the rush of research as you dig deeper into the problem and finally you have the sense of mastery as you figure out the most optimal way of abusing the exploit. It is fun, but that's not what Chronicles of Darkness, or RPGs in general are about.

Sure, you can have a group that's all about deriving fun from breaking a game and exploiting the mechanics, do that by all means. You can similarly enjoy the Ivory Tower Game Design, but after awhile it feels like a system that punishes sub-optimal play.

Recently my group and I have switched systems in one of our game from Savage Worlds to Chronicles of Darkness. A new player joined us that didn't have experience with CoD. We had fun with the session, but by the end I came out of that session with 6 beats, and the other players had only 3 beats a piece. I am by no means a better player than them, nor was my character a more important part of that story. The only difference was I knew how to farm beats and I made a character that allowed me to farm beats. Since we're all loss-averse by nature, seeing someone get twice as many beats was most likely not a pleasant experience. We started using group beats since that point...

In a different session, one of our players cared about a particular NPC - they were tied to their backstory and so on. When my character failed a roll related to helping that NPC investigate their missing father however, I decided to cash it in for a dramatic failure and a beat, much to the dismay of the other player. The failure was not important to my character, but it was going against what the party wanted to accomplish. If we continued on this path for a longer game, we'd probably all start screwing the party over with dramatic failures sooner or later. Luckily it was a shorter game and we learned our lessons.

Cut the beats

Honestly, I feel if the beat system was cut entirely from CoD, the system might be better for it.

Say, if the players and the GM agreed to say, give everyone 1-2 full XP per session, that might be a good pace. Aspirations wouldn't give beats, but would be a way to communicate with the GM and the rest of the party what you as the player want out of a given session. Conditions already either give you a bonus when you "cash them in", or get rid of a penalty if they're negative once you get rid of them. Getting beaten up and surviving means you survived a fun action scene and either continue your story, or have some new enemy to beat up in the future. Risking a breaking point is a dramatic enough moment that it is interesting on its own, and finally for dramatic failures - perhaps the GM could offer you a Doylist choice with some kickback if they believe a botch would add to the story. Some of them could give you Willpower - another important resource in the game, or perhaps a reroll you could cash in in the future. Either of those options would be meaningful, but not important enough to heavily encourage the players to derail the game for their own benefit.

So all in all, the beats system in Chronicles of Darkness is an interesting tool, but when taken to its "rational conclusion" - it starts to break down. It's possible the game might be more enjoyable if we weren't chasing that proverbial carrot at any given opportunity...

The mixed bag that is CoD Beast

I'm a long time World of Darkness fan. I used to mostly play Vampire the Masquarade and Vampire the Requiem, but recently my group decided to give most splats a try. We set out to see how they play in the system's newest iteration - the Chronicles of Darkness. One of the newer lines I was interested to try was Beast: The Primordial, a system where you play an embodiment of the primal nightmare that haunts all humanity. Reading through it however, the game seems a bit of a mixed bag - some parts of the setting look brilliant, while others may make you not want to pick it up at all.

So, without further ado, here are various interesting things I found about Beast, for good or ill. The post might feel a bit meandering, but it's meant to highlight what's noteworthy about the system, mechanics and the setting.

First off, everyone's favourite topic - lore!

Place in the cosmology

While Chronicles of Darkness were designed to be light on the metaplot and vague on the cosmology, one could argue there exists some connecting thread between some ideas presented in Beast and the lore from the first edition of Mage the Awakening.

In Mage, in the Arcanus Mundus chapter, it is basically established that the collective unconscious of proto-humanity, the Primordial Dream, shaped the world. These Dreams created the Atlantis, the place where first humans Awoke. They also created various supernatural creatures that are part of the reality of the world - vampires, werewolves, etc.

In similar vein, Beast talks about the Dark Mother, the first of the Beasts, that travelled into the Primordial Dream and became the first of all monsters.

Another aspect of Beast is their Inheritance and the Beast Incarnate. Basically, the end game of any Begotten (another term for Beast), is to become a perfect embodiment of the horror they represent so that they become that horror. They become something akin to the Boogeyman, or Jack the Ripper, or Bloody Mary - horror much bigger than themselves.

Based on that you could argue that all of the supernatural creatures are a reflection of a proto-being formed by some ancient Beast Incarnate. Some Begotten might've been a blood drinking creature of the night, thus creating the myth of a vampire in the fabric of the Primordial Dream, while a different Begotten might've been a man that takes the shape of a wolf and become Father Wolf. All of this fits so nicely - the Dark Mother creating the concept of Beasts, and then the Begotten filling the Primordial Dreams with subsequent kinds of horrors, all sharing a common kinship.

There is only one piece of the puzzle that to me is a bit misaligned. Beasts feel a kinship with all supernatural creatures except Demons. This probably hints that Demons came from somewhere else and are wholly alien to the world, which is an interesting notion. However, the Beasts also share a kinship with Mages - beings that are explicitly Awoken. They woke up from the Primordial Dream, so one would think they would hold Beasts in contempt as creatures of the Dream that they exert some dominion over. But apparently that's not the case...

A different part of the Beast lore are the Insatiables (detailed in Night Horrors Conquering Heroes), one of those "antagonist types" every CoD game seems to have, like the Strix to Vampires or the Pure Werewolves. The Insatiables represent different types of horrors - the Clashing Faults, the Freezing Hell, the Molten Earth, the Primordial Seas, and the Void. In my theory they represent horrors too grand for the human mind to comprehend completely. The concept of a vampire or a werewolf, however alien, is understandable - it's a horror that wants to murder you. The same can't be said for "the horror that is the unending winter of the ice age", or "the infinite cosmic horror of the emptiness of endless vacuum of space". The human mind can't think on such scales, and thus the Insatiables are like Beasts, but are still distinct from their brethren.

But enough about the philosophical waxing of the lore, let's talk about something much more immediate...

Lack of Integrity system

In Chronicles of Darkness, Integrity is a measurement of how human or alien you are. It can take many forms - mortals just have Integrity, a basic measurement of being a human in a civilised society - avoiding murder, torture, injury, or even contact with the supernatural. Vampires have Humanity - a measure of how connected they are to the mortal world by the means of maintaining contacts with actual people and not acting like a bloodsucker. Werewolves have a balancing act of Harmony - trying to remain true to both their human and wolf natures and keeping their life in balance. Mages have Wisdom, showing how single-minded they are in their pursuit of knowledge over being an actual person. You get the picture - each supernatural splat has a different flavour of balancing their supernatural nature with still being a person.

Unfortunately, Beast has none of that. There is no limit to what a Begotten can do without any consequences (save perhaps of creating a Hero if they "disrupt the Primordial Dream"). This is almost a step back in how Chronicles of Darkness have progressed from the old World of Darkness. See, back in the olden days, creatures like Vampires could arbitrarily choose their morality. Those came neatly packed into "Paths of Enlightenment". Did you want to diablerise your fellow vampires without remorse? Path of Blood! Run around in the woods like a wolf? Path of the Beast! Torture people for "science"? Path of Metamorphosis!

So in other words, whatever you decided to do, you would take "the path of doing whatever I wanted to do anyway" as your moral compass and you would be on your way, avoiding having to worry about descending into madness or trying to cling to the last few shreds of your humanity.

It is a bit of a missed opportunity that Beast lacks an Integrity system. It could've been interesting to see something perhaps akin to Werewolf's Harmony - trying to strike a balance between being a horror of the night and an actual person. Balancing being Rorschach and Walter Kovacs, or Batman and Bruce Wayne.

Because of their lack of Integrity to draw boundaries, as well as their kinship with the other supernaturals of the world, Beasts become...

Supernatural cheerleaders and a bad influence on their buddies

Beasts are naturally drawn to other supernaturals of the setting, and those supernaturals are in turn drawn to the Beasts. This is expressed through a number of mechanics. First is Kinship - any supernatural being (including vampires, werewolves, mages, slashers, and even mediums and psychics) starts off with positive first impressions of the Beast. Second is Family Ties - if a Beast and some other supernatural spend enough time together, they develop a deep connection, granting both sides of the party bonuses to support one another.

Skipping a few minor mechanics, we come to the last and perhaps the most powerful boon a Beast can draw from other supernaturals - Family Dinner. Thanks to this mechanic, if a Beast watches another supernatural hunt or feed, they themselves gain Satiety. The hunt must be genuine however, meaning a Vampire can't just drink from their blood doll to trigger Family Dinner - they must stalk and catch the prey.

Since gaining Satiety through Beast's normal Feeding is much more cumbersome and unpredictable than going with your Vampire buddy to watch him drink blood, the Beasts might be naturally inclined to use it as a natural means of gaining sustenance. Add to this the want to expand their Lairs with some quality Chambers and the lack of an Integrity system, may lead them to being a bad influence on their buddies.

It would be really easy for a Beast to goat a Vampire into feeding more than they need, or getting them to lose that one dot of Integrity somewhere "because I really want this place as a new Chamber". It's so easy for a Beast to tell the Vampire that they will take care of that body for them, it's not a big deal really. The Beast doesn't care - it doesn't have Integrity to lose. All it cares about is getting its next fix, so it becomes a supernatural cheerleader for their kin. Hanging around a Beast is like having a friend that wants to do crack with you on a daily basis, except somehow they only get the high and none of the side effects, while your skin itches and your teeth are falling out...

Since we're on the subject of feeding...

Live to eat, don't eat to live

One categorical lie the Beast book states explicitly is "Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat", which really goes against what the mechanics and tones of Beast is really all about. The Begotten are supposed to "teach people lessons" and further their Legend, but at the same time - that's how the Beasts also feed. So if say, you were playing Batman, you would strike fear into the hearts of criminals, beat them up for being bad and teach them that crime is illegal. This is the lesson you impart, and by teaching that lesson, you also become more ingrained into the Primordial Dream as "the dark knight". More likely then not, this also feeds into your hunger as a Nemesis - you feed by punishing people for their crimes.

Unfortunately, teaching lessons, furthering your legend and feeding are pretty much the only core things a Beast does (other than expanding their lair and fighting heroes). Now compare this to Vampires, creatures that probably share the closest thematic connection to the Begotten.

Vampires need to feed, sure. Having to hurt people on daily basis is taxing, but you can manage that over time with Herd or Feeding Ground. You also have obligations to your sire, your Clan and your Covenant. Maybe you are obliged to spy on someone for your Mekhet brothers, or are expected to take care of your fledgling Carthian brothers, all the while your sire is telling you to represent him well during Elysium meetings because any faux pas will reflect badly on them. At the same time you also need to maintain a facade of being human, otherwise your Humanity will suffer, and you want to maintain your Touchstones that keep you grounded. Vampires are very social creatures by necessity, and that plays to their themes.

Beast has none of that. There are no Begotten societies save perhaps of the local brood. You're not responsible for say, feeding some new Beast that is still learning the ropes. You don't have to maintain human contacts.

Worse yet, due to the mechanics of feeding, you often want to plan your meals ahead of time. The more sated you are, the more elaborate a lesson you need to give. A hungry Batman will be fine just beating a few thugs up, but one that has been somewhat sated would need to confront a supervillain and punish them in a very unique way, perhaps even killing them in the process. So while you have just sated your hunger for the night or week, you also want to start preparing for the next meal - start looking for the next prey and put the plan into motion.

Now let's move to another resource the Beasts accrue...

Lairs, the hidden landscape of the city, and the Apex

Each Beast has a Lair, a network of Chambers weaved together into a land of their own. Those Chambers are a reflections of the real world. They are impressions made on the Primordial Dream by some trauma - either a loss of Integrity, or a powerful Nightmare caused by the Beast. As the book Building a Legend suggests, this basically means the supernatural activity of the city will leave long lasting markings on the Primordial Dream in form of those Chambers.

Lack of unclaimed Chambers would usually mean there are a lot of Beasts in the area looking for them. Clusters of them mean there is some sort of predator frequenting the area and causing harm. Some old chambers might be clues to something that happened years back. This paints a new, hidden landscape to the city the Beasts get to explore.

This gives the Begotten a lot of opportunity to investigate what happened at a given place so they might add that Chamber to their Lair. Tracking the supernatural culprit and figuring out what transpired can be interesting story seeds playing on similar themes to Mage or Hunter. This can be really interesting! Alternatively of course, the Beasts can just cause some trauma themselves to create new Chambers and skip that fun...

Another part of the Beast lore tied to the above is the Apex - the top supernatural dog of the city. The Apex is the supernatural creature that has the most impact on the Primordial Dream of the area. Not necessarily the oldest or the strongest, but the one that is the most present in people's minds. The Batman of Gotham, Jack the Ripper of London, the Boruta of Łęczyca. Figuring out who the local Apex is can be an interesting investigative story in itself, and a Beast trying to become the Apex themselves is an aspiration for a good campaign.

To attain such prestige, a Beast will need its repertoire of powers...

Atavisms, Nightmares and Advanced Merits - three flavours of power

Initially reading over the various Beast powers, I misunderstood what was being presented, and I'm wondering if more people could make a similar error and not see the interesting potential of the mechanics.

Reading things initially, Atavisms were the obvious "Disciplines" of the Begotten - the main cool powers that make Beasts Beasts. These powers didn't have any obvious "levels" to them, you could basically choose any of them at any point, but that was fine - each power had three distinct things you could do with it either by default, when you have low Satiety, or when you spend Satiety. This was cool and thematic - the Beasts would get tougher when pushed to their limits, and each Satiety expenditure were meaningful in comparison to spending a single point of Vitae, Mana, Essense or the like, since Beasts can only ever have 10 points of Satiety at any given time.

However, looking at the Atavisms, I was missing a few key types of powers one would come to expect from the supernatural splats. A lot of the powers were combat oriented, or were otherwise physical (dragon breath, flying, hiding, etc.). Beasts seemed to be lacking mind-reading or mind-control, and their ability to influence people's emotions were usually limited to conversations with Alien Allure and Siren's Treacherous Song, making them more of a temptress or seductress, rather than king among men.

Advanced Merits were interesting boons for the character - not as powerful as Atavisms, but still interesting enough in their own right as to be cool.

The Nightmares initially appeared as "those powers to scare people". With powers such as "All Your Teeth Are Falling Out", "You Are Alone", "You Are Not Alone", it was easy to dismiss this category of powers as some flavouring to add to the Beast character, rather than anything worthwhile in its own right. Here is where I was really wrong.

As it turns out, Nightmares are the more subtle powers for the Begotten. They are at their most effective when the beast has high Satiety. Those basically reflect a cat playing with its food, rather than a cat on a hunt. Those are the powers that were missing from the Atavisms. "You Must Obey" is basically Vampiric Dominate. "We Know All Your Secrets" is a way to have the victim lead the character to their darkest secrets. "Fear is Contagious" is a way to affect a larger group of people. Between this and being able to create one's own Nightmares, this covers a lot of ground the Atavisms were missing.

The last overlooked power of the Beast are the Primordial Pathways. These allow Beasts to move between their Lair and anywhere else in the World of Darkness universe like a horror movie villain. They can reach Temenos, Anima Mundi, Oneiros, Shadow, Hedge, Underworld, or the real world. This is an incredibly open-ended and flexible power, but unfortunately it seems to be left underutilised. There aren't that many mechanics to how a Beast can benefit from going to the Underworld, nor are there that many story prompts as to what the Beast should do with this power (say, become a therapist that goes into peoples' mind and hunt the embodiment of their fear and trauma to help their patients recover). It's pretty much left as a way for Beast to go anywhere, do anything, and bring their buddies along...

Conclusions

Beast is an interesting but flawed game. It set out to create a class of characters that were supposed to represent something akin to a universal monster, hunted by evil heroes, monsters being the good guys and hanging out with other monsters like some interesting team mashup. It turns out that the monster is more of a Rorschach (a crazy, obsessed person you definitely don't want to be around), the heroes had to be one dimensional not to be likeable, and the team doesn't have a strong theme or mechanic to connect them.

Vampire the Requiem tells a better story where the monster has to hurt other people to survive, but also wants to remain themselves. Werewolf the Forsaken tells a better story of being a part of a misfit family (especially if you look at the Pack book).

With that being said, I still feel there might be some enjoyment to be had playing as a Beast character. As long as you embrace what the game is, have a strong idea of the character, and the GM is on board with it (especially if your build would upset the power scale at the table - Beasts can be rough!), it can be compelling to play a character like that. As you might've guessed by now, it seems that Beast is less geared towards playing The Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and seems to be better suited to letting you play Batman or Rorschach. And if you should always be Batman given the opportunity, why not take it now? ;)

Changing the world - Dominion or XP?

My group and I have played a lot of Godbound since its Kickstarter. I've really enjoyed a lot of its mechanics, but my view on some of them has changed over time. Today I'd like to talk about one of those mechanics - Dominion and how the characters change the world with it.

Dominion Changes

Dominion is a sort of meta-currency in Godbound. It allows the characters to change the world on a large scale - affecting entire cities or nations. They can raise armies, build works of wonder, or shape the landscape at whim. It is also used to create great artifacts of power - something on the level of The One Ring, or Marvel's Mjolnir.

PCs earn Dominion at the end of each session, and every in-game month from their cults. They are required to spend a certain amount of Dominion in order to advance a level to make sure they are engaged with the world and don't just hoard Dominion to do some crazy expensive project down the line.

Initially, all of that sounds like a great concept - every PC can express themselves in a unique way and shape the world to their whim. However, in practice it seems players fall into two categories.

First, we have those that spend their Dominion diligently each session fixing up problems as they arise wherever they go. Those would essentially be Divine Janitors or Godly Handymen - if some Faction has a Problem, they'd patch it up instantly. The problem with this type of player is that they focus so much on the little things that when it comes time to making something big, they are broke - they have already spent all of their Dominion.

The second type of player hoard their Dominion and don't spend it until they are forced to to level up. You could call them Forgetful Divinities or Burst Spenders. It's not uncommon for them to accrue enough Dominion to make changes to the entire world at one go when they finally get around to spending those points. The problem with this type of player is that they make much grander and sweeping changes than the previous type - meaning these make the diligent work of the other players seem way less significant, even though they sank just as much Dominion.

In other words, when the Pantheon enters some new area, the Divine Janitors go and fix some small ailments the locals have - clear our some bandits, fix the food supply and so on. At the end, the Burst Spenders wake up and realize they need to spend some Dominion, so they make the sky rain gold and erect Minas Tirith around the village they were visiting.

Now which PC do you think the locals will remember and praise more?

Making investment meaningful with XP costs

An alternative approach to giving everyone Dominion to spend on changing the world would perhaps be to eliminate that currency altogether and just stick to spending XP. While not ideal for a game based on OSR like Godbound, where levels are very distinct and meaningful leaps in power, it might be more suited for a point-buy system like Chronicles of Darkness.

There is some precedent for such an approach in CoD. In Mage the Awakening the PCs can create lasting spells that affect the world in a meaningful way. That spell has to be "held" by the mage that cast it however, unless it is "released" by spending a permanent dot of Willpower - essentially spending XP on it. That cost was significant in the first edition of the book, but got much more affordable in the second edition.

Similarly, CoD allowed the players to spend XP on purchasing Merits for the characters - advantages the character can use that are not directly represented as the character itself. Resources, allies, status, retainers and so on could all be at the character's disposal for an affordable XP cost.

This approach sets a sort of precedent - the players are okay sacrificing direct power of the PC (being able to spend XP on increasing attributes, skills, or buying supernatural powers) in exchange for indirect power they can use.

Using XP in place of Dominion might be a bit more challenging - the players would be sacrificing their personal power to affect the world, but that wouldn't necessarily mean they would be getting a tangible benefit out of it. It would, however, be a very meaningful statement on the player's part - that this problem matters to them enough to make that sacrifice.

Player expectations

So all in all, there are a few player expectationswith one approach or the other that would need to be acknowledged.

In a Dominion economy, the GM should probably acknowledge the contribution of both types of players. If a player spends their Dominion, it shouldn't be an event that becomes mundane. The players that engage with the system and make frequent effort to make the game world better should not be overshadowed by the infrequent big spenders.

In an XP economy, each change is perhaps doubly important because the player sacrifices essentially a part of their character to make it happen. They will be weaker, therefore not having that many opportunities to shine during engagements or combat. They would probably expect to know that their contributions matter.

Conclusions

The Dominion system from Godbound is interesting, but not perfect. While Chronicles of Darkness give an interesting alternative to how the players can change the world, it also introduces some of its own problems.

It's probably useful to engage with the players, make sure their contributions to the game are acknowledged, and be mindful of what they expect out of the game for the resources that they spend.